Charlie

Charlie is the narrator’s little brother and the unwitting reason the Herdman family first comes to Sunday school. His story turns on two candid remarks: one advertises the refreshments to Leroy Herdman, and another bluntly says what Charlie likes best about Sunday school when the Herdmans are not there. Together they make him a small but consequential link between the school’s everyday life and the Herdman family’s arrival in the church community.

Identity and School Experience

Charlie is introduced as a young pupil whose experience of school includes being bullied by Leroy Herdman. The previous year, while Charlie was in second grade, he spent much of it black-and-blue because he had to sit beside Leroy. That history gives his later dislike of the Herdmans a practical basis: it is not merely a child’s abstract judgment of other children but a response to repeated physical harm.

The narrator’s parents interpret Charlie’s attitude differently. The narrator’s Father calls his later comment an un-Christian sentiment; the narrator’s Mother counters that it is practical, recalling what happened when Charlie sat beside Leroy. Their disagreement sets Charlie’s experience against the ideal of how children should speak about Sunday school, while showing why an adult defense of his bluntness is possible.

The Remark That Brings the Herdmans

The immediate cause of the Herdman family’s visit is Charlie’s attempt to stop Leroy from taking the dessert in his lunch box. After Leroy steals it for three days running, Charlie gives up trying to protect it and tells him, “Oh, go on and take it,” he said. “I don’t care. I get all the dessert I want in Sunday school.” When Leroy asks what kind, Charlie lists chocolate cake, candy bars, cookies, Kool-Aid, ice cream, doughnuts, and popcorn balls. Asked who provides it, he answers, “The minister,” though he does not know who else to name.

Charlie means the claim as leverage in a losing encounter over his lunch, not as an invitation. But his description makes Sunday school sound like a dependable source of treats. The next Sunday, the Herdmans arrive, slouching in and looking for refreshments. When Ralph Herdman asks where to get the cake, the superintendent directs the children toward food packages being collected in the kitchen: canned goods intended for the Orphans Home, not a Sunday-school snack. Charlie’s exaggeratedly generous description thus sets up a comic mismatch between the Herdmans’ expectation and what the adults are actually offering.

The Comment That Defines His View

At another Sunday-school gathering, after eight or nine children praise Jesus, God, cheerful friends, or their teacher, the teacher gives Charlie the last turn. He stands without looking at his paper and says, “What I like best about Sunday school,” he said, “is that there aren’t any Herdmans here.” The room’s response gives the line its force: the other children’s positive answers are forgotten, while Charlie’s remark is remembered. When his family comes to pick him up, the teacher suggests that he might tell them some of the other things he likes, smiling while plainly angry.

The remark is socially awkward, but the account preserves the reason it rings true to Charlie: Leroy had made his second-grade year painful. The narrator’s Father judges the words by a religious ideal; the narrator’s Mother measures them against the physical consequences of Charlie’s proximity to Leroy. Charlie’s candor exposes the distance between a welcoming Sunday-school ideal and the children’s actual experience of the Herdmans.

Narrative Role

Charlie’s two remarks form a pointed reversal. First he describes Sunday school as a place with abundant treats, unintentionally drawing in children who have little reason to trust or understand its customs. Later he identifies the Herdmans’ absence as his favorite part of being there. He is not presented as an architect of the larger Christmas pageant or as a participant in the Herdmans’ later questions about the Christmas story; his importance lies in the smaller causal chain that brings them into Sunday school and in the unvarnished perspective that frames their reputation. Through Charlie, the Herdmans’ arrival begins not with a deliberate invitation but with a child trying to get through lunch without losing his dessert.