Holiday Fiction: The Last Will and Testament of Ugly Joe the Hermit

(In last week’s installment, the hermits honor Ugly Joe’s final request, throwing a Christmas party for his frozen corpse, while Lucky (a wild, ferocious, hard-biting boy with a voice “that ripped holes in the air”) continues to wait for Santa Claus, from whom he hopes to receive a longed-for “toboggan sleigh.”)

On Christmas Morning, Lucky was awakened by Spitless Jeff and Nameless Bob.

The boy had fallen asleep by the Christmas tree, buried under a mound of furs and blankets.

“Get yer-sef ready, and dress up real warm,” Bob told him. “Santy Claus is outside with a Christmas present for yer.”

For many children, this would seem an appropriate moment for sweet words and a cordial attitude. For Lucky, there was never such a time.

“Well, what you standin’ there for?” he hollered at the hermits. “Why’nt you wake me up before? Get me my coat! Fetch my boots. Get out’er my way!”

As was his custom, he attempted to bite someone for emphasis, but the hermits had already moved outside to wait for him.

It was a warm-enough day for those parts, with a faint overcast but no wind. The hermits were gathered together out in the snow, assembled in a cluster down by the bank of the frozen Upchuck River. It seemed they were surrounding something or someone. A few minutes later, Ethical Fred saw Lucky trudging toward them through the snow, hollering, “If that’s Santy Claus you keep ‘im right there till I get what I asked fer!”

Fred made her way over to the boy and said, “Better close your eyes, and keep ‘em closed. It’ll make fer a bigger surprise.”

“I ain’t closin? nothin?! Has Santy got my toboggan sleigh or don’t he?” Lucky yowled impatiently. Refusing to cooperate, the well-bundled boy was swiftly blindfolded by Ethical Fred, and carried yelping and cursing over to where the hermits were standing.

Though Lucky couldn’t see it, the group had moved out onto the hard, slick surface of the frozen river. There at their feet was Ugly Joe, face up on the icy Upchuck, with his head aimed downriver in the direction of Butcher’s Foot. He’d been geared up with straps and tethers, as much like a toboggan as a dead man can be. The boy was settled into place, with his feet worked into the leather stirrup straps and a strong steering rope placed in his mitten-covered hands. Lucky permitted all of this, but at the same time rattled off such a stream of insults and hot curses that even those hardened hermits were forced to admit they were at least a little impressed.

Lucky grew silent only when the blindfold was removed.

It took him a moment to understand the situation.

“Where the hail is Santy Claus?” he demanded.

“Oh. He was just here,” lied Ethical Fred. “I guess you done missed him - but he left you the present you asked fer.”

“Hey! Wait! This ain’t a tobbogan sleigh! This is old Ugly Joe!” Lucky hollered. “Ugly Joe ain’t exactly what I asked fer!”

“Well,” said Scandalous Sam, as the hermits gripped old Joe and prepared to give him a great big push, “apparently, you been naughty!”

Before Lucky could think of a thing to say, he was off, tobogganing fast as you please down the winding Upchuck, his throat filled with a long lingering shriek of fear and excitement, a shriek such as anyone might give while sledding down a frozen river on the body of a man named Ugly Joe.

What was left of that shriek was still on Lucky’s lips when he arrived in Butcher’s Foot, to the amazement of everyone there who witnessed it, not all that long after he’d left Frozen Corners. The trip that annually took his townsfolk five days to make by wagon and cart, Lucky had just accomplished in less than one hour.

Lucky shrieked the whole time, and wouldn’t be able to talk for another two weeks.

By the time he finally got his voice back, it’d changed, grown deeper and fuller and far more tolerable to listen to. The boy’s disposition had changed too, a result of the serious reflection and introspective pondering he’d done while plummeting down the mountain at high speed. Though his singing voice would never improve and he still had occasional fits of impatience, Henry “Lucky” Hay had arrived from the top of the mountain, a better, wiser person.

By all accounts, he never bit anyone again.

As for the hermits, the events of the season had been more than any of them had bargained for or desired, and the unconventional camaraderie forced upon them by Ugly Joe and his will was enough to content them for years to come. It was decided that the North Eastern Region Hermit Gathering would be suspended for at least five years. This would also serve to avoid difficult entanglements, now that Lucky and Ugly Joe had so spectacularly spoiled the hermits secret.

Ugly Joe’s body was buried in the cemetery near Butcher’s Foot, and a gravestone erected in his honor. When the people of Frozen Corners returned to town that Spring, the place was empty, almost as if nothing had ever gone on there. As usual, everything was a bit better than before, and little gifts had been left in the closets and cupboards all over town.

Among the children of Frozen Corners, Lucky had earned a newfound respect, and a reputation that soon grew to that of a legend. That legend, with its tale of the boy who rode a dead hermit sixty miles down a river of ice, grew and expanded and was added to over the years that followed, until no one remembered that it had once been true.

Down in Butcher’s Foot, life went on as well, though in years to come it would be reported that once every year, on Christmas Day, a man always came to town, and stood over the grave of Ugly Joe, where he?d sing Christmas carols loud and long, in a voice that ripped holes in the air.