(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange retells one of our all time favorite seasonal stories.
"Favor Johnson" is the story of a hound names Hercules, a flatlander
doctor, homemade fruitcake and the real spirit of Christmas.
(LANGE) Snow was falling softly past the street lamps in
the village, muffling the sounds of the occasional car and the rattle
of the brook down behind the post office and the general store. From
almost every chimney, smoke drifted up through the falling snow. A few
houses were hung with wreaths and colored lights around the front
doors. Through the front windows gleamed lights on Christmas trees.
Just
after seven o’clock, a pair of shaky headlights came slowly down the
Three Mile Road, and an old blue pickup truck puttered into the light
of the street lamps. The truck stopped at the first house. A man in
overalls and rubber boots got out, reached back into the front seat for
a small package, and trudged up through the snow to the kitchen door of
the house. He knocked, the door opened, and he went inside. A few
minutes later he came back out again, with the sound of voices
following him. "Merry Christmas!" someone called, and he waved.
He
got back into his truck, drove to the next house, and repeated the
routine. Then to the next, and the next, all the way down through the
village. Shortly after ten, he turned the old truck around, drove back
up through the village, and disappeared into the night, his single red
taillight glowing through the snow. Favor Johnson had delivered his
Christmas presents again.
In every house where he’d stopped,
there was now a small cylindrical package wrapped in aluminum foil and
decorated with the Christmas seals that come in the mail. When these
packages were unwrapped, they revealed tin cans with one end removed
and a fruitcake baked inside. For single folks and couples, it was a
soup can; for families of up to five, a vegetable can; and for larger
establishments, a tomato can — all of them full to the brim with the
most succulent fruitcake you could imagine. Mixed up with homemade
butter and studded with hickory nuts, candied cherries and pineapple,
citron, raisins, and currants, it was flavored with Favor’s own hard
cider.
Where old Favor had paused
only momentarily or gone only as far as the doorstep, there remained
the scuff marks of his boots in the snow, where he’d shuffled his feet
nervously. But where he’d gone inside and chatted, or perhaps shared a
bit of cheer, the distinctive odor of cow barn lingered faintly in the
air, a further reminder of who had brought the foil-wrapped package for
which each family was already making its special plans. And always some
child would ask, "Why did Mr. Johnson bring us a fruitcake?"
"Well," a mother or father would answer, "it’s just his way of saying ‘Merry Christmas.’"
"Does he do it every year?"
"Yep."
"Does he take one to everybody in the village?"
"Yep."
"Has he always done it?"
Well, no he hadn’t. And so the story of Favor Johnson and the flatlander doctor and the fruitcake would be told again.
Favor
and his sister Grace had been twins, the only children of a
hardscrabble farmer and his wife a couple of miles above the village.
They’d gotten their names from an old Baptist hymnbook. Leafing through
it for inspiration, their mother had come across the hymn, Praise, My
Soul, the King of Heaven, and had been struck by the line, "Praise Him
for His Grace and Favor to our fathers in distress." So Grace and Favor
it had been.
When the old folks gave up farming, during the
Thirties, they stayed on in the house and split the farm between the
kids. Grace and her husband built a small house on their half, and
Favor lived with the old folks.
When the Second World War
began, the Army said Favor was too old to fight, but they made him a
cook. He’d never cooked before in his life, but he turned out to have a
talent for it. He became mildly famous in his outfit, even when they
were in combat in France. Staff officers often commandeered him for
their special dinners.
When Favor came home from the war in
1945, he took up farming again, and surprised everybody by marrying and
starting a family. But his wife’s health wasn’t robust, so the one
child, a daughter, was all they ever had. About the time the daughter
graduated from high school, Favor’s wife died. The daughter married,
moved away, and didn’t keep in touch. Grace and her husband sold their
half of the farm and moved south. The old folks had died during the
war. So Favor was left alone.
The yard and the house slowly
grew shabby, the barn ramshackle. Favor sold most of the stock, keeping
only two or three milkers. He ran a few chickens and a couple of pigs,
kept a horse to haul firewood, and did a little sugaring in the spring.
He must have had forty cats around the place, and one dog, his constant
companion, a spotted hound named Hercules. Favor kept pretty much to
himself and rarely had occasion to speak — except, perhaps, to
Hercules.
Then one year the selectmen decreed a reappraisal of
all town property, and suddenly Favor’s farm was worth a lot more
money. His taxes went up far beyond his meager means. So he decided to
sell his view.
Above his house was a ten-acre field, and the
view from the top to the south and west was magnificent. Real estate
agents had pestered him for years to let them sell it. Now he had to.
The
field was bought by a surgeon from Massachusetts, a Doctor Jennings.
The doctor and his wife hired an architect, and the next summer Favor’s
field was capped by a magnificent, glass-fronted house where the
Jenningses said they hoped to retire someday.
The Jenningses
were good people, solid and predictable. Favor would hear their
Mercedes diesel coming up the road almost every Friday evening, then
roar as Doc downshifted for the driveway up to the house in the field.
They’d stay till Sunday afternoon and then go back home for the week.
Saturday mornings, Doc Jennings would wander down to Favor’s yard to
chat, buy eggs or milk, or talk about mowing the field.
One
early winter afternoon — on a Christmas Eve — Hercules failed for the
first time in his life to show up at the barn door during the evening
milking. Favor went to the door and called and whistled. No Hercules.
Then Favor remembered he’d heard rabbit hunters in his swamp that
afternoon. So after milking he took a flashlight and started for the
swamp. It was dark and beginning to snow. As he headed down the hill,
he heard Doc Jennings downshift for the driveway, and remembered that
it was Friday.
Hours later, after wandering all through the
swamp calling for his dog, he heard a whine coming from a tangle of
alders, and found Hercules. He’d been shot. Favor
scooped him up and headed back toward the house, stumbling in the thick
brush. His flashlight finally faded and died.
Just as he
scrambled up onto the shoulder of the road with the dying dog in his
arms, he heard the sound of the big diesel coming, and the lights of
Doc’s car swept across him. The car skidded to a stop in the gravel and
Doc jumped out. "My god!" he cried. "What’s happened?"
Favor told him.
"Come on!" said Doc. "I’ve got a blanket in the back. Let’s wrap him up and get him to a vet!"
"Nope,"
said Favor. "I don’t want to do that. He don’t look like he’s gonna
live, and this is the only home he’s ever known. He’s gonna die,
oughtta be right here." Tears mingled with the sweat on Favor’s red
face.
"All right," answered Doc. He shouted toward the car.
"Honey, run back up to the house and get that first aid kit in the
kitchen. Come on, Favor, let’s get that dog in the house!"
Doc
was all dressed up in a three-piece suit. He and his wife had been
headed for the midnight church service. But as he and Favor entered the
kitchen, he threw his suitcoat over a chair. He rolled up his sleeves,
told Favor to put Hercules onto the porcelain-topped table, and began
to examine the weakly-panting dog. "Heat some water, will you?" he
asked. "And I’ll need a candle and a sharp knife, some tweezers if
you’ve got ’em, and a pair of sharp-nosed pliers."
In a few
minutes Mrs. Jennings came back with the first aid kit. Doc told her to
go on to church, but on the way back to stop at the hospital emergency
room and pick up some things he’d order by phone. She left, and he and
Favor went back to work on old Hercules.
His jaw was broken.
Some teeth were missing. One shoulder had been torn open by the blast.
The flesh was full of shot. He was too weak to struggle. He only moaned
as Doc, whose sensitive fingers had probed the tissues of the rich and
famous, worked on him under the flickering fluorescent kitchen fixture.
"I don’t know if it’s proper to pray for a dog, Favor," he said, "but it can’t hurt. This old guy’s not in very good shape."
About
one in the morning Mrs. Jennings brought the supplies Doc had ordered
over the phone. She brewed coffee and heated some sweet rolls she’d
bought at an all-night convenience store. About three o’clock Doc
finally took his last stitch, swabbed the wounds with antiseptic one
last time, and gave the exhausted dog a shot for the pain. He and Favor
lifted him gently and laid him on his mat beside the kitchen stove.
"That’s all I can do," he said, washing his hands at the kitchen sink. "Now we’ll have to wait and see."
"Thanks, Doc," said Favor. "He sure looks a lot better’n he did. What d’ I owe you?"
Doc Jennings put both hands on Favor’s shoulders. His own shoulders sagged with weariness, and his eyes were moist.
"Owe
me? Why, nothing, Favor. There’s little enough you and I can do for
each other, and this was the most, I guess, that I can do for you. I
know you’d do whatever you could for me if I ever needed it.
"I’ll be down around ten to take a look at Hercules. You’d better get some sleep. Oh! I almost forgot. Merry Christmas!"
When
Doc came down later, Hercules was too weak to raise his head in
greeting. His long tail thumped softly on the mat beside the stove. He
was going to be all right.
Doc had brought a gift with him, a
fancy, boxed fruitcake from an expensive mail-order place somewhere.
Favor thanked him again for saving Hercules, and for the fruitcake. But
later, tasting it for the first time, he gagged. "Pfah!" he said. "I
can do better’n that!"
And that’s how it started. He made just
one that first year, for Doc and Mrs. Jennings, and then a few the next
year for some old friends. The response was so tremendous that within
just a few years his list had expanded to include the whole village.
And
the whole village responds in kind. During the two weeks of the holiday
season his bedraggled dooryard is hardly ever without a visiting car or
two, and his kitchen is piled high with gifts that he savors and enjoys
all through the long winter. Some of the village kids even think he’s
Santa Claus in disguise, and that seems to give him the greatest
pleasure of all.
This is Willem Lange, wishing you all a very Merry Christmas.
Willem Lange is a contractor, writer and storyteller who lives in East Montpelier, Vermont.