The Book of Feasts & Seasons (25 page)

My eyes popped open in shock. “Oh, good grief! I forgot to tell her that Jesus would be in the Temple when he turned twelve! That he is not in the caravan! I could have saved her all that grief! Jesus Christ, what the hell was I thinking!! Whoops, I mean heck. I mean Jesus Christ save me.”

“Be of good cheer,” said the lamb with perfect seriousness. “Your prayers will sustain and comfort her, whether you speak them now or later. Eternity entertains all prayers at once. And now comes the one who will answer you.”

I saw a light in the distance. It was clear enough that I saw the path again, and so, without any more mishaps with the thorns, I came into place where the ground was clear of rocks and nettles. It felt like turned soil under my feet, and the earth was cool and soothed my aches and stings.

The light was a lantern being held in the hand of a being shaped like a man dressed all in white, purer than any white Earth could make. Over his shoulder was a shepherd’s crook. Tucked through his belt was a golden horn. On his head was a hood or veil which hid his eyes, but I could see his nose and mouth.

“Rise,” he said, because I had realized who he was, and my knees failed and I had collapsed in panic. “Fear not. I am but a fellow servant of the same One you serve. See that you do not bow to me! I must return the lost lamb to the fold.”

I said, “Gabriel? Were you really watching the sheep so the shepherds could go see the child?”

The great being nodded slowly beneath his veil.

“Why was I allowed to see him? And not all the other time travelers? And not everyone?”

He said to me, “Lost lamb, if you were the only man alive, the only one who had ever sinned, and every other Son of Adam had remained pure and upright, it would all have been done for you. For you the child was born. For you he lives and dies. For you.”

The living being raised the lantern, and I saw it was a spiral galaxy inside the glass, not a candle, and clusters and superclusters of galaxies. “It is all for you. The stars love you, and He who, by his word, lit the stars and set them dancing, from the greatest to the least. Everything in the cosmos, all the light of all the worlds, to the blood shed by the Messiah. It is all for you, John Went.

“And more than a mere cosmos! Eternity and infinity are yours, endless life, unbound joy. You shall be rejoined with the one you love, and all the ones you love, and the love will be greater than mortal tongues can pray to ask or praise in thanksgiving.”

I did not know if he meant I would meet her that very hour, or only after many long seasons of life in this eon or many others. But I knew, then, that it did not matter. Only one question mattered.

“Why? Why? Why?” I shouted at him.

Gabriel smiled and he leaned, and he spoke very softly in my ear.

“Do you not give gifts to those you love?”

Christmas Eve

Her name was Ginny. She was six years old, and it was Christmas Eve.

Her eyelids trembled and slowly her eyes closed. With a painful effort, she tried to stay awake. For a moment, her face was utterly at peace. Then with a little sigh of effort, her eyelids fluttered open.

“Mommy…? Is it all right…?”

“Hush, now,” Her mother replied. “Everything is all right.”

“Mommy, is it all right if I stay up until Saint Nicholas comes? Just this once? I won’t ask again.”

Her mother’s name was also Virginia. She was bent over the bed, passing her hand over her daughter’s face, comforting, soothing.

“Yes … just this once … Stay awake. Stay awake for Santa Claus, baby…”

Virginia passed her hand over her daughter’s head as if to smooth too-curly blonde hair; but Ginny had no hair any longer.

“… I hear the sleigh bells…” Ginny said. “He’s coming…How will he fit?”

“What was that?” Virginia bent close to her daughter’s barely-moving lips.

“No chimney. There is no chimney here. How will Saint Nicholas get in?”

There was no chimney in the terminal ward of the children’s hospital.

“He’ll think of something, baby. He’s Santa. Just have faith. Just hold on.”

One of the many blinking boxes connected to the little girl gave off an alarm which sounded like a bright, sharp ringing as if from small bells. Ginny smiled weakly at the noise, no doubt thinking it was sleigh bells, and said, “Will I see Saint Nicholas?”

“Yes, darling, O, yes my darling.” Virginia’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Santa Claus is coming. You will see him.”

The medical technicians and the nurses, voices tense but low, uttering precise commands as quickly and crisply as a priest conducting a well-known and long-beloved ritual, continued their desperate work as one alarm and then the next rang out. There was no room around the bed for Virginia to stand and hold her daughter’s hand.

The doctor told her not to worry. He gave Virginia some vague reassurance, as false but well-meant as telling a child to believe in Santa Claus.

The little girl’s eyelids trembled and slowly her eyes closed. She tried to stay awake.

After two hours and a half, as one alarm after another fell silent, and one monitor after another showed a flat line, they stopped their attempt to revive her. The doctor signed the certificate, showing the time of death as 11: 53. Seven minutes before Christmas Day.

She had lived to be six years old, and it was Christmas Eve.

Virginia could see, through blurring tears and through the Venetian blinds of the hospital room, how thickly the fresh snow was fallen outside, unmarked by footprint or tire tread, to make a scene as silent and perfect as a postcard.

Across the street was a store with window display, bright with holly wreaths, where little mechanical elves, tireless, went through the motions of making toys before a throne on which Santa sat.

For some reason, perhaps due to health concerns, the decorator had made this Santa thin and tall, and instead of a fur cap with white trim, adorned his head with a stern headdress that tapered to a point at front and back with a deep cleft between.

The store front display seemed particularly cruel to Virginia. Back when her daughter had been strong enough to get out of bed, she would stand before the window, wondering, delighted that Santa was so close, almost within reach. Mother and daughter would stand, hand in hand, trying to catch the cheerful notes of the toy store music over the noise of the traffic.

She held the cold body, the life she once had carried inside her own, delighting at every sensation of a kick or turning over. She held it until more than an hour went by. Virginia did not want them to cover the face, the sweet little face. All her daughter’s pain was gone, now. Her own pain would never end, now.

The doctor tried to say a few words to her, but there was nothing to say. Perhaps he wanted to rush Ginny to the morgue so he could go home to his family for Christmas. The unfairness of it sickened Virginia. A sensation of hot anger boiled in her throat, and tears dimmed her eyes. To get away from the man, she went to the visitor’s lounge, hoping to buy a hot coffee from the vending machine there. It was out of coffee, but there was hot chocolate. Ginny had loved hot chocolate: what child did not? Virginia did not have change, but borrowed some coins from an orderly, who had a kind face, and looked at her sympathetically.

Virginia’s anger was too great. She had the impulse to throw the hot chocolate into the orderly’s face. To escape any more sympathy, she stepped outside the glass doors leading to the emergency entrance. She did not bother going back for her coat; she merely shivered, finding dark and perverse comfort in the sting of the cold.

Out from her pocket she took her cellphone. Virginia remembered the salesman at the shop from over a year ago, back when she bought the phone. He had been very handsome and very young, and so she still remembered his face, and his breezy demeanor. He seemed too young for the job, and he had not known how to transfer phone numbers out of her old phone, or how to download a ringtone. But he had been was very charming, full of jokes. She remembered the salesman’s face like the face of a television actor: boyish, smooth, cheerful, full of sunny self-esteem. He had been no older than eighteen.

Eighteen. That was how old Frank had been when they married seven years ago, looking perfectly handsome with his crooked nose and long jaw and big ears in his splendid dress uniform. They had walked under the drawn swords of his fellow graduates together on their wedding day. Now, at twenty-five, he was in charge of an IFV, an infantry fighting vehicle that could blow a hole in a building, wade rivers and crush fences, blasting through walls with high-explosive incendiary rounds before trampling them flat beneath its treads. The M2 was smaller than a main battle tank, but Frank loved his vehicle and what it could do. He loved working with high explosives too, because it required care and precision and knowing exactly what to do.

The salesman had told her that the phone could reach anywhere in the world instantly. Virginia flicked the speed dial for her husband’s number. There was no signal. Of course. He was in the forward operations theater. There were no phone calls allowed. Maybe the enemy could detect the signal. Maybe the commanding officers did not want the men distracted while their machines were trampling rubble.

He was not coming home for Christmas. Leaves had been canceled. It was not even a real war against an enemy with a real name: they called it a “police action”, as if Frank and his men were beat cops stopping purse-snatchers in the park.

Virginia divided the world between pink and gray. Pink people were like the handsome cellphone salesman who had not known how to do his job, and had to stop and ask his manager all her questions. He was as pink as a bunny ear. The people of the pink world believed in themselves, and they lived nice lives, and they criticized other people for being less nice than they.

Grey people included men like Frank. Gray people were those who could repair the motor of a fire engine in motion, drive it through red lights to a burning house; they were the kind of people who ran inside the burning house to save a baby while civilians ran away; the kind who could put out a fire, saw lumber and rebuild a house, and paint it, while also sowing and reaping the field to bring in the harvest so that baby had enough to eat. Gray people did what had to be done because there was no one else around to do it. Frank was as gray as a gun barrel.

But even Frank and all his men and his fine armored carrier vehicle could not save the baby now, not this time. He was as pink and useless as that telephone salesman.

And she had no way to tell him the news.
Merry Christmas! Your present this year is…

Virginia threw the cup of hot chocolate into the snow, where it made a strange brown stain. The cup of warmth was gone. And the snow was falling, so soon even the stain would be covered over, and nothing to mark there had ever been a cup of hot chocolate there.

She looked across the street. The robot elves mocked her, with their hideous mechanical smiles of make-believe joy, their jerky motions.

Virginia crossed over to the store, looking for a rock or something to throw through the plate glass.

There was no traffic at all. Who would be out and about on Christmas Eve? Everyone was home snug in their beds, dreaming of sugarplums. The red and green streetlights glinted against the snow of the road, and glittered against the falling snow. Red and green were Christmas colors. She had never noticed that before.

The WALK sign chimed with the sound of bells, telling the nonexistent blind people on the snowy midnight street it was safe to cross.

Her fingers were numb, and her nose was running. The icy wind bit her. Why had she gone out without her coat? What did it matter whether she had her coat or not? What did it matter whether she lived or died? It was not as if the doctors could make anyone better, not when it really mattered.

Sticking out of a nearby trashcan, half buried in snow, was a hefty looking stick. It looked like the broken haft of a protestor’s sign, crumpled and tossed into the trash. Virginia was not sure who had been picketing the store or why. Someone protesting the commercialization of Christmas, perhaps; or someone protesting Christmas and demanding more commercialization. What did it matter? The signboard was wet and ripped in two, with only a few large angry letters visible, and many exclamation points.

She was not sure if the wooden stick that once held the protest sign was sturdy enough to break the plate glass window, but she took up the stick in both hands, held it over her shoulder, and stepped toward the Santa display.

“Batter up!” she said. Her voice sounded strange in her ears. The alarm telling the blind to cross the street had broken, and was ringing and ringing.

Virginia glared at the figure in the window on the throne. He really looked nothing like other storefront Santas. He was thin and stern, with a hard, craggy face. His shoulder length hair was white but flecked with black. His red robes were all wrong. They looked more like something a rich Roman Senator would wear than a Santa. An elbow-length cape, red as blood, richly decorated with crosses and trefoils, a second garment, green as emerald and worked with gold thread, reaching below the knee, and beneath that a long cassock falling to his jeweled slippers. Around his neck was a chain of office, with holly leaves dangling from the links, and a cross beneath. Who, these days, puts a cross in a Christmas display?

In his hand he held a shepherd’s staff whose spiral head was adorned all with gold. Obviously the store decorator had confused Santa with the Nativity display, and put one of the shepherd crooks into the wrong hands.

She hated Santa because he was pink. He was the epitome of the pink life, the nice promises of niceness, soft and weak and meaningless promises. He was the man who made grown ups lie to children.

She hated him because he had not come.

Her eyes were filling now with tears, blinding her. She blinked and blinked, rubbing her face in her elbow. The fabric of her sleeve was soaked through with snow.