When Angels Sing

by Turk Pipkin

Genres: Religious & Inspirational; General Fiction

Synopsis

This classic Christmas story of rekindled spirit is the inspiration behind the 2013 holiday film Angels Sing, starring  Harry Connick Jr., Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Lyle Lovett.  

This is the tale of Michael, who was eight years old on the Christmas Day he lost his brother David. The day had started out well--Michael and David opened their presents, and much to their delight, they had both received ice skates from Santa. With great excitement they set out to the pond behind their grandparents' house in New Mexico to try them out. But the pond wasn't safe, and David didn't make it out of its icy cold depths. For Michael, the meaning of Christmas changed forever that day.

Thirty years later Michael is the neighborhood Grinch. "To me the only wonder of Christmas is not why that tragedy marked me so," Michael says, "but how the rest of my family can seem so completely unscathed." He scowls at his neighbors' fervent holiday traditions and at his own children, who want nothing more than to string Christmas lights through their front yard. But when another holiday disaster strikes and his own cherished young son loses his spirit to live, Michael searches deep within himself to root out the anger, the fear, and the pain of the past. Can he bear to remember exactly what happened that Christmas Day? And will he make peace with this past for the sake of his own children?

Release date: January 10, 1999

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 120

Sample

I’LL NEVER FORGET THAT LAST CHRISTMAS WITH MY BROTHER, David. As we did every year, we had seen the lights of La Villita and joined San Antonio’s traditional posada, journeying from door to door with a hundred strangers—all of us made friends by our songs and by our symbolic search of shelter for the Virgin Mary and her unborn child.

“What I love about Christmas,” David told me as we sipped hot chocolate amid a sea of joyous faces, “is that all the world’s problems seem to vanish overnight.”

“Then they should make every day Christmas!” I told him.

“No,” he said as he mussed up my hair. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

Reflected in his eyes, a thousand Christmas lights illuminated the world I was sailing into, for I was a ship, newly emerged from safe harbor, with David as my captain. I was a lamb, and David my shepherd.

Fair-haired and freckled, my big brother was truly the golden child of the Walker family, loved and admired for his steadfast heart and his wondrous abilities. To an eight-year-old in awe of his talents, David seemed capable of anything. He could throw a football thirty yards with pinpoint accuracy, do front and back flips off the diving board, or gaze into the heavens and name the constellations. At chess he was unbeatable, though I never heard him brag about it.

“I think that’s checkmate,” he’d say apologetically. “You’ll probably get me next time!”

But I never did.

We shared a bedroom at our home in San Antonio—little Michael in the bottom bunk, thirteen-year-old David on top. Sometimes late at night, with the lights turned off and the two of us supposedly asleep, his voice would come down softly from on high as he recounted stories of great adventure that he’d read in the novels of Jack London and Ernest Hemingway. Embellished by the gift of a natural story teller, David’s versions came so much to life that when I later read the originals, I often found that they had mysteriously lost their spark.

Like most of his heroes, David wanted to be a writer. I merely wanted to be like David.

The community festivals of San Antonio were only the beginning of the Walker family Christmas, for our real celebration awaited us in a magic land far to the north. Rising before dawn on Christmas Eve morning, we piled into the car for the long drive to my grandparents’ house in New Mexico. Our pilot for the journey was my father, Colonel Robert T. “Bull” Walker, a fearsome air force officer whom even his children called Colonel.

The Colonel’s copilot was our mother, Claire. And though her husband spoke almost continuously about course, heading, fuel consumption, and estimated times of arrival, my mother’s focus was committed to a thick novel, which she held as delicately as if it were a bird about to fly away. Only when turning the pages would she glance up at her husband. Then, with out having heard a word he’d said, she’d answer, “Yes, dear,” or “That’s nice, dear,” before ducking back into her book.

My sister, Linda, the oldest child and therefore the most bored, was stretched across the middle seat of the family station wagon. There she painted her toenails three different colors in as many hours, despite the fact that no one but her disinterested brothers would likely see them until sandal season began in April.

In the rear-facing backseat, David and I staked out a world of our own: books by Ray Bradbury and H. G. Wells, field binoculars, playing cards, a National Geographic with a story on the reindeer of Finland, and to keep our hands occupied and bodies energized, a giant sack of pecans that we’d gathered in our front yard at home.

To trace our progress, David unfolded a map of the western states and spread it against the back window, obliterating the view behind us with the journey ahead.

“I can’t see!” I protested.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told me. “All the really good things are in front of us.”

After all these years, I still wonder if he meant to sound so wise, or whether he simply could not help it.

By the first pit stop we were through the wooded canyons of the Texas Hill Country and starting the long hours across the flatlands. Passing through little towns like Levelland and level towns like Littlefield, we forged into the southern edge of America’s Great Plains. Gazing across the open country, from our car to the horizon all we could see were brown cotton stalks, bare except for the scattered white balls the combines had left behind.

“It’s so boring,” I moaned. “It goes on and on, and it all looks exactly the same.”

“Aw, c’mon!” David piped in. “To me it looks like a million tiny Christmas trees decorated with snowballs. And tonight when we look out the windows of the Lodge, we’ll see mi. . .