Lou’s View – Dec. 18, 2014
It’s the Christmas Mannequins, Henry Shoemaker!
by Lou Bernard
If I told you a story of mannequins that come to life and roam around a small town, you’d think,”Creepy. Has to be a Halloween story.” Nope! It’s a Christmas story. Even though that doesn’t seem to make much sense.
Would it make more sense if I told you it was from Henry Shoemaker?
Shoemaker, the Wayne Township writer and historian, often had this kind of wild twist in his stories. This one comes from a collection of his private papers. As far as I can tell, it never made it to one of his books. And it begins around 1905 in a community called Black Snake Mills, because that’s the perfect setting for a Christmas story.
No, wait. That’s the perfect name for a Stephen King story. In a Christmas story, you’d expect something different, but Shoemaker was nothing if not unpredictable. If it helps you to visualize this a bit better, you should know that I’ve looked into this, and Black Snake Mills was probably a fictionalized name for Eastville, down in Sugar Valley.
It began with an old shopkeeper. Don’t get too attached to the old shopkeeper; we won’t be seeing very much of him. Just know that he was against the lumbering industry and protested the destruction of the forests, making him ahead of the environmentalists by about seventy years.
He closed his shop, and refused to do any more business. He withdrew, becoming something of a recluse. The only time he was really seen was in December, when he put his mannequins out.
He had five female mannequins, and every year for Christmas, he would dress them in nice dresses and display them in the window. And that was the only time of year his shop looked alive and warm again.
The mannequins cared for him, and worried about him. Oh, didn’t I mention that they could think and feel? Yes, the mannequins were intelligent. There is no explanation given in the story as to how they got that way. Don’t question it. It’s not important. It’s a Shoemaker story.
So skip to Christmas Eve, when a young man named Hen Coleman was driving to visit his uncle. He was using the turnpike from Lycoming County to Centre County, which places him in Sugar Valley about the time this happened. “Hen Coleman” was not his real name—Shoemaker often changed names to protect people. I can actually see where he scribbled out the real name and penciled in the fake one, but I can’t make out the real one.
Coleman’s car broke down, and he went for help. As he walked, he found five pretty women in fine clothes, and asked them for assistance. They walked right past without changing expression, and Coleman decided that they were stuck up.
A few minutes later, he found a nice old woman whose husband was a mechanic. She got him, and he went with Coleman to fix the car. As he worked, he told Coleman about the walking mannequins.
“The old shopkeeper won’t go to church anymore, and the mannequins worry about him,” said the mechanic. “So every Christmas Eve, they come to life, walk to the church, and pray for him. Nobody sees them, but in the morning we see their footprints in the snow.” (Notice how casually the locals accepted the idea of mobile mannequins. Sugar Valley can be a weird place.)
“Amazing,” said Coleman. “I’m glad I wasn’t snubbed by real girls. Could they jump out of the way, if a car came at them?” (No idea why his first thought would have been attempting to run them over.)
“I don’t know,” said the mechanic. “Nobody ever sees them with a car. They only go out on Christmas Eve. And I don’t blame them, as the rest of the year the shopkeeper puts away their clothes.”
He got the car fixed, and Coleman offered him a ride back home. On the way, as they passed the town square, he stopped and looked out at the ground.
There, in the snow, were five sets of mannequin footprints, leading into the church and back.
I’ve always been tempted, around Christmas, to go down to Sugar Valley and see if I could capture a moving mannequin. Not that I’d know what to do with one if I caught it.
