Chapter X: The Crooked Man Gets a Brand-New Reputation

The Crooked Man had invited Santa Claus to visit him and the Clauses were sitting at the kitchen table trying to decide about it.

“I can’t think why he should have asked Santa to his house,” said Mrs. Claus. She looked down at the letter in her hand, which was, of course, written in extremely crooked characters on a funny little crooked piece of paper.

“Perhaps he’s heard about the toys and wants Santa Claus to make some for the crooked children next Christmas,” suggested Mr. Claus.

“The crooked children!” exclaimed Mrs. Claus. “You ought to know by this time, Mr. Claus, that the Crooked Man is a bachelor.”

“Is he?” asked Mr. Claus. “Dear me. Then who lives with him on the Crooked Mile?”

“He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse, and they all live together in a little crooked house,” explained his wife.

“Oh, I see,” said the baker. But he didn’t see. He simply couldn’t imagine a crooked man and a crooked cat and a crooked mouse all living together in a little crooked house. It sounded like a bad dream to Mr. Claus, not like real life. In real life, men and cats and mice are straight.

“I suppose it will be all right for Santa Claus to go,” Mrs. Claus was saying.

“I suppose so,” assented her husband.

“Nobody ever did visit him, though.”

“No,” said Mr. Claus, “the Crooked Man doesn’t stand very well among the best people, I must admit.”

“Well, do you suppose,” Mrs. Claus stopped, reddening. “Could it be, baker, that the Crooked Man’s morals are crooked, too?”

The baker’s face fell. Morals. He hadn’t thought of them. But naturally, the morals of a crooked man would be crooked, wouldn’t they?

So he said to Mrs. Claus, “Why, yes, certainly his morals would be crooked. Santa Claus must not accept this invitation to visit the Crooked Man. In fact, Mrs. Claus, I forbid it,” he finished up pompously, just as if he, a sage man, had thought up the morals himself.

Santa Claus, who was sitting at the table too, didn’t quite understand.

“What are morals?” he asked his mother.

“Morals?” replied Mrs. Claus. “Why, washing your face every morning is morals, and telling the truth, and going to bed at eight o’clock, and minding your parents, and saving your pennies--all those are morals, Santa.”

“Do you have to have them?” asked Santa. They sounded very uninteresting. He could think of lots of people who were most amusing and lovable, though they didn’t do all those things: the candlestick-maker, for instance, who didn’t wash very often; and Piggy Peddler who stayed up till all hours; and Simple Simon, who didn’t ever save his pennies, but squandered them prodigally on horehound lozenges, his favorite confection.

“Have to have them?” repeated Mrs. Claus, shocked. “Well, I guess you do, Santa Claus. If you don’t have morals, you don’t get very far in this world, sir. Morals make the world go ’round, don’t they, Mr. Claus?”

Mr. Claus, thus appealed to, looked dubious.

“I thought it was love that made the world go ’round,” he ventured.

“Well, love is morals,” asserted Mrs. Claus. You can’t catch that woman very often.

The subject was getting too deep, however, and she hastily changed it.

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “Instead of visiting the Crooked Man, Santa Claus can go to the Gingerbread Fair.”

At which suggestion Santa Claus forgot morals and love and the Crooked Man and everything else, so thrilled was he over the Gingerbread Fair.

The Gingerbread Fair was the great celebration which was held at Pye Corner every year. It was a magnificent affair, of that Pudding Lane was certain, although only Mr. Claus and King Cole had ever gone so far as to attend it. Mr. Claus went on business, of course, and Old King Cole went for pleasure.

And now Santa Claus was going. What an experience for a little boy only nine years old! Why, most of the grown-ups of Pudding Lane lived and died without going to it. Even Mr. Flinders, the wealthy, had not permitted himself that luxury, though it was said that he was planning to take Mrs. Flinders to the Gingerbread Fair on their twentieth wedding anniversary.

Pye Corner was so very far off, you see. It was farther than Banbury Cross, farther than Hamelin, almost as far as London. You went down Raspberry Road, along the Crooked Mile, across Minnow Creek, up Rocking-horse Row, and there, just before you got to London Bridge, was Pye Corner. It took almost a day to get there by foot; it took half a day to get there by coach. No wonder the citizens of Pudding Lane had never traveled so far.

It was decided that Judy-Who-Lived-in-a-Shoe should accompany Santa Claus on his trip to Pye Corner, for Santa Claus could hardly bear to do anything without his favorite little friend, and to do such a wonderful thing without her was unthinkable.

Mr. Claus was to take Santa and Judy to the Gingerbread Fair, but Mr. Claus didn’t take them; he took the mumps instead. Where he took them from was not known, for the Claus children had had the mumps long before, but where he took them at was quite clear. His poor jaws swelled up like balloons, his face ached worse than he had ever supposed a mere face could ache, and on the very day of the Gingerbread Fair, Mr. Claus lay in his bed, moaning, without a thought of gingerbread.

Poor Mr. Claus, with those aching balloons where his face used to be. Poor Santa, without any father to take him to the Gingerbread Fair. Poor Judy, all dressed up and waiting in the Shoe for a Mr. Claus that would never come.

Mrs. Claus, however, was not the woman to let plans slip simply because her spouse had chosen this unlucky moment in which to take on a distressing malady. She would never get to the Gingerbread Fair herself, probably, but she was determined that Santa should go. So what did she do but bustle down to the Town Crier’s and beg him to take the children and the pies to the Gingerbread Fair? Not that it took much begging. The Town Crier had his hat on his head before she had finished her first sentence, and before she had started her second, he was halfway down Pudding Lane toward the baker’s shop.

So it was the old Town Crier instead of Mr. Claus who climbed into the stagecoach ten minutes later, with Santa and Judy in tow, and a great basket of Mrs. Claus’s pies on his arm. Into the coach they got and away they went, Santa Claus and Judy and the Town Crier and the pies. They bowled along Raspberry Road, they bumped along the Crooked Mile, they forded Minnow Creek, they rolled along Rocking-horse Row, and they swung into Pye Corner, that great metropolis, at exactly twelve o’clock.

“We have arrived,” announced the Town Crier sonorously. The Town Crier never said things; he always announced them. Even when he uttered a mere “Good morning”, he rolled it out like a piece of news, sang it, cried it.

But Santa Claus and Judy knew they had arrived without his telling them. They knew it by the sound of a fife and drums; they knew it by the sight of a dozen merry-go-rounds, of Punch and Judy shows, of brightly colored stalls, of children, children, everywhere; and most of all, they knew it by the mountains of gingerbread pigs that were piled up as high and as far as they could see.

“Oh, Judy!” whispered Santa Claus, pressing her hand fervently.

Judy nodded blissfully.

“I know,” she answered. “But come on. Let’s hurry. Oh, it’s a lovely Gingerbread Fair, Santa Claus.”

And it was a lovely Gingerbread Fair, quite the loveliest one Pye Corner had ever had. And such a time as Santa and Judy had that whole long, sunny afternoon, while the Town Crier at his stall announced Mrs. Claus’s pies and made change, incorrectly, for the buyers who ate Mrs. Claus’s pies.

The first thing to do was to buy their gingerbread pigs, those brown crusty beasts with curled tails and sprouting horns (the gingerbread species have horns if other pigs do not), and each pig bearing the name of its owner in sticky pink-and-white icing. There on her pig you could read Judy’s name, plain as day, J-u-d-y, and there on Santa’s pig blazed forth his name too, S-a-n-t-a. The man did it with a little squeezer while you waited.

You picked the pig, you told your name, you paid your penny, and the pig was yours miraculously.

Some of the pigs had freckles, candy ones, but the freckled pigs cost two pennies, and a plain pig does very well if your pennies are limited, as Santa’s and Judy’s were. There was the merry-go-round yet to be reckoned with, and the circus, and the Punch and Judy--oh, lots of things.

The merry-go-round came next. Judy rode a wild bull, a creature with snorting nostrils, angry red eyes and a lolling tongue; Santa Claus strode a Mexican pony whose long tail stuck out straight behind him. They had just mounted when the music commenced, a tune that wheezed from a bronchial music box in the middle somewhere; the platform began to move slowly, the bull and the pony started to rock.

Faster went the music, faster went the platform, faster rocked the pony and the bull. Judy’s fat little legs clung frantically; Santa Claus gripped tight with his fists. The world spun around them, a flying haze of faces and colors and shapes. On and on and on they went, whirling, rocking, dipping, swaying, plunging.

When it was over and they stood dazed on the ground again, Judy gulped, then turned to Santa.

“But what makes the merry go ’round, Santa?” she asked.

Santa Claus didn’t know exactly. In fact, he didn’t know at all. But that only made it better. If you don’t know precisely how wonderful things happen, it seems to make them more wonderful, somehow.

In the circus, they saw an elephant that waltzed and a clown who was fearfully funny because his coat tails were forever getting afire. In the Punch and Judy show there were six Punches and five Judys. Think of it! At the candy stall, Judy and Santa bought taffy that was spun off a wheel like wool. They shot guns and threw rings at bottles and bowled at ninepins. And then, when they had spent every single penny they had, they went back to get the Town Crier--and he wasn’t there. The stall was deserted, the pies were gone, and so, evidently, was the Town Crier.

They looked all over the whole Gingerbread Fair, but no Town Crier was to be found. Where he had gone, nobody could say, until an old apple woman in the next stall, who had known it all along, mumbled that he had picked up his traps and gone home by the five-o’clock stage.

“Gone home!” ejaculated Judy.

She and Santa looked at each other.

“He does forget things, you know,” Santa reminded Judy.

“But he wouldn’t forget us,” Judy said.

“He did, though,” put in the old apple woman. Then she softened. “Look here, you childer,” she said, “it’s yet light. Best hurry home afore dark. Your mothers will be worried-like.”

“But it’s too far to walk before dark,” said Santa Claus. “We live ’way off in Pudding Lane.”

The apple woman considered them a moment. Then she spoke.

“I’ll give yer a lift. Nobody’s buying apples, anyway,” she said savagely.

She did give them a lift, if you can call it a lift, that short ride she gave them in her wheelbarrow on top of apples. Still, even if Judy did keep tumbling off like a very apple herself, even if Santa Claus did ache all over from sitting on the knobby things, it was better than nothing, the apple woman’s lift. And when she dumped them in front of her cottage on Rocking-horse Row with a hoarse “Good night to yer”, Judy and Santa thanked her heartily.

Their thanks were hearty, though their hearts were rather faint. It did seem forlorn to be there alone on Rocking-horse Row, so far from home at such an hour. It was now nearly seven, and the sun was getting ready for bed behind the hill.

But Santa and Judy were brave children. Judy didn’t cry and Santa didn’t flinch. They simply picked up their tired feet and went on. They weren’t really lost, you see, because they knew the way. Only it was such a _long_ way; that was the trouble.

Well, they walked and walked, and finally they came to Minnow Creek, several inches deep and at least four feet wide. Minnow Creek was fun, though, because they took off their shoes and stockings and waded across it. They wiped their feet on Judy’s petticoat, put on their shoes and stockings and approached the Crooked Mile. That indeed looked bad. It was such a crooked mile, twisting and curving like dozens of horseshoes. People always got lost on it. And now, to make it worse, it was almost dark. In another moment, it would be pitchy. Then what would they do?

The darkness plumped down on them at last. Santa Claus could see nothing but a few feeble stars overhead; Judy could not see a foot ahead of her. Hands clasped, they walked on, frightened and quiet, hardly daring to whisper.

Then, suddenly, a yellow light flashed up ahead of them.

“Firefly,” said Judy.

“Lantern,” said Santa.

But it wasn’t a firefly, it wasn’t a lantern; it was a lamp in a house. As they got closer, they talked about the house, whose it was and whether they should knock on the door or not. Judy was afraid it might be a witch who lived there, but Santa Claus pooh-pooh’ed that.

“You know there aren’t any witches except in stories,” he said.

“But this may be a story,” was Judy’s answer.

“You only read stories.”

“You could be a story as well as read it,” asserted Judy.

Santa didn’t understand that, so he made no answer, but marched straight up to the door and knocked. Witch or no witch, he was going to ask for help.

The man that came to the door looked something like a witch, to be sure, gnarled and twisted as he was, with a long irregular nose, and knotted, hunched-up body. He spoke pleasantly enough, however.

“Good evening,” said he. “Why, bless my soul, it’s children.”

“Please, sir,” spoke Santa Claus courageously, “it’s Judy and Santa Claus of Pudding Lane.”

“You don’t tell me,” exclaimed the gnarled man. “Why, come in, Judy and Santa Claus of Pudding Lane.”

He held the door open so that the yellow light streamed out of the little house. The children could see the house more plainly now. It was an odd-looking house, leaning every which way, like a house in a puzzle. Its door sagged at a dizzy angle; its windows were put in aslant. Its very chimneys were askew on top of its zigzag roof.

Wondering, the children followed the hunched-up man into his crazy house. How queer it was inside too. The fireplace seemed to stand on its ear; the table supported itself on one leg; the lamp was upside down. And there, beside the fire, lay a cat such as had never been seen before, a cat all angles and points, between his paws a mouse whose ears were crisscross, whose tail was curly like a corkscrew.... Oh, now Santa Claus knew.

This was the Crooked Man, and here was the crooked cat who caught a crooked mouse and they all lived together in this little crooked house.

Santa Claus had guessed the truth. When he asked the man timidly if he really were the Crooked Man, his host gave a pleasant, crooked smile and jerked his crooked head in assent.

“I am that,” he replied. “And I’ve wanted to see you, oh, so much, Santa Claus, because you’re an understanding fellow, even if you are only nine, and I thought--”

“You thought--” prompted Santa.

“Well, I thought--” the Crooked Man seemed rather embarrassed “--I thought that maybe if you knew me and liked me, just a little, of course--that maybe--”

“That maybe everybody else would like you too, and not be afraid of you any more?” finished up Santa for him.

The Crooked Man nodded vigorously, with an eager look in his eyes.

“Why, of course they will,” said Santa Claus. “I do like you, Crooked Man. You’re very kind and agreeable, and when I tell my friends in Pudding Lane just how nice you are, I’m sure you’ll be very popular there. I really am sure of that, sir.”

The Crooked Man blinked at this, trying to keep back some grateful tears that wouldn’t be kept, however, but pursued a crooked course down his cheeks.

“It’s rather lonely being crooked, I suppose,” said Judy, trying to be tactful.

“It is,” replied the Crooked Man huskily. “It isn’t being crooked that’s so bad; it’s just that nobody else is crooked, you see.”

“Yes, I see,” said Judy soberly. “It’s like spelling. If nobody else knew how, you wouldn’t have to learn, but they do, so you do,” she ended up rather incoherently.

“Only I can’t help being crooked, no matter how hard I try,” said the man, “and you can learn spelling.”

“Can you?” thought Judy. Privately, she thought she would never learn spelling any more than the Crooked Man would ever straighten out.

Well, that was the way Pudding Lane discovered what a nice chap the Crooked Man was, after all. For, of course, he took the children home in his cart as fast as he could, when they told him their story, took them home to their mothers, and was the object of much praise and admiration from all of Pudding Lane. Especially did the Town Crier praise and admire him.

“I don’t see how you remembered to bring ’em,” he said, marveling. “I forgot ’em clean as a whistle. Had a feeling I had left something behind, but couldn’t remember what it was. You must have an excellent memory,” he went on. “Perhaps crooked memories are better than straight ones.”

“Perhaps,” agreed the Crooked Man, smiling crookedly.