This story has been pestering me to be written for months now, and now, since is Christmas, I finally decided to give in! I'll be holding my breath to hear what you think… well, figuratively, that is! (wink, wink)
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, themes, and dialogue are the sole property of Margaret Mitchell's estate and no copyright infringement is intended. I just love Scarlett, Rhett, et al too much to leave them alone!
1.
When Wade Hampton Hamilton saw the crowd gathering at the depot to watch the Christmas parade, Atlanta's first annual, he worried what his mother might think if one of their number let spill to her that he was among them. Surely she wouldn't find out, he told himself. If she did, she might get the idea that he was too young to be trusted with the store's errand-running and return him to sweeping the floors. Truth as it was, he was quicker than any of the other clerks on his feet and a rather more enthusiastic worker. Although, he did hate to sweep.
He looked around for a friendly group to join. Mrs. Meade, he would stay far away from. She was holding onto the arm of the Doctor and looked quite displeased that she had to be there at all, although, as the Chairperson of the church social committee, she had organized the entire event. Then, to his alarm, he almost met the eyes of his own Aunt Pittypat Hamilton. The old woman had a heart of gold and fairly adored him; however, she couldn't be trusted to keep quiet to his mother, even if he asked her to do so. Old Uncle Peter, Pitty's colored coachman, was standing next to her, holding her muff in his hands and looking overwhelmed by the flurry of activity. In front of the station house five or six boys from school circled their leader, his cousin Beau Wilkes, who was wearing the same expression that Wade would have been, had he been a little more at ease, one of unequivocal joy.
"This is it!" Frank Bonnell, one of Beau's friends, said. "Santa Claus himself'll be here directly."
"Santa Claus lives in the North Pole, you idgit!" Raoul Pecard grinned back. "Well shucks boys, if it ain't Wade Hampton! Thought you couldn't make it?"
Wade shrugged, trying to keep his enthusiasm at a minimum. At the ripe old age of twelve, well, thirteen in two months time, he was each of these boys' senior, and it wouldn't do for him to look as openmouthed as they were, no sir. "Nothing else to do."
"Aunt Scarlett said you were at the store all day?" Beau inquired, then let out a knowing sigh. "Well, glad you could come for a bit."
"Can't stay." Wade muttered low so that only Beau could hear. "Fact, I'm going back to the store right now."
"Aww, c'mon Wade!" Beau smiled wide. "You've been here what, maybe two, three whole minutes? I won't tell Aunt Scarlett. Honest. You haven't even seen Santa Claus yet!"
A pained look passed over Wade's face. It was true, he had never seen Santa Claus; however, he already knew a great deal more about the man than Beau did, obviously. Beau had been raised on the same stories he had, those told by his mother, Wade's Aunt Melly, dead and buried this year past. She'd spun them all sorts of tales about the jolly old man who lived in Santaclausville, The North Pole, who brought all sorts of toys and other niceties to children who were good and minded their manners the year round. When Wade and Beau had reached a certain age, they had inquired as to whether or not such a person could really exist. Aunt Melly had assured them that it was so, and to prove her point, pulled out an old edition of Harper's Weekly, in which Santa Claus was not only pictured, but immortalized in a poem by a Mister Webster.
That had satisfied Beau, who had a quiet, dreamy nature and was predisposed to believe in such things. But Wade had been skeptical.
So, with a great deal of trepidation combined with an even greater amount of courage, he had approached his mother with his quite serious inquiry on the occasion of the previous year's Christmastide. As much as he feared her wrath, he knew that his mother always told him the truth, no matter what.
"Mother?" he had asked, his words measured and voice hesitant.
"Yes, Wade Hampton?" she had replied, not looking up from the account book she had been studying.
"Mother, I … I need to ask you something."
"What is it, Wade Hampton? … Mother's busy."
"I was just wondering…Mother…Is Santa Claus a real, live man? Aunt Melly told Beau and Ella and I that he was, but I wasn't sure and I wanted to…check." Wade finished his statement lamely, and looked, embarrassed, down at his sweating palms.
His mother's elegant head had pitched back to look up at him from her figures. She looked nothing if not mad. "Now listen here, Wade Hampton, I know that Melly liked to fill your head with stories, and I don't blame you for listening to her back then. You were only a little boy. But you're almost a man now. And you're old enough to understand the difference between what's real and what's not."
"But Mother, she said that it was so. It was in the magazine!"
"Great balls of fire, do not bother me anymore about what she said! It's not true, Wade Hampton. None of it. And the sooner you realize it, the better off you'll be. Now, please won't you run and play with Ella and leave me in peace?"
And that had been that. He had not revisited the topic in his mother's hearing, and he made sure that Ella did not either. Ella, for her part, was apathetic to the idea of Santa Claus, and Christmas at all, for that matter. His sweet, silly sister had changed a great deal in the past year, sometimes rivaling even Wade in the stoniness of her demeanor. His mother had seemed to appreciate the change, extending a certain amount of affection Ella's way that she had never expressed before in the slightest. And Ella seemed to revel in the attention she was getting, finding that the responses she received from her mother were most positive when she spoke like an adult. Wade, for his part, remained a quiet, casual observer. He missed his stepfather, often called away on business, who had loved him as he was, and felt no need to curry favor with his mother by behaving any differently than usual.
Beau nudged his arm, drawing him out of his daydream. "Look Wade. Over yonder, see? Look who it is! See, with Mayor Angier?"
He looked over to where Beau was pointing. Nedom L. Angier, Atlanta's esteemed mayor was standing on the gray-white gravel with a tall, broad shouldered man who Wade knew, very well indeed. It was none other than his stepfather, Rhett Butler, who had been absent even longer than usual on an undisclosed matter of business and not due home until January at the earliest.
"I wonder what he's doing here?" Beau inquired politely.
"What do you mean?" Wade retorted, a little more shortly than he had intended.
"I meant, he's been so busy … I … I guess he's just enjoying the parade same as us. You gonna go say something to him?"
Wade shrugged. "I'd better get on. Mother'll think I've been lollygagging on the way back from the bank."
"Suit yourself," Beau said. "See you later."
"Alright then," Wade waved nonchalantly, then headed into the crowd, in the direction of his stepfather, who had moved on from the Mayor and on to another man in a black suit.
"Wade!" his big voice called out over the crowd. He'd been spotted. "Wade Hampton, come over here!"
Wade walked over, not knowing whether to delight or despair that he'd been so easily noticed.
"Hi Uncle Rhett," Wade stuck his left hand out, which the older man shook, a bemused expression on his face.
"No hug? Well, I suppose that a handshake is more apropos between us men." He winked down at Wade. "I'm glad you're here. I saw you over there with your friends."
Wade managed a weak smile, not wanting to disclose that they weren't his friends; quite the opposite, they were only tolerable to him because Beau said so, and only then because Aunt Melly was considered a fallen saint, and to defy her boy was to defile her memory.
"Yes sir. I've got to go though. Mother sent me to the bank ages ago."
A strange look appeared on Rhett's face.
"So she has you working at the store?"
"On Saturdays," Wade said hurriedly, lest Uncle Rhett think he'd been set to work for a punishment. "I get a quarter for every hour I work. Mother started me at a quarter a day, but I told her that the darkies were getting near three dollars for sweeping the streets, and that's not even a day's worth of work. So she agreed that I'd earned more."
Rhett let out a chuckle. "That's telling her, Wade. Good for you."
From down the tracks came a whistle, then the marching band began to play a peppy tune. Rhett smiled. "Parade's starting. Wish Ella was down here to see Santa Claus with all the other kids. They've managed to cook up the real deal, all the way from the North Pole."
Wade drew himself up to his full height. "Uncle Rhett, you don't have to pretend for me. Mother told me the truth."
"The truth? What sort of truth was that?"
"Santa Claus. The Christmas myths. All of it's nothing but make believe."
All the talking around them stopped and the clusters of people, particularly the persons with young children began merging into one single mass. The marching band resounded, the mayor and his wife had boarded a fancily adorned open carriage, and were waving to the crowd as they drove past.
"And why … Why ever would she have said a thing like that?" Rhett's voice asked over the noise of the crowd.
"There!" someone pointed to the horse-drawn streetcar.
An old man, donning a green velvet, fur-trimmed robe over his clothes was the carriage's occupant. The man was whiskered and white-bearded, a jolly demeanor on his visage, was standing and waving jovially out the car window and bidding each and every one of them a very Merry Christmas. For a moment, Wade thought that the man was looking directly at him.
"Santa Claus!" Beau and his cohorts had hurried to the front of the crowd in time to reach out and touch the old man's hand, which he had stuck out in greeting as he passed.
Everyone hurried toward the end of the route at the next street, hoping to make it in time to see Santa again as he finished his trip. Then came the Negro children, uncertain as to whether or not they should be in arm-touching contact with the white ones.
"Won't you join your friends?" Rhett moved to touch Wade's shoulder, then, sensing that the boy was discomfited for some reason that had nothing to do with any of the parade happenings.
"Wade Hampton Hamilton!" A woman's voice shouted. And Rhett Butler knew for sure that it was none other than the boy's mother, his wife.
Santa Claus, who was stepping off of the streetcar at that moment stopped short before smiling and waving. It was as though he believed that the woman's greeting was a friendly one, and addressed to him.
At Wade's horrified face, his stepfather whispered, "Don't worry, son. Hello, Mrs. Butler." He bowed politely as she weaved her way through the crowd.
"What the … Rhett, what are you … oh never mind." She refocused her gaze and ire upon Wade, whose face was ravaged with despair and disgrace. "Just what did you think you were doing, young man?"
"I was on my way back, Mother," Wade said truthfully, wondering all the while if being caught standing with Uncle Rhett would count in his favor or against him, "I didn't do a single thing wrong."
Her mouth opened, then shut without any words escaping it. Never a good sign.
"Get back to the store, Wade Hampton. I'll deal with you later."
"Yes, ma'am." He sighed as he departed, his shoulders slumped as he miserably made his way back toward the store.
"I knew he'd come down here, I just knew it! And after I directly told him not to come…"
"Maybe so," Rhett interrupted her, "but what was the harm? He wanted to see the parade with the other boys. And Santa Claus. Normal experiences of childhood."
"Childhood? Fiddle-dee-dee. Wade Hampton is no longer a child if you haven't noticed. And Santa Claus?" Scarlett repeated the name as though she hadn't heard it right. "He's far too old to believe in fairy tales like that. Why even Ella …"
"You've fed this nonsense to Ella as well?"
"Nonsense? Why Rhett, it's common sense. Surely you see that it is…?" Her voice trailed off as she observed his darkening eyes. "Well, I don't want them to grow up thinking that all of their dreams will come true or any of that foolishness. I know too well the hurt in thinking that way."
She could see that she had wounded him with her last statement, so she paused a moment to savor her small victory.
"And they'll turn out better for it. Practical and sensible."
A slow smile spread across Rhett's face and Scarlett found herself smiling too. See, she congratulated herself, I don't always do everything wrong when it comes to managing my children.
"That is an idea, Scarlett. It just hit me. I'm not sure why someone's not thought of it before. Why, the public would be clamoring to buy from any shop proprietor who was shrewd enough to market it …"
He had lost her, but the idea of moneymaking appealed to her business sensibilities.
"Whatever are you running on about?"
"Well, it might have escaped your notice, but as we've been standing here, the entire city is clamoring around that old man on that streetcar who smiled and waved and presented himself as the purveyor of all of their holiday necessities."
"What does that have to do with making money?"
"It would seem to be, Scarlett my dear, that if he could be prevailed upon to appear in a retail setting …"
"Don't be ridiculous, Rhett, surely you don't think that the children will tell him what they want and he'll tell their parents and then …" Immediately and without thinking, she said almost reverently, "…and then they'll buy those things! Rhett!" she seized his arm. "You're a genius! Why hadn't I thought of that? But where is he? I must speak to him, immediately. Oh Rhett, how clever you are! Now then, I must speak to him."
With that, she took her leave, and Rhett Butler stood at alone at the station house, staring down at his pocket watch.
"Put money in thy purse," he uttered, appreciating the irony as he turned his heels to go on to his next destination: home.