Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other StoriesFox, John, Jr.
General
Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories
Fox, John, Jr.
Cumberland Mountains -- Fiction; Kentucky -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Mountain life -- Fiction
Satan slept in Uncle Carey's room, for of all people, after Dinnie,
Satan loved Uncle Carey best. Every day at noon he would go to an
upstairs window and watch the cars come around the corner, until a very
tall, square-shouldered young man swung to the ground, and down Satan
would scamper--yelping--to meet him at the gate. If Uncle Carey, after
supper and when Dinnie was in bed, started out of the house, still in
his business clothes, Satan would leap out before him, knowing that he
too might be allowed to go; but if Uncle Carey had put on black clothes
that showed a big, dazzling shirt-front, and picked up his high hat,
Satan would sit perfectly still and look disconsolate; for as there were
no parties or theatres for Dinnie, so there were none for him. But no
matter how late it was when Uncle Carey came home, he always saw Satan's
little black nose against the window-pane and heard his bark of welcome.
After intelligence, Satan's chief trait was lovableness--nobody ever
knew him to fight, to snap at anything, or to get angry; after
lovableness, it was politeness. If he wanted something to eat, if he
wanted Dinnie to go to bed, if he wanted to get out of the door, he
would beg--beg prettily on his haunches, his little red tongue out and
his funny little paws hanging loosely. Indeed, it was just because Satan
was so little less than human, I suppose, that old Satan began to be
afraid he might have a soul. So the wicked old namesake with the Hoofs
and Horns laid a trap for little Satan, and, as he is apt to do, he
began laying it early--long, indeed, before Christmas.
When Dinnie started to kindergarten that autumn, Satan found that there
was one place where he could never go. Like the lamb, he could not go to
school; so while Dinnie was away, Satan began to make friends. He would
bark, "Howdy-do?" to every dog that passed his gate. Many stopped to rub
noses with him through the fence--even Hugo the mastiff, and nearly all,
indeed, except one strange-looking dog that appeared every morning at
precisely nine o'clock and took his stand on the corner. There he would
lie patiently until a funeral came along, and then Satan would see him
take his place at the head of the procession; and then he would march
out to the cemetery and back again. Nobody knew where he came from nor
where he went, and Uncle Carey called him the "funeral dog" and said he
was doubtless looking for his dead master. Satan even made friends with
a scrawny little yellow dog that followed an old drunkard around--a dog
that, when his master fell in the gutter, would go and catch a policeman
by the coat-tail, lead the officer to his helpless master, and spend the
night with him in jail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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