2018.08.10

It's Friday.

And Ma said she would put the presents in the stockings, as Santa Claus intended. She said they mustn’t look. Mr. Edwards came and sat on the floor by their bed, and he answered every question they asked him. They honestly tried not to look at Ma, and they didn’t quite see what she was doing. When he saw the creek rising, Mr. Edwards said, he had known that Santa Claus could not get across it. Laura said but he had crossed it. Mr. Edwards said yes but Santa Claus was too old and fat, and he couldn’t make it, where a long, lean razorback like him could do so. And Mr. Edwards reasoned that if Santa Claus couldn’t cross the creek, likely he would come no farther south than Independence. Why should he come forty miles across the prairie, only to be turned back? Of course he wouldn’t do that! So Mr. Edwards had walked to Independence. Mary asked if he had done in the rain. Mr. Edwards said he wore his rubber coat. And there, coming down the street in Independence, he had met Santa Claus. Laura asked if he had done in the daytime. She hadn’t thought that anyone could see Santa Claus in the daytime. No, Mr. Edwards said; it was night, but light shone out across the street from the saloons. Well, the first thing Santa Claus said was hello Edwards. Mary asked if he knew him. Laura asked how he knew he was really Santa Claus. Mr. Edwards said that Santa Claus knew everybody. And he had recognized Santa Claus at once by his whiskers. Santa Claus had the longest, thickest, whitest set of whiskers west of the Mississippi. So Santa Claus said hello to Edwards and told him when he had seen him last time he had been sleeping on a corn-shucks bed in Tennessee. And Mr. Edwards well remembered the little pair of red-yarn mittens that Santa Claus had left for him that time.