audience staring wide-eyed at the spectacle—and the newspaper said things like “Though
it was certainly interesting, it wasn’t exactly the play we’ve all come to know and love…
.”
So Hegbert decided to try his hand at writing his own play. He’d written his own
sermons his whole life, and some of them, we had to admit, were actually interesting,
especially when he talked about the “wrath of God coming down on the fornicators” and
all that good stuff. That really got his blood boiling, I’ll tell you, when he talked about the
fornicators. That was his real hot spot. When we were younger, my friends and I would
hide behind the trees and shout, “Hegbert is a fornicator!” when we saw him walking
down the street, and we’d giggle like idiots, like we were the wittiest creatures ever to
inhabit the planet.
Old Hegbert, he’d stop dead in his tracks and his ears would perk up—I swear to
God, they actually moved—and he’d turn this bright shade of red, like he’d just drunk
gasoline, and the big green veins in his neck would start sticking out all over, like those
maps of the Amazon River that you see in National Geographic. He’d peer from side to
side, his eyes narrowing into slits as he searched for us, and then, just as suddenly, he’d
start to go pale again, back to that fishy skin, right before our eyes. Boy, it was something
to watch, that’s for sure.
So we’d be hiding behind a tree and Hegbert (what kind of parents name their kid
Hegbert, anyway?) would stand there waiting for us to give ourselves up, as if he thought
we’d be that stupid. We’d put our hands over our mouths to keep from laughing out loud,
but somehow he’d always zero in on us. He’d be turning from side to side, and then he’d
stop, those beady eyes coming right at us, right through the tree. “I know who you are,
Landon Carter,” he’d say, “and the Lord knows, too.” He’d let that sink in for a minute or
so, and then he’d finally head off again, and during the sermon that weekend he’d stare
right at us and say something like “God is merciful to children, but the children must be
worthy as well.” And we’d sort of lower ourselves in the seats, not from embarrassment,
but to hide a new round of giggles. Hegbert didn’t understand us at all, which was really
sort of strange, being that he had a kid and all. But then again, she was a girl. More on
that, though, later.
Anyway, like I said, Hegbert wrote The Christmas Angel one year and decided to put
on that play instead. The play itself wasn’t bad, actually, which surprised everyone the
first year it was performed. It’s basically the story of a man who had lost his wife a few
years back. This guy, Tom Thornton, used to be real religious, but he had a crisis of faith
after his wife died during childbirth. He’s raising this little girl all on his own, but he
hasn’t been the greatest father, and what the little girl really wants for Christmas is a
special music box with an angel engraved on top, a picture of which she’d cut out from an
old catalog. The guy searches long and hard to find the gift, but he can’t find it anywhere.
So it’s Christmas Eve and he’s still searching, and while he’s out looking through the
stores, he comes across a strange woman he’s never seen before, and she promises to help
him find the gift for his daughter. First, though, they help this homeless person (back then
they were called bums, by the way), then they stop at an orphanage to see some kids, then