A Christmas Blizzard by Garrison Keillor Read Free Book Online Page B

James, “Don’t worry about the past and don’t try to solve the future. Bravery and adventure! That’s the ticket! Don’t sit and gather moss. Get up, get out, do what you dream of doing, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and you don’t need to make that particular mistake again, but at least you won’t get old wondering what if you had.”
    Like the Christmas Uncle Earl decided to experiment with candles on the Christmas tree. He had seen this in Victorian picture books, the master of the house lighting the candles and the children dazed with wonder, and so he went ahead—secretly, of course—why spoil the surprise?—and bought an 8-foot Norwegian pine and six dozen clip-on candleholders and let Aunt Myrna hang the bulbs and doodads and gewgaws and tinsel and on Christmas Eve he snuck out of the Methodist church during the singing of “Silent Night” and trotted home and hung the candles and then, when he glimpsed Myrna and the children and the Sparrow family and Aunt Mona and Boo and Sherm heading for the house for the oyster stew and the cardamom buns, he took a little gas torch and lit 72 candles just in time for the whole gang to come piling in the front door, but they made a bee-line for the kitchen, not the living room where the astonishing thing stood in its flaming glory, and when he cried, “Let’s all go in the living room!” nobody budged. So he cried out, “Let’s open presents!” But Myrna was already handing out cups of mulled wine. So, in desperation, and as a sort of joke, he yelled, “The tree’s on fire!” And the whole bunch mobbed into the living room and indeed it was and James’s mother, who got there first, fainted at the sight and landed on little Liz and broke her collarbone and she had to be driven forty miles to a hospital, which cast a shadow on the evening. Aunt Myrna said to him, “How could you have done such a thing and not have warned me?” but it was Earl’s way to do things impulsively, with great enthusiasm. And thereby made a vivid Christmas memory for each and all and on succeeding Christmases the mere sight of a cluster of candles brought it all back, the majesty and the terror of it.

10. He descends through the storm into the land of dark memor ies
     
     
    H e got to Midway at two in the afternoon and the Lucky Lady was pulled up in front of the V.I.P. terminal and Buzz was waiting to take the bags from Ramon and stow them in the tail. Buzz had put on his lucky white silk scarf and his leather helmet. The snow was coming down hard. He followed Buzz to the plane and Buzz asked where Mrs. Sparrow was. “She’ll fly commercial on Christmas Day,” he said. “She’s feeling under the weather.”
    “We could come back here and pick her up.”
    “We could do that. We’ll see.”
    Buddy had the coffee made and a basket of fresh croissants and raspberry jam and all the newspapers, which Mr. Sparrow stuffed under his seat. He buckled himself in and looked out the window at a little Cessna wheeling off toward the runway. No interest in newspapers today—he was afraid of what he might find out. The company was wallowing in this recession and his radio stations were tanking— why had he ever wanted to get into radio? Dumb dumb dumb— and the Lake Superior Cruise Line was a loser— who wants to sail the coast of Wisconsin?— and the publishing division came out with a magazine called Sleepers aimed at people with sleep issues and strong literary interests. Not a success. And in November came that nasty article in the Mid-Atlantic Journal of Medicine , a little study jiggered by a disgruntled nobody in a lab coat purporting to show that coyote grass is somehow tied (it isn’t) to a loss of language skills. Sales of 4xPrime went in the toilet. Mr. Sparrow’s marketing people met behind closed doors and anguished over the thing and meanwhile the story spread.
    When it comes to the rich, people are anxious to believe the absolute worst!
    And so this