Read Online Till Morning Is Nigh by Leisha Kelly - Free Book Online Page B

he’d thought to do that, but he’d worked it out in his mind, and I was impressed. A little paste held the paper tube together and a little more held it atop a cone in just the right place to be the head resting over a generously wide cone robe.
    But Rorey wasn’t satisfied. “He’s got a hole in the top of his head. That looks really dumb.”
    “That’s where you put a shepherd’s hat or maybe some yarn for hair,” Franky told her.
    “They’s still gonna have a hole in their head,” the little girl complained. “Just covered up. An’ a hole in the bottom too. Real big.”
    “Oh well,” I said quickly. “I’m sure if we picked up our pretty little glass nativity and looked at the bottom, whatever the figures are standing on wouldn’t look like feet.
    It’s just for show.”
    “Can I see?” Rorey asked immediately.
    “Well . . .” I hesitated, but surely if I kept our precious little figurine in my own hands it would be all right. I lifted it down from the mantel and turned it over carefully. “See. At the bottom of the robes there’s nothing at all. It’s even partly hollow.”
    “From the top it looks like Mary’s kneeling,” Sarah observed. “But underneath, she don’t even have legs!”
    “It’s just for show, like I told you. A fun way to display the reason we celebrate Christmas.”
    “’Cause lidda Lor’ Jesus is borned in a manger,” Berty added.
    “Right. Just like your song.”
    “Can I make the paper Jesus?” the little boy asked.
    Franky frowned. “I been thinkin’ ’bout that. He’ll hafta be smaller. I don’t think a cone is gonna work right for him.”
    “Let’s just work on some of the others for now,” I suggested as I put the glass nativity away. “We can figure that out tomorrow.”
    “But we have to have a Jesus,” Sarah began to protest.
    “It’s okay.” Katie supplied the answer quietly. “He isn’t born yet.”
    “Yeah!” Sarah’s whole face lit up as though it were revelation. “It isn’t Christmas yet!”
    Rorey picked up a cone and turned it around in her hand. “These sure would smash easy.”
    Why did she have to be like that? I hoped to goodness she didn’t take to destroying what was already made. Rorey had such an awful attitude so much of the time. But nobody else seemed to pay any attention.
    “We’ll have to make the manger bed for Jesus too,” Sarah continued. “And some paper hay ’cause he’s asleep on the hay. Only not yet, ’cause he isn’t born yet. And some of these other guys have to be shepherds.”
    “And angels,” Franky added, suddenly the expert. “We’ll hafta make some more cones, so we can have plenty shepherds an’ angels, plus the kings too. And those guys’ll hafta have crowns on their heads.”
    Robert looked at me skeptically. “These might look awful funny.”
    “That’s all right,” I assured him. “I’ve seen unusual manger scenes in my life. I’ve even heard that in Russia they have one where all the pieces stack inside the biggest piece.”
    “Which one’s biggest?” Harry wanted to know. “A really fat shepherd?”
    “Or an angel big as the sky,” Sarah supposed.
    “Nothin’s that big,” Rorey contradicted again.
    “I didn’t mean really.” Sarah shook her head. “It’s just a saying.”
    Kirk and Willy finished one checker game and started another. I thought maybe Robert or Joe might want to play the winner of their first game and leave us to our paper creations, but neither of them said a word about it. Robert helped Berty paste a paper-tube head while Joe was helping Harry. Franky cut a few more rectangles to size. Sarah thought it might be easier to color on the faces before they were pasted, so she started adding eyes and merry smiles to a couple of Franky’s rectangles. Katie claimed one too and said she wanted to make shiny angel faces. And Rorey seemed to be following their example. But soon Sarah was expressing dismay at Rorey’s work.
    “Why’s that one