Decking The Halls

Scents of freshly cut pine, vanilla, and cinnamon tickled Johnny Lancer's nose as he walked through the open doorway nearest the fireplace alcove. He drew in a deep breath then stood gazing around the room with the wide-eyed wonder of a child. He couldn't believe the transformation since that morning.

Holly branches with cherry colored berries, evergreen boughs, and clusters of pinecones seemed to have sprouted in every nook and cranny. They cluttered the mantle of the fireplace, filled in the empty spaces on several shelves of the bookcases at one end of the room, and formed a nest for the candelabra, base hidden by a crimson bow, on the dining table next to the bookshelves. Both front corners of the oak desk by the high arched window that took up a major portion of the opposite wall were also adorned by the greenery, as were the tops of the gun cabinet and various other small tables. Strings of snow-like nuggets of popped corn added a frilly scallop to the edges of these same furnishings while ribbons of red perked up the bases of candle holders, wall lamps, and the arms of the floor lamp that separated the two wing-backed chairs, which were dressed in checkered quilts of red and green calico that matched the festive covering on the sofa in front of the fireplace.

When his eyes had had their fill, Johnny shifted them to his brother, who had followed him into the room and was standing at his side. "So this is what yuh meant by decking the halls, huh Scott?"

"You haven’t seen anything, yet, Little Brother" replied the elder of the two. "Wait 'til Cipriano and Jelly get here with the tree . . . and remember, you haven't been upstairs, either."

Scott's smile was smug, and there was that knowing gleam in his eyes that never failed to remind Johnny of the vast differences in their up-bringing. Sometimes he found the expression infuriating, and at other times it brought a deep burning pain in his chest. Today, even though he felt a twinge of both emotions, he responded to his brother's enthusiasm with a grin. "Guess your grandfather went all out, didn't he? I mean . . .." His eyes wavered downward as his voice faded.

"I’m sorry--"

"What's to be sorry about?" Johnny cut in with a hint of irritation, his eyes finding his brother's face once more. Scott always seemed to be apologizing for something these days.

Scott glanced away, and then his shoulders lifted as he looked over at Johnny. "I forgot how it must have been for you all those--"

Again Johnny interrupted his brother. "Scott, it ain't worth makin' a big deal out of. I never missed all this . . . back then." Johnny lowered his eyes and fell silent before shrugging and looking up, not quite meeting Scott's gaze. "Besides . . . way I look at it, you're the one that's missin' out the most."

"Me? How do you figure that?" Scott, brows rising, sounded genuinely surprised..

"Oh . . . I don't know." Feeling a little uncertain of where the conversation might be headed, Johnny swept the room with a wave of his hand. "Guess because I can't see this bein' all that much like Boston."

"No . . . not that much . . . but enough." Scott hesitated longer, his eyes settling on the floor as Johnny's crossed their path and rose to study his face. "Actually, I think this might be the best Christmas I've ever had," Scott continued, his voice faltering a little.

"Yeah?" During the silence that followed his softly spoken question, a thought took form in his mind. Johnny closed his eyes and chewed his lip. "Yeah," he said in an awed tone as a lump crept into his throat.

The French doors on the far side of the room rattled, and Johnny felt a gust of cold air caress his cheeks. At the same instant he opened his eyes and saw the glass doors swing inward, a bulky form appeared in the doorway while a voice from outside said, "You sure this ain't gunna be too big?"

"It will be fine, Señor. You will see," replied Cipriano, a stoutly built Mexican, as he guided the butt end of a tree into the room.

While Scott rushed forward and offered to help, Johnny stared in open-mouthed wonder as the giant fir was squeezed through the opening. He didn't move until his brother called to him. "Johnny, think you could help us?"

"Uh, sure. Where yuh plan on puttin' it?" Johnny glanced around. Somehow the room seemed to have shrunk.

"T'resa said it goes by the fireplace," replied a muffled voice from somewhere in the midst of the tree's thick branches.

"The fireplace! How're we supposed to get it there?" asked Johnny, almost laughing at the absurdity of Jelly Hoskin's words.

"No problem," Scott announced, reaching for the nearest chair and scooting it out of the way. "We just move a few things."

This looked like an easy enough solution until they reached the table that held their father's ship. Johnny didn't like the idea of trying to move it. The model, with its intricate details and tall masts, had a delicate appearance. More than once Murdoch had cautioned them to be careful around it.

"Are you going to help me?" demanded Scott, who already had a hold of one side of the small table.

Johnny remained a few steps away. "Can't we get around it where it is?"

"Not without moving the sofa. Besides, we have to put Murdoch's chair somewhere. It'll look better here against the wall than anyplace else."

Scott had a point, Johnny supposed. The large leather chair that was in the corner to the left of the fireplace would look out of place sitting out in the middle of the room. "Guess you're right . . . only where yuh plannin' on puttin' that?" he said, taking a step before pausing to motion at the table with the ship.

"Behind the sofa. It's a much better place for it . . . don't you think?" said Scott, his chin rising in a most aggravating manner. .

Before Johnny had a chance to make a retort of any sort, a whiskered face pushed through the branches toward the far end of the tree. "You two gunna stand there jawin' all night?" the man complained.

"Don't go gettin' yourself in a pucker, Jelly," groused Johnny moving into position to pick up the other side of the table. Then as he and his brother carried the ship-laden table toward the sofa, he pointedly said, "If this gets broke, I ain't taken the blame . . . and I ain't gunna be the one to tell the old man, either."

"Tell the old man, what?"

Startled by the sound of his father's deep voice coming from somewhere behind him, Johnny twisted around enough to see Murdoch approaching from the hall doorway beyond the fireplace.

"Johnny!" shouted Scott as his brother's end of the table tipped.

Feeling the ship totter, Johnny turned his attention back on the vessel, its sails descending in a wide arc toward the floor. Time then seemed to slow to a crawl as he let go of the table with his right hand and grabbed for the ships' hull. His heart lurched. The table was slipping from his fingers and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

As the ship rocked against his hand, Johnny saw a vision of the majestic vessel lying in a heap on the floor, slivers of wood piled in a tangled mass like the sticks of Teresa's game made from rounded splinters of kindling. There was no preventing the impending disaster.

A large hand clasped the edge of the table and another steadied the ship. "You mind telling me just where you're going with this?" demanded the man, whose shoulder was inches from Johnny's eye.

Letting out a deep sigh of relief, Johnny nodded in the general direction of the sofa. "Over there," he replied. He then gave his brother a chilling glare. "But we can put it back where it was, can't we Scott?"

"And just what was wrong with where it was?" asked Murdoch, still supporting the ship and the table.

"It was . . . we needed more room . . . to get the tree in. I thought we could move it over behind the sofa where it would be ou-uh . . . safer," stammered Scott.

Seeing his brother become flustered was a rare treat that Johnny found amusing despite the intimidating frown on their father's face. He had to bite his lip to keep from laughing when Scott's cheeks took on a pink hue.

"I see." The creases in Murdoch's forehead deepened and his eyes grew thoughtful. "I suppose it would be better by the sofa," he said, and then instructed Johnny to steady the ship.

Johnny noticed his brother was as surprised as he was that their father hadn't put up an argument. However keeping his thoughts to himself, he did as he was told while Scott and Murdoch carried the table to its new location. He then looked upward and closed his eyes in thanksgiving that the ship had been moved without further incident.

A half hour later, Scott stood with crossed arms, his head tilted back as he gazed up at the top of the tree that dwarfed the fireplace and filled the corner Murdoch's chair had occupied earlier. "Looks good . . . don't you think?" he said, turning his eyes on his brother, who was standing next to their father a few feet away.

"Yeah," replied Johnny, failing to sound convincing. Even his smile fell flat. He simply couldn't see what all of the hoop-la was over having a Christmas tree. It seemed a lot of work for nothing. In a few days, the needles would be dry and falling off the branches.

"Of course it has to be decorated yet," said Scott as though he had read his brother's mind.

Before Johnny could reply, his father and surrogate sister, Teresa O'Brien, walked in with heavily laden arms.

Teresa stared up at the tree for a moment, a wrinkle forming between her brows and her lips pressed tight together. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and then put on a brave smile. "It's a lovely tree."

"Yes, it is," replied Scott, reaching out to relieve Teresa of her load. "Jelly and Cipriano made an excellent choice."

Murdoch set the box he was carrying down on the sofa and opened the lid. Johnny noticed the man's face looked a little strained, too. However, he had little time for reflecting on the emotional state of his family. As soon as the lids were removed from the boxes, he was handed several tin stars, each with a string attached to one point. "Here, Brother. Hang these," commanded Scott.

Johnny looked down at the shiny pieces of paper-thin metal in his hand. "Hang 'em where?"

"Anywhere you want. Just pick a branch and fish the end of it through the loop of string, like this," replied Scott, demonstrating with another star he had taken from the box on the sofa.

Attaching the stars to the limbs was easy enough. It was the deciding where to hang them that took time. There seemed to be so few of the ornaments in comparison to the size of the tree. Johnny figured they needed to be spaced out as evenly as possible to look right.

Johnny hung the stars and Teresa tied red bows here and there while Scott, Jelly, and Murdoch draped long strings of popped corn from limb to limb in an upward spiral as far up as they could reach. As they all worked, Scott began to whistle a merry tune. "Let's all sing," he suggested after a while and then started right in without waiting for an answer.

"Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Fa la la la la la la la la
'Tis the season to be jolly,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Don we now our gay apparel,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Troll the ancient Yuletide carol,
Fa la la la la la la la la."

Jelly started singing immediately, and Murdoch and Teresa joined in by the end of the fourth line -- a blend of diverse masculine tones complimenting the girl's softer feminine voice. Johnny, being unfamiliar with the song, just listened as he continued fastening more stars in place. The words made little sense to him, and he wondered what they had to do with Christmas. There was no mention of the Virgin Mary, a lowly stable in Bethlehem, angels announcing the birth of God's Son, or shepherds and wise men coming to worship the Christ. Obviously his family's customs were far removed from those of his mother's people.

There was a pause in the singing by the time the last star was dangling from the end of a branch that Johnny could only reach by standing on the tip of his toes. He felt a hand touch his arm. "Sing with us," pleaded Teresa, her eyes glimmering with moisture.

Johnny did his best to stumble through the song as the others loudly sang,

"Fast away the old year passes,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Sing we joyous all together,
Fa la la la la la la la la
Heedless of the wind and weather,
Fa la la la la la la la la."

A couple more songs followed. Johnny tried to sing along as much as possible, but found it more and more difficult to concentrate on keeping up with the unfamiliar words and tunes as the tree was transformed from a towering mass of greenery to a spectacle of color before his eyes.

"It's beautiful," breathed Teresa once the last decoration was adorning a branch of the tree. Then her face clouded and her lip trembled before she choked back a sob and fled the room.

"Paul always got the tree and helped with the decorating," explained Murdoch, sadness creeping into his eyes and tone. He also left in a hurry.

Jelly too made some excuse to leave and for a moment Johnny thought Scott would do the same. Instead his brother let out a sigh and went over to the table where he poured two glasses of brandy. "A toast," he said as he offered one glass to his brother.

"To what?" Johnny replied, taking the glass and holding the stem lightly between the thumb and first finger of his right hand.

"To our first Christmas. May it fill our next with fond memories," said Scott with such grim determination etching his face that Johnny almost smiled.

Seeing that his brother was missing being in Boston with his grandfather, Johnny sobered while clinking his glass against Scott's raised glass. "Yeah," he softly drawled in agreement with the other man's sentiments. He too hoped that the future would hold more pleasant memories for them all.

By the time Johnny headed for his room later that night, a hush had fallen over the Lancer hacienda. Murdoch and Teresa had both retired shortly after supper, and Jelly and Scott had gone to bed an hour or so later.

Johnny slowly climbed the stairs, his eyes trailing over the garland of holly and red ribbon that garnished the banister. Upon reaching the second floor landing, he looked down the long hallway. It too had a festive glow with moon-shaped patches of wall tinted a soft yellow from the light of the candles in sconces, which were also trimmed with bits of holly and ribbon.

Pausing in the doorway to his room, Johnny looked down the hall one last time. First a tune flitted through his mind and then the words to the song his brother had led them in earlier.

'Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
Fa la la la la la la la la.
'Tis the season to be jolly,
Fa la la la la la la la la.'

A smile tugged at Johnny lips as a tremor of anticipation ran through him. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, a time to join Cipriano, Maria, and the other Mexicans on the ranch and participate in the traditions of his mother's people. Then Christmas Day would be celebrated according to the customs of his father and brother. There would be gifts to exchange and open, and a meal fit for a king to stuff himself on.

Suddenly, the words of the song made perfect sense to Johnny. Yep! 'Tis the season to be jolly, he thought, entering his room and closing the door. He sat on the edge of the bed, tugged off his boots, and then flopped onto his back. As wave of contentment washed over him, and he closed his eyes. The halls are decked out in grand style. I have a family and a few good friends, and the New Year is lookin' bright. This is gunna be my best Christmas ever. Fa la la la la la la la la!