“I treated a sick boy a while back. Thought I’d see how he’s coming along.” I took my bag from the car and started over. Already I recognized my patient, Tene, as one of the boys with the parson. “Hello, Tene, how you feeling?”
He was around eleven or twelve, and shy with non-gypsy gadjo like myself. “I’m okay,” he said finally.
“This the boy was sick?” Parson Wigger asked.
I nodded. “A throat infection, but he seems to be over it.”
At that moment Tene’s father appeared around the side of the wagon. He was a dark brooding man with a black mustache and hair that touched the top of his ears, leaving small gold earrings exposed. Though Parson Wigger was the same size and both men looked to be in their mid-thirties, they could hardly have been more different. Except for an old arm injury which had left him with a weak right hand, Carranza Lowara was the picture of strength and virility. By contrast Wigger gave the impression of physical weakness. The parson’s hair was already thinning in front, and he wore thick eyeglasses to correct his faulty vision.
“You are back, Doctor?” Tene’s father asked.
“Yes, Carranza, I am back.”
He nodded, then glanced at April. “This is your wife?”
“No, my nurse. April, I want you to meet Carranza Lowara. He is the leader of this gypsy band.”
April took a step forward, wide-eyed, and shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“I’m trying to help these people get settled for the winter,” Parson Wigger explained. “These wagons are hardly good shelter for twenty people. And the two tents are not much better.”
“We have lived through the winters before,” Carranza Lowara said. He spoke English well, but with an accent I hadn’t been able to place. I supposed it must be middle European.
“But not in New England.” The parson turned to me and explained. “They came up from the south, as do most gypsies. I’ve encountered them before in my travels. Spain deported gypsies to Latin America hundreds of years ago, and they’ve been working their way north ever since.”
“Is that true?” I asked Lowara. “Do you come from Latin America?”
“Long, long ago,” he replied.
I happened to glance back at my car and saw a gypsy woman in a long spangled skirt and bare feet. She was examining my car intently. I’d seen her on my previous visit, and suspected she was Lowara’s wife or woman. “Is she of your family?” I asked.
“Come here, Volga.” The woman came over promptly, and I saw that she was younger than I’d first supposed. Not a child, certainly, but still in her twenties. She was handsomer than most gypsy women, with high cheekbones and slightly slanted eyes that hinted at a mixture of Oriental blood. I introduced her to April, and they went off together to visit the other wagons.
“She is my wife,” Lowara explained.
“Tene’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“She seems so young.”
“Gypsy women often marry young. It is a custom. You should come to a gypsy wedding sometime and see the groom carry off the bride by force. It is not like your Christian weddings, Parson.”
“I imagine not,” Parson Wigger replied dryly. “But I will come to a gypsy wedding only if you honor me with your presence at my church.”
The gypsy shook his head. “Your townspeople do not like us.”
“They might like you more if they saw you attending Christian services.”
Lowara shrugged. “We have no religion. We would as soon go to your church as any other.”
“Come, then, on Christmas Day. It’s just two weeks away. Once you know the people and are friendly with them, you might even find an old barn to stay the winter.”
“Would a barn be any warmer than our tents? I think not.”
“Come anyway,” the parson pleaded. “You won’t regret it.”
The gypsy nodded. “I will talk to the others. I think you will see us in two weeks.”
Parson Wigger walked me back to my Runabout “I think their appearance on Christmas morning will have a good effect on the townspeople. No one can hate a fellow Christian on Christmas.”
“Some call them beggars and thieves. They say the women are good for nothing but telling fortunes.”
“They are human beings with souls, like the rest of us,” Parson Wigger reminded me.
“I agree. You only have to convince a few hundred of your fellow citizens.” I didn’t have to remind him that his own popularity in Northmont was not too high at that moment.
April came back from her tour of the wagons, and we drove away with a wave to Parson Wigger. “He’s really tryin’ to help those people,” she said. “That Volga thinks highly of the parson.”
“She’s Lowara’s wife. She must have been a child bride. I treated her son and never even knew she was the mother.”
“There’s an old woman in one wagon who tells fortunes,” April said with a giggle.
“She tell yours?”
April nodded. “Said I was gettin’ married soon.”
“Good for you.” April was some years older than me, in her mid-thirties, and not the most beautiful girl in town. I figured the old gypsy woman was a good judge of human nature.
On Christmas mornin’ it was snowin’ gently, and from a distance down the street Parson Wigger’s church looked just the way they always do on greeting cards. I wasn’t that much of a churchgoer myself, but I decided I should show up. Last Christmas I’d spent the entire day deliverin’ a farm woman’s baby, and an hour in church sure wouldn’t be any harder than that.
Parson Wigger was out front, bundled against the cold and snow, greetin’ the people as they arrived. I waved to him and stopped to chat with Eustace Carey, who ran one of Northmont’s two general stores. “How are you, Doc? Merry Christmas to ye.”
“Same to you, Eustace. We’ve got good weather for it-a white Christmas but not too white.”
“Folks say the gypsies are comin’ to the service. You heard anything about it?”
“No, but it is Christmas, after all. Nothin’ wrong with them comin’ to church.”
Eustace Carey snorted. “What’s wrong is them bein’ here in the first place! I think they hexed old Minnie to get permission to camp on her land. These gypsy women can hex a person, you know.”
I was about to reply when a murmur went up from the waiting churchgoers. A single crowded gypsy wagon pulled by a team of horses was comin’ down the center of the street “Looks like they’re here,” I remarked to Carey.
It was obvious then that Parson Wigger had been standin’ in the snow for exactly this moment. He hurried out to the wagon and greeted Lowara and the others warmly. It seemed that all the gypsies had come, even the children, and after the parson shook hands with them, they filed into church.
“I don’t like ’em,” Carey said behind me. “They look funny, they smell funny, they got funny names.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Eustace.”
We followed the gypsies into church and took our seats in one of the front pews. I glanced around for April, then remembered that she’d be at the Catholic church, on the other side of town.
After a few moments’ wait Parson Wigger came out wearin’ his traditional long black cassock and white surplice. He carried a Bible in one hand as he mounted the pulpit and then began to speak. “First of all, I want to wish each and every one of my parishioners-and I feel you are all my parishioners-the very merriest of Christmases and the happiest of New Years. I see 1926 as a year of promise, a year of building our spiritual lives.”
I’d never been a great one for listening to sermons, and I found my eyes wandering to the double row of gypsies down front. If the sermon was boring them too, they were very good at masking their feelings. Sitting right behind them, and none too happy about it, was old Minnie Haskins, who’d given them permission to use her land.