“Well, regular, I wouldn’t know. But you. You’ll have nought here to tell you it’s Christmas. What will you do?”

What will an acorn do when it has lain awhile in the ground and the rain swells its husk? Become a fig? “I have the galley proofs to finish,” I said.

“Now Mr. Shepherd, that is a fib. You finished those, and I know it.”

“I wanted to have one more look. And then I’ll start writing something new.”

The eyebrows soared. “What about?”

“I’m not sure.”

She gathered up her purse and gloves, preparing to go. A light snow had been falling all day. “All work and no play, Mr. Shepherd. Makes the meat go to gristle.”

“Does it? I thought it made Jack a dull boy.”

“It would do that as well.”

“I’ll probably get nothing done at all, thanks to the pile of books you brought from the library. I’ll poke up the fire and have Christmas with Mr. Hardy and Mr. Dickens. What could be better? And Tristram Shandy. The cats are hinting that I should cook a leg of lamb, so maybe I will. And I’m sure Eddie Cantor and Nora Martin will sing some carols for me on Wednesday night.”

“I hate to tell you, but they’re singing for their sponsor. I think it’s Sal Hepatica.”

“You are cruel, Mrs. Brown. Next you’ll tell me all those girls on the Lucky Strike Hit Parade are crooning for Lucky Strike cigarettes, and not me.”

She sat with her hands on her pocketbook, waiting.

“You want to say something. Go ahead.”

“None of my business, Mr. Shepherd. But a man would have a girl usually. Or attachments. That aren’t cats or books.”

I took off the gloves and folded them carefully. “Now this is really a case of the skillet calling the kettle black. Thirty years is a long time to stay a widow.”

“I did have a runny-go at marriage. The one time.”

“Well, don’t worry. I’ve had my runny-goes. Attachments, as you say.”

“If you say so. And no Christmas present for ten years. If you get attached to something, seems like it wouldn’t come all that far loose.”

“No, wait, I forgot. Last Christmas Romulus brought over a jam cake from his mother. Half the cake, actually. He said they’d had enough of it.”

“Blessed are the grateful, Mr. Shepherd, but that is no account as a real present. Half a jam cake showing signs of prior use.”

Chispa slipped into the room, around the edge of the door and along the wall, flattened to it, as if pulled sideways by a separate order of gravity. Slowly she crossed the bottom of the bookcase in similar manner, into the inglenook by the fireplace. I unfolded the gloves. It was tempting to put them on, wear them until Whitsuntide. “I’m not the sort of person who attracts gifts.”

“Mr. Shepherd, do ye think I believe it? I open the mail, with all such things in it as people can let sail. Even little embroidered things.”

“Then I should say I’m not a good recipient. When people are no good at relationships, I’ve noticed they often blame the other people. But I don’t.”

“I’ve never heard you blame a soul for anything, Mr. Shepherd. It’s one of your qualities. To the extent I sometimes wonder if your mother dropped you on your head.”

“No, she probably carried me in a suitcase—she was eternally on the move. Anyone I especially liked was soon gone, household people or friends. It’s been like that. Or they’ve left me on their own initiative. Mostly by dying.”

“Well. I am not a one to argue with mortal demise.”

“Well said, Mrs. Brown.”

“You ought to write it down. About yourself and all those that went away.”

“What, write about my life? Like poor old Tristram Shandy trying to remember his whole story helter-skelter?”

“You’d get further,” she said. “You’ve been keeping good notes all along.”

“Who would want to read such trivial stuff?”

“Well, why write it down in the first place, then? Because you do. I’m not putting my nose into anything, you do it plain in the open, Mr. Shepherd. Seems to me, if you really wanted shed of your own days, you’d not take such care to put them all down on a page. I see you go so deep in it, you forget day or night and have breakfast at supper.”

“I’m just a writer. It’s my way of thinking.”

“It’s your attachments. That’s what it looks like to me. You might do as well to attach to your own self, alongside all these story people you dream up from nowhere.”

“But who would want to read that?”

The light outside had gone dusky, and now the wind raised a low keen against the window. Clumps of snow fell out of the trees, shattering across the yard. “You won’t want to miss your five-fifteen bus,” I said.

She donned a formidable knitted hat and stood to leave, reaching to shake my hand. “I will see you on Monday week. Happy Christmas, Mr. Shepherd.”

“Happy Christmas, Mrs. Brown. I thank you for the gift.”

She closed the door and stepped out toward Haywood, leaving behind a house as silent as an underworld. Chisme slipped into the room, pulled by the same sidelong gravity across the bottom of the wall into the inglenook. Chispa immediately left it then, according to the inscrutable laws of attraction and indifference. The hall clock divided the scene into measured increments: Tick, tick.

Who would want to read all this?

Kingsport News, March 2, 1947

Book Review

by United Press

Picture the lady walking by, a real looker, gold bangles on her arm and a tattoo on her ankle. She’s headed out for some shopping, with a basket strapped on her back. For today’s menu she may choose iguana roasted on the spit, or perhaps armadillo. For cash, her gal pals trade cocoa beans, or a handy gadget that’s the rage with their better halves here in ancient Mexico: a double-edged throwing spear called the atel-atel.

That’s the opening scene of Pilgrims of Chapultepec, a novel by Harrison Shepherd that reads like a joyride. This tribe of ancients will settle down in village life for only so long before it loses its charm to pox, invasion, or bandits—you can count on it. Then they hit the trail again, goaded on by a wild-eyed chief who claims he’ll lead them to a promised land. How will they know they’ve found it? He claims the gods told him to look for an eagle on a cactus, snacking on snake.