Happy Birthday, Mr. Dickens

We try to be sparing in our use of reprints, but this month, we can't resist.

February 7 marks the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. And while his reputation among the literati waxes and wanes, his appeal to readers has scarcely diminished in the 140 years since his death.

There is little doubt that A Christmas Carol is the most read and best known of Dickens' works. And it's also the most adapted, since its basic story seems to fit in to any time and any place.

We are among the many adapters of the work. A few years ago, we decided to publish our adaptation the way Dickens published the original: as a serial. A new chapter appeared each week in December, and just to keep it interesting, we wrote it the way Dickens did the original: each episode at the very last minute. More fun that way, don't you know.

So, although Christmas of 2011 is just a memory, here are all five chapters of ….

A Dachshund Christmas Carol

Chapter One

Marley's Ghost

Many thought that Evan Scrooge was a stingy man, but those who knew him best knew that he was, in fact, quite generous. Evan was a very unhappy man, and he shared that unhappiness with all he met.

Money seemed to be his sole criterion for happiness, and he would have seemed to the casual observer to have enough of it to make him ecstatic. And yet, every dollar he gained seemed to remind him that there were even more of them that he didn't yet possess.

Evan owned Scrooge's Feeds, a business that, as only child of his father, he had inherited in its entirety. It was the only feed store in the county, so everyone came there for food for all of their farm animals and their pets.

Years earlier, Evan had realized that there was no point in acting as a middle man and sending part of his profits off to the city, so he began to manufacture the feed as well as sell it. The stuff he made wasn't all that good, but it wasn't really bad enough to cause people to drive fifty miles to the nearest store for a choice. Every now and then, someone threatened to start up a rival store, but if there is any advantage at all to living in a small town, it's knowing enough little secrets so that you can generally "persuade" people to do things your way instead of theirs.

No one really liked Evan, and none of them ever got close enough to him to puzzle out the one thing that caused everyone to wonder about him the most: How could a man who made his living from serving the needs of animals dislike all of them so much? Especially dogs. Most especially dogs.

Country dogs will generally growl at threatening animals or people. They crossed the road, however, to avoid Evan. And if they didn't the first time they met him, they knew well enough to do so the second time.

Late one afternoon — Christmas eve, of all the good days of the year — Evan was sitting in his office in the back of the feed store as Bob Cratchit, his clerk, bookkeeper, and, in fact, the store's only employee, waited on trade at the counter. He watched as Bob reached into a barrel and gave a dog biscuit to a customer's elderly beagle and clenched his fists waiting for the customer to leave. The door's closing behind customer and beagle was hastened by the wind of Evan's rushing out to Bob. "I don't remember authorizing you to dispense my merchandise without collecting money for it, so it must be that you intended to pay for that biscuit yourself. And so you will. Two cents for the biscuit and ninety-eight cents for my trouble." Evan plucked a dollar from the envelope he held, an envelope that held Bob's already meager salary.

"I'm sorry," said Bob, "but I thought that it being Christmas and all … "

"It's Christmas outside," said Evan, "it's a feed store in here. And speaking of Christmas, are you coming in tomorrow to work on the contract with Mills Farms?"

"But, sir," said Bob, "it's Christmas. And besides, I was hoping that you would change your mind about dealing with them. Have you seen the terrible conditions that those puppies and dogs of theirs live in? Don't you know that they only moved here so that humane societies from the big cities won't find them."

"I'll tell you what I know," shouted Evan. "I know that they stand to put a lot of dollars in my pocket. What else they do is none of my business or yours. I'll tell you another thing I know. That contract will be finished by ten o'clock on the morning of December 26 or you'll be out of a job. And since I own that shack you live in, you'll be out of a home as well."

"It will be finished, Mr. Scrooge," Bob promised. "I'll take it home with me and work on it after dinner tomorrow. If it 's okay, I'll close up now."

"It's not okay," said Evan, "but no one else is going to come in today and I'm tired of looking at you. So remember. Ten o'clock day after tomorrow or else."

Bob left quickly; Evan dawdled. He had nowhere to go but home, and the heat there was at his expense. The heat in the store was tax-deductible. He finally headed out for the old farmhouse across the road, his family's old homestead. No one farmed the land anymore, no one lived with him, and he spent no more than he had to on heating the two rooms that he used.

As he walked onto the porch, he heard a dog howl. Impossible! No dog came close to this place. And that howl; it sounded like … But it couldn't be; his old dachshund, Marley, had vanished fifty years ago, when Evan was a boy.

He walked into the kitchen and was about to turn on the light when he saw a glow in the corner of the room. Looking closer, he saw a dish. A dish that said "Marley" on it. He backed up quickly, but the door had closed behind him. Then, from under the table, came a clicking footfall unmistakable even after five decades.

"Marley." He almost reached out, but stopped. A boy of ten was the one who wanted to reach, but he was a man of sixty. So he said it again, and he made it an accusation. "Marley! What makes you think you're welcome here? You were my only friend, but you walked out on me without a word. Just like all the ones before. Just like all the ones since."

Marley looked at him with the knowing stare he always had had. He and Marley had always had conversations, but Evan had supplied all the words. Still, Marley had always looked as if he were on the verge of talking, so it didn't surprise Evan that much when, this time, he did.

"Is that what you've thought all these years, Evan? That I walked out? If you're capable of thinking that, maybe I should have. Maybe I shouldn't have wasted my time that night defending your father's chickens and getting dragged to the coyote's den for my trouble. Maybe I shouldn't be wasting my time tonight. But the chances for creatures on my side of the grave to talk to those on your side are few and far between, and you need a talk as few men do. You're on the road to a worse fate than you can imagine, but you were always my friend, so I thought, and I came here to help you. There may still be time for you, Evan. And because of that, I'm going to send three more dachshund spirits to visit you. They may not be able to talk sense to you, but at least I've done my part."

Part way through Marley's talk, the weight of disbelief had risen from Evan and left him so light that he could not move for fear of floating off into space. Marley hadn't abandoned him! He had always wanted to believe that. Just as right now he believed that he did not want three more ghostly visitors. Feeling confident enough, finally, to walk with the certainty that his feet would touch the floor, he ran to the spot where Marley has once again walked under the table.

But before he got there, the dreadful familiar emptiness filled the room again, and he knew that he would be looking into darkness if he lifted the tablecloth.

Three more spirits to come. He wanted to start running and never stop. Until he realized that he had been running for years, and the time to stop and turn and confront what was behind him was finally at hand.

Chapter Two

The First Of The Three Spirits

Evan Scrooge was suddenly very cold, colder than his frugality with fuel could explain. It was the kind of cold that makes you want to stand perfectly still, afraid that any move will start a shudder going through your body. The kind of cold that makes you want to implode into the hot center of your soul. If you're convinced that there are any fires of passion left burning there. Evan didn't know.

Presently he heard a noise from the living room and, with his back turned, felt rather than saw a glow coming from there.

Turning before he had time to think better of it and walking into the room, he was only slightly surprised to see and feel a fire roaring and jumping merrily in the fireplace whose chimney he had long since plugged. He registered the lighted Christmas tree out of the corner of his eye, for most of his attention was drawn to the small brown body curled in front of the fire.

The unstudied eye would have thought it was Marley again, for it was a small red smooth dachshund. It wasn't, though, and Evan's eye was as quick as any dog owner's to pick out the subtleties of detail that made this dog different from his own.

Turning and stretching, the dog looked directly at Evan and said, "I am the Dachshund Of Christmas Past."

"Long past?" asked Evan.

"Your past."

Evan was less than eager for this answer or for the scenes it promised, but the Dachshund wasted no time. "Take the leash from the peg by the door and put it on my collar," he commanded. Evan did as he was told, and the act of hooking the leash on the collar caused something like a shock through his body. The Dachshund walked toward the kitchen again, and Evan followed, walking at heel.

A light came from under the door. The Dachshund did not wait for the door to be opened, but walked directly through it, Evan only half a step behind him.

There at the kitchen table were Evan's mother and father, looking as they had when he was a boy.

"It's craziness, I tell you," said his mother.

"I know Christmas is a bad time for a puppy," replied his father, "but this little fellow is an orphan as of this morning."

"Christmas is no worse a time than any," said his mother, "because there is no good time for a puppy." It's enough I have to care for the two of you and clean up after you without having to worry about that." Here she gestured at a basket by the kitchen wood stove, and Evan looked over, seeing a small shape huddled under a blanket in. Marley! Was it possible that Marley had ever been small?

"Spirit," said Evan, "Can I go over and touch him and smell his puppy breath again?"

"What you see is only a shadow of what has been," said the Dachshund. "You can no more pick him up here than you could have if I had never come here tonight."

Not hearing, not wanting to hear, Evan was walking toward the stove. "We have many stops to make and not much time to make them," said the Dachshund, "and as Evan turned, the light in the kitchen changed from evening lamplight to early morning sun from the window. Looking, Evan startled to see himself in his father's chair, and his mother some ten years older. He knew without seeing any more what morning this was. Christmas of the year his father died. The Christmas morning that Marley disappeared.

"Now I'm going to hear nothing more about this. I've told you for ten years that dog was no good. Now he's gone, and our best hen gone with him as provisions for the road." Evan looked at his young self, just emerging from shock fully enough to consider tears as an option. "But Marley … "

"But Marley won't be eating us out of house and home any more. Now if you don't want those things under the tree, let me know now so I can get ready to take them back to the store tomorrow."

"But it wasn't true, Spirit. A coyote did that, and he got Marley, too. I knew it. I always knew it." His voice trailed off a little. "Didn't I?"

"My time grows short." said the Spirit. "Quickly!"

They walked back through a living room with no fire in the hearth and a tree so sparse as to say that he who put it up remembered more the forms of Christmas than the spirit. His mother dozed in her chair. If he put the year right in his history, her doze would soon lengthen and become eternal.

They continued to walk out onto the porch, and he knew what he would see.

"Please, Spirit, not this. Don't do this to me." But the Dachshund pulled him on.

"I do nothing to you. I show you the shadows of what you have done to yourself."

Yes, there she was, standing on the porch beside his twenty-year-old self that Christmas eve so long ago. They stood on the porch, cold, but away from his mother's ever-alert ears.

"It's a beautiful present, Evan, a beautiful ring, but I can't take it. I want to release you from any promise you might have made that would have required you to give it to me."

"But why?" Young Evan asked, "I've never asked you to release me."

"You ask very little. You say very little. The passion in your life is your business. For a while I thought I could change that. But I have a friend who knows more about people than I do, and she doesn't think you're right for me."

"Who is it? Is it … "

She cut his list of suspects short. "It's Greta."

"A dog? Your little mutt growls at me a few times and you think it means that you have to … "

"Greta isn't a mutt. She's my friend. And whatever she senses in you now, I would in times to come. Let's not make this more difficult than it has to be, Evan. You go inside and I'll go home."

His mind, more used to business problems than human concerns, could not begin to formulate an answer until she was out of earshot.

Evan felt a tug on the leash and turned to follow the Dachshund back into the house and back into the cold kitchen in which he first had met Marley's ghost.

"Why, Spirit?" he began to ask, but the leash disappeared from his hand as his visit to the past ended.

Once more, he was in the cold heart of his house in the present, waiting for the next ghostly visit.

Chapter Three

The Second Of The Three Spirits

Evan Scrooge was less surprised but no less disconcerted by the next spirit.

As he stood among his own lingering ghosts of the past, he heard a noise at the back door and turned to look. There, just inside the back door, was a longhaired dappled dachshund. A red leather leash was attached to his collar, and the opposite end hovered in the air at just about the level of Evan's hand.

"I am the Dachshund Of Christmas Present," said the spirit, "and unlike the past that is always with you, my time is short upon the earth. Come take me for a walk and let us see what can be seen."

"I'll get my coat," said Evan, but the Dachshund, pretending not to hear (or perhaps really not hearing, for no one has ever determined for sure what a dachshund does or thinks or hears), the dog walked through the door. As the Dachshund had turned, Evan had grabbed for the leash, and he now felt himself pulled through the door and into the cold outside. Except that it wasn't cold; he was perfectly warm in shirt sleeves. His feet were warm as well, for they did not touch the ground as he and the Dachshund headed toward the road to town. Perhaps strangest of all, Evan felt the warmth of the sun on his neck and saw that it was a bright winter's day.

As they came closer to town, they saw men and women that Evan knew, most of them hurrying off to church services. They smiled at each other as if it were the most normal thing in the world that peace and good will should hold sway, though one morning out of 365 was the extent to which many of them could even consider this ideal. As one bright smile after another caught Evan's eye, all of them aimed at someone else, he began to wonder when the last time was that such an expression was directed at him.

Presently, he realized that they were veering away from the heart of town and out into the place where Evan's father had bought a parcel of land many years ago. Rounding a bend in the road, Evan and the Dachshund came into sight of a one-story frame house. It leaned toward the road, as if wanting nothing so much as to get away from itself and perhaps be a structure of substance in the next town or the next state or anywhere else but here. But its foundations were as rooted into the parched local earth as were Evan's.

As dismal as the house was, a glow came from its windows that illuminated even the harsh early morning light, a glow that promised more by way of warmth than the building's evident lack of insulation would seem to render possible.

"Spirit, that's the house of my clerk, Bob Cratchit. I wish … "

"You wish what?" asked the Dachshund.

"Nothing. Just that I hadn't sent him home with work to do. Just that I wish I had sent him home with something extra in his pay envelope instead of taking a dollar from it."

They walked in through the door of the Cratchit home as easily as they had walked out through the door of Evan's house. And though the kitchen they entered barely had enough room for the three Cratchits, Evan and the Dachshund stood in it unobserved as they watched the doings of this Christmas morning.

"Bob, put those papers away and come along, or we'll be late for church," said a pleasant-looking woman.

"Yes, dear. It's just that the earlier I finish this contract, the earlier I'll have time to spend with you and Tim and Skippy."

"If you worked for a human being and not an ogre, you wouldn't have to work at all on Christmas Day."

"Please, dear," said Bob, lowering his voice, "Whatever you think of Mr. Scrooge, this isn't the morning to let Tim hear you saying it."

"Very well," said Mrs. Cratchit. "For you, and for Christmas."

Evan missed this grudging deference to himself, because his attention was diverted to young Tim Cratchit, whose attention, in its turn, was focused on something in a blanket that he held.

"A dachshund puppy," whispered Evan, as if anyone else in the room save the Spirit could hear him. "Bob never told me they had a dachshund puppy."

"Would you have listened?" asked the Spirit. "Would you have cared?"

"Come now, Tim," said Mrs. Cratchit, "Skippy will be warm by the stove while we're at church. I wish you hadn't brought Skippy home," she then said quietly to her husband. "You're only letting Tim and yourself in for sadness."

"I know," said Bob, "but when I went to take the contract draft to Mills Farms and heard  that his mother had died and his brothers and sisters were stillborn, there was nothing else I could do. The pup will die, but he'll die loved, not like he would have at that place. Tim will learn something about love from this, and something about loss, and those are valuable lessons."

"My dear Bob," said Mrs. Cratchit. "Your Mr. Scrooge could have said those words and made them hateful. I know you mean only the best by them, though."

"Spirit," said Evan, "Tell me that the puppy will live."

"My province is the present," said the Spirit, "but if the events here cast their shadow into the future unaltered, the pup will not see the new year."

"No!" shouted Evan, almost loud enough to pierce the spirit veil that hid him from the Cratchits. "He must not die."

"What do you care?" replied the Spirit. "You'll soon become richer still selling feed to Mills Farms, and you know that sickly puppies don't eat enough. The more of his sort that die, the more hungry dogs there will be to fill the cage he would have emptied."

Evan hung his head, for he knew that it was the same argument he would have made … when was it? Only hours ago. It seemed so very long since he left the feed store.

"Spirit," said Evan, "Marley told me that I would be visited three times. Is the next … " But he didn't finish his question, for the church bell began to chime in the distance, and with each chime, the scene around him, including the Dachshund Of Christmas Present, faded a bit, until he was left standing alone in a heavy mist.

No sound escaped him, but one came toward him. More distinctly by the moment, he beheld approaching him a solid black wirehaired dachshund with glowing eyes.

Chapter Four

The Last Of The Spirits

Evan's first impulse was to turn and run rather than face whatever this last of the three spirits would show him, but he realized that somewhere during the night's visits, he had begun to realize that Marley had sent these spirits not to torment, but to help him. And whatever torment might come with that help, he would accept it.

The Dachshund stopped before Evan and made no sound.

"You are the Dachshund Of Christmas Yet To Come," said Evan. "I fear you far more than either of your predecessors, so let's go where we must before my nerve fails me."

The Dachshund may have nodded or may simply have lowered his head to sniff the ground, but, still making no sound, he turned and walked into the mist. Evan followed.

Just a few minutes into their journey, Evan's fear turned into a physical shudder and he fell behind the pace of Dachshund. Without turning, the Dachshund stopped and waited for Evan to recover, and Evan felt even more fear at the thought that the spirit before him was watching him, even though his eyes faced elsewhere.

Presently, the mist cleared slightly, and Evan realized that they were on the main street of town, just a block from his store. The only light on the street was from a string of flashing Christmas bulbs in the window of the bar. He had never been in there himself, but it seemed that many of his less savory customers made it and his feed store their only two stops on trips into town. Now the spirit led Evan in through the doors into an interior almost as dark as the street and far less inviting.

Three men sat drinking, magi manqué, brought by whim of an evil star to as false a savior as this world knows. "It's almost a year since the Big Bonfire," said one of them, setting his latest offering of gold on the bar. "Figure the new place is going to open soon?"

"Hope so," said another. "Tired of driving all that extra distance."

"You know," said the third, "I'd almost rather keep driving the distance instead of dealing with those people."

"You put up with the old man all those years," the bartender pointed out. "How much worse could the new people be?"

"You got me there. When you've already done business with the Devil, working with Beelzebub is no big deal."

The Dachshund led Evan back into the street. "I recognized those men, Spirit," Evan said. They all have farms out on the old county road. I guess they have no better place to go at Christmas than the bar. Is that what you're showing me? Will my life become as empty as that?"

Saying nothing, the Dachshund led the way down the sidewalk toward Evan's store. As they came to it, though, it wasn't Evan's store at all, but the framework of a new building. "Have I done well enough, then, to rebuild my store, Spirit? Are you showing me that I will have an empty life, even though a financially successful one?"

Further on they walked, and the scene dissolved once again into mist. Soon they were at the Greyhound station, where three figures huddled in the unheated station, waiting for a bus that was already late. Evan was startled to recognize Bob Cratchit and his family. He hadn't known that Bob had family anywhere else. Then he looked at the cheap luggage piled up around the three and knew that, as little as it was, it wasn't baggage for a vacation. It was all the family possessed.

They were silent for a while, then Bob, with the air of a man singing a practiced refrain, said "Tim, I'm really sorry about this Christmas. But there are a lot of jobs in the city, and we won't have to spend a year on welfare like we just did."

Tim held his father's hand. "Dad, you know that it couldn't have worked out any other way. You couldn't have worked for the Mills Farms people, and Mr. Scrooge would have fired you for leaving without permission if he were there when you came back."

"And after all that," said Bob, "There was nothing we could do for poor Skippy. But if you hadn't called me to come and take him to the vet, I would have been there when the fire started. Evan wouldn't have been alone, and I might have got him out in time. Then  Mills Farms wouldn't have been able to buy the feed store from Scrooge's estate. I had my differences with Mr. Scrooge, but I'm sure he wasn't as bad as everyone thought. I know he would have rehired me."

Unseen by the Cratchits, Evan fell to the floor. "Spirit, say that you don't show me these things simply to torture me. Tell me that it wouldn't have been worth your time to show me this if there were no way I could change myself and change the future. Tell me that there's still hope for me and for the Cratchits and for Skippy." The Dachshund merely stared at him from glowing, sightless all-seeing eyes.

Becoming bolder than he had been all evening, Evan reached out and seized the Dachshund and lifted him up. "Tell me that there is hope."

But the Dachshund said nothing, because he had turned into a pillow, a pillow that Evan held as he lay in his own bed.

Chapter Five

The End Of It

Evan froze for a moment, then looked around. It was his bedroom all right, and the first light of dawn was creeping around the shades.

But dawn of what day? Evan turned on the radio and waited impatiently for the song to end. Then the announcer came on and said "It's 7:27 on a partly cloudy Christmas morning. Merry Christmas, everyone."

Evan always said later that that "Merry Christmas," sent into the air for anyone and aimed at no one, was the happiest of all happy sounds he had ever heard. The spirits had worked their wonders in a night, and had even left him most of the day for the many things he knew he would have to do.

First a call to the home of the local grocer, who was somewhat less cheerful than the radio announcer, but whose disposition brightened somewhat at the size of the order that Evan proposed to have him deliver to the Cratchits' home and particularly at the size of the cash premium that Evan offered for prompt handling of this unorthodox order. Even so, and just to protect himself, he demanded that Evan meet him at the grocery with cash in hand, just to prove that he wasn't practicing some early form of April Fool's joke.

The phone calls that followed were more difficult still, but he found the people he needed and made the arrangements he had to, and when late afternoon came, he was so satisfied with himself that he didn't even mind the fact that he had forgotten to stock his own larder when he ordered for the Cratchits. No matter. He took a long walk, noticing things that he hadn't seen for years, and he was as satisfied as he would have been with turkey and all the trimmings.

The next morning he was early at the feed store and Bob — Bob was late. A full twenty minutes late, and not looking to be operating at full power when he came in.

"Did I institute a new starting time and forget to remind myself of it?" asked Scrooge in as good an imitation as he could muster of his voice of that long ago time last night before the spirits visited. "I assume that you'll have the Mills Farms contract ready at 10:00 per our agreement?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Scrooge," said Bob. "Someone sent us an anonymous gift of food, and I kind of overdid it yesterday. Please just give me a little extra time."

"I'll tell you what I'll do and I'll tell you what I'll give you," said Evan, advancing on Bob, "Since you don't have that contract ready, what I'll have to do is to call Mills Farms to tell them that we can't do business. Then I'll give you a big enough raise to justify the work you'll have to do with me to drive those puppy-farming scum out of this state."

Bob looked as if he were deciding how scared to be of Evan's irrational behavior, but Evan was too sincere to be doubted. "But that can wait for tomorrow, Bob. We have other work today. I've put in some calls to the veterinary school at the state university. They say that if we get him there fast, Skippy can be helped. Call your wife, tell her to wrap Skippy in a blanket, then you go put the CLOSED sign up on the door and let's get moving."

Scrooge was as good as his word, and he did it all. Skippy recovered to be a happy, healthy dog, and Evan was his favorite "uncle." The Mills Farms people were put out of business for good, and Evan started a national fund to stop unscrupulous breeding everywhere. He knew that not even the power of the spirits would stop that dirty business for good, but he knew that he wasn't going to stop trying.

In years to come, Evan was known to be as good a man as the town had, but the thing people noticed about him first was how dogs loved him on sight. And even though dachshunds were a rare breed in that little town, the few that were there seemed to have an almost spiritual bond with him.

And as Evan himself often remarked, "Dogs bless us — every one of them."

The End