said, ' 'And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with/ear.' ' Whereupon, Mr. Wiggin paused for the full effect of the shepherds cringing at the sight of Owen struggling to get his feet on the floor-Barb Wiggin operated the creaky apparatus that lowered Owen, too, placing him dangerously near the lit candles that simulated the campfires around which the shepherds watched their flock.
' 'BE NOT AFRAID,' ' Owen announced, while still struggling in the air; ' 'FOR BEHOLD, I BRING YOU GOOD NEWS OF A GREAT JOY WHICH WILL COME TO ALL THE PEOPLE; FOR TO YOU IS BORN THIS DAY IN THE CITY OF DAVID A SAVIOR, WHO IS CHRIST THE LORD. AND THIS WILL BE A SIGN FOR YOU: YOU WILL FIND A BABE WRAPPED IN SWADDLING CLOTHES AND LYING IN A MANGER.' ' Whereupon, the dazzling, if jerky, 'pillar of light' flashed, like lightning, or perhaps Christ Church suffered an electrical surge, and Owen was raised into darkness-sometimes, yanked into darkness; and once, so quickly that one of his wings was torn from his back and fell among the confused shepherds. The worst of it was that Owen had to remain in the air for the rest of the pageant-there being no method of lowering him out of the light. If he was to be concealed in darkness, he had to stay suspended from the wires-above the babe lying in the manger, above the clumsy, nodding donkeys, the stumbling shepherds, and the unbalanced kings staggering under the weight of their crowns. An additional evil, Owen claimed, was that whoever played Joseph was always smirking-as if Joseph had anything to smirk about. 'WHAT DOES JOSEPH HAVE TO DO WITH ANY OF IT?' Owen asked crossly. 'I SUPPOSE HE HAS TO STAND AROUND THE MANGER, BUT HE SHOULDN'T SMIRK!' And always the prettiest girl got to play Mary. 'WHAT DOES PRETTY HAVE TO DO WITH IT?' Owen asked. 'WHO SAYS MARY WAS PRETTY?'
And the individual touches that the Wiggins brought to the Christmas Pageant reduced Owen to incoherent fuming-for example, the smaller children disguised as turtledoves. The costumes were so absurd that no one knew what these children were supposed to be; they resembled science-fiction angels, spectacular life-forms from another galaxy, as if the Wiggins had decided that the Holy Nativity had been attended by beings
A PRAYER FOR OWEN ME ANY from faraway planets (or should have been so attended). 'NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE STUPID TURTLEDOVES ARE!' Owen complained. As for the Christ Child himself, Owen was outraged. The Wiggins insisted that the Baby Jesus not shed a tear, and in this pursuit they were relentless in gathering dozens of babies backstage; they substituted babies so freely that the Christ Child was whisked from the manger at the first unholy croak or gurgle-instantly replaced by a mute baby, or at least a stuporous one. For this chore of supplying a fresh, silent baby to the manger-in an instant-an extended line of ominous-looking grown-ups reached into the shadows beyond the pulpit, behind the purple-and-maroon curtains, under the cross. These large and sure-handed adults, deft at baby-handling, or at least certain not to drop a quickly moving Christ Child, were strangely out of place at the Nativity. Were they kings or shepherds-and why were they so much bigger than the other kings and shepherds, if not exactly larger than life? Their costumes were childish, although some of their beards were real, and they appeared less to relish the spirit of Christmas man they seemed resigned to their task-like a bucket brigade of volunteer firemen. Backstage, the mothers fretted; the competition for the most properly behaved Christ Child was keen. Every Christmas, in addition to the Baby Jesus, the Wiggins' pageant gave birth to many new members of that most monstrous sorority: stage mothers. I told Owen that perhaps he was better off to be 'above' these proceedings, but Owen hinted that I and other members of our Sunday school class were at least partially responsible for his humiliating elevation-for hadn't we been the first to lift Owen into the air? Mrs. Walker, Owen suggested, might have given Barb Wiggin the idea of using Owen as the airborne angel. It's no wonder that Owen was not tickled by Dan's notion of casting him as Tiny Tim. 'WHENISAY, 'BENOT AFRAID; FOR BEHOLD, I BRING YOU GOOD NEWS,' ALL THE BABIES CRY AND EVERYONE ELSE LAUGHS. WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY'LL DO IF I SAY, 'GOD BLESS US, EVERY ONE!'?'
It was his voice, of course; he could have said, 'HERE COMES THE END OF THE WORLD!' People still would have fallen down, laughing. It was torture to Owen that he was without much humor-he was only serious-while at the same time he had a chiefly comic effect on the multitude. No wonder he commenced worrying about the Christmas Pageant as early as the end of November, for in the service bulletin of the Last Sunday After Pentecost there was already an announcement, 'How to Participate in the Christmas Pageant.' The first rehearsal was scheduled after the Annual Parish Meeting and the Vestry elections-almost at the beginning of our Christmas vacation. ' 'What would you like to be?'' the sappy bulletin asked. 'We need kings, angels, shepherds, donkeys, turtledoves, Mary, Joseph, babies, and morel'
' 'FATHER, FORGIVE THEM; FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO,' ' Owen said. Grandmother was testy about our playing at Front Street; it's no wonder that Owen and I sought the solitude of Waterhouse Hall. With Dan out of the dorm in the afternoons, Owen and I had the place almost to ourselves. There were four floors of boys' rooms, the communal showers and urinals and crapper stalls on every floor, and one faculty apartment at the end of the hall on each floor, too. Dan's apartment was on the third floor. The second-floor faculty occupant had gone home for Christmas-like one of the boys himself, young Mr. Peabody, a fledgling Math instructor, and a bachelor not likely to improve upon his single status, was what my mother had called a 'Nervous Nelly.' He was fastidious and timid and easily teased by the boys on his floor; on the nights he was given dorm duty-for the entire four floors-Waterhouse Hall seethed with revolution. It was during an evening of Mr. Peabody's duty that a first-year boy was dangled by his heels from the yawning portal of the fourth-floor laundry chute; his muffled howls echoed through the dorm, and Mr. Peabody, opening the laundry portal on the second floor, was shocked to peer two floors up and see the youngster's screaming face looking down at him. Mr. Peabody reacted in a fashion that could have been imitated from Mrs. Walker. 'Van Arsdale!' he shouted upward. 'Get out of
