Deej Recommends: The Christmas Eve of Squinty Pete

by Johnston McCulley

Johnston McCulley achieved immortality almost by accident when his character Zorro was brought to life on film by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. He was, arguably, a hack, in that he was one of pulp’s “million word a year men” for over twenty years, and continued pounding out pulp stories into the 1950s, regardless of how many film adaptations he got paid for.

However, if he was a hack, we should have more such hacks. I’ve only read a few of his works (and will be reading and publishing more at some point), but what I have read is a lot like this story: hokey, yet entirely enjoyable.

Seriously, you will see the “twist” coming the moment it’s set up. You’re going to know the ending of the story from a few paragraphs in. And I doubt very seriously that you will mind either of these things.

The Christmas Eve of Squinty Pete

Johnston McCulley

I.

Bitterness filled the heart of Squinty Pete, pickpocket, burglar, thug. It came from a sense of wasted effort and wasted years, though Squinty Pete did not analyze it that way. It was induced by the season, by the happy faces Pete saw around him, by the rollicking holiday crowds that filled the streets and jammed the shops, by the spirit of Christmas that seemed to be in the air—a peculiar spirit that changes the souls of men, inspires thought, and exerts influences apparently for no particular reason.

Though he could not explain it, Pete felt that Christmas was a pagan festival, deteriorated from a religious impulse. In the dim past there had been Christmases in a New England farmhouse, when Pete’s squint was thought “cute,” and he was the youngest of a brood of eight, and when there had been Christmas trees, with pop corn hanging from the branches, and lighted candles, and a few modest presents. An orange had been a thing, in those days, to make a youngster open his eyes and give thanks to Santa Claus. A new muffler or a new pair of mittens had been inevitable in a way.

Then there came a day when Pete drifted away from the old home, as his brothers and sisters had done before him. Pete traveled a bit, ofttimes neglecting to pay his fare, and the men he met dubbed him Squinty Pete. As such he became known to fame. The old folks died, the farm was sold, and Pete spent his share in one big spree—and so found himself adrift in the world. He made no effort to communicate with brothers and sisters.

Pete traveled in odd corners of the world and lived by precarious methods. There had been months spent behind steel bars. But, taking it altogether, Squinty Pete was lucky, considering his transgressions. The years were years of adventure, though most of his adventures were nefarious.

Together with two companions Pete had visited a little town in Iowa and broken into the vault of a bank, to find that it held a goodly sum. The three had scattered, and Pete, having a “hunch” that good fortune was likely to desert him if he lingered in that locality, hurried to New York.

He had not been in New York for years, but he hunted for old haunts and old friends. Some of the former he found; they were changed to a degree, but Squinty Pete did not know it. He knew it after finding, one morning, that a man he had supposed to be a friend had taken his money while he slept. Pete had a dollar left; it had been hidden in an inside pocket of his vest.

Squinty Pete had a blue hour, and then he shrugged his shoulders and started walking uptown. He reminded himself that it was not the first time he had been penniless. And yet there was a difference, too; Pete was beginning to get old. Irregular living had left its marks upon him. He was slowing up. The future held no bright prospects.

As he walked, Squinty Pete began to think. He wondered whether his brothers and sisters were alive.

“Little good it’d do me if they were,” he told himself. “Think I’ve gone to the devil, I suppose. Probably kick me out if I showed up.”

Four brothers and three sisters he had, if they still lived. Pete supposed that all of them were farmers, or wives of farmers. To-morrow was Christmas, and they would be eating big dinners and giving presents. It seemed to Pete that everybody in the world except him had money and friends and good fortune. For the first time he began regretting the life he had lived.

And then the bitterness entered his heart, an unfair bitterness, such as generally enters the hearts of failures who are such through no fault save their own. It wasn’t right, Squinty Pete decided. Here were men and women, and even children, spending money, and he had but one dollar. Here were human beings greeting one another, and he had not a single friend he could clasp by the hand. It wasn’t fair for others to be happy, Pete decided.

“I’ll get mine,” he declared to himself, gritting his teeth. “I’ll show ’em.”

He was in the midst of the retail district now. Crowds were pouring into the shops. Laughing, happy women and children, their arms filled with bundles, hurried to subway entrances and elevated stairs, and waited for surface cars. Another class got into limousines driven by chauffeurs in livery. Everybody seemed happy, everybody seemed to have money—except Squinty Pete.

“I’ll get mine,” Pete promised.

He did not know exactly what he intended to do, except that he would take a chance “lifting a leather” and get funds with which to have a celebration of his own. He felt that somebody owed him a debt, and he meant to collect. He did not blame himself, of course, for the predicament in which he found himself; men like Squinty Pete never do that.

Pete stopped on a corner and stood back to watch the passing throng. The happy faces angered him. Once or twice he found himself near to tears, and tears were foreign to the nature of Squinty Pete.

“It ain’t right,” he declared. “I ain’t got nothin’ in life—nothin’ at all. It’s a bum Christmas I’m havin’.”

Pete walked on up the street, which was Broadway. He reached Times Square and for a time he watched a crowd purchasing theater tickets at an agency. Pete supposed that all those people had regular homes, and he began wondering what a regular home would be like. He began wishing that he had a regular home, that he had remained on the farm. A man always had good food there, even if he did have to work hard for it.

Why, it had been twenty-five years since he had seen his brothers or sisters He wouldn’t know them, and they wouldn’t know him. That wasn’t any way for a man to spend his life.

Pete walked back to Herald Square, not caring particularly in what direction he went. He stood on another corner, close to the curb, waiting for a break in the seemingly endless line of traffic. A motor car whirled around the corner into the side street, the side of it almost scraping Pete’s coat buttons. A package flew from the rear seat, where a multitude of packages had been piled. It struck Pete and fell at his feet.

He stooped swiftly and picked it up. He looked after the car, started toward it, wondering whether he would get a reward for returning the package. Then he remembered that there had been nobody in the car but a chauffeur, who probably would give him no reward at all.

Yet Squinty Pete continued after the car, looking at the license number as he went. But before he came to the middle of the block he knew that the chase was useless. The car darted around the next corner and was gone. Squinty Pete had the package beneath his arm.

He stopped at the curb and grinned. This, at least, was a small measure of luck. If he could not return the package and collect a reward, at least he might sell the contents. He began wondering what was in the parcel. He hoped that it was something he could turn into ready cash. He knew of a “fence” far downtown.

It was a sort of puzzle package, and Squinty Pete decided that he would not open it until later. He might meet with disappointment if he opened it, and he always delayed disappointments if possible. Pete was wanting in the finer shades of courage.

For an hour longer he walked the streets through the jostling crowds, carrying the package beneath his arm, now and then stopping to roll and light a cigarette. The bitterness was deepening in his soul, He began to hate the idea of Christmas. He didn’t like to see other folk prosperous and happy when he was not.

And then, just at dusk, he reached Madison Square, and sought a bench in a secluded corner beneath an electric light. There he opened one end of the package, and then he made a full investigation.

“Just my luck!” he growled. “Chink stuff! Some nut must have bought it! Junk!”

Yet it was not junk in the proper sense. Pete knew that it had cost enough. There was an image of an idol in ivory and jade; perhaps he could get a couple of dollars for that. There was a pattern of rich silk. There were half a dozen Chinese ornaments of the better sort.

Squinty Pete wrapped the bundle up again and put it beneath his coat where he could carry it easily. There was no sense in going far downtown to the fence with stuff that would bring less than five dollars, Pete thought. He would get something better to take, and he would get money if he could. Straight up Fifth Avenue he would go, and then cut across to busy Broadway and the shops there. In those crowds he would “lift a leather.”

II.

At the end of another hour Squinty Pete felt huge disgust. On the streets there still were thousands of persons, but opportunities for stealing a purse were scarce. Pete plowed through the theatergoing crowds, waiting for his chance, and it did not seem to come.

Finally, he found himself over on the Avenue again, scarcely knowing why he had gone in that direction. He walked northward, and came to the park. There was small chance for stealing a purse there, and Squinty Pete knew it; but still he walked on.

Pete was thinking again, It wasn’t fair, he told himself. What right had folk to celebrate Christmas? Of course he hadn’t made the most of his life, and had allowed himself to be led into questionable paths of existence, yet he felt that he should not be punished in this manner.

He felt that he hated every person who had a home, every person who had prosperity. He cursed softly to himself as limousines glided by swiftly, as he looked at the jewel-bedecked women in them and the well-dressed men. The bitterness in his soul increased.

Still he carried the package that had dropped from the automobile. He had about decided that he would go downtown on the subway and sell the stuff for what it would bring. Three or four dollars, possibly, he thought, and that meant a few meals, at least.

In the middle of a block Squinty Pete stopped and stood at the curb, trying to decide what to do. The thought of burglary came into his mind; but he was too wise to attempt burglary without the proper preparation. He turned around and looked at the mansions before him, four of them in the block, each representing an outlay of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

They were ablaze with lights. From one of them strains of music came. There had been a time, Pete remembered, when he had liked good music.

He realized that he was growing cold and buttoned his coat up to his throat. He felt lonely, miserable, an outcast in a land of happy people. A lump came into his throat. No person on earth, Pete thought, cared how he fared this Christmas Eve. It made no difference to these prosperous people whether he lived or died, whether he spent his Christmas in a cheap lodging house or whether his body was found in the river.

Well, he would go downtown and sell the contents of the package to the fence and then he would plan a burglary, or something like that, get in funds, and go South for the winter. He had done it before. He did not like to do it particularly, for he liked New York, and he had been away for many years. The Middle West, the Pacific coast district, Hawaii, China, Japan, and the South Seas—he had begged and stolen through them all.

Squinty Pete felt a touch on his shoulder and whirled around with a snarl on his lips. But it was no officer of the law to force Pete to spend his Christmas in a detention cell. Before him was a prosperous-appearing gentleman of late middle age, a well-dressed man who radiated success.

“Pardon me,” he said, “but are you—er—busy?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Pete offered.

“Would you work for me for an hour or so, if I rewarded you well? At the same time you’d be doing me a favor, I assure you.”

“I’m ready to be rewarded at any time, but I don’t go out of my way to do favors for anybody,” Pete said, “What’s the lay?”

“I beg pardon?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“You see, it is like this: I am having an old-fashioned Christmas tree for the family and some friends. When I was a boy we used to have trees, but we got out of the habit when I began getting rich. Now we are going to have an old-fashioned tree, with strings of pop corn on it, and oranges and candy and stockings made from pink mosquito netting, and all that. And we are going to have a Santa Claus.

“The man I engaged to play Santa Claus hasn’t shown up, and I just got a telephone message that he had slipped on a pavement and hurt himself. I need a Santa Claus. It will not take you more than an hour, and I’ll pay you well. And—pardon me—you look hungry. You can have all you want to eat.”

Squinty Pete thought it out rapidly. Here was a chance to get warm, a chance for good food, and possibly a chance to see the inside of one of these mansions and mark it for a future burglary.

“I—I don’t mind,” Pete said.

“Good! You don’t know what a relief it is to find a man like this. Just come with me. I’ve got a Santa Claus suit; everything is ready for you.”

Squinty Pete followed at the other’s heels. They passed through a big bronze gate, and Pete noticed that they were going into the house from which the music came. He was led around to the side and in at an entrance there.

“I’ve got a sort of den on the second floor, and the stuff is there,” Pete heard the other saying. “It is strictly my own room; some people are surprised when they see it.”

Up the stairs at the rear they went, along a hall, and into the den. Squinty Pete blinked his eyes rapidly. The room was furnished with old-fashioned furniture, such as he had known when a boy. On the walls were old photographs, some of them badly faded.

“I’ve made my pile,” he heard the master of the house saying, “but I keep this room old-fashioned because I like to come in here when I have some problem to think out. It’s good for my soul too—keeps me from getting haughty. I came from an old New England family, you see. Farmers, we were.”

“Same as me,” Pete said.

“That so? I had a lot of brothers and sisters. I’m the only one who struck out and won a fortune, but the others are comfortable; well off, you might say. There’s the Santa Claus suit. Get into it and I’ll get you a tray of food.”

He hurried out and closed the door, and Squinty Pete glanced rapidly around the room. Nothing worth stealing here. All rich men were maniacs, Pete told himself. Imagine keeping a room like this in a mansion!

Pete sat down and reached for the Santa Claus suit, but stopped to glance around again. The room brought back his happy boyhood. He got up and began looking at the faded photographs.

Before one of the photographs he gasped, rubbed at his eyes, and looked again. There could be no mistake. There was his father, his mother, his brothers and sisters, himself. Why, he remembered when that photograph had been taken. A traveling artist had stopped at the farm—and Pete had fought because his mother forced him to put on his good clothes and pose, Pete could remember how she had scrubbed his face and brushed his tangled hair.

This man, then, this rich man, must be one of his brothers. Twenty-five years since he had seen any of them! Why, it couldn’t be believed that, of all the houses in the great city, Pete had come into this one. But perhaps it was one of those miracles that have a habit of occurring about Christmas time, induced by something which mere man knows little.

Pete struggled with the Santa Claus suit and his thoughts at the same time. His host returned with a tray, and Pete stopped to eat, for the food was excellent, of course, and he was hungry.

“Mind telling me your name?” Pete asked.

“William Hadder.”

“Thanks, Mr. Hadder. That picture over there of your family?”

“Yes.”

“Some family!” said Squinty Pete. “All alive?”

“As far as I know,” said William Hadder. “One brother, named Peter, ran away when he was a boy. He was the youngest and I am the oldest. We never heard of him afterward.”

“Dead, maybe—or gone to the bad.”

“He may be dead—but he hasn’t gone to the bad,” William Hadder declared. “A Hadder might make a mistake, but he couldn’t go to the bad entirely. There’d be a streak of good in him that would show up sooner or later. Peter was a peculiar boy. He always had a faraway look in his eyes. He wanted to travel and see the world, and I’ll bet that he has, too.”

“I’ve seen the world myself, and a lot of it ain’t worth seein’,” Squinty Pete said. “I suppose you’re a little sore at him—black sheep of the family.”

“Nothing of the sort,” William Hadder said. “I envy Peter. He probably has traveled through foreign lands and learned a lot while I have been grubbing for money. I wish he’d come back. I’d give him all the money he wanted if he’d tell me his experiences. When we were youngsters Pete was my favorite.”

Squinty Pete finished eating and got behind the Santa Claus mask.

“All ready?’ Hadder asked.”We’ll go downstairs, then. You don’t have to say anything. After I introduce you to the kiddies, you pick up the presents at the foot of the tree and call off the names.”

“All right,” Pete said.

He followed William Hadder, his brother Bill, down the marble stairs. There was a chorus of exclamations as they appeared, and the children danced and clapped their hands. Squinty Pete stood at the foot of the tree while William Hadder introduced him as Santa Claus.

“Santa Claus, this is my son,” he said. “And this is my daughter. And here is my son’s wife and baby. You see, Santa Claus, I am a grandfather now.”

Squinty Pete watched closely during the introductions, and a mist came into his eyes. Brother Bill had a family and wealth. And brother Bill envied his brother Pete, who had traveled the world, but had gone hungry doing it; who had spent months in prison, and had been near to an ignoble death half a score of times.

He turned and looked at the tree, and again his boyhood stood before him. Wise brother Bill! The same sort of tree and strings of pop corn. The same pink stockings made from mosquito netting, with oranges in the toes.

Squinty Pete, remembering his rôle, began picking up the packages and reading the names. Those in the big room came forward, took their gifts, and bowed to Santa Claus. The children looked at him wide-eyed when they got their candy and oranges and nuts.

And then William Hadder was leading him up the stairs again to the little room furnished like yesterday. Squinty Pete removed his mask and started to get out of the Santa Claus clothes. He wasn’t sure whether he could make his identity known or not. But finally he decided.

“Bill, don’t you know me?” he asked.

“Beg pardon?”

“I look what I am—a bum, I suppose,” said Squinty Pete. “But I’m your brother. I’m Peter Hadder.”

“You—Pete——”

“I am, Bill. Ask me questions, if you don’t believe it. I can tell you how you got that scar over your eye, Bill. I gave it to you one June afternoon when you tied up the sleeves of my shirt at the swimmin’ hole.”

“Pete? My brother Pete?”

“I sure am, Bill. Ask me some questions.”

William Hadder did—and was convinced.

“But don’t be afraid that I’ll bother you,” Pete said. “I know that I’m no good, and that you are a man of importance now. I’ve seen the world, all right, but there’s been something besides romance in it. And I’ll go on seeing it, brother Bill, until I die. So I’ll just shake hands, and take what you intended giving me for playing Santa Claus, and be on my way. You see I’ve—”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” William Hadder cried. “You’ll stay right here with me, Pete. I’ll give you all the money you want, and you’ll sit in this room with me and tell me tales—”

“I can tell you tales, all right,” Pete said. “But it wouldn’t do, Bill. You and your rich friends—”

“Don’t worry about that, Pete. I may be rich, but I’ve raised my family right. They’ll welcome you, Pete. They are not snobs. Why, you old rooster, you!”

William Hadder held brother in his arms and slapped him on the shoulders.

“And what’s that package?” Hadder asked.

Pete looked at it and scratched head, undecided as to what he should say. But his indecision soon vanished. He told his brother Bill just how he had come by it, and, after a few moments of concentration, repeated number on the license plate of the mahine that dropped the package. Tracing the owner of the car returning package would be a simple matter, in his brother Bill’s opinion. Somehow Pete’s heart flooded with joy after his avowal in regard to the parcel he had found.

And soon Squinty Pete was standing before the Christmas tree again while William Hadder talked. He caught only fragments of brother Bill’s excited revelation.

“——gone twenty-five years—came back to us on Christmas Eve—only missing member of the family—big reunion New Years up in the home country—”

Pete was forced to sit down and make himself at home, despite his poor clothes and the stubble on his face. Brother Bill was offering him food and wine and cigars. Brother Bill’s children were around him. He held brother Bill’s grandchild on his knee.

The time passed swiftly, and somewhere a clock struck twelve.

“Merry Christmas!” somebody shouted.

Squinty Pete felt tears in his eyes, Surely this must be a miracle! And he was home again. These folks made him feel at home. He wouldn’t have to be pickpocket or burglar any more.

“Some Christmas!” said Squinty Pete to himself. “Wasn’t I the fool to be cussin’ the thought of it?”