The Conductor's Coat, A Christmas Story(Todd Hephill) The Conductor's Coat

by Todd Hemphill


If you're reading this then it means that I can no longer partake in my one and only holiday tradition. Each year I promise myself that I will, at last, sit down and finally tell this story. Each year, for well over ten years now, I have come away with the story left untold.

Trust me when I say that the story itself is not the problem. It's a fine story and, as it happens, it is in fact a true story. The problem, I suppose, is that even to this day I have trouble believing that it happened at all. And if I have trouble believing in this story, I who have known the people involved these many years and have held the faded evidence of its truth in my hands, then how can I possibly ask you to believe?

Perhaps this year will be different. It has recently occurred to me that believing may be overrated. It may be enough that you simply know the story and, believing or not, carry it with you as I have for all these years.

I will start by telling you that Mary Jennings hated Christmas. It was for her the worst of all possible days and, I must admit, she had her reasons. It was on Christmas day that her father walked out on her and her family. Mary, her mother, and two younger siblings were left to fend for themselves. From that year forward Christmas brought with it only painful memories and cold feelings of emptiness.

Through the years they struggled through the worst of it and, eventually, Mary made her way to college, where I first met her. She became a nurse and took a job at a small hospital in Wiggum, Indiana. It was there that I renewed our friendship many years later.

One December, while stopping over in Wiggum, I called Mary from my hotel and gladly accepted an invitation to dine with her and her family. They lived in a large apartment which was located downtown, above the shops along Main Street. It was there that I was greeted by Mary and met her husband, Harold, and there that she and I once again became the best of friends.

In the course of the evening the conversation naturally drifted back to our college days and wandered through the years that had gone by since. Suddenly something occurred to me that I should have found startling from the moment that I entered the apartment. There were Christmas decorations, some adorning a tree that stood near the front window and others lovingly placed on a shelf nearby.

'Mary,' I remember blurting out, 'did you stop hating Christmas?'

Mary glanced at her husband. Harold gave her an approving nod and set about clearing the table as Mary began her story.

She started slowly. 'When I first came to Wiggum.'

When she first came to Wiggum, Mary settled into the apartment on Main Street and began working at the local hospital a few blocks away on Riverside Drive. She had been in town for several weeks when she received a letter postmarked from Benchley, a town just east of Wiggum. The letter was from Mary's father. He had learned of her arrival in Indiana from a friend who's mother lived in Wiggum.

In the letter her father expressed his deep regrets for what he had done so long ago and asked if Mary could ever find a way to forgive him. A part of Mary longed to forgive and forget but she found it impossible to move beyond the sense of betrayal that she had lived with for so many years. She kept the letter locked away but never answered it.

Over the next few months she received two more letters from her father. They too beseeched her for forgiveness but they too were locked away and remained unanswered.

That first year, on Christmas day, Mary awoke to find the snow falling into deep drifts. It was, the locals would later say, the heaviest snowfall they had seen in years. Mary, as always, planned to spend the day quietly indoors, doing her best to ignore the holiday. And then the phone rang.

The call was from her father's neighbor, a Mrs. Clark. Her father, she was told, was dying. He was in a hospital in Benchley and his neighbor feared that he wouldn't last through the day. 'If you wish to see your father,' she told Mary, 'you'd best come today. It would mean so much to him.'

With the roads completely snowed under, cars and buses had been rendered useless. Mary was suddenly desperate. Why had she been so stubborn, she scolded herself. Was she now too late?

Grasping at her last hope, she found her way to the train station and was told that, within the hour, a train bound for Benchley was due in. Shivering in the station, only now becoming aware that her thin woolen coat simply wouldn't do for a winter in Indiana, she waited for the train and began to chide herself for not responding to her father's pleas. Try as she might she couldn't shake the thought that she was too late, that she had always been too late, too late to see her father, too late to open her heart.

The train ride to Benchley, via Medford, was a blur. She hit the station platform running and within minutes found her way to the hospital and to the room where Mrs. Clark had said that her father would be waiting. The bed was empty.

Numb with grief, she spoke briefly with Mrs. Clark before leaving the hospital. She learned that her father had died only an hour before her arrival. 'You were all he talked about in the end,' she was told.

From her pocket Mrs. Clark produced an old photograph, lovingly framed. It was a picture of a young man, beaming with pride, holding a new born baby girl. 'He always kept this by his side. I think that he would have wanted you to have it.'

Stunned, Mary made her way back to the train station. The prospect of the long ride home was, as you can imagine, almost unbearable. Soon after leaving the station in Benchley, Mary, still shivering and exhausted from her ordeal, stretched herself across a row of empty seats and drifted into a fitful sleep.

When she awoke, being gently shaken by a passing porter, the train was just pulling into Wiggum. She found that she was warm, having been covered by a conductor's coat. Stirring from her sleep she asked the porter where she might find the man who had loaned her his coat. She was told that he had gotten off in Medford. 'That was Mr. Holding,' the porter told her, 'his wife, she's having a baby!'

Mary considered leaving the coat with the porter but, glancing out the window at the frigid landscape leading from the train station, she decided to wear it home instead. It was brutally cold outside and she promised herself that she would return the coat to the station on the following day. But she never did. Instead it hung in her closet for years, a sad reminder of yet another terrible Christmas.

Five years later Mary arose on Christmas morning and found that it was snowing, much the way it had her first year in Wiggum. After years of stern refusals, this Christmas, she had finally given in to her co-workers entreaties and had agreed, reluctantly, to join them for a party in the afternoon.

Preparing to brave the weather it occurred to her that the old conductor's coat, still hanging in her closet, would do nicely for the walk across town. She set out on foot and, while winding her way through a part of Wiggum that she seldom saw, she soon found herself lost in the falling snow.

With the stores closed and the streets all vacant she plodded on, looking for any familiar building or sign that she might use to find her bearings. Finally, nearing desperation, she looked down a narrow alleyway and saw the light from a shop's window glowing softly in the snow. She hurried in to warm herself and to ask for directions.

It was a toy store, one she had never seen before or, for that matter, since. Looking about she was soon transfixed by the beauty and simple charm of the toys surrounding her on all sides. They appeared to be handmade and were crafted in astonishing detail. Above her there hung wooden airplanes with propellers that spun slowly about. The shelves, along the walls, were filled with soldiers and dolls that seemed, at times, somehow strangely animated.

Eventually her attention was drawn to a toy train that circled about on a nearby table. It was mesmerizing. Smoke poured from the engine and in the windows of the cars the faces of circus animals came and went as the train chugged steadily around the tracks.

She couldn't be certain of how long she had been staring at the train when she was startled by the voice of a tiny old man who had suddenly appeared at her side. He was the oddest little fellow. He chuckled and said something about her and the train and, before she knew it, he was boxing it up.

Ignoring her protestations, the old fellow was soon nudging Mary back into the alley with the train, neatly packed and wrapped, tucked underneath her arm. With a jingle, the shop door closed and Mary found herself alone, once again, beneath the falling snow.

Just as she was about to make her way back to the main thoroughfare the old shop keeper darted into the street and slipped a small yellow card into the pocket of the old conductor's coat. 'Instructions,' he giggled with delight, and was gone before she could speak.

Soon after returning to the center of town Mary found herself walking along a familiar street and, at last, made her way to the home where the party was being held. As she entered the old home she set the package down and began to remove the conductor's coat. The hostess, who came forward to greet her, seemed perplexed as she gathered up the old coat and was about to ask about it when her attention was instead drawn to the enormous package that rested at Mary's feet. 'My goodness,' she said. 'Who on earth is that for?'

Mary simply smiled and shook her head. 'It's the oddest thing. After I settle in I'll have to tell you all about it.'

While her hostess conveyed her coat to a nearby bedroom she placed the neatly wrapped box that contained the curious train in an out of the way corner and moved to the fire to warm her hands. Before long, to her surprise, she found that she was enjoying herself, chatting with friends and making new acquaintances.

As she stood in the doorway leading to the family room she watched the children milling about the tree as they anticipated the rending of wrapping paper and guessed at what the packages might hold in store for them. She spied a child sitting quietly apart from the others. She asked about the boy and was told by her hostess that his father, having been called to work, had dropped him by that morning. 'It's kind of a sad story,' she told Mary, 'his mother died when he was just a baby.'

Mary was also told that the boy, Marcus, being a late addition to the party, was the only child without a gift beneath the tree. So, quite naturally, Mary quickly scribbled his name on a card, attached it to the package containing the train, and placed it among the other presents.

When it came time to open the gifts, Marcus was amazed to hear his name called out as the card attached to the largest present under the tree was read. He hesitated before opening the package, waited to be certain that there had been no mistake, and then tore through the wrapping with delight.

When he opened the box he gasped at the sight of the train. With tears filling his large brown eyes he looked about the room, not knowing who to thank. The hostess nodded slightly toward Mary and in an instant Marcus was in her arms.

Long after the curious glances of the gathered party had been drawn back to the business at hand, watching one child after another tear into their gifts with relish, Marcus stood at Mary's side, his arm wrapped around her leg. When Mary glanced down he looked up at her and whispered, 'May we set up the train?'

Mary, understanding that watching other children opening their multitude of presents wasn't the way a child of five would want to spend his Christmas evening, winked at him and nodded toward the hallway behind them. Marcus, who insisted on carrying the train himself, followed her as they found their way to the guest room in which the hostess had piled all the coats and hats and gloves upon the bed. She quietly shut the door and together they began to unpack the train, carefully laying the tracks out around the center of the room.

When at last the train began making slow circles about the track Mary watched happily as Marcus first ran along the outside of the circle and then fell to his knees and marveled at the same sights and sounds that had enthralled her as she had watched the train chugging along in the tiny shop along the alleyway.

The sight of the magical train was, as I can now testify, strangely hypnotic. The two of them had no idea of how much time had passed when they suddenly became aware that a young man was standing in the doorway, watching them as they gazed happily at the train. Waking from his trance Marcus leapt to his feet and raced to the door. 'Father! Come and look at my present!'

The young man hugged his son and took one last look at the train before turning his attention to Mary. She rose, somewhat embarrassed, unsure of how to begin to explain exactly how it was that she had come to be hidden away with a small boy, playing happily with a toy train. But before she could speak she glanced down and suddenly realized that the man standing before her was himself wearing a conductor's coat.

The young man was Harold Holding. It was he who had placed his coat over a shivering young woman who lay sleeping on a train that Christmas day, five years ago, the day that Marcus was born.

Suddenly a strange and wonderful understanding filled Mary's heart. Lifting her hand to her mouth she gasped, not knowing how to begin. Instead of speaking she simply moved to the bed nearby and began to rummage through the winter garments as Harold looked on in confusion. From the pile she slowly drew out the old conductor's coat and, looking up at him, hugged it tightly to her chest. Then, as Harold looked upon a coat that he had been certain he would never see again, Mary began to do something that she was certain she would never do again. She began to cry.

When at last the three of them rejoined the party as one the hostess eyed them with suspicion and gave Mary a curious look. Casually working her way toward them she caught Mary by the arm and whispered, 'You've got some 'splainin' to do!'

Hours later, after the party, Harold insisted that he and Marcus would see Mary home. They made a somewhat curious spectacle, a young boy leading the way, toting a package that was almost as large as the boy himself, followed by a couple, locked arm in arm, who both wore train conductor's coats. The snow, which by now had stopped falling, crunched crisply beneath their feet as they made their way through town.

At one point along the way Mary stopped and glanced down a vaguely familiar alleyway that led to their right. A soft light glowed from a shop window and then, as if on cue, suddenly grew dim.

'What is it?' Harold asked.

Mary shook her head. 'It's nothing... I guess.' She turned back to him and smiled and together they made their way home.


That, for the most part, is my story and at this point, you might be wondering why it is, or rather was, so hard for me to believe that it all truly happened the way that it happened so many Christmases ago. Why, you might ask yourself, would anyone have trouble telling such a story. After all, it would be so easy to wrap it all up with a cheerful; and they lived happily ever after.

But here the story takes one last curious turn...

Exactly five years from the day on which she met Marcus and his father Mary awoke and found, once again, that the snow was falling on Christmas day. As her family slept quietly nearby she felt a sudden sentimental urge to don the old conductor's coat.

Nestled in the coat, standing in front of the window overlooking Main Street, she watched the snow, falling softly now, illuminated by the glowing streetlights below. Thrusting her hands into the coat's deep, warm pockets she felt something brushing lightly against her fingertips. From the right hand pocket she drew out a small, faded, yellow card.

Written on that card, in her father's own hand, she found the following words; It's never too late.

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