Marie Marshall

This is how it all happened. Leastways, this is how I heerd it. See, there were two families – the McCratchits and the Scroogefields. The McCratchits lived up on McCratchit Mountain, and to say they were dirt poor is to give disrespect to dirt. And they didn’t take kindly to folk trespassing on the mountain. The Scroogefields lived down in the valley where the river runs and the land is sweet, and old Eb Scroogefield was rich, by Appalachian standards that is. Now, old Eb Scroogefield and Paw McCratchit didn’t much like each other, didn’t have no reason to like each other. Both families were Scotch, like you folk. Leastways, Paw McCratchit’s granddaddy and old Eb Scroogefield’s daddy had both come from Scotland to America, but the Scroogefields were what you’d call Low-landers and the McCratchits were High-landers. That was bad enough, but old Eb Scroogefield held the mortgage on the McCratchit place, and as the land didn’t grow much cepting rocks, the McCratchits owed old Eb Scroogefield and owed him big.

Old Eb Scroogefield, last of his line, could have afforded to be generous, he could have cut the McCratchits a whole lot of slack. But he had a tight fist, deep pockets, and short arms. He was a by-word and a hissing in the valley when it came to meanness, and a plain cuss to mountain folk. Not that people would say so to his face. He counted every cent, made an inventory of all his possessions, and wouldn’t spend if he could mend. If charity began at home it stayed there as far as old Eb Scroogefield was concerned. If anyone was collecting for worthy causes they knew to walk right past the Scroogefield house. If you knocked on old Eb Scroogefield’s door and asked him for a drink of water he’d tell you to lie on your back, open your mouth, and pray for rain.

Not that he was much for praying. I guess you could call him a rationalist. Yeah, he rationed everything. He had been a church-going man oncet, but folk could remember when the preacher took as his text “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,” and Eb Scroogefield walked out.

From that moment on nothing metaphysical bothered him much. That is until one night when he got metaphysically bothered big. It was a cold night in December, the threat of snow was in the air. Old Eb Scroogefield shut his ledger, shuffled out of his coat, his shirt, and his pants, and into his night-shirt, blew out his candle, and huddled into the blankets on his bed. He had calculated that two blankets was enough to keep in his body-heat, no sense in having three on the bed – they’d only wear out quicker. Anyways old Eb tried to settle to sleep. Sleep never came easy to him, but this particular night it eluded him entirely. In the darkness the figures from his ledger seemed to dance the polka with dollar bills right in front of his eyes. He lay there and worried. First he worried on his right side, then he worried on his back, then he worried on his left side. It seems like he stayed awake for hours, but then maybe he did fall asleep, because he suddenly heerd his daddy’s old long-case clock downstairs strike midnight.

Old Eb Scroogefield started and sat up in bed. He was no longer alone in the room. Someone was standing by the side of his bed.

Eb began to reach for the old flintlock pistol he kept by his bed, but then stopped. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up like bristles on a hog. The man standing by his bed was his former business partner, and that was impossible, because he had been dead for seven years.

Old Eb Scroogefield pinched himself. “Ow!” He tried to look away from the apparition but his eyes were drawn back in-exorably.

“Jake? Is that you?” he asked, his voice scarcely above a whisper.

“Well it sure ain’t Thomas Jefferson,” said the apparition. “Yep, it’s me, it’s Jake Marley come back to haunt you.”

“Horse-feathers!” said Eb, a collecting himself. [By the by, it weren’t exactly ‘horse-feathers’ – like I said old Eb Scroogefield was mean and he wouldn’t waste two syllables where one would do.] “You’re dead, Jake. How in heck can it be you?” He pinched himself again, and sure enough it hurt again.

“I’m a sperrit,” said Jake, raising his arms and looming over the bed. “I’ve come to you with a warning. If you don’t want to spend eternity wandering the world as a ghost, you have to change your ways.”

“Horse-feathers,” said old Eb again, but with more uncertainty.

“I knowed you would be hard to convince, Eb,” said Jake. “But heck, just look at me… I wasn’t half as mean as you are, and yet I’m a-floating round in limbo and a-dragging these here chains after me, never peaceful, never resting. It’s no way to spend eternity, Eb. You’re not getting any younger, you’re running out of time to change your ways. If you could just do one act of generosity, then maybe… maybe…”

“What kind of act of generosity?” said old Eb. By now he was commencing to get frightened. But his meanness was fighting with his fear. “Not a big one, just maybe a little one?”

“The size doesn’t matter, so long as it shows a change of heart,” said the apparition. “You’ve got to change, Eb, really change! Aw, I knowed I wouldn’t be able to convince you. I’m going to hand you over to three other sperrits, Eb…”

“No! No!” begged old Eb, now getting really frightened.

“Too late, Eb… they’ve been summoned… they’ve been summoned… they’ll visit you one by one, on the stroke of midnight…” The words of Jake’s ghost faded as he himself faded.

With the disappearance of the apparition old Eb Scroogefield began to regain some of his composure. He must have been dreaming, he surely must. It was dark in his room and his shoulders were cold, so he huddled back down in the blankets and shut his eyes. He still didn’t sleep, though, because Jake’s words would not leave him be. He heerd the clock strike the hour and opened his eyes in surprise. Surely it was only one o’clock? But the clock was striking two… three… four… Old Eb held his breath and counted all the way to… twelve!

A figure stood beside his bed, and again old Eb Scroogefield’s eyes were drawn to it. “Who in tarnation…” he began, but couldn’t get no further. Jake’s ghost had come as a shock, this here second sperrit added confusion to that. One moment it seemed like a youngster, the next a grizzled old-timer. Eb rubbed his eyes, but couldn’t look away. “Who… who in tarnation are you supposed to be?” he managed to say at last.

“I ain’t supposed to be nobody. I am the Ghost of Christmas Past,” said the sperrit. “Ya’ll ready fer a ride down Memory Trail?”

The sperrit didn’t wait for any answer, but touched Eb Scroogefield on the arm, and suddenly there they both were standing outside an old log cabin. Eb recognised it, but more’n that he recognised the two young people setting on the bench outside it. “Why, that’s the old McCratchit place, and that’s Mary Lou McCratchit and… me! That’s me when I was no more’n sixteen, and we were sweet on each other.” Well, the young couple were a-gazing into each other’s eyes and a-talking, and they didn’t notice when someone else arrived on the scene – Grandpaw McCratchit. Well, he wasted no time in ordering Mary Lou inside and telling young Eb to git. Old Eb watched as his young self ran away and Grandpaw McCratchit followed Mary Lou inside, taking off his big leather belt. Old Eb went to call his younger self back, but the sperrit told him, “Won’t do not good, he cain’t hear ye.”

The scene changed, and there was the young Eb setting at the table in the Scroogefield house, while Big Daddy Scroogefield paced the room. Old Eb and the sperrit stood by like lollygaggers at a medicine show.

“Eb, boy,” said the patriarch, “I jest had Robert McCratchit Senior come to the front door, with his shotgun, giving me a piece of his mind that he could ill afford. I resent it when the likes of that mountain trash come to my house armed and loaded, but if what he told me is true then jest maybe he had reason. About you and Mary Lou McCratchit – that true?”

“It is, sir. We love each other. We aim to get married.”

“And if I say to you, here is a silver dollar,” said the patriarch, putting a coin on the table, “and it’s yourn if you give up the girl, what would you say?”

“I’d say no, sir, I love her,” answered young Eb.

“And if I put another silver dollar on top of it?”

“No, sir. Wouldn’t change a thing.”

“And another?”

“No, sir.”

“And another?”

This went on until there were forty silver dollars on the table in front of the young man. It was more’n he’d ever been told was his in his life. When he answered “No, sir” that time there was hesitation in his voice, and when he heerd that, Big Daddy Scroogefield grinned. Well, the pile got to forty-eight before young Eb changed his answer.

“I’d think about it, sir…”

“And another, then… makes forty-nine?”

Young Eb stretched a hand out towards the money. Old Eb wanted to cry out and stop him, even though he knew he wouldn’t be heerd. Jest in time the youngster saw his daddy’s hickory switch come down – didn’t exactly miss, caught him a stinging blow.

“Merry Christmas, son,” said Big Daddy Scroogefield, shoveling the silver dollars into a leather bag. “And no need to thank me.”

“Merry Christmas? Thank you fer what?”

“A valuable lesson I jest taught you,” said his father, grinning more, and leaving the room, while the young man sat nursing his stinging knuckles.

“Horse feathers!” he said.

Those were the very words old Eb Scroogefield said as he came to himself, setting on his own bed, alone in his room. But he said them with far less conviction than usual. He was thinking about the time in his life he chose money over love, and wondered whether it had been as wise a decision as his daddy had convinced him. Still, saying “Horse feathers” again gave him some comfort.

But then he heerd his old clock striking, and again it was striking the full twelve. Eb looked around him for another sperrit, but he couldn’t see nothing. After a few minutes, maybe there was a chink of light under the door, though, and from outside the room was that the sound of laughter?

“Ya’ll fixing to stay in there all night, Eb?” said a voice.

Cautiously, Eb Scroogefield got up from his bed, crossed the room, and opened the door. He expected to see his staircase, but what he did see instead was a big room with a big chair in it, and in the big chair there sat a big, big man, quite the biggest man old Eb had ever seen. he was dressed from neck to toe in fringed buckskins, with a coonskin cap on his head and a couple of eagle feathers stuck in it. His buckskin shirt was open to the waist, and round his neck there were strings of Delaware beads. He had a skillet in his right hand, and he was frying chicken wings in it over a roaring fire.

“And who in tarnation are you supposed to be?” asked old Eb.

“I ain’t supposed to be nobody,” answered the buckskinned apparition, “I am the Ghost of Christmas Present, and I’ve got something to show you, Eb Scroogefield.”

Eb was about to ask him what that something was, when the sperrit reached out and touched his arm. The fire and the skillet and the chicken wings disappeared, and Eb found himself staring  at a table in a mean room. Around the table sat a crowd of poorly-dressed critters, and at the head of the table… why, that was Bob McCratchit Junior, head of the whole McCratchit tribe. He rose to his feet and spoke.

“Brothers, sisters, cousins, McCratchits all. Today’s Christmas day, and this here’s our annual Christmas dinner. Now, times is hard, game is scarce, and money’s even scarcer. So all we’ve got fer dinner is squirrel stew, same as yesterday, same as the day before. But as it’s Christmas, I’m a-breaking out the moonshine, so at least we’re gonna get a mite merrier than usual.” There were cheers all round the table, as he reached for a big old fruit jar, and splashed a helping of mountain dew into each McCratchit’s cup.

“We’ll drink a toast,” said Bob, “to old Eb Scroogefield!”

Well, that surprised Eb, to see each one of the whole tribe of his enemies raise their cups to their lips and take a mouthful. It was less of a surprise when each one of them spat that mouthful on the floor and cussed!

“Is this supposed to make me feel better towards this trash?” he asked the sperrit.

“Hush up and watch and listen,” the sperrit replied. Eb did as he was told, and he saw a look come onto Bob’s face like he never saw on any McCratchit. It was a soft look, with a smile concealing deep worry, as he looked down on the little boy setting hunched on the next chair.

“Hey, Tim-Bob,” he said, gently. “How’s my little man?”

“I’ll be fine, Daddy,” said the boy. “I’m jest a mite tired I guess.”

“Well jest you go and sit next to the fire, and I’ll get your maw to bring over a bowl of stew.”

“Thank you, Daddy,” said Tim-Bob, throwing his arms round his daddy’s neck and kissing him, before hobbling off to the fireside on a home-made crutch. Bob McCratchit drew his wife to one side and spoke quietly to her with tears in his eyes.

“He ain’t getting any better.”

“No Bob, he ain’t. To speak the truth he’s getting worse. Bob… Bob… can we not ask the doctor to call?”

“Now Mary-Jean you know we cain’t. Doc costs money, and the next mortgage repayment’s due.”

Eb looked at the Ghost of Christmas Present and was about to ask him a question, when the sperrit touched him on the arm again, and Eb found himself in the middle of a desert. A man in ragged clothes was crawling over the stony ground, gasping “Water… water…”

“Sperrit, will he find water?”

“He might,” said the sperrit, “if he lies on his back, opens his mouth, and prays for rain.”

Eb put his chin in his hand. “I suppose you’re telling me that nothing good happens without somebody making it happen?” But there was no answer. The sperrit and the desert had gone, and Eb was standing in the dark outside his own bedroom.

Well, he went back inside, but he didn’t get near his bed before he heerd the clock begin to strike. He didn’t have to count, he knew it was going to be twelve. On the twelfth stroke the room became cold. Eb didn’t quite see, more like felt the presence of someone… something… in his bedroom, over in a dark corner. The moon came out from behind clouds, and a shaft of moonlight fell on the frock-coat of a figure, dressed entirely in black. Old Eb was rooted to the spot with fear. Of all the sperrits that had come to him, this one was the worst by a long mile!

“I guess you’re supposed to be…” he began. “Darn it, I know you are the Ghost of Christmas-yet-to-come. I also know this ain’t going to be no picnic!”

The sperrit moved forward noiselessly. He was dressed in mourning clothes, and his face was in shadow. He said nothing but pointed out of the window with one hand and touched Eb’s shoulder with the other. Window and night melted, and there they were outside, in the main street of the town. A buckboard went slowly by with a coffin on it, followed by a whole line of mountain people, and a couple of townsfolk stopped to watch it pass.

“There’s been some deaths this past month,” said one.

“True enough. And some mourned more than others.”

“I reckon so. There goes that poor little critter. And two weeks back it was the old skinflint.”

“Him? Oh yeah. Well no one went to see him buried, that’s for sure.”

“Who’re they talking about, sperrit?” asked Eb. “Not that little McCratchit? Not Tim-Bob? Heck, I know I’ve been no friend to that family, but he’s just a kid, a harmless, sickly child. What does he know about feuds and such? Tell me it’s not him!” As though in answer the sperrit touched him on the arm again, and there they stood in the town graveyard. Right in front of them was a tidy little plot with a bunch of mountain flowers placed lovingly on it. There was a plain wooden board placed at its head, and in neat pokerwork were the words “Timothy Robert McCratchit, beloved son of Robert and Mariah Jeannette McCratchit.”

Well, old Eb shed the first tears he’d shed in a long time, and they were like fire in his eyes.

“Sperrit, tell me these things ain’t fixed. Tell me they’re just things that might happen, and all it takes is for someone to…”

The sperrit pointed to another grave, and Eb approached it in terror. There were no flowers, the earth was piled on it in a tumble, and already poison ivy was spreading its leaves-of-three there. A single plank was stuck in the ground at a crazy angle. As the sky darkened, Eb strained to read what was written on the plank. It was hard in the twilight – the words appeared to have been cut crudely with a bowie knife. There was a peal of thunder and a flash of lighting, and Eb could make it out…

“EBENEZER SCROOGEFIELD”

“No!” he cried, falling to his knees. “No! Look here, sperrit, surely all it takes is for one person to do… well… something, and all this could be different. Couldn’t it?”

There was another peal of thunder, and Eb found himself kneeling on his bedroom floor. Outside it was light, and he could hear townsfolk shouting “Merry Christmas!” to each other.

He stood up.

“The feud has to stop,” he said. “It’s brought nobody no good for three generations. I’ll stop it. I’ll start by cancelling the McCratchit mortgage and giving Bob the deeds to his family home.

Now folks, this is the point I’m going to have to take you to that same McCratchit home, up McCratchit mountain. You got to see things from their point of view. So, there’s Bob McCratchit setting by the fire, and there’s his eldest, Pete, standing by the window.

“Hey, Paw!” the lad calls out. “Here comes old Eb Scroogefield on his horse!”

“The heck you say!” says Bob. “Here? On McCratchit mountain?”

Bob got his hunting rifle, opened a window, aimed, and fired. Shot old Eb right between the eyes.

What? What? You were expecting a happy ending? Heck, this is the Appalachians. These are mountain folk.

It was the end of the feud, though. That enough “happy ending” fer you?