“Long about midnight P.M., I’d say. Joyce is taking a nap now. When she wakes up she’s promised to make some good old Christmas eggnog—if I promise not to spike it too strong. You might as well dip your cup in our bowl. Meanwhile, let’s grab a quick beer here before I get on to the store. Come on inside. Man, I’m excited! I got another present for Joyce.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to tell you until after Christmas. It’s a surprise. But whilst I am drinking, look at this which I writ yesterday.”

XMAS

I forgot to send

A card to Jennie—

But the truth about cousins is

There’s too many.

I also forgot

My Uncle Joe,

But I believe I’ll let

That old rascal go.

I done bought

Four boxes now.

I can’t afford

No more, nohow.

So Merry Xmas,

Everybody!

Cards or no cards,

Here’s HOWDY!

“That’s for my Christmas card,” said Simple. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Not bad. Even if it will be a little late, be sure you send me one,” I said as we went out into the snow.

“Man, you know I can’t afford to have no cards printed up. It’s just jive. I likes to compose with a pencil sometimes. Truth is, come Christmas, I has feelings right up in my throat that if I was a composer, I would write me a song also, which I would sing myself. It would be a song about that black Wise Man who went to see the Baby in the Manger. I would put into it such another music as you never heard. It would be a baritone song.”

“There are many songs about the Three Wise Men,” I said. “Why would you single out the black one?”

“Because I am black,” said Simple, “so my song would be about the black Wise Man.”

“If you could write such a song, what would it say?”

“Just what the Bible says—that he saw a star, he came from the East, and he went with the other Wise Mens to Bethlehem in Judea, and bowed down before the Child in the Manger, and put his presents down there in the straw for that Baby—and it were the greatest Baby in the world, for it were Christ! That is what my song would say.”

“You don’t speak of the Bible very often,” I said, “but when you do, you speak like a man who knew it as a child.”