The mall crawled with harried shoppers, their lips pinched with frazzled expressions as they flowed in and out of shops. Most of them were holding something: a child’s small hand or a bouquet of paper bags bunched together and brimming with gifts. People brushed by me and the most impatient of them gave me a backward glance, as though I had no right to amble through the mall when it was only seventy-two hours until Christmas. My hip kept me at a leisurely pace nowadays—much to the chagrin of the woman behind me, whose bright red Macy’s bags bounced fervently off her legs as she strolled around me and continued toward the food court.

​

Only one bench along the large wall of movie advertisements remained empty, and it was near to a teenage boy who sat sullenly on the edge of his seat. His hair was uneven—whoever had cut it had poor coordination with scissors.

​

“Do you mind if I sit here?” I asked him. He shook his head and I eased myself slowly onto the bench, smoothing out the wrinkles of my lavender dress. Several minutes passed in contented silence, watching the shoppers bustle back and forth. Down the hall there was a large, plush chair upon which a beleaguered Santa Claus sat before dozens of families, their children crying or refusing to sit on his lap. Every minute light flashed as the picture was taken and the assembly line continued. 

​

“Your water bottle is leaking,” the boy said suddenly, and I moved to refasten the cap. Slowly. My fingers don’t move as fast since I reached my seventies. 

 

“Thank you. Are you waiting for someone?”

​

His face crumpled at the question. “My parents work late. I walk here after school to hang out until they get home.”

​

“You don’t take the bus?”

​

“I live in the town over. The bus doesn’t go there. So I come here and do my homework. And then when I finish, I wait. My mom won’t be here for another hour.”

​

I glanced at the packet of algebra next to him. It was white and vacant. “My parents left me alone a lot, too. I was lucky enough to have my grandfather live with me, so I would help him out most of the time.”

​

“My grandpa died last year.” The boy’s voice was hard. “Cancer.”

 

“I’m sorry. I know that’s a tough thing to go through.” The boy didn’t strike me as the type to want excessive pity, so I didn’t offer anything more. 

​

We sat in mutual silence for another ten minutes. 

​

“Tell me about your grandfather?” the boy said, hesitant, as though afraid I would refuse. And just like that, to a stranger—a young boy that could be my grandson, of all people—I began to talk. 

​

​

What I remember of 1934 began with fire and ended with snow.

​

My grandfather was always a modern man. Even when there was nowhere to go but backwards during the thirties, he was looking ahead. While my pa worked the fields all day with the few other men from town who were fortunate enough to still be employed, I worked with my grandfather to deliver the produce and transcribe every last cent in the tattered bookkeeping ledger with one of his fat pencils. He dictated and I wrote because Mrs. Cook had praised my good fist many times, and as a twelve-year old I took that as the highest qualification possible.

​

We rode in the 1929 Ford Model A. It was a reliable car, painted red as a ripe tomato with a leather backseat to load in the food. Grandfather delivered products mostly to supermarkets—we’d motor down the winding, graveled roads, crunching along because they weren’t paved at that time. Usually a young boy would run out to the car and help transfer the products to the store. I resented the impish way he grinned and ran inside, Grandfather’s precious baskets of food tucked precariously under his sweaty arms. 

​

Then Grandfather would hobble back to the car, hunched over the way he always stood. “Five dozen eggs to Weinstock’s,” he would report, as though I hadn’t been sitting there to witness the transaction. The engine spluttered as I carefully wrote down the numbers. Even while he drove I could keep my hand steady enough to be perfectly legible. “Did you get it?” Grandfather asked, haphazardly igniting his cigar with the old Zippo lighter he kept tucked in his flannel shirt pocket. He always had that sickly sweet and smoky scent attached to him. 

​

“I got it.” 

​

“And the twenty pounds of potatoes?” 

​

“Yep. Thirty-eight cents.”

 

“I’m proud of you, you know that?” He liked reminding me of that. “Your arithmetic is quite a doozy, girl. You still studying hard?” 

​

I would reassure him that yes, I was, and no, I wasn’t with any boys yet and I didn’t plan on it for a long time and sure I’d always help him out, he didn’t need to worry about me moving away anytime soon. Then we’d make the next stop, and I hurriedly jotted down each sale, fixated on doing justice to Grandfather’s bookkeeping. If he returned with the same food he entered with because nothing was purchased, he never got frustrated, but just popped his cigar back in his mouth and said, “Trip for biscuits. Let’s hope for some carrot cake next time.” He’d always change the dessert at the end, and it delighted me. “Another trip for biscuits,” he’d say, sliding back into the seat still holding the unsold bushel of apples. “Maybe Weinstock has some pecan date pudding for us.” As the thirties stretched onward, there were more and more trips for biscuits, but Grandfather never broke down. At least, he never showed it in front of me. 

​

I still remember the prices of each product even today, sixty-seven years later. Nineteen cents for ten pounds of white potatoes. Thirty-three cents for a dozen eggs. Twenty-six cents for a bushel of corn. A dollar eighty for a Christmas tree. Prices in those years were driven lower than dirt. 

​

Before the Depression, we were well-off, and the farm used to be bigger. My ma always fawned over the apple orchard when it bloomed in May. Delicate white petals materialized overnight, exploding so thickly over the tree branches that it looked as though snow had fallen, as the slush and mud of spring soaked into the quickly growing grass. Pa liked the corn field—he was an overanxious man and he always said the pin-straight rows of stalks calmed him. 

​

But Grandfather said he and I were birds of a feather, because we both favored the small Christmas tree farm. It was the only tree farm in Vermont at the time, as far as I’m aware. In the twenties folks were content with marching through the woods to cut down a sparse and wilted tree, only to then drag it back through a mile of mucky snow. But after Grandfather started selling his trees at the local farmer’s market for the first time in December 1927, he became something of a local celebrity—his trees were the best in New England because he knew every trick to getting the branches as fluffy with green needles as possible.

​

“Won’t cutting the branches make the trees thinner?” I asked once as I trudged behind him along the dirt path one warm June day, clasping and unclasping my pitch-covered fingers. Before the fall of 1934, Grandfather was plenty rugged. In just a few hours he could shear a whole block of trees—I’d watch from the window as I helped clean inside, fascinated by his small, hunched figure as he worked. 

​

Grandfather chuckled. “We’re not pruning them, only shearing.” He took his old hedge clippers to the branches, and with the dexterity of a barber, cut away the excess. “Shearing slows down the tree’s growth and helps the foliage come in thicker. Here. Give it a try.” The hedge clippers were placed in my small hands, and then his withered fingers closed over mine to guide me. Ma criticized Grandfather whenever she saw me “helping” with the Christmas trees but never stopped him.

​

And then—1934. The burning was on the last day of June.

​

There are some people in the world who have so much hatred in their hearts that it just builds and builds until one day it spews right out and ends up stabbing someone in the heart. I learned that when I was twelve, and I’ve seen it over and over again in my life since then. Tommy and Bill Haymon, two wet-sock twins in the grade above me, liked to torment Grandfather—it made me madder than anything else, and I would holler at them until they left the property to go shout obscenities at someone else. 

​

I won’t tell you what they used to call Grandfather, but they made fun of him constantly: his hunched back, his large ears, his terribly off-key singing that could be heard from outside. I don’t like thinking about what they used to call him back in the day. Grandfather always remained serene and would calm me down, even though he was the one the profanities were directed at. He explained to me that they were envious—their father, Howard Haymon, used to work on the farm until Grandfather had to let him go with the Depression and all. It was just the way the world was spinning, he explained to me, and there was no way he could keep paying Haymon for growing tomatoes that no one wanted to buy. 

​

Tommy and Bill poured stolen gasoline onto the trees that were so carefully cultivated over the past seven years, and then dropped a match on them. I heard Grandfather’s raspy shouts before I saw the blazing fire, and my feet were running out the door before I had even put on shoes. 

​

That day, Grandfather lost two things—his block of trees he was going to harvest that winter, and his strength. I still remember as though looking through an old album, clear as day. His face was contorted into devastation like I’d never seen on him before. Flames were already licking at the dark green firs, smoke eerie as death rising towards the robin egg sky. His feet slipped on the grass, came out from under him, and Grandfather’s already-crooked back struck the ground as though gravity were trying to yank him into an early grave. When I reached him, tears streaked down his sagging, pockmarked face. I cried long after Pa came and put out the few wisps of fire that remained.

​

We thanked God for Grandfather’s ingenuity, though. He’d made his tree farm in six blocks, each separated by a small dirt road acting as a fire break. We only lost one sixth of our trees that day, but Grandfather was never the same after that. When insults were thrown at him thereafter—oh, for the cruelest things, like his shaky hands or the way he scuffed his feet against the ground when he walked—he would wince as though another match had been thrown down on his trees. 

​

Grandfather didn’t work on the farm much after that.

​

“It’s time I focus on the world,” he told Pa. “You hear about Clarence Cooper? He joined the CWA last winter and now he’s making a damn good impact on Vermont. Chipped in with all sorts of projects—that new bridge in Lamoille and that new elementary building across the river.” 

​

“But the farm—” 

​

“Doesn’t need me. You’ve seen the prices. No one is buying nothing these days. The farm could use less workers anyway.” 

​

“Didn’t the CWA end this summer? Clarence is out of a job again—see how much good that Roosevelt project did him.”

​

“Then maybe I’ll pick up bridge. Everyone’s learning how to play. It’ll keep my mind sharp.” He rapped the side of his head and grinned widely, revealing the gaps where his teeth were missing.

​

He told me the truth that night. “Without your pa, my bad back would be the kiss-off of this farm. You ever sit on your foot for too long and then it starts tingling and burning like the dickens? That’s what my leg’s been doing. It’s been acting up ever since I took that tumble, prickling from my spine down.” Then he saw my concerned face, realized he’d been too honest with me, and laughed it off. “Girl, don’t you worry ’bout me. Maybe I’ll finally start on that book I keep threatening to write.” 

​

“Grandfather, we don’t have a typewriter.” 

 

“I heard Thomas Winship has one over at his pawn shop.” 

​

“We can’t afford that!” 

​

“Then you’ll have to be my transcriber,” he responded, smiling.

 

If scratching down the sale of seven Yukon gold potatoes delighted me, then you can imagine how it felt to be the one entrusted with the task of writing down my grandfather’s carefully crafted words. He stayed up late in the sitting room, sometimes past midnight. It was his routine: he settled himself slowly into the moth-eaten floral armchair, smoking a cigar and solving a crossword puzzle. The radio was never more than two feet away. It was a clunky, old contraption, the wood arched like the entrance to our local church. The black dials were a dull gray on the sides after a few years of being fussed about every evening with calloused fingers stained brown from dirt. Grandfather was a jazz fanatic, but every time Roosevelt came on to do one of his fireside chats, he’d twiddle his Zippo with excitement and get everyone quiet. We’d all stare at the radio as though it were the president himself speaking in our drafty little sitting room. 

​

These nights—smoking, listening to jazz, percolating over one of those crosswords—were his chances to think. Then he’d very slowly relay what he’d thought of to me, when I had woken up and finished my morning chores the next day. 

​

“Days of December, frosted dawns to rosy dusks, would that they could last a year.” Pause. “Oh, the days of December.” Pause. “Cider and cinnamon.” Pause. “Golden church bells.” The next pause was so long that my tea went cold. “Dreams of stockings and eight fleecy reindeer.” 

​

I set down my pencil with stunned wonder. “Grandfather, you’re song-writing!” His face flushed. “Well, I wouldn’t call it a song. Poetry, more like.” And then, as though to justify his sudden interest in the arts, “I’m just thinking about those trees. So many burned—you ever think where they might have ended up? No, don’t write this down.” I had begun scribbling down his words, and halted immediately, setting down my pencil to focus on his gaunt face.

 

“Girl, you’re going to be the next Ida Tarbell with the speed you write at. Ten years from now, I’ll be damned if you’re not sitting in New York, hacking away at a fancy typewriter.”

​

“The city! I’d rather stay here in Vermont with you.” 

​

He didn’t seem to hear me. “You’ll be crafting a piece that exposes that crumb Warren Austin. I’d like to see that. You’ll dig up dirt on him, won’t you?” Grandfather liked to rag on Vermont’s senator whenever he got the chance. 

​

“Sure, I’d do that for you. That’d really bring in the money, wouldn’t it?” 

​

His gaze drifted to the hazy sun shining through the paned glass window. “I can’t help but think about those trees.” 

​

“I say, it was a horrible sight.” 

​

He rubbed at his wrist. His speckled skin bruised easily and blemishes of deep purple blotted his skin like oceans on a map. At twelve years old I hadn’t much thought of Grandfather as anything but a wise role model, a whiz at farming, and an optimistic soul amongst so much despair during the Depression. But then I saw a new part of him, as though the face of the moon had swiveled and revealed its other side in a crumbling shift of resolve. He had taken the loss of the trees harder than the personal attack it embodied. 

​

“Will the trees be part of the poem?” I asked, in an attempt to rein the conversation back to his writing. 

​

He smiled, and some spirit returned to his eyes. “Maybe, if I can find something that rhymes with balsam. I suppose if you can’t sell a Christmas tree, might as well sell a book. They both require the death of a tree either way.”

​

“Keep going,” I pressed him, and he continued to slowly tell me, word by word, his poem. I’ve still got that old paper that I put his song down on. It’s yellowed and worn on the edges but the ink shines just as brightly as it had when I wrote it that fall. 

​

Thanksgiving must have come and gone, though I don’t remember it. I wish I did. In December, Pa cut down one of the trees from the next oldest block, the one that hadn’t burned. It could have used another year or two of growth, but Grandfather didn’t say a word and neither did I. We couldn’t afford to buy new baubles like we traditionally did in years past, so Ma scavenged the pantry for materials. Together we strung rosy cranberries to weave the boughs with garland, and melted down sugar and water to glue popcorn kernels until we had a dozen ornaments to hang. 

​

After school got out for break, I was free to spend more time with Grandfather—which included checking the mailbox every afternoon for a stamped envelope marked with a New York City return address. I had convinced Grandfather to mail out his anthology of poems and short stories, confident he would get published. Anticipation crossed his face whenever I returned up the driveway with an envelope in hand, but most days the mailbox was empty. Even if we had received something, it was usually a letter from Ma’s sister out in Albany. 

​

But like I said, Grandfather damn well never got frustrated or impatient. He would simply shake his head and blame the poor quality of roads; otherwise, he would have surely received a response by now. So many weeks had passed since he sent out the manuscript that I think a rejection would have been just as relieving as an acceptance because he was nervous it had gotten lost in the mail.

​

In the meantime we began burning our corn. Funny how it seemed so normal at the time: a few months earlier, we lamented the scorching of the Christmas trees, and then by winter we were happily torching our stocks of corn. No one was buying it; no one could buy it. And, Grandfather reasoned, corn was mighty cheap compared to coal. It warmed our house and gave the corn a use instead of having to throw it out. 

​

The week leading up to Christmas was bitterly cold. The forecaster on the radio warned of a massive snowstorm headed for inner New England for Thursday or Friday. I remember I still had the excitement only a child can have in the face of impending snow. My mind saw the forecast as days skating on the lake, enjoying Ma’s hot chocolate (little did I know we wouldn’t be able to afford it that year), and building snowmen if the snow was wet enough. Grandfather, Ma, and Pa didn’t interpret it how I did, though, because they talked endlessly about getting out the old sleigh since they didn’t dare get the Ford stuck in the snow, and how else would they sell what little food the town was purchasing at the moment? 

​

I often try to recall more about this week than the snowstorm, but that’s it. Sometimes my memory gets me so irate that I want to just yell at the sky until it shatters, because what did happen leading up to Christmas? Did we use the old cast-iron tree stand that Pa always hated climbing into the attic for each year? Were we still able to walk to Joe and Martha’s place for the annual caroling, or was Grandfather’s back too sore? Maybe if I could remember something—anything—then 1934 wouldn’t be so painful, because I’d have happier memories to distract from the bad. 

​

Ma was crying two days before Christmas, the day the snowstorm was supposed to knock on our door. I wasn’t supposed to overhear but I eavesdropped at the top of the stairs.

​

“We’ve got nothing,” she said, and blew her nose. “I could wrap up some of the food in the pantry. Or I could try to find an old dress in the attic she might like. But even then I’ve only got newspaper to wrap it with. She’s just a girl, she doesn’t deserve this.” 

​

“She’s old enough to understand.” Pa’s voice was lower and harder to make out. “No one’s getting anything this year. We’ll still have a nice dinner—potatoes, meat, carrots. That’s enough, isn’t it? For us all to be together?” 

​

“I’ve got some money stowed away.” Grandfather’s voice, hopeful and wobbly as it always was. “I could buy her something.” 

​

“No. Save it for this winter. We might need it later on.” 

​

 But Grandfather didn’t heed Pa. When the snow showed no interest in relenting, he must have set out sometime after we all went to bed on Christmas Eve. His old beige scarf and L.L. Bean boots were missing when we woke up to a cold house devoid of the smell of charred corn; usually Grandfather was the first to wake and get the house warm for us. 

 

I think he wasn’t strong enough to walk to town and back in that blizzard, because there were no marks on his body, no injuries, no sign of attack. Just Grandfather, lying face-down in the snow about half a mile from the house. It must have stopped snowing shortly after he fell because he was only buried under a dusting of fluffy powder, the kind you can’t possibly make a snowman with. Why do I remember thinking about the texture of the snow? I guess my younger self, even amidst Grandfather’s death, still thought of building snowmen. 

​

Toppled in the snow and icy to the touch was an LC Smith typewriter, its ribbon spilled out like spools of black blood. Thomas Winship told the police the next day that yes, he had given Grandfather that new typewriter at about midnight, because Grandfather woke him up with the doorbell and offered double the money Thomas had originally paid to buy it for the pawn shop. 

​

“It’s not your fault,” people like to say to me. “He was a good man and wanted to do a good deed, that’s all. You didn’t tell him to go out there and buy that typewriter.” But I know that if I weren’t around, Grandfather would have been alive to see the fat envelope from New York in his mailbox, the very next day, saying that they would love to publish his manuscript. 

​

The poor boy who had to endure my elderly reflection on the past stared, stunned. 

​

“Here.” I filled the silence. “Buy yourself something.” I took a crumpled twenty dollar bill out of my wallet. So many blessings today that even I forget to notice them sometimes. That’s what makes me somber when I look around at the florid lights and frenzy of purchases this time of year: Are folks thankful, every day, every hour, every minute of their lives? Have I forgotten to be grateful for what I have? 

​

The boy didn’t reach out to take it and simply sat agape. “I can’t.” 

​

“Please. My Christmas gift to you, for your patience listening to an old woman ramble.”

​

“Thank you, ma’am. Thank you so much.” 

​

He didn’t linger long, because his mother was waiting for him and he was running late, he explained in a rush, but he had wanted to hear the end of my story. 

​

As I stood up to leave, “Winter Wonderland” ended on the stereo in the Rite Aid next to me, and a new song began—bells and soft piano, then a baritone voice: a beautifully nostalgic rendition of a classic Christmas poem written during the Great Depression. I began to hum along with it as I limped my way out of the shopping mall, the familiar notes coursing through my head. Oh, the days of December, the singer continued, the lyrics echoing through the increasingly quiet mall as the sun crested over the horizon. It seemed like just yesterday I had written those words down on that old lined paper Grandfather had mailed to New York.