Unbroken Circle – A Christmas Story

 Mark Mooney lifted himself from a lumpy mattress; rubbed his side with one hand while reaching for the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels on stacked wood crates. As the last of the amber liquid slid down his troth, he knew that there was not enough left to dull his troubled mind. It was Christmas Eve; all he could think of was his wife and daughter. He had messed up; he should be home with his family instead of living in the cold dingy room above the Gentry General Store.

The alarm clock leap to life once again from snooze jerking him back to reality, jumping out of bed he stood over the open floor vent to catch what little heat that rose from the store below. Rumbling through a clothesbasket he shook out the cleanest looking uniform washed his face, dressed and walked out the door.

 Crawling into his old pickup Mark looked down at the doll he had bought at a dollar store wrapped in used Christmas paper he had pulled out of the office party trash; the one he did remember from last night. His plans were to drop it off after work; on his way to Dixon’s bowling alley. He found that the bowling alley was where a few other single parents he knew, mostly men gathered on Christmas Eve to get drunk and forget their blunders in life.

Pulling into the Post Office parking lot, he popped a stick of gum in his mouth; he needed to avoid getting close to anyone; he knew that he reeked of whiskey. Mark had taken a co-worker’s shift to earn extra money for Christmas, that’s what he told himself and he tried to mentally remember how late the liquor store stayed open. He could not remember the last time he was totally sober, and he worried about keeping it from his employer.

“Damn”. 

Mark reached in his jacket pocket pulling out a card to his mother, he had been going to mail it for two weeks, and he threw it into the out of state bin. He loaded his mail truck and pulled out onto Dixon’s icy main street, its only street.

He begins his mail delivery cursing the snow and sleet that suddenly begin to stick to the winding road leading up the side of one of Tennessee’s most dangerous mountain that led from Dixon to Cedarville. Half way up the mountain; Mark was having trouble seeing out his windshield, it was a white-out and he could feel his tire chains slipping on the ice.  Suddenly through the white wall came a red pickup truck sliding toward him.

“What the hell”.

Yelling, he jerked the steering wheel sliding to the side of the road, he stopped just as the old red truck toppled over the guardrail and disappeared out of site.

Mark radioed Mountain Rescue before trying to run toward the bent and torn guardrail, the truck was now wedged on a ledge of jagged broken trees; below was nothing but open space ending at the valley floor several hundred feet below. Sliding down the frozen rim Mark was thankful for the brush and vines that slowed him down as he plummeted toward the edge of the mountainside.  He grabbed at a straggly cedar tree growing out of a rock next to the truck; his breath bellowed a foggy mist and his heart pounded in his ears. 

Through the shattered driver’s side window, Mark could see a small white-headed person twisted beneath the steering wheel with a trail of red running from the head.  His next thought was selfish, even cruel…he wish that he had called in sick, dropped off the doll, bought a bottle of Jack and gone back to his grubby room. Mark looked at his bloody hands caused by holding to rocks and the small pine trees, one wrong move and the truck would plummet to the valley taking them both with it.

“This is diffidently going to make me late for the party.”  

Mark said aloud before crawling through the window as he looked at the drop off beneath the old truck. The truck wobbled, he stop, then crawled slowly to the passenger’s side, it wobbled again, and he held his breath and looked under the steering wheel. He was looking down at the small fragile body of a very old woman, praying as the truck shook, he pulled her gently up to the seat beside him; he thought she was dead. He realized at that moment that he could not get both of them to safety? 

Suddenly she moved; open tired old blue eyes, and then the dark leathery face lined with wrinkles spread into a toothless smile. 

“Jimmy!” O.K. thought Mark, she’s delirious.  

A tiny spotted heavily veined hand patted his face; Mark could not believe what he was seeing, she had to be ninety and who was Jimmy?  He was speechless as she begin talking non-stop, he knew she was hurt badly but for some reason she did not know it.  

“It took me a long time to get this ole truck started”.  

“Mam, you need to lie still and don’t talk”.

“I was going to the store in Dixon, it just slid off the road”. She continued almost in a hurry.

  “Now don’t be mad at me son, I know your thinking your ma shouldn’t be out driving, but I needed stuff to make the family a good Christmas Eve dinner and you boys your favorite coconut cake.”

An aggravated sound rolled out of Mark, the old woman thought he was her son; he did not have time for this, he had mail to deliver, see his daughter and get to a party where he could drown himself in a bottle! Where was Rescue? 

           “Oh, what the hell.”  Mark did not realize that he had said it out loud.

Upset at his own life and the current situation Mark slammed his fist down on the old ragged dashboard; he did not care if both of them went down the cliff, the truck trembled and then he stopped to think, this could be his mother. 

“Please lay still help is coming.” 

He knew she was hurt badly and he hoped she would not die in his arms; he just looked at her in amazement when she opened her eyes and started talking again as if nothing was wrong with her. Mark now confused with his own feelings tried to tune her out; both compassionate and angry he did not want to hear a story from some old woman that was causing him to miss a drinking party, or seeing his daughter. 

He tried drifting away into his own self-centered world, but the story she was telling took him away from his world back into hers. This tiny crush woman had lived through hard times, the Depression and wars this country had fought, the death of her children and her husband, and now she had only one child left; Jimmy the baby. 

She told about her marriage to a poor man the town of Dixon called a “Cherokee half-breed” she said that he too was dead.  Her ma disapproved of him she explained, but they had three children, war took two and her baby, a Marine was now coming home for Christmas.  Mark’s feeling of frustration abruptly turned into one of humbleness, her hardships had begun to make him see that he should be grateful that he had a family even though he was not with them.  

Mark sadly thought “I threw away my family to party.” He listened to the strange but believable stories. He thought her ability to keep talking in such a traumatic state was unbelievable!

“I do rightly R‘member another day this cold Jimmy. You were born that day. I kin tell you don’t want to hear it agin but I spec we ain’t going’ no where right now.”  

Mark just looked at her amazed that she could talk. He thought this old woman would probably still be talking if she were dead. He looked up hoping to see signs of help.

  “Mam, please, you need to lay still, don’t talk!”

“Your pa left for work with nothin’ but weak watery coffee in his stomach. I wished that I could make him some biscuits and sweet milk gravy. I fussed over his being hungry as I helped tie bailing wire round his ole boots to keep the soles on while he worked. You R’member Jimmy, your pa was a logger.” 

She coughed and Mark dabbed at the blood gathering in the corner of her cracked lips. His only thought then was please God do not let her die, her son is coming home.

   “My pa didn’t hold no grudges. A week before, he promised if your daddy help kill hogs we could have some meat. We never got no meat. I decided after your pa and the boys left to find work that day I would go ask for it. I was eight months along with you, but I walked the five miles down the mountain to my daddy’s farm outside of Dixon.” 

Mark continued to wipe blood, hold her tight, and pray that Rescue would be there soon, and listened.

“We lived in a three room farm shanty off Cedarville Road, down a bit from the  Baptist Church, it were free cause we worked on the farm, sharecropped; the older boys were big enough to help, took us twenty years to buy that place.   

Her hand went to Mark’s cheek patting it with gnarled fingers.  

“My ma, she came from the Whitfield family over in Rock County, but pa he was from a poor family. Pa opened the door that day sayin’, come in out of the cold Sister Girl; he always called me Sister Girl. When I told him I would come for meat owed us, ma shut the door right’ my face. Well, I guess she never forgave me for leaving’ her with a passel of young un’s, I had eight sisters and brothers.” 

Mark felt like an intruder eavesdropping into her past, even worse she thought he was her son. The life she had lived was beyond anything he could imagine. 

“I left and I walked up the mountain road to old Preacher Stone’s.  He were not any preacher, we just called him that because he talked so much. Mattie, his wife was boilin’ pork, onions, and taters together. I was so hungry I thought my knees would buckle under me. Mattie asked if I had been to my ma’s and had I seen she was carryin’ another baby. She said that my ma did not need any more babies, I recon’ maybe God thought the same way because that little baby boy died shortly after he was born.  Mattie told me to help her peel apples and she would give me a pie to take home.” 

The old woman started coughing, bringing blood that Mark could not stop, and he could not get her to stop talking either!

“We baked pies and cornbread and I had been painin’ for hours. I didn’t tell Mattie, just said I had to go home. She packed up a pie and some pork and other stuff for me. I thought I’d never get up the mountain. I unpacked what she gave me puttin’ it on the hearth; I smiled my family would eat well that night, it was Christmas Eve.” 

Suddenly she went limp; Mark held his breath until she began to talk again, he had stopped trying to silence her, she had to tell her story to her Jimmy.

“I knew you were going to be born, ready or not; I put a kettle of water on to boil. I knew what to do. I’d helped my ma birth many a young un’.” 

Mark just looked down, this frail little woman thinking of the courage she had then, and still possessed.

“I was alone and it was gettin’ dark when your pa and the boys come home. He had this tiny cedar tree and four ears of dried corn, guess he planned on poppin it over the fire and we’d spend Christmas Eve eatin’ it and stringin’ it on that puny tree. Then he said to me, what’s that good smell Girl, a miracle? He were laughing when I said, ole Cherokee come see your miracle. When he looked at you, your pa’s face just broke up. We both sat cryin’ and thanked God for our Christmas Eve boy. The boys came in quietly looking at you, and then left us alone. The fire got low, but we didn’t care and we weren’t even hungry. We were warm and full of love, the kind of love only a child can bring; it was you Jimmy.”  She looked up patting Mark’s cheek with trembling hands.

Mark was choking back his own tears when she told him to look in her front shirt pocket and get her billfold. She pulled a picture out of it.  

“R‘member, your first soldier picture.” She said showing Mark the picture, he looked out the back window of the pickup; he could see the red lights of an ambulance and those of Mountain Rescue.   

“Thank God.”  Mark breathed a sigh of relief.  

He started to put the picture back in the billfold when he saw a yellowed newspaper clipping. It was an obituary.

[Military services will be held for Major James Earl Dunlap of Cedarville, Tennessee on December 24 at 2:30 P.M. in Moss Cemetery. Born December 24, 1933, Major Dunlap a Navy pilot killed in Vietnam on December 24, 1963 was the son of Emma Jean Dunlap and was preceded in death by his father Earl “Cherokee” Dunlap in December, 1960, twin brothers Matthew and Mark Dunlap both Navy pilots killed in Vietnam in December, 1962.]   

The obituary was forty years old; Mark held her close to him, no longer able to stop his tears. She opened her eyes now veiled with the shadow of approaching death. He somehow knew that Earl and the boys were waiting on their mother to come home. Mark brushed the tears from his face looked down to find her smiling. 

“Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Jimmy Earl I’m ready to go home now.”

Her face relaxed, the wrinkles seem to fade from her dark leathery face, the only thing showing was a smile. As her breath became shallow Mark leaned over, kissed her cheek.

“Bye mama, I love you.” It was for her Jimmy.

When Mark returned to Dixon, he knocked on the door of the house that was so very familiar to him, he had painted it yellow with a white picket fence a few years back and he used to share it with his family.  He held a doll wrapped in used Christmas paper and hope in his heart that all was not lost. It was then that his heart melted and he knew that the New Year would bring him joy, a lesson well learned.

           “Daddy”.