Chapter 12 — Christmas at Kennebec Academy

Christmas crept up when no one was looking. After Thanksgiving the grass turned brown, the last leaves left the maple trees, leaving the hills covered with slim gray pencil lines. The wind was cold, raw, easterly, smelling of spruce and salt water, and the river flowed gray and sullen. No one paid any attention to the weather. Winter sports practice had started, strategy developed, and the incessant bouncing of basketballs filled the afternoons. The wrestlers writhed and groaned, squash players relieved their aggressions on the little gray ball. The hockey team, outcasts rather, left daily in a bus to play at the Bowdoin rink. The winter routine of classes and sports fell into place. In the second week in December came a warm, quiet day with a southwest breeze. The river showed a dusty blue and the sky was soft and hazy. “We’ll pay for this – you’ll see,” said Bert, the school’s carpenter, who ran a string of lobster traps on the side. “This one’s a weather-breeder.” That evening came a screaming snow squall. When it cleared, the northwest wind blew for three days out of a cold, hard sky. At night the wind moderated and the mercury huddled in the bottom of the thermometer. When Allen Poole came out of the dorm to go to breakfast, the cold bit through his thin jacket and reached down into his lungs for the first time since last winter. Every rut and footprint was frozen iron hard on the path, and from the river rose a bank of vapor where the warmer water met the cold air. The salt water in the icehouse cove was skimmed over, and Allen’s hair was frozen when he reached the warmth of the dining hall. A few tried to tough it out without coats, but the campus blossomed that morning with down ski jackets, Hudson Bay blanket coats, and checkered mackinaws. Hats from the curly Persian Lamb of the Russian steppes to the plastic orange hunting caps of L.L. Bean punctuated walks. Of course the fresh water stream above the old sawmill froze. The ice was new and black. Every skate mark showed a scar of white. They followed the stream up, and whenever two or three stood together, the ice bent, and cracks zipped across it. Up in the swamp the channels between the tufts of grass made a maze through which the boys chased each other, the leader never knowing which way he would have to turn next. The water had dropped a little, banking all the turns. Skating back with the remains of the clear sunset splashed yellow behind them, they felt as if they were skating in a bowl, for the rubbery ice bent a little with their weight. Then it warmed up and snowed all night and suddenly Christmas was upon them. To the top of the flagpole was hoisted a green spruce tree and the little trees growing in front of the dorms sparkled in colored lights. Candles glowed in the windows, and the morning mail swelled with Christmas cards. Mrs. Floyd, wife of the master of Chelsea House, liked the winter birds. She watched the chickadees around her feeding station - neat tidy little birds, well tucked up. The juncos, modest and not quite so quick, and two nuthatches flickered in and out. She was thinking about the dormitory party for the last night of school, a real send-off for the boys. Each of the two families and the two single men would bear part of the cost. It was a sort of foolish thing to do, but it had been a good fall term and for some of the boys who had rather a dismal Christmas ahead, it would be cheering. The ones going to the Caribbean she worried about not at all. The last classes came on Wednesday. There was a festive air, which was irrepressible despite the earnest appeals of the Headmaster to finish up the term “productively.” The halls resounded with French Christmas carols. The Spanish class broke a piñata in the gym with quite undignified shouts of joy - in 58

Spanish. “If Santa Claus can travel home at a rate half again as fast as he travels to Portland,” began the math teacher. “Imagine,” said the English teacher, “a reindeer in your living room. The door and windows are too small to let his horns out. How do you get him out?” “How did you get him in? Imagine him out,” shouted a gifted lad with exploding enthusiasm of the discovery. It was a very productive day. The dormitory party was a huge success with punch, a cake and for each boy a red and yellow school scarf with a C for Chelsea House sewed into the corner. The next morning after breakfast the halls were vibrant. “Come here and sit on this suitcase for me.” “Oh, get Fatty Sikes to do it. I’m busy.” “I’ll do it.” “Don’t jump on it, you jerk!” Someone had left an orange on his windowsill. A frozen orange thrown down a tiled hall explodes. The showers steamed with a new zeal for cleanliness, and of course someone flushed all toilets simultaneously and nearly boiled his roommate like a lobster. At 9 o’clock a procession of buses turned in off the State Road, lumbered and squeaked around the circle to join like a great worm in front of the school building. As if pulled with wires, boys ran toward that common center. Little boys and big boys, some with elaborate packs, some with duffel bags. Two boys, each with huge suitcases, stood between them and each picked up one end of each bag. By keeping step they made astonishing speed. The buses swallowed the pool of boys gathered round them, lumbered on around the circle and down the State Road toward Portland where the school would disperse to buses, planes, and private cars. As the last bus rolled past Chelsea House, Mrs. Floyd watched it out of sight. It left her with a faint foul smell of diesel smoke, a flutter of red and yellow, and an echo of “Jingle Bells” as the peace of vacation descended on Kennebec Academy.