Free The Boy With Penny Eyes by Al Sarrantonio Page A

The fact that the holiday was nearly three months away didn't matter; it could be the Fourth of July and he'd still start the hot muggy morning with "White Christmas" or "The Christmas Song" or whatever else came into his head.
    It was the clink of milk bottles that made him think of Christmas. They sounded like sleigh bells. That and the fact that he started working when the sun was not yet up, at the time he always used to get up on Christmas morning with his brother and sister when he was a kid. Every morning when he loaded the cages of bottles into the truck and they began to jingle, in the hour before dawn, no matter what day it was, winter or summer, it was cold outside, and he could close his eyes at that magic moment and pretend that he was back there in his childhood skin, with his brother and sister, in his father and mother's house, and that the tree was waiting -in shadow downstairs, with dark outlines of presents all around, in neatly stacked piles, the smell of balsam hitting their nostrils—he in front, Bobby and Marian butting up against him from behind, whispering to him to hurry up. But he would take only one step down at a time, knowing that this was the only time during the whole year you could do this—that an hour from now it wouldn't be the same, all the presents would be opened, and Mother and Father would be yawning their way into the kitchen to make coffee (that alone, the coffee, would dull the balsam smell), the lights would be on, the sun coming up. (Was there snow this year? Yes!) In short, it would all be over. This was the moment to kiss, the moment when it was all still ahead, each step a step closer in anticipation, the rising excitement, the glowing single moment of each year just ahead, a step closer, step closer . . .
    "Come on, Potty!" Marian would finally say, moving past him followed by their brother. But still he would linger, not wanting this moment to end, wanting it to go on forever. He would leave all the rest—the presents and the hugs and the thank you's and Father opening a box with the same ties in it—he would give it all up—the presents, even, for this supreme moment to last always. Another step down, he heard Bobby and Marian around the corner in the hallway, themselves lingering, waiting for him to catch up, not wanting to go in just yet, maybe afraid to go in without him, afraid that somehow the spell would be broken since this was the way they always did it. Another step, hand on the railing near the bottom, brushing past the three long barber-pole-striped stockings that hung between the iron of the railing, something heavy at the bottom of the first one (it had to be an orange in the toe—there was always an orange in the toe), then a light brush of the other two stockings—which would wait till the end for exploration, since they were always of secondary importance to what waited in the living room.
    "Potty, come on!" Bobby whisper-shouted to him. And with a sigh he suddenly found that his unslippered foot was off the carpet of the stairs and on the cool-cold floor of the tiled hallway.
    "Coming," he whispered back.
    Still he lingered at the bottom of the stairs, his hand on the railing, looking up at the darkness above from which they had descended. He almost wanted to go back up, start all over again . . .
    Hearing the impatient groans of his brother and sister, he let go of the railing and followed them into the mouth of the kitchen.
    No coffee yet. There was only the smell of a kitchen cleaned the night before in anticipation of a holiday. There was the clean odor of Comet in the sink, and the faint smell of fruit. That was from Mr. Antonela's basket, the one he came over with every Christmas Eve from his own fruit market. There were things in there they never ate any other time: dates and figs, golden raisins as big as knuckles, damson plums from the Mideast, oranges so huge they wouldn't fit in the toe of any stocking, apples shined so red they hurt the