up cleaning himself. The donkey toppled over. “¡Jodido!” He cursed Lloyd and shoved him. Lloyd fell over his cow.
“You could be sued for that,” he threatened from the floor.
“Boys! Boys!” Miss Violet called excitedly from the dark.
I felt Horse’s head tossing at the excitement. I clamped my arm down to hold him, and he bit my hand.
“¡Ay!”
“And there in a manger, they found the babe—” Red turned and nodded for me to speak.
“I am Joseph!” I said as loud as I could, trying to ignore the sting of the horse bite, “and this is the baby’s mother—”
“Damn you!” Horse cursed when I said that. He jumped up and let me have a hard fist in the face.
“It’s Horse!” the audience squealed. He had dropped his veil, and he stood there trembling, like a trapped animal.
“Horse the virgin!” Bones called.
“Boys, Bowoooo-oizz!” Miss Violet pleaded.
“—AndthethreekingsbroughtgiftstotheChristchild—” Red was reading very fast to try to get through the play, because everything was really falling apart on stage.
The audience wasn’t helping either, because they kept shouting, “Is that you, Horse?” or “Is that you, Tony?”
The Kid stepped up with the first gift. “I bring, I bring—” He looked at his script but he couldn’t read.
“Incense,” I whispered.
“¿Qué?”
“Incense,” I repeated. Miss Violet had rearranged Horse’s robe and pushed him back to kneel by me. My eyes were watering from his blow.
“In-sense,” the Kid said and he threw the crayon box we were using for incense right into the manger and busted the doll’s head again. The round head just rolled out into the center of the stage near where Red stood and he looked down at it with a puzzled expression on his face.
Then the Kid stepped back and slipped on Abel’s pee. He tried to get up and run, but that only made it worse. He kept slipping and getting up, and slipping and getting up, and all the while the audience had gone wild with laughter and hysteria.
“Andthesecondwisemanbroughtmyrrh!” Red shouted above the din.
“Meerrrr, merrrrda, ¡mierda!” Bones cried like a monkey.
“I bring myra,” Samuel said.
“Myra!” someone in the audience shouted, and all the fifth graders turned to look at a girl named Myra. All of the boys said she sat on her wall at home after school and showed her panties to those that wanted to see.
“Hey, Horse!”
“¡Chingada!” the Horse said, working his teeth nervously. He stood up and I pushed and he knelt again.
The Kid was holding on to Abel, trying to regain his footing, and Abel just stood very straight and said, “I had to.”
“And the third wise man brought gold!” Red shouted triumphantly. We were nearing the end.
Florence stepped forward, bowed low and handed an empty cigar box to Horse. “For the virgin,” he grinned.
“¡Cabrón!” The Horse jumped up and shoved Florence across the stage, and at the same time a blood-curdling scream filled the air and Bones came sailing through the air and landed on Horse.
“For the verrrrrr-gin!” Bones cried.
Florence must have hit the light bulb as he went back because there was a pop and darkness as the light of the east went out.
“—And that’s how it was on the first Christmas!” I heard brave Red call out above the confusion and free-for-all on stage and the howling of the audience. And the bell rang and everybody ran out shouting, “Merry Christmas!” “Merry Christmas!” “¡Chingada!”
In a very few moments the auditorium was quiet. Only Red and I and Miss Violet remained on the stage. My ears were ringing, like when I stood under the railroad bridge while a train went by overhead. For the first time since we came in it was quiet in the auditorium. Overhead the wind began to blow. The blizzard had not died out.
“What a play,” Miss Violet laughed, “my Lord what a play!” She sat on a crate in the middle of the jumbled mess and laughed. Then she looked up at the empty beam and called, “Bones, come down!” Her voice echoed in the lonely auditorium. Red and I stood quietly by her.
“Shall we start putting the things away?” Red finally asked. Miss Violet looked up at us and nodded and smiled. We straightened up the stage as best we could. While we worked we felt the wind of the blizzard increase, and overhead the skylight of the auditorium grew dark with snow.
“I think that’s about all we can do,” Miss Violet said. “The storm seems to be getting worse—”
We put on our jackets, closed the auditorium door and walked down the big, empty