The Light in the Woods Read online

  Her eyes faded off over the hammers and picks scattered over the tables. Ray could tell the surroundings reminded her of his dad’s workbench in the basement. He remembered them talking about how his workshop in the basement had been a battle the first year they moved into the house on Jacob’s Lane. Ray’s mother came from a clean Polish family who couldn’t help but put everything in its place. Each time his mother would walk through the basement, she would separate and place Hal’s tools in size order, making it impossible for Hal to find anything when he came back to his bench. Understanding his wife and her fastidious nature, Hal drew an outline of each tool on the wall with a hook, so if his Estelle felt the need to make order in the orderless world of a man’s workshop, she would find that each tool had a home. When he went off to the shop, she would gingerly put each one back in its assigned space. Except once. The only time she did not put any of Hal’s tools back was the day he left for basic training. For the first time, Hal would know his hammer was where he last left it. Now his mother asked Ray to fetch things from the basement. His dad’s delicate line drawings looked like a police outline of deceased instruments. Ray didn’t know that Hal’s workbench became her world. The little lives Hal loved couldn’t find a place after he left. Nothing seemed to be able to find its way home, no matter how clear the directions were.

  “It would only be a few hours after school. Before I came home from work,” she continued.

  Oscar shook his head as if he didn’t want to hear himself agree to it. “I can’t pay him,” Oscar said. Then his eyes glanced up at the wall. He took two towels out of the back pocket of his gray dungarees and put them over his ears. “And it’s four o’clock.”

  And with that, every clock on his wall came alive. A chorus of brass bells and silver whistles, metal tubes smacked by rubber mallets, oak-carved birds singing, spinning dollies and gears whizzing rang in the air. Ray and his mother stared up at the walls in amazement. His mother let out a girlish laugh as one hundred clocks belted in joy that it was one, two, five or ten o’clock somewhere in the world. Then, after ten seconds of clamor and chiming, they all stopped as if an orchestra conductor sliced his wand and silenced them on cue. The room became silent as each clock turned back into another face on the wall. Each numerical face looked down at the three seated in the living room and waited patiently for their next big moment to arrive. Ray’s mother dropped the rags from her ears but the smile remained on her face.

  “No, Mr. Taglieber. That won’t be necessary.”

  After a few moments, Ray, his mother, and Oscar made their way to the door. Oscar shuffled quickly behind the two as he seemed eager to be left alone with his clocks. Oscar stayed in the doorway as he watched the two walk out in the snow.

  His mother stopped and dusted her cap as Ray kept walking. Ray figured that if he couldn’t talk he could put some distance between him and the ticking walls. After he walked a few yards ahead he stopped and the let the future sink in. His afternoon playtime was gone. Now his few remaining hours of daylight would be spent in that odd house helping that odd man. Not with Olive or Tommy or in the woods playing Terry and the Pirates. He remained a safe distance away and kicked at the rocks that sat under the snow. Even from the end of the driveway he could hear his mother and Oscar talk about him.

  “It has been hard for Raymond,” he heard Oscar say quietly.

  “It is hard for everyone, Mr. Taglieber,” she said, cleaning her feather. “Telling that boy there was no Santa was the first sin I’ve ever seen my son commit. I believe it is the only sin one can commit at his age.”

  Oscar scratched his beard. “A sin, you reckon?”

  “He took the magic out of someone’s life, Mr. Taglieber,” she said as her eyes and voice drifted higher into the darkening sky. “Christmas day, the most joyful day, will be less joyful for that child because of my son’s actions. I can’t think of anything that is more sin, can you?” Her thin eyes appeared like dark wells with no floor. Oscar took in a deep breath and looked over at a deer that appeared in a far corner of the wood.

  “No, ma’am. Right now, I can’t.”

  Ray followed his mother’s gaze and watched the deer take a few tentative steps towards them before turning and bounding back into the woods. She shook her head, put on her hat, and straightened the brim as if she was affixing a helmet to her head before going into battle. The pools retreated and the fire came back into her eyes. Her jaw clenched as she turned to face Oscar.

  “My son’s magic was taken from him. But that gives him no right to take it from someone else. He is not the enemy. Under my roof he will not act like one.”

  Ray watched his mother nod to Oscar and march back up the lane. She didn’t look at Ray as she passed him. Her chin tucked in her collar, her fists clenched inside her coat pockets. The falling snow melted before it could even touch her cap.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ray’s Room – Southold, New York, 1944

  As Ray lay in bed, contemplating his new afterschool life with Oscar Taglieber, his eyes drifted up the walls. His did not hold a hundred clocks. Instead, they held a hundred shadows made from the light of the moon. The only nice thing about winter nights was the moonlight. The maple and oaks that covered the Kozak’s lawn acted like a canopy. Some trees were so high that Ray couldn’t even see the tops. In the summer and fall the leaves blocked most of the moonlight away from the windows. Only the shush of the leaves and an occasional shadow would make its way onto Ray’s walls. But in the winter, the moonlight could be blinding. During a full moon, Ray would have to draw the shades to block out all the light.

  His bedroom, a small room tucked away in the corner of the second floor, had two windows. One faced the backyard and Ship’s Drive, the street that ran through the acre of woods behind his house. On a winter night he could see clear through the trees and past their homemade forts to the quiet lamppost lights dotting the lonely road. The other window faced Olive’s house. The Mott house was almost identical to Ray’s except it held triple the number of occupants. Olive’s room faced Ray’s, which is why Ray kept a flashlight and a can of rocks under his bed. He would flick a rock or shine a flashlight into Olive’s window when he couldn’t sleep. Even though Olive shared a room with her grandmother, their options to communicate were not limited. Her grandmother slept on the opposite side of the room and was selectively deaf, choosing to listen only to Olive’s mother and only conversations that centered on Olive’s lost father. The nightly business of a ten-year-old would not be something she would bother to hear. Unless the window blew open and Ray struck her in the head with a rock, her grandmother would never know or care.

  Ray stared up at the shadows of branches that crisscrossed around his room. He imagined they were barbed wire and pictured his dad cutting through them on his way into enemy country. He pictured the eight men covered in mud, crawling over the cold earth on their elbows with their rifles crossing their chest. He used to wonder if his father looked at the stars and thought of him if he got scared. For Ray, his dad was no further away in heaven than he was in Germany. Only the hope of a reunion was now gone. The reunion, which he used to measure in hours and weeks, would now be measured in a lifetime.

  He sat up in bed and waited for the lamppost lights to go out. First would be the Jernick’s post. Ten minutes later would be Van Dusen’s. Finally, the Goldsmith’s at the end of the block. As he stared across the woods he noticed a deer gently walking and poking its way through the brush. Ray crawled up the window and rubbed his eyes. It was a buck. Ray couldn’t believe his luck. Two bucks in one week. No one ever saw bucks. Only does and fawns. He rapped on the glass slowly to see if the buck could hear him from so far away but the deer kept pushing its snout through the branches on the ground. Ray cracked open the window. The sound of the creaking window seam caught the deer’s attention. Its head jerked up and twisted over in the direction of the sound.

  “Come on now. Run,�
�� Ray uttered to himself. He loved to watch the deer take off and leap through the woods. It always amazed him to see an animal that big move so fast through the woods. It was the only thing that could outrun him and his dad through these parts. The only thing that knew this area better. Instead of taking off, the buck started to move toward the house. Each leg deliberately and cautiously placed itself in front of the other. Ray opened the window higher. A burst of cold air burned his wrists. The sound stopped the buck for only a moment before it kept its pace towards the house. Ray whispered as loud as he could.

  “Go! Get!” His breath turned into white puffs and floated upward. The deer stopped momentarily and looked up in Ray’s direction but kept its deliberate pace towards Ray’s window. Fright crept up Ray’s spine the same way it did at the Christmas tree farm. Why were these bucks not afraid? Every time he saw a deer, it fled at the sight or sound of a human. Now another was walking towards him. He ran across the room and grabbed the flashlight from under his bed. He shined the light out of the window and down at the deer. The deer stopped and pushed its head further back. Ray pressed his nose up the screen to get a better look at the buck. As soon as Ray could focus on the buck’s face his heart flew into his neck. He blinked hard three times.

  There it was. That star on its forehead. It was the same buck.

  The beam of the flashlight suddenly went all over the room as it smacked the floor. Ray scrambled to pick it up and shut it off. Soon the soft creak of footsteps came from the hall as his mother’s voice squeezed through the crack in the door.

  “You ok in there?”

  “Fine, Mom,” Ray said softly as he sat under the window, clutching the flashlight to his chest.

  “Ok. Get to bed now.” He could sense her lips leaving the door’s edge. “Good night and God bless you,” she said as she headed down the hall to her room. The nerves left her voice. Ray knew if he heard those words he would not see his mother again until the morning.

  Ray took a deep breath and slowly turned up towards the window. He looked down to see the deer standing closer than before. The animal stood tall right under his window displaying its rack with pride. Ray wouldn’t sleep knowing this buck was standing there and guarding his room. Throwing a rock at the buck might make things worse. Ray searched his mind on what he could do to chase it away. Then he remembered Oscar. Oscar got it to move. In a fright Ray pressed his lips up to the screen and puffed out the only words he hoped might work.

  “Hup! Hup!”

  The buck turned itself towards the Mott’s house and bolted across the backyards as if it were being chased. Ray smiled wide as he closed the window. It worked, he thought. It really worked. The buck listened to him. Ray remained at the window until his breath covered the glass and there was nothing left to be seen.

  CHAPTER 8

  Grigonis House – Pittstown, New Jersey, last year

  “How do you take your tea?” Berta asked John Charles as she poured boiling water into a line of mismatched coffee mugs.

  “Just plain for me, thank you,” said John Charles as he sat at the table with his hands resting on his lap. Nothing about him looked out of place or awkward. It was as if he had taken his seat at this table every Monday afternoon for the past one hundred years. The other man in front of Ava looked completely lost in the act of trying to fix the toy racer. He produced a tool from the back pocket of his overalls and already removed the undercarriage of the car from the body. Ava held the number 8’s frame as the man worked silently on. Each part he removed he handed to Ava for safekeeping.

  “And you there?” Berta barked at the man whose concentration was firmly fixed on the underbelly of the car’s chassis. He didn’t even look up at Berta. “What you take?”

  “Nothing for me, ma’am.”

  Berta brought the two cups over to Ava’s mother and John Charles. He nodded his thanks as he just sat with his hands safely out of sight, with no motion of touching his cup.

  “After all these years, someone from INR is here,” Ava’s mother said as she held the hot mug up to her mouth. She shook her head in disbelief as she blew on the water. “I’m sorry but I’m just so…surprised.”

  “Why is that?” asked John Charles. He tilted his head and gave her a pretend scowl. “Did you think we didn’t exist?”

  She let out a chuckle. “No, no. I always believed.” She gave a quick look at Ava and then leaned in. Her voice dropped in tone and volume. “Dad would sometimes let me read the letters.”

  John Charles let out a full-blown laugh. “Well, I can assure you, what they ask for now is quite different. We don’t make many toys by hand. Now we do everything through computers.” He lifted his lumps of bone and knuckles and did his best to imitate the act of typing on a keyboard. Ava thought, no wonder he needed help. No one would have presents under their Christmas tree if the typing were left to that man. “But in a way, it makes it easier.”

  Berta, who stood by the sink, turned around quickly. “Wait a moment. Is this the man with the letters?” Berta pointed her mug at John Charles. “The one Raymond speaks of?” Her accent thickened the more excited she became. “I thought he made it up. He…” Berta circled her one free hand in the air as if she were trying to whip up a breeze. “You know. Tell fairy tales.”

  “I can assure you it’s no fairy tale. We sent Raymond letters for a number of years,” John Charles said as he finally reached for his tea. His fingers would not allow him to grasp the handle. He scooped up the mug carefully in both hands and held it to his chin. “Before everyone wanted something electronic.”

  Ava’s mother cleared her throat and shot John Charles a look. Her eyes then pointed to Ava. John Charles put his mug down and looked over at Ava affectionately. “I’m sorry, Ava. You do believe in Santa, don’t you?”

  The man fixing the car broke his attention from the metal racer and looked up at Ava, waiting for her to answer.

  “Yes,” Ava answered.

  “And do you know your grandfather worked for him?”

  “Yes,” Ava said tentatively as she looked up at the adults. All of them looked at her as if they were waiting to hear her lead them in evening grace or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. “Pop-pop says Santa and him would make gifts for kids at Christmas time.”

  “He sure did. We heard it all the time,” her mother said as she rubbed her forehead. “I mean all the time.” Her eyes widen and she let out an exasperated breath. Berta nodded in agreement as she took a sip of tea. Ava did not mind her grandfather’s constant talk about Christmas. She couldn’t believe how amazing and lucky her Pop-pop had been to be handpicked by Santa himself. But her mother said that all the talking about Santa Claus turned Christmas into a four-letter word. Ava wondered what that four-letter word was. She prayed it wasn’t the word “over.”

  “But yes, honey,” her mother continued. “Santa sent Pop-pop his letters through this man’s company.”

  “No,” Ava said while shaking her head. She stood up and put one hand on her hip as she pressed her index finger to her lips in thought. “He knew the real Santa. Pop-pop said he made toys with him when he was a little boy. In his house full of clocks.”

  “Oh, yes. You’re talking about when he was young, like you,” John Charles said. “When he worked alongside Oscar Taglieber.”

  Ava’s mother looked taken aback. “Wow, how did you know that name? That’s going back quite a few years.”

  “He’s a legend,” John Charles said. “Oh, he is not the first Santa Claus but the general consensus at INR was that he was one of the greatest Santas that ever lived. He brought a lot of joy into children’s lives,” John Charles said with a smile. He looked down at the man who was in the middle of taking off one of the wheels on the racer with his small Swiss Army knife. The man did not look up but nodded in agreement. John Charles finally took a sip of his tea. “Yes, he did. Lots and lots of joy.”

&nbs
p; CHAPTER 9

  Oscar’s House – Southold, New York, 1944

  Ray couldn’t have been more miserable as he walked up Oscar Taglieber’s driveway. On the orders of his mother, every single day up until Christmas he was to go to Mr. Taglieber’s weird workshop and spend at least two hours assisting him in making whatever it was he needed to make. She said it would help, only he did not know who or how. After the many fruitless negotiations with his mother, Ray couldn’t make her budge. Ray thought of every excuse. From doing more chores, to protecting Olive and Tommy from the stray dogs that roamed the neighborhood, to the fact that even Oscar himself didn’t seem to want Ray around, nothing would change her mind. Nothing ever did.

  Ray did not lift his heels from the ground. The entire two-mile walk from the school to Oscar’s was one long shuffle. His footprints resembled wagon tracks in the snow. He hoped Olive and Tommy would catch up to him if he lingered long enough on the road but every time he stopped and turned around they were nowhere to be seen. Then an idea popped into his head. Maybe, if he knocked softly enough, Oscar wouldn’t hear him. Then he could run home and still have some daylight left to play with Olive, Tommy, and Paley. After all, how could he help Mr. Taglieber if he wouldn’t let him in the house? Hope began to bubble up until he turned the corner into Oscar Taglieber’s driveway and saw him sitting in the front bay window wearing crazy looking goggles. Oscar looked up and spotted Ray through the window. He pushed the gear away from his face and gave him a less than enthusiastic nod. Great, Ray thought. I guess this makes two of us.

  Ray heard the footsteps before he even knocked at the front door. From the sound of Oscar’s gait it seemed as if he had a problem with lifting his feet up as well. Ray felt like an hour had passed before the door opened and Oscar appeared.