The Last Noel Read Online Free

said no, the crosses belonged to his mother, that she always brought them with her and stuck them in the ground when she came to visit. He said that every year on New Year's Day she would start assembling a new collection of these grave markers, then she would pack all but one of the previous year's crosses into a shoebox that she called “The Promised Land.” Each year she saved one cross from the previous year and put it with the other saved ones, and she set them out with the new ones in her cemetery. They were, she said, “reminders.”
    â€œReminders?” Noni asked.
    Kaye looked away, then turned back to her with a dramatic nod. “Like your mama's ‘beau ideas,’” he said. “These are my mama's.”
    Pulling her down to her knees beside him, shining his flashlight on the strange little crossed sticks, he began reciting from memory, as he might a school lesson. “Emmett Till, 14 yrs old, Aug 27, 1955, beaten to death.” He moved the light's beam along the row. “Willie James Howard, March 12, 1944, lynched to death.” “Harry T. Moore and his wife Harriette, Christmas Day, 1951, bombed to death in bed.”
    In the front row of the cemetery all the sticks had this year's date on them, 1963. Kaye quickly bounced the flashlight beam at each cross: “June 12, 1963, Medgar shot.” “Nov. 22,1963, JFK shot.”
    There were four crosses close together side by side that all said Sept 15, 1963. The boy read out their inscriptions: “Addie Mae Collins, 14 yrs old, bombed.” “Denise McNair, 11 yrs old, bombed.” “Carole Robertson, 14 yrs old, bombed.” The fourth cross had fallen over. He brushed off the snow and stuck it back in the ground next to the others. “Cynthia Wesley, 14 yrs old, bombed.” Noni didn’t know how to respond; she wasn’t sure what any of it meant, except that somebody had killed these people, children too, and that as a reminder the boy's mother had made these peculiar little stick crosses—which was a very strange thing to do—into a sort of doll's cemetery. She said, “They’re very nice,” which was all she could think of to say.
    Kaye stood, brushed snow from his knees. “My mama's been in marches and sit-downs, too.”
    â€œSit-downs?”
    â€œYou sit down and the police can’t make you get up. A policeman hit my mama in the head.” He ran his hand across the top of his head. “She’ll show you the scar. Well, my grandmama says,” and he spoke with a sad matter-of-factness that Noni recognized as Aunt Ma's voice. “Says my mama takes things too much to heart, and she takes any more, she's gonna bust in two. You want to see something else?” Before she could answer, he slipped inside the door and vanished, leaving her huddled beside the cemetery. He was back within minutes, awkwardly holding a long narrow cardboard box. Holding it out across his arms, he told her to open it. “You’re gonna see something you never saw!”
    In this prediction, the boy was absolutely right. For inside the box there were human bones wired together. The bones of a big foot. And the bones of half of a long leg. “Now how ’bout that!” he asked her, eagerly grinning.
    Noni was speechless. She could only nod.
    â€œMy Grandpa Tat keeps this box hid in his closet, but heshowed it to me. He made the V.A. hospital give him back his leg they cut off, and me and him wired it back together just like a jigsaw puzzle and now he's gonna use it to make his case.”
    â€œHis case?”
    But Kaye was busy thrusting the box back inside the door, and after he closed it he seemed to be finished with the subject for he didn’t answer her. “You want to ride that sled?” he said again.
    Beside Clayhome, the hill swept widely down through a meadow where in summer wildflowers grew. Toward the bottom, the slope plunged steeply