a snowman at Christmas

a Christmas classic

The snowman grinned. He drove a ’72 Lincoln with the windows down and the A/C on full, smoking Kools and drinking frosty cold cans of Coca-Cola. The Stones played on the eight track. It was December 24th, day vanishing into night.

The Voice was speaking to him over Jagger. It had been all afternoon. It was the same Voice he’d been hearing since he opened his bottle cap eyes and walked off of the abandoned lot of his birth. A nameless voice. The one who whispered. Sometimes it even spoke backward, as though in tongues. It told him to steal the car. Now it was saying, “Smoke, drink and drive fast, for snowmen melt sooner rather than later. We have seen the future, and you are not a part of it.”

The snowman accelerated, his wide white frosty foot on the gas pedal, the speedometer ticking toward 75 mph. Too fast for a snowy, winding rural road. It was 5pm. The snow-shrouded dirt farms, billboards and Christmas lit roadhouses flew by. The last crows on road-kill flew off in murders. The tape deck hissed and played Tumbling Dice.

He sped through a highway intersection where a semi had run into the ditch. The driver waved for the Lincoln to stop, but the Voice said drive on. And the snowman did.

The landscape rolled in the gentle way of a prairie, a moon and stars imminent. The Stones ended. The snowman pulled the cartridge from the deck and threw it out of the window, then put in John Lee Hooker. Boom Boom came bluesy over the speakers as he observed for the first time a suspicious orange glow coming from over the next rise in the road.

A snowman has no word for dread. But if dread was what he felt in that moment, it was a feeling enhanced by nicotine, speed and the voice and guitar of a sharecropper’s son.

He slowed the Lincoln as the road began to run down into a hollow where a homestead had stood next to a creek for a hundred years. A large white house, now in violent flames. And he could see, as he approached, a small knot of people standing in the yard, watching. One of them, a woman, ran frantically from one spectator to another, her arms raised, her clenched fists in her hair.

“Keep driving,” the Voice told the snowman. “We’ve seen what passes here, and you have no part in it.”

But the snowman slowed even more as he approached the long driveway that lead off of the road. He pulled over, killed the engine and turned off the headlights. Then he lit another cigarette and felt the uncomfortable heat of the blaze, not far off.  “That’s one hell of a thing,” he said, meditatively blowing smoke.

“Drive on,” said the Voice.

The snowman’s hand was going for the keys in the ignition, to start the care, when he saw a man run out of a shed with a ladder. The man placed the ladder against the house, beneath a windowsill and begin to climb. It was the only window not issuing flame. But as he neared it, there was an explosion of fire, and the man fell two stories to the ground.

“Sandra,” the woman shouted louder. “Somebody please do something, for God sake. My daughter….”

But there was nothing anyone could do. All of the windows and doorways spewed flame, and the onlookers could only watch. The woman took a desperate run at the open porch door, but was driven back by the heat. The others pulled her away and held her firm. From far off in the distance, came the faint sound of a siren, still a mile or more away.

Stepping out of the car, the snowman paused and watched more resolutely. Still someone in the house. Someone. A child.

“Don’t,” said the Voice.

But the snowman didn’t listen. He walked slowly at first, then faster, then began to run down the driveway toward the inferno.

“You’ll perish,” the Voice said. “You’ll melt before you even get to the door.”

“But there’s so much of me,” said the snowman. The children had made him fat. “And I’m so cold. I may not melt so fast.”

When he got to the yard, he said, “Who? Where?” And at first the people could only stare back, mute. A large, white, grim-faced man of snow. But the woman being held back gasped, “Second floor. Third room down the hall, on the right. My God, she’s only six. She can’t save herself.”

The snowy yard was orange and red, reflecting the colours of the firestorm. Water dripped down the snowman’s forehead.

“You’re melting, even now,” said the Voice.

“There’s enough of me,” the snowman said. “I won’t melt all at once. If I move fast, and she’s easy to find, I….”

“I gave you life,” said the Voice. “You’ve things to see. You’ve no business doing this!”

“Please,” begged the woman.

“These people don’t care about you,” said the Voice, “no matter what you do. Get in the car and drive. The night’s cold and it waits.”

The snowman stopped thinking about it, then stopped listening all together. He was certain then that only he could do this. His mind made up, he ran toward the house, up the veranda steps and through the front door into the flames. Inside, everything glowed. A once decorated tree in a corner of the main room crackled and snapped. The heat was overwhelming. The snowman felt himself melting, maybe faster than he imagined he would. Turning this way and that, he finally saw the staircase and ran for it, racing to the second floor.

Third room on the right. There it was. He entered and saw no one. The flames were finished with the window curtains and were running up the walls and consuming the closet door. He was getting smaller as he sweat. For the first time in his short existence, he felt weak and disoriented.

“Sandra,” he called. But all he heard at first was the fire’s snarl. “Sandra, please. You’re scared. I am, too.”

“Help,” he heard a little voice say. “Help me.”

“Where you are?”

“I’m under the bed.”

The bed, of course. He saw the bedding smoking, then suddenly turn to flame. Quickly he crouched and reached underneath. There was a tiny hand. He grasped it and pulled. A little girl with singed hair, wearing a flannel nightgown appeared. She held a half scorched cloth bear.

“Hey,” she said, then coughed, “you’re a snowman.”

He pulled her close, stood up and began to run. He was thawing fast. His legs felt weak, and there were still the stairs ahead of them. In the hall, pieces of ceiling crumbled and fell. The girl was a small, coughing ball of humanity in his dissolving arms. Stair steps gave way beneath him as he descended, and only by moving very fast did he avoid falling through.

The first floor was now so fully engulfed, he knew that he wouldn’t make it. Even the floor glowed a blackish charcoal red. He dashed for the door as his legs and arms disappeared, and what was left of him fell out of the fiery front door and onto the porch.

Frantically, the people in the yard rushed up the stairs, shielding themselves from the heat. Sandra lay on the threshold, covered in slush. They took her and ran, leaving behind a few stones, a soggy half deck of cigarettes and two bottle cap eyes.

Her mother cried and hugged her little girl. “Did you see the snowman?” Sandra asked, then smiled, catching sight of a rebel star over her mother’s shoulder, falling across the sky as the roar of flames and the sirens of the approaching fire trucks ruined the quiet of what might have been a nearly silent night.

“Snowmen are such damn fools,” said the Voice. But no one heard.

Blossom Prairie at Christmas

London, April, 1917

The small group of PPCLI, on short leave from the trenches in France, began pulling themselves out of the rubble after the Zeppelin had passed over London. A bomb dropped from the massive airship had hit the empty house where the soldiers had taken shelter. As he moved bricks and timbers aside, in search of survivors, Corporal Wilber Marengo found himself standing in a cache of glistening, if a little worse for wear, bric-a-brac, the relics of a wealthy family, evacuated shortly after German aerial bombing had begun in 1915. None of it, to Wilber Marengo’s mind, was worth taking and risking charges of theft or even looting, except one item. He picked it up and blew off the dust. His Sergeant shouted that it was time to move on. All personnel had been found, and the wounded seen to. Marengo stuffed the fascinating item into his pocket, and joined his comrades.

Paris, December 2000

It had snowed the night before, and looking out the window of her second floor flat, Elinor saw that the pale ochre, blues and yellows of rue Crémieux were accentuated by last night’s blanket of white. The world around her was scented with the essential spices of a Joyeux Noël, Christmas lights were hung, there were candles that glowed in windows at night, and nearly completely covered in snow, a small nativity on the corner had been erected by the children of a the neighbourhood. In total, a glad vision of her chosen home.

Now she held the object in her lap. It had arrived, unexpectedly, in the same excellent condition she remembered. It was slim and light in weight, though heavy with memories. The letter that had accompanied it, she’d placed before her on the kitchen table. It was from Earl, and read:

Dear Elinor, Merry Christmas. I’ve found it! It was in an old forgotten dresser drawer in the attic. Can you believe it? In a drawer in the attic—damn—who would have thought. After searching through all of those boxes full of memories, oh well.

Now I see it on the mantel over the fireplace. So here’s my plan: Tomorrow, I’m mailing it to you. When you receive it, have it for a while, hold it close, remember that crazy moment and those wonderful days. Keep it as long as you like, but not too long, then please post it to John. I’ll have him pass it on to Stephen, who has agreed to return it to the Museum of London, where it belongs. Please contact me if there are any questions, or if you’d just like to chat.

The best of the season to you, and a happy new year,

Your good friend, Earl

Blossom Prairie, December 1958

It was December 19, 1958, and this was the Friday night that Clyde Marengo, who drank just enough to be declared the town drunk—because after all, every town needs one—lay bleeding on a gutter snowbank out front of Fenster’s Emporium and Grocery Store. Nearby, stood Ivan Halikowski, smoking a cigarette next to his Studebaker pickup with its freshly dented passenger side fender.

It was dark, 7pm, a light snow was falling and a Christmas tree stood, its colourful lights aglow, in nearly every front window in town. Lights were strung from lampposts, and a choir was singing Ave Maria, though so quietly that no one could say from which church the song came. The small Blossom Prairie downtown was bright and colourful, still busy as Friday was the evening it remained open until eight o’clock.

The four of them—the Squad as they were known—Earl, John, Stephen and Elinor walked along Rose Blossom Street, while Earl and Stephen argued over Earl’s claim to have mint Gordy Howe and Bobby Hull hockey cards tucked away in his underwear drawer.

“Just can’t,” Stephen said. “That’s too lucky. You’d need to buy a thousand packs of cards before you found both of them. Nickel a pack. That’s more money than you’ll ever see in your life.”

“I got ‘em, though,” said Earl triumphantly. “Lucky, I guess, just like you say. I bought ‘em at Chow’s corner store. Same place you buy yours. Maybe Santa’s payin’ me back for being extra good this year. So, too bad for you.”

“Ain’t no Santa,” John said, though saying it nearly broke his heart. “You’re just a fibber.”

“Am not.”

“Hull and Howe are both overrated, anyway,” Elinor said.

“Are not.”

“Are so. And I still think Mommy Kissing Santa Clause is a horrible song,” Elinor added, returning to a previous, heated, discussion. “Someone’s mommy shouldn’t be kissing another man, no matter who he is.” Then she said, “Wait,” holding up her hand. “Look.”

The four twelve year olds stopped and watched a growing huddle of townies out front of Fenster’s Emporium—“a good dozen of ‘em,” John said—standing round Clyde Marengo, lying there, gasping. Emporium customers and patrons from Norm’s Café across the street were standing as close as they dared to see to see poor Clyde on his back, bleeding, as RCMP Constable Fokker pulled up, opening the cruiser door, stepping out and putting his hat on, all in one fluid, well practiced movement. Then he lit a cigarette and tried to look like John Wayne. In the distance, an ambulance could be heard approaching, slow as a parade float on the icy roads.

“He just staggered out front of me,” said Ivan Halikowski stepping up. “Ain’t my fault. He’s probably been drinking Lysol.”

When it became too much to resist, the squad crossed Rose Blossom Road to join the gathering. Clyde Marengo was a forty-five year old man who looked closer to sixty, but still had the sapphire blue eyes that once drove the ladies of Blossom Prairie mad. Now he gazed beseechingly up at the crowd and whispered an near-inaudible sentence.

“What’s he saying?” Elinor said, a question that rumbled through the crowd. No one could hear.

Then Clyde spoke again, louder, but still just a mumble. Just two words this time rising from his bloody lips.

The four youngsters moved in closer to hear the dying man’s last words as the adults around them stood back. Constable Fokker had pushed his way though and now stood with next to Earl. “What’s the score, Kid?” the Constable  said.

“Get in closer, Earl,” said John.

“No way. Why me?”

“’Cause you know him. He’s your friend.”

“Clyde ain’t no one’s friend,” Stephen said.

“Well he’s Earl’s father’s friend,” said John.

“Ain’t.”

“Is so,” said Elinor. “Your father gives him food, and a winter coat this year.”

“He gives Clyde socks and mickeys of rye every Christmas,” Stephen said.

Earl looked around at the smirking crowd, now all eyes were on him.

“Someone’s gotta listen to him,” said Elinor. “No one will know his last words, otherwise.”

Fokker gave Earl a gentle elbow to the shoulder and said, “Do it kid. You’ll be famous. Round town, anyway. The girls’ll all know yer name.”

Earl, who still wasn’t sure about the utility of girls, took a deep breath, stepped up to Marengo, knelt and put an ear close to the man’s ear. The combined smells of bootleg apple jack and the boozy eucalyptus aroma of Listerine nearly overwhelm the boy.

Clyde was nearing the end. Now kneeling over him, Earl got a greater sense of the man’s brokenness. Not only his bones, but something else in the man’s fading countenance. Earl put his ear closer. “Christmas Cake,” he thought he heard Clyde say.

“What?” Said Earl.

“Christmas Cake, dammit. You got spuds in yer ears?”

“Sorry, you’ll have to speak a little loud…”

“For the love of God, boy,” Clyde’s whisper now a fierce hiss, a little more blood spilling out of his mouth, the crowd taking a step back. “Are you deaf, stupid or both? Pay attention. I said Christmas cake. I can’t say much plainer.” He coughed and grabbed the boy by the lapels of his coat, pulling Earl even closer. Now in less ferocious, more confidential tone, he said, “This concerns you and yer friends over there, more than anyone else, get it?.” Clyde coughed again, bringing up more blood, spots of it landing on Earl’s cheek. “Christmas cake, kid. Remember them words.” Then Clyde was quiet.

Suddenly the lights illuminating the 12×6 foot billboard on the roof of Fenster’s Emporium went dark as the bulbs in all five fixtures lighting it made popping sounds and went out. Everyone in the crowd looked up. The billboard was advertising a company called Granny Webley’s.

“Damn thing’s been blinking off and on since they put up that Webley’s ad,” Roy Fenster said. “The sign company comes out, dose repairs, but in a day or two it goes out again. Pain in the arse.

Blossom Prairie, Christmas Eve 1958

There was a girl in the backseat of the red Cadillac Series 62, just off the showroom floor, its chrome shining in the low December sun. A small thing, the girl, and sullen, moving her lips as she read a Wonder Woman comic book. She wore a camel colour wool coat, and a red headband which held back her blond curls to reveal a spherical paper-white face, thin lipped and with eyes of indeterminate colour, something between grey and brown, but not hazel. Her name was Daphne, and though she was in reality quite slender, she wore her school uniform a half size too small, her mother always hoping the child would lose just one or two more pounds.

Daphne’s mother was the tall slim woman now standing on the curb next to the car, wearing her cobalt blue Jaques Fath coat with its mink collar. Her Chanel pumps were red, to match her cherished automobile, and her salon coloured blue black hair, in a Hepburn bob, was held in place beneath a yellow kerchief. The effect was perfect against her pale creamy complexion, as she freshened her red lipstick while holding small round compact mirror. The world stood still around her as she did, or so she imagined.

This was Edna Everwurst, who’d once been the wife of Mr Leopold Everwurst, and who was now sole heir to the Everwurst dynasty. Leopold had been a corpulent man whose personal aroma was an odious combination of sour pork-chops and mail order cigars, and who had mysteriously vanished one day from his downtown Saskatoon office, never to be seen again. This after a squabble between himself and Edna over the cost of her travels to Europe and the fashions she’d purchased there; and the fracas over the inconvenient, compromising photographs, taken by a private investigator, of her with the gardener in the toolshed behind the rosebushes on the lower eastern reaches of the estate.

About the absolute disappearance of Mr Everwurst?: “No,” Edna would say, if asked, “I don’t know how or what happened, and I resent the question.” Voluntarily adding, “I spoke to the police. I’m suspected of nothing, innocent, completely exonerated. Please don’t ask again. It’s rude.”

And asked about the Everwurst fortune: “Slums and houses of ill-fame,” she’d say, throwing her head back in a ladylike guffaw, followed by a near-signature exhalation of blue cigarette smoke, signalling that the truth was too absurd to take seriously. In fact, the Everwurst fortune was built on sausage. Leopold Everwurst had been the King of Sausage.

Now Edna sniffed the cold winter air of Blossom Prairie like a predator, as she surveyed Rose Blossom Street, the four block stretch of road that ran through the town’s busy downtown. People she’d never met were wishing her a Merry Christmas, while people shouted the same to friends across the street. There were cars going by with Christmas trees on their roofs, and children laughing with their noses pressed up against toy store and bakery windows. Shop windows were decorated with seasonal motifs, and blue haired dowagers in Salvation Army uniforms were ringing bells over pots of dollar bills, quarters, nickels and dimes. Edna’s business in town was in the Law Offices of one Luscious Barrymore, on the third floor of the Poultry Standards Building, if front of which she now stood.

She hoped this business would be quick and easy. And then the drive home. The only delay would come from not getting what she wanted; the single thing she’d come here for, from her brother’s puny estate. If her brother’s Will didn’t mention her, which she feared was likely the case, then there’d have to be a dainty plundering of her brother’s rooms.

She had an idea of what had happened, it being explained to her over the phone by the lawyer’s secretary. Her brother had drunkenly stepped out in front of some hick’s oncoming pickup truck. And bang, that was it. The community had taken care of the funeral—“Thank gawd,” she’d sneered when she heard. This was the man she’d humiliated and dressed like a little girl when they were children; who was bullied at school and never rose beyond gas station attendant. A pauper and an alcoholic, but somehow their father’s favourite.

And their father had given the precious thing, that she wanted so bad, the trophy he’d brought home from war torn First World War Europe, to Clyde. Simply because Clyde was a man, She was rich now, almost beyond measure. Her husband had left her everything. But to her, possessing this trophy meant everything.

“Daphne,” she shouted, knocking rapidly on the car window while at the same time skillfully lighting an Export A with her Cartier lighter. “Get yer pot roast keester out here.”

The girl looked dolefully back out of the window, slid her comic book into her bag and stepped out of the car.

“We’ve got some business with a hayseed ambulance chaser,”  Edna said, kneeling to fuss over the child’s coat and skirt. The she stood up and looked down at the girl, with a slightly disappointed look. “After that, it’s dinnertime,” she said, “and let’s hope there’s a restaurant in this town that doesn’t deep fry every item on the menu, or boil it to a pulp.”

Daphne looked around her at the holiday decorations and bustle, the tidy small town architecture, shoveled sidewalks and clean streets. A group of high school girls walked by gushing over Phil Spector.

“What a dump,” Daphne said, doing her best Bette Davis, while at the same time feeling warmed by her sudden surroundings.

“Well, let’s get in there,” Edna said. “The quicker the better.”

Mother and daughter entered the empty lobby, Edna pushing the Up button on the elevator, as Daphne pulled a velvet bunny with raggedy ears out of her bag and hugged it close, looking up as they listened to loud banging and whirring sounds coming down the shaft. Edna smoked restlessly and tapped her toe until the doors to the car doors finally opened. Stepping on, she pushed 2nd floor. The both of them remained still, waiting. After 2 minutes of the gate slamming shut and opening again and shutting once more, and several jolts, sudden stops and continuations upward, and once dropping down half a floor, stalling, then slowly migrating up again, the car at last arrived on the second floor.

Exiting as the elevator gates opened, the two of them stepped into a corridor lined with office doors, each with a window, each window dark, Light shone out of only one office door window. The one with Luscious Barrymore, Attorney, painted on it in confident gold lettering.

“Must be the place,” Daphne said. Then, “I’ve gotta go pee.”

Edna looked both ways, up and down the corridor for Ladies Room. There was none. “Tie a knot in it, kid,” she said.

“I can’t do that,” Daphne complained. “I’m a girl, not a boy.”

“Well whose fault is that?”

She wasn’t ready to panic yet, but the child looked up and scowled at her mother.

Edna opened the door and entered the office, Daphne following, and was greeted by a middle aged woman in a flower print dress and a sparkling holly corsage. “Oh!” she said. “Is it 2:30, already?”

A large wall clock across from her, ticking slowly, said as much.

“You must be that Everwurst gal,” the woman behind the desk smiled. “I’m Rosy, Mr Barrymore’s secretary. A pleasure to meet you.” Rosy remained seated but extended a hand, which Edna ignored.

Instead of shaking, Edna began removing her gloves, saying, “Never call me that Everwurst gal again, Rosy. It’s always a shame when something bad befalls a person during this festive time of the year.” She smiled an unnerving smile.

Rosy’s face paled, and she pursed her lips.

“It’s Mrs Everwurst to you and everyone else in this Tolstoy village,” Edna said. “Understood?”

“Yes, Mrs Everwurst,” Rosy said, and began shuffling papers on her desk.

“Well…?” Edna Everwurst said. “Are you going to let this Barrymore person know I’m here?”

“Oh.” Rosy put down a file and called her boss over the intercom.

“Who?” said Barrymore in crackly response.

“Mrs Everwurst, sir.”

“Oh, her,” the lawyer said. “What she look like?” Then in a lower voice, he said, “I hear she’s a bit of a shrew.”

Edna grinned.

“She’s right here, Mr Barrymore,” Rosy blushed, “at my desk.”

“Oh.” There was a moment of silence before the door to Luscious Barrymore’s office opened and an obese man wearing a poorly fitted suit came out briskly, smiling. He’d a pencil thin black mustache, his thinning hair only beginning to change to grey, and there were beads of perspiration across his forehead.

“Hello and Merry Christmas, Mrs Everwurst,” he gushed, shaking her hand vigorously. Then looking down at the girl with the stuffed bunny standing at Edna’s side, he blinked, puzzled, and said, “Who are you?”

“I’m Daphne,” she said, matter-of-factly. Then added, “You’re fat.”

“Is she with you?” the lawyer said to Edna, warily. Children weren’t the man’s forte.

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

There was another quiet moment as the lawyer looked to be assessing the situation, with a furrowed brow, eyeing Daphne, then her mother. Bing Crosby sang White Christmas quietly on Rosy’s Motorola, behind her on a shelf.

“Why are we here?” Edna asked Barrymore.

“Ah.” He held up an index finger, taking his eyes off the little girl. “Come into my office. Can Rosy make some coffee?”

“You tell me,” said Edna, unbuttoning her coat and taking a seat. “Can she?” She patted the chair next her for Daphne. Daphne sat.

Barrymore called for coffee, over the intercom.

“I gotta go pee,” said Daphne, now looking marginally distressed.

Barrymore looked startled.

“Well?” Edna said to him.

Barrymore triggered the intercom again and said, “Rosy, any movement on the biffy?”

“Still out of service. Plumber’s gone to get a part. That was a hour ago.”

“It’s an empty, mostly unused building,” Barrymore apologised to Edna. “Ours is the only functioning washroom.”

“Except it’s not functioning.”

“No.” Luscious Barrymore grinned, awkwardly, moved his hands back forth on the blotter, picked up a pen and then put down, then said, “I’ll make this quick.”

“Good.”

Daphne squirmed.

“It seems, Mrs Everwurst, that your brother may have died without a Will.”

“Good,” she said, satisfied. “Then the estate’s mine. I’m all he had. Anyone else is just a pretender. I’ll sue them off the face of the Earth.” She sat up primly, expectantly, her satin clutch in her lap.

“Well, it’s not that simple.”

“Where do I sign? I want to get in and out of his rooms as quickly as possible, back home in time for Christmas.”

“Mrs Everwurst,” Barrymore said, “not having a Will is a problem in itself, a big one. And there may be insurance, but there’s no evidence. Did the two of you ever discuss such matters?”

“Certainly not.”

“Did he ever mention any safety deposit boxes, places he may have stashed any of his important documents?”

“No, of course not. Did you ever meet the man. The only important documents he would have had would be an outstanding bar tab.”

“Well, then you’ll be needing some assistance.”

“Aren’t you his lawyer?”

“No.”

“Then who is?”

Briefly, all that was heard was the ticktocking of the large wall clock in the outer office. Daphne shifted in her seat.

“No one,” sighed Luscious Barrymore. “I think we can both agree that Clyde Marengo wasn’t the kind of man to have a lawyer.” He paused, then pulled a sheet of paper out of his desk’s top drawer. “But I am willing to take on the necessary tasks for you,” he said, presenting Edna with the document. “These are my rates. Most find them very reasonable.”

“You want me to hire you?”

“Hire whoever you like. But one way or another there’ll have to be someone working on your behalf. And, um, this town isn’t exactly overflowing with barristers.”

“This is ridiculous. Give me the key to his place. I’ll go in and see what’s what. No one needs to know”

“You wouldn’t be able to take anything.”

“That’s absurd.”

Barrymore, pressed the intercom button and said, “Rosy, draw up the usual contract for our guest.”

Edna frowned, and said, “You’re trying my patience, fat man.”

“Perhaps,” the lawyer said, suddenly canny, “but this ain’t nothin’ compared to what it’s like once I get started. You may recall that, when we began, I said that Clyde may have died without a Will.”

“…may have,” Edna narrowed her eyes. “Carry on.”

“Well we have a file with Clyde Marengo’s name on it. In fact,” Barrymore slid a stained manila folder across the desktop to Edna. Opening it, she saw a copy of an Invoice for Professional Services, dated December 23, 1954. She picked it up and read it the two line items:

Meet with client to review inventory of personal possessions.

Drawing up of and completion of Will. Special attention paid to special item mentioned in said document.

Beneath was the total balance due: $100

“So you must have a copy on file,” Edna said.

“No, but maybe. I just don’t know. I bought the firm and all of the case files two years ago. The previous lawyer was a drunk. Everything’s a mess. Took his secretary with him, so no one was left to help fix it. They moved to Vancouver and opened a nightclub on Hastings Street. The Grinning Monk or something like that.”

“I have a lawyer back home, in the city.”

“Fine. Have him give me a call.” Barrymore pointed to the caddy holding his business cards. “We can have chat in the new year.”

“Mommmmy,” Daphne whined desperately, and began to kick, “I’ve gotta goooooo.”

Ignoring Daphne, Edna glanced past Barrymore and out of the window behind his desk. Across the street on the roof of Fenster’s Emporium, she saw a small explosion of sparks. An electrician from a local billboard company was attempting to rewire the lights that illuminated the Granny Webley’s ad at night. The electrician stood up, kicked a fixture and lit a cigarette.

“I know that there was something of value in Clyde’s possession, Mrs Everwurst,” said the fat man, shifting gears. “That invoice is from the year before I took over the Practice, so I don’t know all the details. But I recognise the look in your eyes. I see it in clients from time to time. You’ve been done a terrible wrong.” The empathy slid extravagantly off of his tongue, like oil. “We’re not that different, you and me. I’ve been done wrongs, too. So, tell me what that thing is and let’s try to get it back.”

“Mommmmmmmmmmmy.”

The sound of flushing came from the outer office as Rosy’s voice came over the intercom, “Plumber says john’s come home to stay.”

Edna Everwurst, her eyes made dewy, despite herself, by Luscious Barrymore’s kind words, now believed she’d finally meant someone was on her side. She said, “It’s not so much the cash value….”

“Mommy, mommy, mommy….”

“I know,” Barrymore said. “It’s the principle. It should have been yours all along. I strongly sense you got the dirty end of something. Let’s make it right.”

“Mommy, I gotta, gotta, gotta go.”

“Yes. let’s make it right.”

“Rosy,” Luscious Barrymore shouted. “Get yer rump in here and take this whelp to the can.”

Edna smiled at him. A smile so warm and yielding, she surprised herself. He returned the smile, the grin of a fleshy, overfed  tarantula.

Rosy arrived and took Daphne away by the hand.

“All I want is a percentage,” said Barrymore, covering the ring on his left hand with his right. “And a little consideration, besides,” he added, raising his eyebrows a fraction. He wrote a figure on a scrap paper and slid it across to Edna. She looked without picking it up, grinned and nodded.

*  *  *  *  *

          The telephone rang seven times before Penelope answered, “Hello?”

“Hello, Penelope,” Rosy said, mildly annoyed.

“Oh, Rosy, Merry Christmas. How are you. We’re fine. Christmas sure is in the air, isn’t it? I’m baking sugar cookies. The first batch burned, so I’m trying another—ever forward. Oh, remind me to watch the time.”

“Yeah, yeah,’ Rosy said, “Merry Christmas. That was seven rings, Penny.”

“Well, Murray likes hearing bells. They make him frisky.” Murray was Penelope’s cat, sitting at her slippered feet. “It’s such a lovely time of the year for bells, don’t you think? Murray’s in absolute Heaven. He plays and plays, and sits at the living room window, meowing in that lovely voice of his and watching the other cats, outside. Poor thing makes a bit of a racket sometimes, but it’s just too cold out there for him. And he gets lost under the snow, from time to time, you know. Sometimes he gets lost under the snow for days before he can find his way home. It’s deep out there. Say, can you hang up and call again. Murray will love you for it; hearing bells makes him feel so festive.”

Rosy didn’t like Murray. Murray didn’t like Rosy.

“Forget about Murray for a minute, Penny. I’ve got some juicy news.”

“Forget about Murray?” Penelope said.

“Just listen. Luscious had a new client in today, Clyde Marengo’s sister.”

“It’s hard to forget about Murray, Rosy. He’s sitting right here, and today’s the day I clean his box. Then I have to brush him. Oh, Murray loves being brushed. Then he snuggles with me when I’m listening to Young Doctor Malone on the radio…”

“Listen to me, you ditz,” Rosy interrupted. ”I heard it over the intercom. The woman’s name was Edna Everwurst. Does that ring any bells?”

“Murray loves bells.”

“Stop it. She’s that woman who made a fortune divorcing Leopold Everwurst, the Emperor or King or Princess, whatever, of Sausage.

“I heard he just vanished. UFOs, some people are saying.”

“She was in looking for whatever Clyde left behind,” Rosy said. “Apparently he had something of value she thinks should be hers, and she’s come to collect. But since there’s no Will to be found, only a receipt for one, she intends to get the item by whatever means she can. Even by less than legal means. And get this, Luscious is willing to help her, by whatever means. I think he’s fallen for the broad. It only took a minute, too. What a dope. But goodness knows, Mrs Barrymore isn’t too enchanting these days, what with her swollen ankles and her rashes.”

“I hear she’s allergic to orlon,” Penelope said.

“Just listen.”

“I think the cookies are ready,” Penelope said.

“Forget the flipping cookies, Penny. Luscious told me, confidentially, the other day that he sent a man into Clyde’s rooms to look for a Christmas cake, because those were supposed to be his last word—Christmas cake. He whispered them into that Earl kid’s ear. Luscious told me that his man heard it. But there wasn’t any cake. I checked Luscious’ notes, and they say that there wasn’t even anything that might refer to a Christmas cake. No ads, nothing written down, no magazine or newspaper clippings, no recipes. Nothing.”

“I have to check the cookies,” said Penelope.

“Quiet,” Rosy said. “That means that Clyde must have hidden whatever the thing is elsewhere. Somewhere near to, or associated with Christmas cakes.”

“I think I smell smoke. Did I set the timer?”

“How the heck should I know,” Rosy said. “Now listen to me, where do they make Christmas cake? In a bakery, that’s where. And there are only two of those in Blossom Prairie. We’ll start with those.”

“I’m opening a window,” Penelope said. “I don’t think the cookies should be done yet, but…”

“There’s Selma’s Bakery and Confectionary, and Toot Sweetbreads and Cakes.”

“So we have to visit them two bakeries? Then what,” said Penelope—there was the thumping sound of a window opening. “I think someone’s knocking on the back door.”

“I don’t know, then what,” Rosy said. “Not yet, anyway. You be there tomorrow morning at opening, understand? Maybe Clyde had one of the bakers bake the treasure or whatever into a Christmas cake. That’s crazy maybe, but Clyde wasn’t exactly the most stable element on the Periodic Table.”

“What?”

“Never mind. The important part right now is that you keep this to yourself.”

“I swear I smell smoke,” said Penelope, “and it’s getting hard to see. Maybe I should check in the kitchen. It’s just down the hall, but the phone won’t reach. Wow they’re really knocking hard on the back door.”

“Answer the darn door when we’re done,” Rosy said. “Now, you go to Selma’s Bakery and Confectionary, and I’ll go to Toot Sweetbreads and Cakes. Just be cool when you’re there. Maybe bring up Clyde when you’re at the counter. See how they react.”

“Golly, Rosy, the smoke’s getting really thick. Maybe I should go answer the back door. Murray’s scratching at the front door like a poodle or something. That’s real odd. Huh, do you hear sirens? Oh giblets! The cookies.”

“So, I just want to make sure we’re understanding one another,” Rosy said, “Are you gonna go to Selma’s, Penny?”

Rose heard a click, as Penelope put down the phone.

The Blossom Prairie Volunteer Fire Department finally kicked down the front door, finding Penelope standing stock-still, stunned, in the smoke-filled kitchen with a large spoon in her hand. They quickly evacuated her and extinguished the small fire in Penelope’s oven, then used a fan at the open door to clear the air. Murray escaped and was lost for days in the snow. Once home, he sulked for a month.

*  *  *  *  *

Friendly and some not so friendly neighbours gathered on the sidewalk in front of Penelope’s house and watched as the volunteer firemen reloaded their truck, pausing for long guffawing, black slapping cigarette and cigar breaks, during which many of the ladies standing nearby were quietly appalled and offended by the firefighters bawdy jokes about bodily functions and loose women.

Shivering in her house dress, until Natale Campbell from down near the cul-de-sac left and returned with a coat, Penelope began sharing the theme of her phone conversation with Rosy. Sure, she thought, Rosy wanted to keep it all a secret, but she’d never understand the fierceness of a sugar cookie inferno and the trauma it caused Penelope. Rosy would never take responsibility for insisting that Penelope remain on the phone, as the catastrophe unfolded in her kitchen. And now, where was Murray?

“Christmas cake!” she said to Natale Campbell. “Somewhere there’s a Christmas cake with treasure baked inside. Whoever finds it will be rich beyond all of their dreams.” This may have been an overstatement, Penelope knew, but it had been such an overstated day.

“Actual Christmas cake,” asked Mrs Kegel, standing behind them, “or stollen?”

“Stollen certainly is not proper Christmas cake,” said Mr Cobbledick from the curb. His British accent confirming his prejudice toward anything but a dense, brick-like cake of candied fruit, nuts marzipan and icing. “Besides, it sounds like balderdash to me.”

“Yes, Christmas cake,” said Penelope, now loving the attention. “That’s what I think we’re looking for. I mean, if such an incredible thing could be true,”

“Well, if Rosy says so, then it’s probably true,” Mrs Birdwhistle said. “She knows pretty much everything that goes on in this town.”

“But where would we look for it,” ask Mrs Macegirdle.

“The most obvious places to begin with would be Selma’s, Fenster’s Emporium and Toot Sweetbreads and Cakes,” someone said.

“That’s right!”

“Jeepers, that’s such a strange name for a bakery,” said Miss Marley.

“I think I should get back inside,” Penelope said, and returned Natale Campbell’s coat.

“Wait,” said Mr Bozzelli, “Where are you going. What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” Penelope said, beginning to shiver again. “I’m going to look for Murray.”

“But what about the Christmas cake treasure?”

“Oh, yeah” said Penelope, sincerely baffled by a simple question. “Hmm. I think I have to clean my oven before I go out looking.”

“She’s a shifty one,” muttered Mrs Kegel to Mr Cobbledick.

“You watch,” said Mrs Lightfoot, who’d on recently shown up, “she’ll be heading out the backdoor as soon as we go home.”

“That Penelope dame’s gonna look for that Christmas cake treasure without any of you,” a volunteer fireman smirked, chewing on the end of a dime store cigar.

“Sneaky wench,” shouted a stranger in a dark overcoat and fedora hat. “She knows exactly where it is and she’s going to get it before we do.”

“Yeah,” Mrs Laksekjønn said, speaking too loudly, she knew, for her normally dignified Norwegian decorum.

“Well then,” said the man in the fedora, shouting even louder, consistent with evolving situation. “We better head downtown and hit the stores. It’s Christmas Eve and it’s getting dark and starting to snow.”

The swarm of citizens had grown quickly as word of an invaluable treasure baked solidly in a cake spread throughout the town. Later, they’d say there were two hundred people, or more—or maybe less, since exaggeration is gossip’s closet cousin.

“The stores will be closing early, too,” said someone lost deep in the gathering mob.

The disorganised crowd was beginning to move as one, when Mrs Macegirdle said, pointing her finger, “And you can just stay where you are Penelope,” The throng grumbled in agreement. “You’ve shown us your true colours.”

“Let’s go,” someone shouted and the multitude began moving toward downtown Blossom Prairie, which, since the town was so small, was only a short walk away. They moved down to the end of the cul-de-sac and took the shortcut through a wooded area, along the trail that lead to Daisy Blossom Avenue. Some began chanting Christmas cake, Christmas cake, we want Christmas cake. Others shouted, Give Us Our Christmas Cake. Mysteriously, a lit torch appeared and then another.

Emerging onto Daisy Blossom Avenue, Mrs Macegirdle asked Mrs Birdwhistle who in the crowd would get to keep the treasure when and if it was found.

“I haven’t thought about that,” said Mrs Birdwhistle. “Perhaps we all should share it.”

“It’ll belong to whoever finds it,” Mr Bozzelli said, having overheard. He began walking faster, and the two women began to keep up. Looking over his shoulder and seeing them, Bozzelli began to run, leaving Macegirdle and Birdwhistle behind.

There was a shout, “Hey! Let’s get that chubby fool,” as Bozzelli made a dash, passing everyone else.

“That wasn’t a very nice thing to say, about a man’s weight,” Miss Marley said, but began to run, too. The entire crowd moved faster.

Mr Cobbledick stopped first at Ophelia’s Bliss & Pastrami Delicatessen, asking as he opened the door, “Have you got Christmas cake?”

“Nope,” Ophelia said. “But I’ve got stollen.”

“Oh for gawd sake,” said Cobbledick. “Where’s it from? Made locally?”

“Imported from West Germany, of course,” Ophelia said. “Hey, you wanna Ruben sandwich, Mr Cobbledick? I’ve got the extra fatty corned beef you like so much.” Cobbledick hesitated a moment and licked his lips. Then pulled himself away and joined the chanting rabble.

Meanwhile, at Flippers Prairie Arcade, there was the rattle and clang of pinball machines, the bells and clockwork score wheels clicking ever higher and higher, as the troupe, Earl, John, Stephen and Elinor, were playing their last games of pinball until Boxing Day.

So far, between Elinor and Earl, Elinor had the higher score on the Mystic Marvel machine. Her fingers were subtle and skillful, she’d a good eye and she was able to move her hips just enough either way to nudge the ball toward the desired catapults and rails, without causing a tilt. Earl could only watch and sigh.

Two machines down, John and Stephen were on the Marble Queen machine, scores too close to call a winner, when they heard Marty Fioco, at the front of the premises, standing in line to get change, shout, “Hey, fellas, look.” (And yes, for the purposes of pinball, Elinor was a fella.) “Mr Bozzelli just ran by. I mean like his life depended on it, nearly fell on his butt in the snow.”

Marty paused a moment. The room had gone quiet, then he yelled, “Hey! And now it’s Mrs Macegirdle and Mrs Birdwhistle. Wow, them two ol’ girls can really hoof it.”

Some of the arcade patrons remained at their machines, trying to maintain their focus, while others ran to the front to look out of the window as an angry gang of rioters flowed quickly by, all of the adults of the town in their heavy winter coats, furry hats and galoshes, many of them holding lanterns, a few with torches, and still many more pumping their fists in the air, shouting something about cake. Earl, John, Stephen and Elinor ran up to the window and watched in wonder. Suddenly there was a odd excitement, an urgency in the air, each of them realising, with a child’s sense of history, that this might be the most sensational thing ever to happen in Blossom Prairie. Maybe it would become a tradition, like a yuletide running of the bulls.

“It’s a revolution,” Stephen said, nose against the glass.

“It’s like Caracas.” said Earl, who always kept up with world events. “Looks like they’re gonna attack Nixon’s motorcade, or something.”

“Something’s in the water,” said Deyna, the part-timer sneering behind the counter as he counted nickels. “I tell you, the government’s putting weird stuff in our drinking water. That’s why I only drink Orange Crush.” He took a gulp. “It’s an experiment to see if we go nutso. Looks like it works.”

“Look, they’re splitting up,” Elinor said. “Let’s go.” The four of them put on their coats, and ran out into the snow to watch, just as the huge Christmas tree in the town square lit up in all the colours of the season.

And Indeed, the rioters split into two groups. The first group marching to one end of Buttercup Blossom Lane, to stand out front of Toot Sweetbreads and Cakes, where Mrs Macegirdle took command, and the other stopping several yards away at the other end of the short Lane to stand in front Selma’s Bakery and Confectionary. There, Mr Cobbledick took charge with his commanding British accent.

The four kids found a place off to the side and watched.

“There are only two bakeries in this town…,” shouted Cobbledick.

And as if taking her cue from the Englishman, Mrs Macegirdle shouted, “And they are the only places to find a supply of Christmas cake consistent with the season.”

“Who left town and put her in charge?” someone near the front grumbled. Mrs Macegirdle scanned the assemblage, scowling. There was silence.

Mr Cobbledick continued, “And we all know that something of great value currently resides in a Christmas cake in one of these establishments. Something put there, nefariously, by that reprobate, Clyde Marengo. Marengo who has cost this town nothing but money in policing and overnight stays in the drunk-tank.”

“And he left a dent in my Studebaker,” shouted Ivan Halikowski from the back of the crowd.

“Now it’s time to collect on those debts!” Cobbledick bellowed.

Both groups shouted various hoorays and hallelujahs.

“Jeez, what a bunch of chumps,” John said, only loud enough for his three friends to hear.

From the window of the offices of Luscious Barrymore, overlooking the Lane, Edna Everwurst surveyed scene. “What’s all this, then?” she said.

Barrymore stood next her, squinting, and cautiously said, “I haven’t got a clue.” He called Rosy on the intercom. “Get me Selma’s on the line, right now.”

“It’s probably cabin fever,” Edna said. “These tiny villages on the prairies, what else is there to do in the winter but sit at home and listen to the wallpaper?”

“I don’t think so,” Luscious said. “This looks like a run on a bank, ‘cept it’s cookies instead of cash.” The phone rang.

Luscious picked up, “Hello, Selma?” he said. “It’s Luscious Barrymore.” He paused to listen. “Oh, the wife and I are fine.”…”Yes, and little Elma’s doing well at UBC, nearly perfect grades. Canada’s next rocket scientist, you know, ha!”…”Yes, the new Chevrolet is a real keeper. How about you and Burt, and the little ones?”…“Ah, that’s terrific.”

Edna shot him an evil eye.

“Oh, ah, Selma,” said Luscious, giving Edna an appeasing grin, “just a question. What do you suppose that rabble is doing out front of your bakery?”…”Oh? Uh-huh, uh-hu.”…”Christmas cake!” He held his hand over the receiver and mouthed the words to Edna.

“I heard,” she said.

He stepped up to the window again. The crowds were, for the moment, each standing still as time bombs, ticking. He looked over his shoulder at Edna, then said to Selma, “Well, what do you think they’re going to do?”…”Oh, good.” He a looked relieved. “Yes, well, uh-huh, uh-huh.”…”And you, Selma, merry Christmas. Goodbye.”

“She’s called the RCMP,” said Barrymore

“Better be a whole battalion,” Edna said.

“Well, not exactly.”

RCMP Constable Fokker appeared shortly after Selma’s call. Now he stood in the dimming evening light in his Wellingtons and buffalo coat, his hat crooked on his head, looking like he’d been woken from a nap. He surveyed what there was to survey then said, “I’ve heard about situations like this, before.”

Everyone stared back. Ivan Halikowski lit a cigarette, then spit into the snow.

“It was in the textbook they gave me at Mounty School,“ Fokker said. “I know how to handle moments like these. Under normal circumstances, I guarantee you. But I only have one canister of tear gas. My brother gave it to me a couple of Christmases ago, as a joke—har-dee-har. Not only that,” he continued, “the cruiser’s got a flat and my horse is getting shoed. So, I think you all should just go home and roast yer chestnuts. And try not to talk politics when you sit down to Christmas dinner tomorrow. I hate getting called out on Christmas day, ‘specially if there’s blood.”

“There’s a Christmas cake in there,” said Mrs Macegirdle, pointing at Selma’s. Selma and her counter girl were looking back, out the window at the angry mob, trying to smile. “It’s got something very valuable hidden inside of it, and I, I mean we, are here to get it before someone else does.”

“Someone else who?” Fokker said.

“Well,” sputtered Mrs Macegirdle, “umm.”

“Before Clyde Marengo’s accomplice gets it,” someone in the crowd shouted, “that’s who.”

“Marengo had an accomplice?” Fokker said. “You sure? Accomplice really isn’t a word much heard on the Canadian prairie.”

“Communists, then,” someone shouted.

“Yeah,” another shouted, “what if the communists get it.”

“Get what?” said Fokker.

“Look,” Luscious said to Edna as he pointed out of the window, “it’s that Earl kid.”

“What Earl kid?” Edna stepped closer to the window to look. “Which one?”

“That one.”

“What one? There’s three boys and a girl.”

“The one in the red plaid coat,” Luscious said.

“They’re all wearing red plaid coats, you putz.”

“Well,” Luscious said, heading to the closet to get his coat. “Let’s get out there and get him before this all goes haywire.”

“Daphne!” Edna said. “Put down that damn comic book and let’s go.”

Daphne had just returned from the washroom, and was comfortable after a traumatic time. “I wanna stay here,” she said, turning a page. “It’s warm.”

“Nope,” said Edna Everwurst, grabbing the child by the hand. “You’re coming with us. Get your coat on.”

The trio went into the outer office where Luscious held up a hand and paused. “You,” he said to Rosy. “You started this. Don’t deny it. You were listening in on the intercom, and not for the first time. Then you phoned one of your gossipy little friends.”

“Me?” said Rosy with false-astonishment. “That’s a dreadful inference, Mr Barrymore. I’m hurt.”

“We’ll talk when I return, Rosy,” Luscious Barrymore said, and exited with Edna and Daphne in tow.

In the Lane, Mrs Macegirdle stood staring down Constable Fokker. Then struck with a bright idea, she said, “I’ll tell you what, officer. I’ll just go into the bakery and peruse the inventory. What can it hurt. How many Christmas cakes can be left by now, the night before Christmas?”

“Yeah,” Cobbledick shouted from across the way. “I’ll do the same over here. What can it hurt?”

At that, Fokker looked down at the snow. And while deep in thought, he moved a booted foot back and forth, pondering, with his hands deep in the pockets of his great hairy coat.

“Fine,” he said, finally, loud enough for all to hear, “Cobbledick, you can go into Selma’s, alone to look. Mrs Macegirdle, you can go into Sweetbreads—stupid name for a bakery. You can buy three Christmas cakes each, and that’s all. If you find what you’re looking for, swell. If not, then tea biscuits. You all go home. And no fighting over whatever this damn thing is, if it turns up.”

Cobbledick looked over at Mrs Macegirdle, leering squintily, while Mrs Macegirdle looked back over her nose with a superior and annoyed, motherly expression. And as they both turned and sprinted into their self-assigned bakeries, Edna Everwurst ran between the two mobs and said, “Wait, it’s mine!”

“What’s yours?” Earl said coming up to face Everwurst.

“Whatever it is in the Christmas cake. The one Clyde told you to look for. Where is it?”

“I don’t know. But isn’t it mine, if Clyde said so? That’s what would be right, right?”

“How would you know what’s right?” said Edna. “You’re just a kid.”

“Kids always know what’s right,” Daphne said. “Better than big people, most times.”

Giving her daughter a fowl look, Edna cocked her elbow as though she was about to give Daphne the back of her hand. And as she did, Stephen stepped forward resolutely and said, “Don’t you dare,” making Edna turn and look upon the boy. Who was this rude little urchin?

Then both Mrs Macegirdle and Cobbledick came out of their chosen bakeries, each with the dark, fruity cake crumbs all over their hands.

“I tore open three. Nothing,” Cobbledick yelled over to Mrs Macegirdle.

“Same here,” shouted Mrs Macegirdle.

“But there’re still ten of them left in there,” said Mrs Macegirdle. “They’re putting 25% Off signs on them.”

“There’re twelve in this one,” Cobbledick said. “What should we do?”

“We Just get in there and we take ‘em,” shouted Mr Bozzelli.

“Like chop suey, you do,” said Fokker, realising he’d forgotten his revolver. “You all just get on home.”

“We can’t steal Christmas cake,” Mrs Laksekjønn said. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

“Well,” hollered Mrs Birdwhistle, “we’ll asked the Lord for forgiveness tomorrow. This is too important. Let’s go. There’re probably commies lurking all over town!”

Both mobs ran into the bakeries, digging through the remaining cakes.

“Well, that’s just wrong,” said John, and the four of them moved further back, with Daphne, Luscious Barrymore and Edna Everwurst not far behind.

A few moments later, Ivan Halikowski ran out of Sweetbreads, with cake crumbs round his mouth, shouting, “Nothing here.”

“Same here,” yelled Mrs Kegel, dashing out of Selma’s.

“There’s still Fenster’s Emporium,” Mrs Birdwhistle howled, as everyone from both mobs reassembled in Buttercup Blossom Lane. Then the multitude, chanting loudly about communism and treasure, marched on to the Emporium.

In less than two minutes, they showed up at the Fenster’s, with Earl, John, Stephen and Elinor arriving shortly after Mr Fenster locked the door. The proprietor stood firm, looking out a window with a broom held firmly in his hands.

“I was in there this morning, buying drain cleaner and Brussels sprouts,” bellowed Elmo Butts. “Fenster had plenty of Christmas cakes, then.”

“He’s locked the dern door, though,” someone said.

“So, that’s what passes as customer service in this town, huh,” said another.

“Well,” hollered Cobbledick, “I guess we’ll just have to break down the door.”

Yeah, yeah, the crowd replied uproariously. Break down the door, break down the door.

Suddenly, there were sparks from above and the street dimmed as the lighting for the Granny Webley’s billboard went out again.

“Stupid billboard,” Mrs Birdwhistle. “On or off, on or off. What’s it gonna be.”

“Never mind that,” said Elmo Butts. “Them lights’ll be back on in a minute. Are we gonna break down that door, or not?”

The assembly became quiet. “Seems a bit extreme,” said someone.

“Yeah, maybe,” said other. “Fenster’s a good old guy.”

Looking back up at the billboard as the crowd grumbled, Elinor saw the lights come back on. And there it was. “Look,” she said, and the four of them looked up at the and saw it.

“Darn,” said John, “how about that.”

“Hilarious,” Stephen chuckled.

All Earl could say was, “Uh?”

Meanwhile, someone shouted, “Hey Cobbledick, maybe we should just all go for a Labatt’s. The mob seemed to think it over.

“Let’s not say anything,” Elinor said, as they gazed up at the billboard depicting a fat Santa sitting by a fireplace with a cup of cocoa and a slab of something nutty and fruity on a small plate on side table next to him. Above the warm, festive scene, the slogan: Granny Webley’s Christmas Cake, Good Enough for the Jolly One, Himself.

“That’s it,” whispered John.

“Let’s go,” said Earl.

Everyone knew the secret, but not-so-secret, way to the roof of Fenster’s Emporium. The four of them headed to the back alley and up the fire escape ladder that was jammed in place and couldn’t be pulled up from ground level. The four friends climbed up to the second floor platform and then took the iron stairs to the roof. Walking across the roof to the area under the sign, they found it. A tin Peek Freans Cookies box with Earl’s name roughly painted across the top.

“This is too strange,” said Stephen.

“Well, open it up, boy,” said Luscious Barrymore. Earl looked over his shoulder at the big man standing there. The door to the roof was open. “The crowd’s calmed down a bit,” Luscious said. “Fenster unlocked the door, and I think he’s gonna sell out of Christmas cake tonight. He let us come on the back stairs.”

“I’ll sue you, little boy,” Edna said, grinding her teeth.

“No she won’t,” said Luscious. “Not if what’s in there is what I think is in there.”

“Like what?” said Earl.

“Just take a look,” the lawyer said,

Opening the cookie can, they all saw a fat wad of twenty dollar bills held together with an elastic band, a book and an envelope. Earl picked up the rubber band bound wad and marveled at the amount of cash.

“Put that down, Earl,” said Luscious. “Open the envelope.”

Inside of the envelope was the Will, which Earl later found out said many things, including that he’d inherited something of great value, and that thing of great value wasn’t the cash, though Clyde said in the Will that Earl could spend it any way he liked. The thing of great value was the book, a smooth leather volume that seemed at once very old, and very new, as if just off of a bookstore shelf.

“That’s something real special,” Luscious Barrymore said. “Lucky boy.”

 

Paris, December 2000

Now Elinor held the book in her hands. A very limited edition, it’s leather cover was cool and smooth and embossed in gold. It seemed nearly new, but the year 1843 was printed on the copyright page. A few pages on, was the signature of the author, Charles Dickens. It was A Christmas Carol. She closed her eyes and saw the snowy streets of old London, and Tiny Tim melting Scrooge’s icy shell. It was a special thing. A treasure.

the ballad of Sam and Dinah part 1

note: WordPress in its fuckupedness formatted this document in such a way that the text in places is blue. Please patient.

 

the twenties

Birdsong and sunrise. From the field the boy sees in the distance a stick of a woman in a flower print dress and pair of worn flat brown oxfords, standing on the porch of the house. She’s smoking a cigarette and gazing back at him. He hears her call his name as he turns away and sees a man in a check shirt using a cane to heard five milk cows toward a barn, swatting each of them hard, harder than necessary. They won’t arrive on their own for milking; they fear hired man’s cruelty. The thickset man looks at the boy, waves and grins. But the boy doesn’t wave back. He walks in another direction toward a thick, familiar stand of trees, his giants, his own mythical island on the parched meadow. He intends to stand at its centre, already intimate with its shadows, heavy as water, dark with gentle voices, old and worriless. There, he will be very still and become ashen, a ghost without history, no stories others will tell, and become stone forever.

the thirties

The Ford was an atom on the badlands heading north too fast for the old narrow road. The city cops had been left behind but there could be Troopers ahead. A fat raindrop falls on the windshield from out of the cloudless blue sky, then another. Then nothing, and they vanished. “You shouldn’t have,” the driver said. “Dammit.”

The woman seated next to him says, “I know.” But firing the gun had been the only natural answer to the immediate question. She looks down at the thing in her lap—wheel, chambers, trigger, hammer—then rolls down her window and throws it out of the car.

The driver gears down for a rough patch and a bend in the road, and sees the man wearing a checkered shirt in the rear-view, sitting in the backseat, nodding his approval. Then the driver accelerates and the man is gone.

“Sam?” The woman says. “Sam! You’re going too fast, baby. The roads bad and we’ve gotta save gas.” The speedometer reads nearly ninety.

“Sorry.” He slows the automobile, the great red trophy. If asked, family and others, they would have said he could never have owned such a thing. It was too grand. The Model 48, upon which the salesman had laid a hand only weeks before, and made his pledge. The ’35 Ford’s V8 was a daemon at the diver’s command. The clutch, transmission and column shifter were a near-holy Trinity that moved in righteous union, and the ride was as safe and smooth as an ascent into Heaven. There were more expensive cars, but none so powerful and suited to a “young fella” like Sam.

So Sam with his holstered .45 heavy under his jacket, having left a stolen Pontiac only blocks away, paid in full for his first new car. Nine hundred dollars in cash, the bills still cold with the panic of the teller who’d handed them over one town before, and he drove away with Dinah at his side, freshening her lipstick, in a luckless direction through the grasslands toward the next town. Toward what had become their purpose: the holding of a gun to the heart of America. The mission he believed so worthy of them that he dreamt sometimes, seeing himself from above entering the cathedrallike compass of the biggest of banks, like entering Jerusalem beneath a crystal dome, and pulling the shotgun from under his coat, as Dinah, revolver in hand, charmed and disarmed the guards, smiling sweetly as she visited the tellers one by one, telling each that God loved a generous soul, then the two of them leaving with the wealth of the world in their hands. That was the destination.

Dinah had been surprised at how little they’d bought along the way, considering the haul. Rooms over night. Meals. They’d both bought expensive respectable clothes, and she had her hair done almost weekly. And the weapons and ammunition of course. He liked a Colt 1911, its gravity. The way the Earth drew it toward its core. And there was the sawed-off Remington. She liked the way a .32 fit in her small hand. Might be just the thing close in, the gun seller said. But it was for show. She hoped she’d never use it. An ample supply of ammunition sat heavily in the Ford’s trunk, along with sticks of dynamite and caps.

They eventually came to Great Falls. The First National Bank on Third Street. A building miserly and vain, where the bespectacled manager had stepped out of his office, firing wildly until the hammer of his six-gun fell with a dull empty thud. And that was when the stone moment arrived. When, as she listened to a teller’s prayer, Dinah took aim and returned fire. The old man took the bullet to heart with dignity and fell to the floor.

“C’mon,” Sam said pulling Dinah out of the bank by her sleeve, and the two of them ran with a small sack of money they didn’t need. The robbery had been a conceit, a whim. A risk taken without a plan. And now murderers, they were, together, perfectly alone.

*

They met on a hot night in July, music falling like ash from the open upper windows of the Rosemary Rooms onto Gulliver Street. The Rosemary, Dinah’s home, a five story walk-up of glories gone. Now occupied by out-of-tune pianos, brass, percussion and woodwinds, and the bluesy cigarette voices of ruined songbirds—the idled jazz of the Depression, waiting for something to snap and set it free. Dinah’s room was on the third floor.

She had watched him for a while that night from across the narrow street, through the sidewalk crowds, as he leaned a shoulder against a brick wall next to the steps up to the Rosemary’s front door, listening. He held his suit jacket in hand, sometimes closing his eyes and slowly nodding his head to whatever melody could be distinguished above all the others. His shirt needed a wash and his trousers a crease. It was a hard neighbourhood and a stranger could be dangerous, ready to reach out and grab on. But her belly growled and she’d have to get past him if she wanted to go home. So she dropped her smoke in the gutter and crossed the street, threading through the slow cruising traffic.

At the steps she was delayed by a gang of laughing, backslapping men with instrument cases filing out of the entrance, giving her a moment to see the stranger up close.

“Busy joint,” he said, catching her glance.

“Yeah, I guess.” She began digging through her bag, not for the first time mindful of the fit of her second-hand dress, her untidy hair. She was young. Pretty as a mint nickel, someone told her once. But her poverty was a blur of unlovely colours. And now here was this handsome man. A bit hollow from hunger and needing a shave. Unnecessary like a million others. Later he’d huddle in a doorway until morning. But he’d a shy confidence. Genuine, though there was a small crook in that posture. He’d survived a some bloodbath or other, she thought in those few seconds before she wrapped her fingers round her keys. “Have you eaten today?” she said.

“Just listening to the music, lady. Go home.”

Her mother had warned her of the melancholia of men.

“I’ve got soup,” she said, taking a shoplifted can from her bag and holding it to her breast, close as a secret.

“Ain’t much, is it. And I don’t have no money for a girl right now.”

“A girl?”

“Never pay for it anyway.”

“What?” It was a quick hard word. “You, you think I’m for rent?”

“I guess.”

“Well, fuck you.” She dropped and picked up her keys, then began to climb the steps. “That’s fine, all the more for me.”

“Okay, sorry. I guess I was wrong.”

“I’ll say. It was just pity on my part, anyway. Fresh from the farm, aren’t you.”

“Not exactly fresh.”

“But damn near, I’ll say. I can tell by that churchy face of yours and the way you’re standing there like you’re out front of the generalized store. Never pay for it anyway? Bet you don’t even know what it is.”

“Sorry, I said. It was impolite.”

“Impolite.”

“True, I don’t know nothing, and an invitation to dinner’s rare these days.” He looked down at his shoes, cracked and worn. “Maybe I’m too proud.”

“Why’s that? You ain’t much.”

“Don’t know.”

“A little stupid, too,” she said. “Well, I ain’t no whore. So you can leave that idea at the door if you want to come in. But first, what’s your name.”

“Sam.”

Sam. She looked closer, and then offered her hand. He stepped up and took it. “No monkey business, Mr Sam.”

“None, swear it. But you got a habit of inviting hobos in for soup?”

“No. And I don’t know what the hell you are, but you ain’t no hobo.” She looked a little harder. “You just ain’t. Nah, you look more like somethings about to happen. Some kid just in from Purgatory, huh.”

He nearly grinned.

“Well, come in with me then,” she said. “Don’t bring the night with you.”

He was uncomfortable entering her room. A small pile of cast off clothing at the foot of the closet. On the dresser, a modest collection of cosmetics on a chipped plate, next to a decorated opium pipe and a curious deck of cards. There was a scent on the air, or scents, quiet strawberries and another thing. A saxophone played nearby, a soft slow lullaby. And a gaunt man in the dresser mirror looked back at him. He looked away.

“Let me get a pot and can opener,” she said, taking off her coat and then turning on a lamp. “The place ain’t much but I’ve got burner and running water.”

“It’s a good place,” he said.

“Relax then. Take the big chair. I can sit on the bed.”

Returning from the burner, Dinah lit two sticks and stuck them into the soil of a potted ivy. Soon the fragrance of sandalwood filled to room. “Nice, huh. What do you think?”

He smiled uneasily.

“That music from down the hall,” she said, “you ever hear anything like it? Pretty, huh. Jazz, you know.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, I guess you would. Bet you’ve heard it on the radio. Some don’t get it though. He plays it slow. That’s Roger, a bit too sentimental. All that music you heard on the street was jazz, too.”

“I get it.”

“All those fellas out front, on their way to some club or other to play. Maybe pick up a few bucks. Frisco’s got a lot of places like that.”

Sam shifted uneasily in the chair. She sat across from him on the bed, saw his gentle blue eyes, the way he pushed aside his black hair. “So, where you from; where’s home?”

“North of here.”

“What, like Sacramento?”

“No.”

“Alaska?”

“Isn’t worth knowing.”

“They got jazz there?”

“Hell no.”

“You’re not wanted by the cops, are you?”

Of this he wasn’t exactly sure. “No.”

“Not much of a conversationalist, are you.”

Conversation. He could never easily come up with an anecdote, opinion or experience the way others did. But…, “Okay, it’s a small place, where I come from.” Saying it made him relax some, and he noticed her eyes were green. “It’s just over the border. Canada. Alberta. Grew up there. Wasn’t much. It dried up like everything else. My family had a mortgage on a place, but there’s nothing left. Not even dirt, the wind blew so hard.”

“So you’ve been on the road. How long?” The fragrant smoke from the incense floated where ghosts might. He shook his head.

“Alright, I’ll get the soup,” she said. “There might even be crackers, and I was thinking.” She looked over her shoulder.

He’d become quiet again.

She sat back on the bed. “I was thinking, maybe you should spend the night.” She spoke cautiously. “I mean properly. I mean not sharing a bed, or nothing. It could rain. You could get a cold. But mind, I just gotta yelp and half the guys from down the hall will be knockin’ the door down, got it? Like I said, no monkey business and I mean it.”

“I better not. And maybe feeding me isn’t such a good idea.” He began to stand up and she reach across, putting her hand on his shoulder.

“But you haven’t eaten yet. Don’t worry about my reputation, if that’s what it is. It’s already sort of bruised, living in a hotel full of jazzmen. We leave each other be, so don’t get me wrong. But I’m also a notorious shoplifter and do a job or two, now and then, occasionally, for some fellas who I guess are kinda shady. Never thought it’d turn out this way, but there it is. As far as men go, mostly I’m not interested. Most of you are assholes. I just want to help. And I’m no hooker, like I said. So no fooling around.”

“I better not,” he said, and saw she was still nearly a child. But he wasn’t much older.

Dinah lit a candle next to the incense and turned out the lamp, spent a moment at her dresser, then another behind an Oriental and reappeared in a lavender flannel nightgown down to her naked toes, with a crooked lace collar and a missing button. “Glamorous, huh.” She gave him a blanket, then sat down. “Getting late,” she said, adjusting the pillows so she could sit up in the corner of the bed, then pulled the comforter over her. “Late for me, that is. So good night.” The candle barely lit the room.

She woke later to his uneasy sleep, whispers. The candle had gone out and he was framed in the half-light through the window, the Moon’s blue hands. He gasped once, head back, then a quiet shout, holding out a hand to make something, someone, stop, then let it drop.

*

The farmhouse.
In his bedroom, a child is awake in his small parcel of boyhood. A man lying next to him in bed, asleep and holds the boy close. Moist breath on the boy’s neck. The child had been torn open again. And in the way dreams are, the church congregation gossips. Spots the boy in a Sunday crowd, and looks away. Ladies and men. Tea and rye whisky. “It ain’t rape. Little boys tease.” Soft laughter, counterfeit concern, shaking heads. “Just asks for it,” says his shamed mother, the too slim widow, the good Christian who spoke softly to the boy nightly of Doom, almost a hymn. A mother knows. A knowing smile. “Say a prayer before you sleep, for the end of days,” she says, kissing his forehead. “Sleep tight.” Then takes her lamp past a grinning shadow at the door, and vanishes. The Jesus music in every beam, board and nail of the old house.

*

“Sam?” Dinah spoke softly from her bed, then placed her naked feet on the cold floor and stroked his cheek, whispering to him that it was only a dream. He opened his eyes wide and push himself back into the chair. Panic, guttural words, in tongues. Then he said, “Leave me alone.” Just a dream, Dinah’s voice. Her hand gently on his knee. His shirt damp with sweat. He madly scans the room.

They sat silently together until it was light.

Rain was the city next morning. The jazz had gone to bed. Now Dinah stood looking out of the window thinking not precisely of home, but distantly of its delicacy, the fragility of an abstract that had always provided enough. Christmases, summers and childhood. And how at sixteen, one Black Tuesday, she watched it vanished. The once untroubled house of infinite rooms suddenly haunted by hungry ghosts. The money—though, childishly, she thought irrelevant at first—proved itself essential, but fantasy. Her father the broker, a gunshot at dawn, and he was gone. While her mother, until then so unafraid, so full of imagination, vanished into a fabric of madness, something almost graceful on the wind as she settled beneath the horizon of the world.

As a result, Dinah was dispatched by others to a strange aunt, who’d strangely scratched her reluctance to the request in a single line on a stingy sheet of paper that came in the mail—

Send her if you must.

But Dinah never arrived at her aunt’s house. Instead, she stepped off the Greyhound two cities early with the naive mind of the newly orphaned, into a cold wind off a lake people said was superior. She found those, or they found her, who’d share their company, their hovel homes, stories and cigarettes. Some gave her money for nothing, out of pity. Others demanded trade, what few small things a girl had to offer.

She found her way onto roads and highways and unknowingly drifted west, past abandoned towns and farms, roadhouses and long forgotten cemeteries, mourners already passed away, and onto the sidewalks of devastated hearts, young and old. These things had been mere rumours in her previous life. Her journey wrapped tightly in journeys.

In Frisco, Dinah got out of a stranger’s car and stayed. She swept and washed floors, and ran errands and numbers for fat Italian men with switchblades scars, being valued for the job, small as she was, for her teenaged look of innocence. And she was taught the tarot by a crone named Mathilde, who told the fortunes of the opium addled in a dim back den. Mathilde charged a dollar for a fortune, the addled forgetting her predictions the moment they awoke, some of them dying savagely as a result. Dinah learned she’d clairvoyant talents in exchange for keeping the dragon pipes lit, and began charging only fifty cents per sitting. But her clients were few.

Now four years older, she was still hungry most days. But her rent was paid. Her father would have approved of her priorities.

Sam watched from the chair, then said, “I have to go.”

“No.”. 

“Thanks for everything.”

“No,” she repeated herself, looking at him over her shoulder.

He got up with jacket in hand, but she turned and stood her ground. Small and fresh from bed, her uncombed hair, the night gown with the crooked collar. “The weather’s awful,” she said.

“Okay then, but they said there might be bread this morning at a church up the street. I can get us some.”

“You won’t come back.” She was right and shouldn’t have cared, but stepped closer and touched his cheek. She’d read stories, promising he’d stay if she showed tenderness, but he gently pushed her away.

“No, I mean it,” she said. “Just stay.”

“Find someone else.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I mean you said you wanted me out in the morning. Thanks for dinner last night. But I’m no better a person for it, or for a night off the sidewalk. I shouldn’t have come up.” He looked around at the poverty of the room. “You’re starving as it is.”

Dinah stood on her toes and kissed him. Softly, on his lips, his chin, on his lips again. “Maybe I’m stupid,” she sad. “I was wrong. I’m not hopeful much past a minute, and maybe the next. But I’m so fucking sick of being alone. And you are, too. I know it.” She kissed him again, his lips. Not as softly this time, holding him as close as he’d allow. “So what is it? What’s wrong?”    

“A hundred things,” he whispered.

“Then they’re dead here, whatever they are.”

Maybe.

Sam yielded, trying a clumsy embrace she calmly corrected, and then only slightly more at ease with intimacy than him, Dinah guided him to her bed. He recognised her then, seeing her as they engaged in their gentle brawl, every touch and soft gesture, each trade of supremacy. It was her. A girl, now the woman, from a boyhood dream, who’d sat with him on a prairie hill. Wordless, only thought and the hum of small things. His house behind them, like a spy. So Dinah was her name and this was how the world had come to surround her.

In the evening, after they’d made love, he lay in bed while she sat next to him hugging her knees, serene in a fading rainy day light. Then she stood, and at her bidding, naked and close, they danced to a small love song, forgotten to the world, coming up from the floor below, a soft piano. And when that song ended, they danced to the next, just as sad and slow.

later in the day

A penniless man learns to scan the rooms he enters. Dinah stood at Sam’s side as he paused at the door of the diner.

There was a pale shade of a woman in an old rose coat sitting at a table with a cup of tea, and two black men seated with newspapers in a corner booth. Sam and Dinah took their stools at the counter. A faded sign hung crooked above the coffee urn, reading: Whites Only. At the other end of the counter, ten stools down from them, was a patrolman smoking Chesterfields and drinking Coca-Cola. The waitress behind the counter wore a pink uniform, a little too big, well-worn but clean. The badge above her breast read Abigale. Sam watched as the cop whispered something to Abigale that made her blanche and step back, the cop laughing as she walked away, trying to hide her disgust. Sam stared back, and caught his eye as the cop smirked, drawing on his cigarette and letting a small dense cloud of smoke slowly escape his open mouth, and inhaling it in two milky lines through his nose.

“Pimp.” 

“Shut up,” Dinah whispered. “ That’s Pierce, the Warlock. He’s a son of a bitch.” 

“Punk.”

Gun at his side, billy club glossy and black on his belt. Pierce was of a tribe that busted up hobo camps, beat already ruined men bloody.

“Why’s he called Warlock?”

“Because he can make things disappear,” said Dinah, “people too. It’s just a street tag, but fitting.”

“What’re you two having?” Abigale had arrived to take their order.

“A Coke,” Sam said.

“Pierce bothering you again?” Dinah said. Abigale stayed mum, and wrote Coke on her order pad. “Alright, bring me a coffee. Maybe something else in a minute.” Abigale walked away.

“How we gonna pay for this?” Sam said.

“They let me run a tab, as long as I don’t push it.”

Sam felt for something in his pocket. “Guess it’s time I sold this watch.”

“A watch? You shouldn’t sell it.”

“Makes no sense going hungry with it in my pocket.” He offered Dinah one of the last two cigarettes from a crumpled deck of Camels.

“Let me see it.”

“It’s nothing.”

“If it’s nothing, you won’t mind me looking at it.”

He dug in his pocket and handed it over.

It was round and cool in Dinah’s hand, silver with an elegant heft. “It’s real. I mean it’s solid, solid silver.” She opened it, pressing the crown, and saw its handsome face. Then closing it, and turning it over, she read the inscription: To Samuel Merrick upon graduation, St. Andrew’s College, 1936, Uncle Cyril.

“St. Andrew’s, where’s that?”

“Saskatchewan, University of. Divinity school.”

“So you’re a preacher.”

“Uncle Cyril thought so..”

“You don’t sound happy about it, though.”

“Went in early.” Sam spoke wearily. “Boy genius. True holly prodigy. Scholarships, gifts, donations. The folks back home had had a collar waiting for me since before I graduated high school. The land got dry and people figured the Lord was telling them something. Figured handing me over to Him might make things right. So I attended Pastor Tech, and then went home to try on the collar.”

“And?”

 “It fit like a burning tire, so I got the hell out fast as I could. What’s not to be happy about?”

“Where’s home?”

Abigale arrived with a Coke and coffee “Beautiful day,” Sam said to her.

“Still rainin’.”

“Maybe. But Abigale,” Sam thumbed over his shoulder, “have you ever been in that bank across the street?”

“Why? “ She leaned in close. “I took a peak in a couple of times, but I mostly ain’t welcome. I gotta go down the street.”

“Really, why?”

Dinah spoke in a low voice, “What are you asking for, Sam?”

“’Cause it’s a Negro bank,” Abigale said. “No whites allowed. I guess I could push it ‘cause we serve black folk here, would be stupid not to. But I gotta White’s Only bank a little ways down the street. No problem.”

“Ah.”

Abigale tone became patronising. “You’re new here. Just rolled in with the wind, huh.”

“Maybe. Much foot traffic in and out of that place across the street? When’s it get busy?”

“You shut your mouth with Pierce sittin’ down there.” 

“She’s right, Sam.”

“They got a guard?” asked Sam.

Abigale looked at Dinah. “This a gangster, Dinah? You shouldn’t be runnin’ with gangsters. You’re already in with some shifty characters, but at least they keep quiet about it. This boy looks like an amateur, besides, wearin’ that crummy suit.”

“Sam’s a good man. He’s a preach…. He’s a good man.”

“Well, let me tell you somethin’, mister good man,” Abigale said, leaning in even closer, “I don’t need something else troublin’ me round here. Neighbourhood’s gotten bad past couple of years. Got enough pain without helping you plan a bank job. I’ve got a friend workin’ in that bank. And that cop down there ain’t worth a Goddamn. He ain’t comin’ to her rescue. He’d shoot a black man in the back, soon as look at him. Then bill his mama for the bullet. What I will say though, is that my White’s Only bank’s only six blocks up the street, that-a-way. Hell, they got a million more dollars to steal than that bank cross the street. And the guard’s the fattest whoreson on Gulliver Street. I see him most days out front of the place just eatin’ sandwiches, smokin’ cigar ends and drinkin’ Nehi, looking at the girls. Belly hangin’ over his gun belt, scratchin’ himself.”

Abigale straightened up and started wiping the counter. “Hell, you aren’t really bad, mister good man. Neither of you are, Dinah. I’ve seen bad, and it doesn’t look like either of you. You should go get some soup down at St Bartholomew’s. See if they got a coat for you, and then get the hell outta town.”

Sam got up off his stool, taking Dinah by the elbow, “Got to go,” and they began walking toward the door. The Warlock watched.

“Go where?” Dinah said.

“Damned if I know. How about you home.”

She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Alright, I got things to do. I’m running numbers today. Uptown, shoeshine boys and newsies. I’ve got to get started or lose the route.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t do anything stupid. I know we just met, but I feel good about it. Yesterday, last night,” She paused a moment. “It was wonderful, you know?. I’ll have some money when I get home. We’ll eat tonight. I’ll bring something home, some real food.” She kissed him again, then exited, hesitated on the sidewalk, then walked away.

He watched as she crossed through the idling traffic jam on Gulliver, and disappear into the shadows of an alley between two tenements. Then he stepped back to the counter and said to Abigale: “You step into the kitchen now. Stay there and tell the cook not to come out. I’m not thinking of the bank no more, so forget it. And forget we had our conversation.”

“What you gonna do?” Abigale handed him his bottle of Coca-Cola

Do? He struggled to name it. Sam had hated Pierce in seconds, for more than the obvious. The cop was a scribble, a cipher, grammatically wrong but clear enough. He had words on him that Sam first saw over the tall grasses and wild flowers, taller than him at the time, that he swam through one night as a child, running away. The words were code in the smoke and flames rising from the burning grass around him, in a fire set by the man who’d raped the him and meant to destroy him. Sam fled panting, gulping air against the wind, at one point crossing an derelict wooden bridge spanning a dry creek and emerging into a small clearing, rocky and uneven, punctuated by tufts of scrub grass and three small mounds. Shadows danced in the light of the retreating blaze, and three children, dishevelled and filthy with dirt from the grave, stood looking back at Sam. We were his, said one before they vanished into the low orange glow. And there Sam stood fixed, until found in the morning and bought home to be punished for his escape.

Warlock wore the code, the mark.

“Just a word with Warlock,” Sam told Abigale.

“Maybe I should call the cops.”

“You won’t. You hate him, too.”

The woman in the old rose coat placed some coins on the table, and quickly left.

“Hey,” Pierce spouted, “what you two yappin’ about? Don’t like the way yer getting up all close and whispering like that.”

“This diner’s everything I got, mister,” Abigale told Sam, then sighed. “You’re new to the neighbourhood and I’m already sick of you. Now I think you’re gonna make an awful mess.”

“I intend on being tidy.”

Abigale walked away into the kitchen.

“Time to move on, tramp,” Pierce said from his stool. “I don’t want you in my part of town.”

“Punk and a gun.” Sam began walking slowly his way.

“What?”

“He holds a cigarette like a pimp, sips a soda like a princess.”

Pierce stood and put his hand on his weapon. “You’re fucking with the wrong guy, hobo.” Warlock’s beat, his world, was a dim flat Earth of trespass and bloody floors. The Warlock, not a grift he wasn’t in on. He cut throats. Bodies dumped in the bay. Evidence destroyed. Children were traded. And no one spoke to him like Sam just did. Somehow Sam knew all of this from looking Pierce in the face.

“Have it your way, Hobo.” The Warlock drew his gun as Sam took one last long step, smashing his Coca-Cola bottle on the edge of the counter,  and slicing the patrolman’s cheek in a deep fine arc, the sharp points of glass making the untroubled sound of skates on a frozen pond as Sam cut the man from his chin through his ear. Then Sam took Pierce’s revolver and put it in his belt, and wrestled the bleeding screaming man toward the door, pushing him out onto the sidewalk and kicking him down a stairway.

A small crowd gathered and dispersed, one woman saying, “Ain’t that a shame,” as she walked away.

Sam went down the steps and dug a wallet out of the Pierce’s back pocket, taking the cash. “I ain’t going nowhere, you little bitch,” he lied to Pierce. “I’m staying here in town. And I’ll be spreading the word about you, about how easy you are to slap down. Things are gonna change. There’ll be a lot of people watching, including me. So forget getting all vengeful. Next time you’re a fucking corpse, you got it?” Sam ground his heel into the open wound on the cop’s face before Pierce had a chance to answer. “I said, you got it?”

“Yeah, fuck yeah.”

“There’re a lot of hungry men out there who’ll snuff you out for a can of beans.” Sam still held the broken bottle in his hand, blood dripping. Warlock closed his eyes and shivered in the damp.

Climbing back up to street level, Sam re-entered the diner and handed over the cop’s cash to Abigale, as she shook her head at the blood on the floor. “A gift from the man at the cellar door,” Sam said as she squeezed the bills in her fist.

The two men who’d occupied the corner booth exited, walking quickly, but not before one paid their bill by pushing some bills into Abigale’s other hand.

“I gotta call someone. No one on the sidewalk’s gonna.”

“Give me a few minutes first, Sam said.”

“Maybe I’ll call the Fire Department first, by mistake.”

“Whites Only Bank’s that-a-way, you say.”

“I do,” said Abigale. Then seeing the gun in his belt, she said, “Don’t make a career of it, mister good man. And maybe you should keep that chunk hid under yer jacket.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABBA, Jesus and My 1974 Ford Pinto

a remastered version of one of my first stories posted on this blog, years and years ago

This morning He was here again. Jesus, sitting in the lotus position on my nightstand where my clock radio is supposed to be. I don’t know how I know it’s Jesus. I just do. He doesn’t look like any of the pictures you see of him—the scrubbed Caucasian, coiffed and bearded, appearing to represent all that’s good in white supremacy. Instead, He has a sort of Taliban or Al-Qaeda look about him, but without the bomb-vest. He rarely speaks, just stares ahead at empty space. Sometimes he hums little tunes, mostly ABBA’s greatest hits. When he does speak, it’s cryptic, mysterious, usually a single word like butterfly or cyclamate or microfiche. This morning, though, He said a little more. He looked at me and said, “Watch your head.” Then He vanished, leaving my clock radio on the floor, unplugged. Three cryptic words out of the mouth of the Lord our Saviour.

The peephole in my apartment door provides me with a fisheye view of things. I don’t have a TV. So, I watch through the peephole, sometimes all day, as people walk down the hall, past my apartment, as they get bigger and bigger then smaller and smaller. Then they disappear as mysteriously as they appeared. I stand there looking out with my forehead and cheek hard against the door, drinking warm beer through a straw, wondering from whence and to where. Usually there’s a clue, the sound of the elevator or the stairwell door opening. Sometimes though, there’s just silence. They just go missing, like Jesus from my nightstand.

There’s a woman who walks past my door every day. She’s younger than me, maybe by twenty years. She’s blonde and has a yoga sort of body, pleasantly soft yet defined. The weather’s been cold lately so she’s been wearing sweatpants a lot, and a kangaroo jacket. They call kangaroo jackets hoodies now since everyone wants their clothing to sound dangerous. Hoodie doesn’t sound that dangerous, I admit, but it does have a meaner, race riot ring to it than kangaroo jacket. People’s lives are blessed, but their fashions have become hopelessly faux inner-city. Poverty and desperation have become dernier cri for the privileged, and now even yoga ladies are gangstas.

I know when the woman in the hoodie is coming even before I see her. Hers is a rapid step, and she comes down hard on her heels. When she comes from the right—bigger bigger bigger, smaller smaller smaller—she’s coming from the elevator. That’s when she’ll have groceries, a backpack with a rolled up yoga mat or she’s carrying a satchel and is dressed in business clothes. It’s when she comes from the left – bigger bigger bigger, smaller smaller smaller—that she’s more likely to be wearing more casual tough-chick clothes. That’s when she has her trash or a bag of laundry, and she’s heading for the basement. That’s where the laundry room is. It’s also where the trash is stored until garbage day so poor people can’t steal it. Our building manager has very strict rules about who may and who may not lay their hands on our garbage.

The hoodie woman’s name is Jessica. I found out by accident once when I was getting my mail. Sometimes she’ll put out return mail for the mail carrier to pick up, stuff that was meant for other people who lived in her apartment before her, and then died, I guess. I take it to read later if no one’s around to see me slip it into my pocket. It’s mostly LL Bean and Victoria’s Secret catalogues. Sometimes, though, there’s a birthday card. Once there was a fifty dollar bill in one from someone’s mother. I bought beer and KFC.

But that’s not how I found out her name. One day she was at her mailbox, a few feet away from mine. I kind of know when to be in certain places so I can see her up close, not just through my peephole. Like once or twice a month, not too many times so she doesn’t think I planned it or anything, I go down to the laundry room a few minutes after she passes by with her laundry bag. Sometimes I glance at her putting things into the washer. Her dirty laundry is very clean. Then sometimes she sits on a bench across the street from the building and reads. She reads weird shit. Titles like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. I got them both from the library; they were crap. At least the first three or four pages were. Anyway, when she does that I occasionally go out there and sit nearby and pretend to read something, like one of the tracts I get in the mail from Christians in American or the latest Awake Magazine. I figure, maybe if she sees me reading that stuff she’ll know I’m okay.

So, when I first heard her name it was from this guy I see in the building sometimes who thinks he’s something real special. He comes up to her one day at her mailbox and says, “Hey, Jessica. How you doing?” Real soft and casual like you’re not supposed to get what he’s up to. The neighbourhood’s gotten real gay lately, so I figure he’s trying to sound a little sweet—not too much—so she gets this false sense of security. But he ain’t gay. I think he’s stalking her. His name is Randy. I wonder how many women he gets that way, pretending not to be interested. Inviting them up to his place to trade recipes and then jumping their bones. Pervert. Meanwhile, swell guys like me go through life ridiculed and alone, watching endless reruns of X-Files. Mulder’s such a dick.

So, the other day something different happens. I watch through the peephole and Jessica wheels a new bike down the hall. It’s a yellow, modified 70s vintage Peugeot with the single speed high torque gears. Terribly hip, I guess. But you have to be a tri-athlete to pump one up a hill. After she passes by, and I hear the elevator doors close, I put on my jacket and follow her out. On the street, there she is talking to Randy who has a similar bike, only his is a purple Apollo. It’s five degrees centigrade, and he’s wearing cut offs. If that doesn’t prove that he’s pretending to be gay, I don’t know what does. And he’s wearing just a tee-shirt under this obviously real expensive lightweight micro fibre jacket, and a pair of pricy riding shoes with the metal cleats. But what’s really made obvious by its absence is his helmet. Randy is clearly too cool to bother with head protection, and so, apparently, is Jessica who is also without a helmet.

For a moment I think that they may just be talking and not planning to ride, after all. But then it happens. Randy throws his head back and laughs at something Jessica has said. It’s this real phoney laugh. What a fraud. Then he bends over both bikes and kisses Jessica on the cheek. And then, after polluting Jessica’s pure pink cheek with his perverted lips, they mount their bikes and ride off toward the park—helmetless!

I have a 1974 Ford Pinto. It’s a beautiful dark mossy green colour that doesn’t show the dirt, but the hubcaps are gone. It’s a good car, a legend, a combustible classic. I got it real cheap at an estate sale along with a toaster that lowers the bread automatically into the slots. It happens kind of slow and makes this calming mechanical buzz. It makes toasting bread real fun. Sometimes if I get bored, I make a lot of toast, maybe a couple of loaves, maybe pumpernickel, maybe sourdough, just to listen to the toaster hum and watch the slices of bread vanish into the fathomless fiery slots.

Anyway, I try to keep my Ford Pinto parked nearby on the street. You need a special pass to park in my neighbourhood, though, so people from other crappier neighbourhoods don’t take over. But it costs $50 a year, which is like way too much in my opinion. So, I never buy one which means I have to move my car every two hours. Sometimes that means that I end up parking it a long ways away. But this time the Pinto’s right there, so I get in, start it up and follow them.

I stay back about half a block. My Pinto wants to go fast. It’s in its nature to perform, with its four savage cylinders of speed. But I drive real slow because they’re riding real slow and talking and Randy keeps throwing his head back and laughing that real fake laugh of his. My hands grasp the steering wheel real tight. I’m thinking bad thoughts, the kind my psychiatrist and probation officer don’t want to hear about, especially when an appointment is running long and it’s nearly lunchtime and they get that look in their eyes, trying to snatch a peek at their wrist watch, and I start talking about the female mannequin my father kept in my parent’s closet, dressed in a red leather corset that my mother kept telling him to get rid of until she divorced him and left me behind with him, and the female mannequin in the red leather corset, which is the name of my nearly finished novel: Female Mannequin in the Red Leather Corset in My Father’s Closet. But here I stray from the current narrative.

Off to the right, through the trees, as I drive along, is the lagoon. It’s a pond really, a small lake. But some poet chick from the cowboy days tagged it Lost Lagoon, and it stuck. I guess it does sound better than Lost Pond or Lost Lake. It ain’t an accurate description, though. But whatever, I figure lagoon’s where I’ll dump Randy when I’m finished with him. I have chains in the trunk in case it snows, but I’ll gladly sacrifice them to weigh his body down. Jesus said, “Watch your head.” Maybe He was trying to warn me about something. Maybe I’ll have to be real careful dealing with this creep.

I accelerate and pass them and drive ahead about half a click. Then I pull over, get out and pull up the hood of the car. I don’t really have a plan, except that I think I’ll stab him with a screwdriver. I have a nice long skinny one that I bought at the Dollar Store. It looks more like an ice pick. Only problem is that Jessica will see me do the deed, and it might be hard to convince her I’m an alright guy after that. And I’m just starting to think I should maybe wait until another time, so I can get Randy alone, when the two of them ride into view, with me gripping the screwdriver in my right hand.

When they ride up to me next to my car, they’re all like, “Oh, hello. Don’t you live in our building? Having car troubles?” Then there’s the familiar and inevitable beat in time before one of them, Randy this time of course, says, “Is that really a Pinto?” as if to say, “Is that really herpes on your lip. I didn’t know people got herpes anymore.” But yeah, some of us have herpes, and it’s episodic and there’s medication, and it’s not like I think we should be French necking here in the middle of the street where you’ve just stopped me to point out to me that my herpes are showing.

That’s kind of like what it’s like to have herpes and a Ford Pinto, in case you wanted to know. And so—“No,” I say. “It’s a fucking Porsche.” I can’t help it. It just comes out like that. I’m confused for a moment, and then bend over the engine and pretend to be adjusting something. Meanwhile Jessica and Randy look at each other kind of surprised. Then Randy pipes up, “Can I help?” Oh sure, I think. First he’s trying to be all gay and now he wants to fix my car. I figure this is it, time to stab the little prick. Jessica will just have to learn to love me in spite of it.

I move fast. Suddenly I’m a natural born killer. But I stand up too fast and slam my head into that hook-shaped thing that hangs down from the hood and locks everything into place when you close it, and now my head’s stuck. I’ve hit the hook so hard that it’s embedded in my skull. It feels weird, but there’s almost no pain. “Holy shit,” Randy says, as I twist my head a little this way and that, trying to dislodge. “I’m calling an ambulance,” Jessica says, pulling out her iPhone. “No,” I shout, a trickle of blood finding its way down my forehead, between my eyes and driping off the tip of my nose. There’s a dark red splat on the radiator cap, then another. Meanwhile, Jessica’s calling 911. Shit! Fire and ambulance. Probably the cops, too. If I want to waste this Randy bastard and have time to get away, it has to be now.

I swing the screwdriver in a horizontal arc. The hook in my head is starting to hurt. Randy jumps out of the way just in time and says something brilliant like, “Hey!” with a real stunned look on his face. Finally I twist and yank the hook out with a sloppy wet popping sound, step away from the Pinto and quickly reassess the situation. “It went in about eight or nine centimetres,” Jessica is saying on the phone. Suddenly I feel dizzy. “Yes, a lot of blood. And he’s starting to act kind of violent.” I spread my legs a little further apart and get my bearings. Then giving my head a shake, I spray blood everywhere. “God damn,” Randy says, wiping it off of his face. “You don’t have anything blood-born, I hope.” I know what he means, like I would have some communicable disease. (Okay, herpes, but who give a shit!) The lippy little s.o.b. That makes me attack him with everything I’ve got, but I miss again. Randy’s a slippery character, I’ll give him that. Then he says, “What’s your problem, pal?” How come people you’re trying to murder always call you pal?

And now’s when I stumble forward and fall onto the road, just as this fat black Escalade with its stereo on full-blast playing Drake rumbles out of nowhere, clearly exceeding the speed limit. I remember looking up and thinking how clean it was, even underneath, as it ran over me like I was a speed bump. Fuck I hate Drake.

Anyway, the hospital’s a dump. This is where people come to die, and I don’t want to die. But the Escalade messed me up, something terrible. Besides that, they tell me that I sustained a severe brain injury when the Pinto’s hood hook penetrated my grey matter. It’s the brain injury that they say accounts for my irrational and violent behaviour toward Randy. So, there’ll be no charges. I’ve been forgiven. Even Randy, whose throat I’ll cut next time I get a chance, has given me a pass. Jessica visits me every evening after work. She sneaks in KFC even though she says it’s poison. I’m building up the courage to ask her out. There’s a second run movie theatre in the east end that’s having a Dirty Harry marathon.

Jesus has taken up residence in the bed next to mine. “‘Watch your head.’ Good one,” I say. He’s hooked up to a ventilator and plugged into a dozen machines. He sure knows how to blend in. Angels surround him 24/7 singing ABBA songs, all angelic-like. I really like their renditions of Mamma Mia and Knowing You Knowing Me. They kind of sound like this album of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir I bought at an estate sale once. Sometimes He speaks, but the ventilator makes it difficult to understand what He’s trying to say.

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a snowman at Christmas

a Christmastime classic
my first ever Christmas story, written several eons ago

The snowman grinned. He drove a ’72 Lincoln with the windows down and the A/C on full, smoking Kools and drinking frosty cold cans of Coca-Cola. The Stones played on the eight track. It was December 24th, day vanishing into night.

The Voice was speaking to him over Mick Jagger. It had been all afternoon. It was the same Voice he’d been hearing since he opened his bottle cap eyes and walked off of the abandoned lot of his birth. A nameless voice. The one who whispered. Sometimes it even spoke backward, as though in tongues. It told him to steal the car. Now it was saying, “Smoke, drink and drive fast, for snowmen melt sooner rather than later. We have seen the future, and you are not a part of it.”

The snowman accelerated, his wide white frosty foot on the gas pedal, the speedometer ticking toward 75 mph. Too fast for a snowy, winding rural road. It was 5pm. The snow-shrouded dirt farms, billboards and Christmas lit roadhouses flew by. The last crows on road-kill flew off in murders. The tape deck hissed and played Tumbling Dice.

He sped through a highway intersection where a semi had run into the ditch. The driver waved for the Lincoln to stop, but the Voice said drive on. And the snowman did.

The landscape rolled in the gentle way of a prairie, a moon and stars imminent. The Stones ended. The snowman pulled the cartridge from the deck and threw it out of the window, then put in John Lee Hooker. Boom Boom came bluesy over the speakers as he observed for the first time a suspicious orange glow coming from over the next rise in the road.

A snowman has no word for dread. But if dread was what he felt in that moment, it was a feeling enhanced by nicotine, speed and the voice and guitar of a sharecropper’s son.

He slowed the Lincoln as the road began to run down into a hollow where a homestead had stood next to a creek for a hundred years. A large white house, now in violent flames. And he could see, as he approached, a small knot of people standing in the yard, watching. One of them, a woman, ran frantically from one spectator to another, her arms raised, her clenched fists in her hair.

“Keep driving,” the Voice told the snowman. “We’ve seen what passes here, and you have no part in it.”

But the snowman slowed even more as he approached the long driveway that lead off of the road. He pulled over, killed the engine and turned off the headlights. Then he lit another cigarette and felt the uncomfortable heat of the blaze, not far off.  “That’s one hell of a thing,” he said, meditatively blowing smoke.

“Drive on,” said the Voice.

The snowman’s hand was going for the keys in the ignition, to start the care, when he saw a man run out of a shed with a ladder. The man placed the ladder against the house, beneath a windowsill and begin to climb. It was the only window not issuing flame. But as he neared it, there was an explosion of fire, and the man fell two stories to the ground.

“Sandra,” the woman shouted louder. “Somebody please do something, for God sake. My daughter….”

But there was nothing anyone could do. All of the windows and doorways spewed flame, and the onlookers could only watch. The woman took a desperate run at the open porch door, but was driven back by the heat. The others pulled her away and held her firm. From far off in the distance, came the faint sound of a siren, still a mile or more away.

Stepping out of the car, the snowman paused and watched more resolutely. Still someone in the house. Someone. A child.

“Don’t,” said the Voice.

But the snowman didn’t listen. He walked slowly at first, then faster, then began to run down the driveway toward the inferno.

“You’ll perish,” the Voice said. “You’ll melt before you even get to the door.”

“But there’s so much of me,” said the snowman. The children had made him fat. “And I’m so cold. I may not melt so fast.”

When he got to the yard, he said, “Who? Where?” And at first the people could only stare back, mute. A large, white, grim-faced man of snow. But the woman being held back gasped, “Second floor. Third room down the hall, on the right. My God, she’s only six. She can’t save herself.”

The snowy yard was orange and red, reflecting the colours of the firestorm. Water dripped down the snowman’s forehead.

“You’re melting, even now,” said the Voice.

“There’s enough of me,” the snowman said. “I won’t melt all at once. If I move fast, and she’s easy to find, I….”

“I gave you life,” said the Voice. “You’ve things to see. You’ve no business doing this!”

“Please,” begged the woman.

“These people don’t care about you,” said the Voice, “no matter what you do. Get in the car and drive. The night’s cold and it waits.”

The snowman stopped thinking about it, then stopped listening all together. He was certain then that only he could do this. His mind made up, he ran toward the house, up the veranda steps and through the front door into the flames. Inside, everything glowed. A once decorated tree in a corner of the main room crackled and snapped. The heat was overwhelming. The snowman felt himself melting, maybe faster than he imagined he would. Turning this way and that, he finally saw the staircase and ran for it, racing to the second floor.

Third room on the right. There it was. He entered and saw no one. The flames were finished with the window curtains and were running up the walls and consuming the closet door. He was getting smaller as he sweat. For the first time in his short existence, he felt weak and disoriented.

“Sandra,” he called. But all he heard at first was the fire’s snarl. “Sandra, please. You’re scared. I am, too.”

“Help,” he heard a little voice say. “Help me.”

“Where you are?”

“I’m under the bed.”

The bed, of course. He saw the bedding smoking, then suddenly turn to flame. Quickly he crouched and reached underneath. There was a tiny hand. He grasped it and pulled. A little girl with singed hair, wearing a flannel nightgown appeared. She held a half scorched cloth bear.

“Hey,” she said, then coughed, “you’re a snowman.”

He pulled her close, stood up and began to run. He was thawing fast. His legs felt weak, and there were still the stairs ahead of them. In the hall, pieces of ceiling crumbled and fell. The girl was a small, coughing ball of humanity in his dissolving arms. Stair steps gave way beneath him as he descended, and only by moving very fast did he avoid falling through.

The first floor was now so fully engulfed, he knew that he wouldn’t make it. Even the floor glowed a blackish charcoal red. He dashed for the door as his legs and arms disappeared, and what was left of him fell out of the fiery front door and onto the porch.

Frantically, the people in the yard rushed up the stairs, shielding themselves from the heat. Sandra lay on the threshold, covered in slush. They took her and ran, leaving behind a few stones, a soggy half deck of cigarettes and two bottle cap eyes.

Her mother cried and hugged her little girl. “Did you see the snowman,” Sandra asked, then smiled, catching sight of a rebel star falling across the sky. The roar of flames and the sirens of the approaching fire trucks ruined the quiet of what might have been a nearly silent night.

“Snowmen are such damn fools,” said the Voice. But no one heard.

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lady in the rain

If he had a car, he’d drive away to Jesus, because to him Jesus wasn’t people, just a destination. A roadhouse with faded awnings and a door on rusty hinges, out on a protestant prairie where the winds hadn’t let up since the cretaceous. The parking lot, a quarter acre of grit blown in off the highway where some pickups are parked. Step through the door, Django Reinhardt’s on the jukebox. Everyone’s smoking at the counter, except the farmers who like a pinch between the cheek and gum. Everyone drinks coffee.

The waitress is on the telephone. Bad news, not for the first time. She’s stone, though, hard to move and slow to erode.

This was Jesus in his mind. Where he’d be if he could go.

Jesus the place, the short-lived, coming to mind late at night. Three hundred black and white lines of jumpy resolution at 3.00 a.m., after the meds stop working. But that waitress, the one with the telephone, she’s in colour. Slightly over saturated. The pink glow of her uniform follows her as she refills coffee cups. There are streaks of grey in her hair. Hair that’s been put up and out of the way, though a strand occasionally falls to lie on her cheek. She pushes it back behind her ear, and he sees the pink enamel on her fingernails, sees that the nail of her left ring finger is broken and looks painful, that the skin around the base of her thumb is a little red and cracked.

He sees her other places, besides the roadhouse. In the city. Standing very still on the street as crowds move around her. Like a dashboard Mary. Her uniform’s gone. This time of year, round Christmas, wearing a long surplus greatcoat and worn Docs, once red. When she sees him, she smiles. Then she looks away. Traffic passes by, and she’s gone.

If he could go to Jesus, he would

* * *

In honour of Christmas Eve, Elsa Street pins a small Christmas tree broach onto her hand knit tam o’ shanter. Not quite Goth, but tis the season. In the mirror, she sees a second-hand vision of her mother looking back. She makes a face and carries on, tugging at the sides of her winter coat. There are worse things than resembling your mother. Worse things. Elsa removes the needle from a vinyl Lou Reed album, then pulls on her black kidskin gloves and retrieves her pack and keys. It snowed last night. Now it rains. She remembers at the last moment, and manages to grab her umbrella from the stand before the door closes behind her.

* * *

He’s walked a century of Christmastimes in the rain, against solitude, away from his room and it’s ghosts, all of them talking. Some bullying, commanding, some sad and whispering. All of them wanting part of him. Shoes forever wet. Long beard dirty hair. His eyes too bright, too wide.

He stands at a corner, hands in holy pockets, waiting for the crosswalk light turn the right shade of green. Sometimes this takes a very long time. Sometimes, like now, it’s better to try a different corner, and walking away, he catches sight of her. The rain pelting down, but she’s radiant, colours of a summer mural. She smiles at him, and this time, when a truck passes between them, she hasn’t disappeared. She remains, on the opposite corner.

Once, while in line for a sandwich from the Franciscan Sisters, he mentioned seeing a lady to a Sister, and was told that Our Lady is with us always, but he mustn’t say that he sees Her. When he mentioned what he saw to the Anglicans, he received silence, socks and a book of prayer.

Yet there she was, smiling at him from across Burrard Street. The Franciscan Sister, the old, bucktoothed cheerleader for Christ, may have been right. But he never said she was Our Lady, only a lady. The same one that bites her thumbnail between orders and the shouts of cooks, there in that place called Jesus.

Now he crosses the street, unaware of the traffic light’s shade of green. In fact, it’s red. Car horns, and bike couriers shouting. A Yellow cab tags him just below the knee and spins him around, but he keeps walking, limping badly, to reach the opposite corner. But she’s gone. He stands there for a minute, and a fat man with shiny shoes and a too-tight overcoat forces $2 into his hand.

A few blocks away, Elsa Street stands in a shop, just looking at things. A salesgirl approaches, but Elsa quietly sends her away. At Christmastime, retailers go for the throat. It’s important to possess the newest things. She looks down at her worn Docs. Who was she if she didn’t?

Was she really so removed? So out of touch, remembering Woodward’s Department Store, holding her father’s hand in the Christmas bustle? Maybe she was born so separate from the world. A man in her life said so once, who’d stolen money from her purse. She’d walked away from him, and never met anyone else.

Now she takes an escalator down, and emerges onto Granville Mall, and decides to walk west along Robson. At Burrard, emergency services have congregated. A knot of them, police, fire and ambulance, around a filthy, poorly dressed man seated with his back against a plate glass window. His eyes roll in their sockets. He’s looking for creation, but there’s nothing. She hears someone say he was hit by a cab.

Looking down at him, Elsa sees just one more tragedy. She’s numbed, then slightly ashamed. A cop say mental male into his two-way. She begins to look away, but not before this mental male makes eye contact. She can’t help looking back. A firefighter shoulders through the crowd, nearly knocking the umbrella from her hand, but she holds her ground. And after a moment of quiet, the man on the ground shouts.

“YOU.”

He tries to stand.

“You,” he says again. This time holding out a hand. Elsa tries to step back, but she can’t. His yelling has attracted more people. A police woman asks if Elsa knows him. “No,” says Elsa, but isn’t sure.

He is standing now, has gotten to his feet fast. The ambulance crew moves off, allowing the police to move in.

“It’s you,” he says. “Don’t go. Please don’t go this time. Stay and talk to me, just once.”

A pair of cops step in while a police woman takes Elsa’s arm.

“No,” Elsa says. “It’s okay. I….”

Again, the policewoman says, “Do you know him, ma’am?”

“No.”

“Then move along. He’s not well. He’s not going stop until you go.”

“PLEASE,” he shouts, now holding out both hands. He can hear the scratchy opening bars of Django’s Honeysuckle Rose. Two officers attempt to restrain him, but there’s so little of him to hold onto, and he’s slick with rain. He takes three steps toward Elsa as one of the cops draws a weapon. Now the crowd backs off. The officer shouts, “Taser.” The other cops look confused, but it’s already done. As the emaciated man comes closer to Elsa, there’s a brief hissing sound and he stands frozen in place. Elsa sees the grime beneath his nails, the bulbous knuckles of his starved hands, and then looks up and into his stunned, wet eyes. The dark network of red round the pale hazel irises, telling a life story in the time it takes to gasp. Then he drops to the concrete.

The ambulance team is on him. Rolling him over, checking for vitals, tearing his shirt open. No pulse. Everyone seems surprised. They’re pumping his chest, creating an airway. Elsa feels a hand on her elbow. It’s a cop coaxing her away. No, she won’t go. She’s been called to witness this thing. To breathe the wrongness of a man dying so easily on such an ordinary day?

She sees herself reflected in the plate glass.

* * *

For a while, he stood watching a gentle wind move across the fields of prairie grass. Planets and stars. Then he walked in off the shaded porch, past the faded Orange Crush and Copenhagen ads, and sat at the counter. These were remembered eyes. Eyes he’d seen through before.

“Coffee, stranger?” asks the waitress in pink. She smiles, and he sees creases at the corners of her mouth. The thin lines a woman earns.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah.”

She poured. “Menu?”

“Nah,” he says taking a deck of Players out of his shirt pocket, like the most natural thing in the world. “Bacon and eggs, I guess, with biscuits and gravy.”

“Mighty big plate in this joint, mister. You hungry?”

“Awfully,” he says. Then quieter, “Awfully hungry.”

“Cream,” she says, writing up the order.

“Yes, cream.” He could have cream in his coffee. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Say, you got some nickels?”

He pats his jeans pockets. There’s something there. “Uh huh.”

“Do a girl a favour and drop some in the juke. Nothing worth a damn on the radio this morning.”

Outside, a pickup pulls in. The country twang on the truck’s radio dies and both doors open and slam shut. There’s some good-humoured chatter coming up the stairs. The voices of happy people who mean no harm.

“Gonna be a damn fine day,” says the lady bringing him cream for his coffee.

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a toy once loved

1964

What surprised her was how the burden hadn’t fallen heavily upon her heart, but had gently wrapped itself round, like a mist. She’d had a successful year in business, and was able now to give her friends this gift of a train trip through Christmas. But intuition told her that success was only one wheel of many, and some wheels turn best at the expense of others.

Of this she was certain, standing there in her red wool coat, surrounded by porters, passengers and newsies, in the frenetic motion around her on the platform, aware only of it all slowing down in that moment, nearly to a stop, as the CN Super Continental rolled into the station, the perfume of diesel filling the air. In contrast to her melancholy, this was fantasy come true, the anticipation of travel, her greatest love, and Christmas aboard this luxurious behemoth. A waking dream, in which she was absolutely lost. Until she felt someone tapped her on the shoulder.

“Wakey-wakey,” the someone said, and Elinor’s dreaming moment quickly faded, along with her escape from the blues. It was her friend Margy at her side. “Time to board,” she said. “Are you coming with us?”

“Yes,” said Elinor, “Of course.” She took a ticket from her coat pocket, and held it in the air for all to see.

“You okay?” Margy asked.

Elinor quietly nodded.

And there they all were with her; Margy and Ian, Harland and Michelle, Marijus and Jennifer, Cindy and Geoff.

The Conductor and his assistants were on the platform checking tickets and directing passengers, First Class and Second, and ensuring luggage was loaded. And as the friends lined up to board their First Class car, Elinor noticed the private coach just down the way. Private, she knew, because after some consultation with the Conductor, only three people boarded. A large and dapper bearded man in a tweed overcoat and shoes with the burgundy gloss of fine leather, followed onboard by a young man and woman, equally well dressed. And that was it. No line of passengers behind them waiting to board. Only the three. And as Elinor looked on, before he boarded, the large and dapper man looked back and gave her a wink.

How strange.

Elinor had seen private rail coaches before, and was glad each time to have the chance to play her own secret game of guessing, and sometimes even discovering, the identity of the grand passengers.

Once aboard, the group of friends stood a moment deciding where to sit, when greeted by a young man in a white jacket to the waist neatly fastened by a double row of polished brass buttons, and black expertly pressed pants. He bowed slightly, quietly clicking his heels and nearly smiled.

“The Warkentin party I presume,” he said, with a bored European accent difficult to place, The man’s posture, gold piping and spotless white gloves made him seem terribly important. Perhaps he thought he was.

“That’s us,” said Marijus.

“Well welcome. I am Maurice, your Car Attendant, assigned to make your journey a comfortable one. Please be seated, or explore the cars. The cocktail lounge and dining room are in that direction, but please,” he said, looking mildly repulsed, “please avoid second class.” Then changing his attitude, he said, “And please, there is a private coach. You’ll know it, if come to it, by the sign on the door. The door will be locked, naturally.”

“I think he tweezes his eye brows,” Harland whispered into Michelle’s ear. He took an unseen but expertly executed elbow to the ribs.

“Your personal accouterments have been placed in each of your sleeping compartments. I’ll take you to them for inspection as soon as I attend to  another party. Are there any questions?”

“I think we’re fine for now,” said Cindy.

“But who’s in the private car?” Elinor asked.

“But one never asks that,” Maurice pointedly answered, the slick of his Brilliantined hair becoming a bit slickier. “It’s just not done. His privacy must be absolute, as with all private passengers.”

“His?”

The railcar shook gently, as the trip commenced. The Christmas trip Elinor and company had planned for a year.

“Please leave your coats at the coat check,” said Maurice, guiding them, then walking away.

“Do you think he tweezes his eyebrows?“ Geoff said, as they all sat down.

“Looks like it to me,” said Ian.

“See?” Harland whispered into Michelle’s ear.

“Cocktail time, I think,”  Jennifer said, as the train ran the cut through Vancouver’s east end.

“That’s a girl,” said Marijus. “Maurice pointed that way for the booze can, so let’s go.”

“Let’s go, indeed,” Cindy and Geoff said together.

At the lounge entrance, they were greeted by a gaunt and elderly man, grey and slightly stooped, who like Maurice, wore a snuggly fitted white jacket. His name tag read, Jack.

“There are nine of you,” Jack said.

“Yes,” said Elinor.

“Nine,” Jack repeated.

“That’s right.”

“I’ll have to put tables together,” he said, without budging. “I’ve the arthritis; do you know what that’s like?”

“No,” Cindy and Geoff said together. “Oh dear.”

“It aches,” said Jack. “Carrying trays is a challenge.” He was solemn. “Getting out of bed, maintaining personal hygiene. It aches.”

“Sorry about that, mate,” Harland said, “but can we be seated, please.”

“Nine,” Jack repeated. “I’ll have to put tables together.” He gazed off in the direction of the lounge. “I’ve the arthritis, you know.”

He wondered off, grimly.

“I say we slip the bartender a few bucks under the table,” said Marijus. “Buy us a bottle of rye. We can go back where we came from, sit down and have a party. Maybe get some paper cups from somewhere.”

“Not so fast,” Jennifer said, nodding toward the lounge where Jack was instructing  a young bar port on how to properly put tables together and place chairs, then lay on peanuts, napkins, coasters, candles and ashtrays.

“No, no, no,” Jack was saying quietly but sternly, pointing his finger here and there.

Returning to the party of nine, he said, arthritically taking nine cocktail menus from a caddy, “Please come this way.” He walked slowly, so the party of friends did too.

“Your table, ladies and gentlemen,” Jack said, “which was two tables only moments ago. Sorry to make you wait, but I’m not the young man I once was. My knees and shoulders are especially bad. But can life be any different? Please choose from our extensive list, and I’ll be back shortly. There’s aspirin behind the bar.”

“It’s retirement time for that old duffer,” Marijus said. “Needs to go somewhere nice, with a masseuse and soft food.”

When Jack returned, he had the bar port with him who’d arranged the tables into one. The nervous teen had pad and pencil in hand. “Are we ready to order?” Jack said.

“We’d like to share a bottle of wine,” Margy said. “Or at least, some of us do. Maybe a burgundy, Pinot noir? How is this Moorooduc 1961 McIntyre.”

“Disappointing, I’m afraid,” said Jack.

“Oh, then the Et Fille Heredity Pinot Noir?”

Jack shook his head, “Absolute plonk, sad to say.”

“Then what do you recommend?”

“Becks, ma’am.”

“The wine?”

“No ma’am, the beer. It’s your safest choice.”

“Oh, I’ll have that,” Michelle said. “I like Becks.”

“Me too,” said Cindy with enthusiasm.

“Alright,” Margy said, with less enthusiasm and wondering if second class might be better, after all.

“What’s this hot rum with marzipan thing?” Ian asked.

“Rum with a stick of marzipan,” said Jack, without encouragement.

“Becks, then?” Ian said.

Jack nodded.

And so it went around the table until it was Elinor’s turn.

“Icelandic vodka and cranberry juice,” she said, in a mood that seemed low.

“Oh I’d like that instead,” Margy said.

“Me too,” said Jennifer, ”That sounds nice.”

“Yes, cross out the Becks,” Cindy said. “I’ll have what she’s having.”
“Well write down!” said Jack, rolling his eyes, scolding the bar port.

“And I’ll have that hot rum with marzipan, after all,” said Ian. “And pretzels.”

“Yeah, pretzels,” Marijus said. “Where are the gosh darn pretzels?”

Then after a moment of thought, Harland asked Jack, “What’s with that guy, Maurice?”

“We have two Maurices at work on board,” Jack said. “Do you mean the chef, or the one who tweezes his eye brows?”

Harland gave Michelle a nudge.

“Yeah,” said Marijus, “the tweezing guy, what’s with him?”

“Just don’t mention Vladivostok,” Jack said, and walked away with the bar port.

It was then that Elinor rose, and took the window seat at a table down the way, near the Christmas tree. Solitude sat quietly across from her, as she watched out the window at the snow on suburban streets, and as the distance grew between street lights. After a spell, Jennifer, Cindy,  Michelle and Margy came to sit with her.

“Interesting view,” said Michelle, “too bad it’s dark.”

Dark, really? Maybe not so dark, the surface of snowy streets being known to reflect an absent light near Christmas, and cast eccentric shadows. Oh holy night…

Elinor smiled, sincerely sighed and took sip of what was left of her drink.

“All right, dearie,” Jennifer said, “what’s the matter?”

—the hushed rumble of wheels, a pianist softly playing—

“This trip, it isn’t what I expected.”

An answer inked in hurt.

“It’s only the first night,” said Cindy. “Has something happened? Another passenger say something? You better tell us so we can make it right. We still have a long way to go.”

“Was it that Maurice weirdo?” Jennifer asks. “I’ll have him put in a cage if he’s said or done something mean to you.”

“No,” said Elinor. “I like him. He doesn’t know he’s trying too hard, but I do.”

“That’s very generous,” said Michelle.

“I’ll say,” Jennifer agreed.

“No,” said Elinor. “It’s just something that hit me back on the station platform. Maybe it hit me before then, a long time ago, and I’ve just lived round it.”

“And?” someone said.

Elinor finished her cocktail.

“It’s a small thing,” she said. “Selfish and embarrassing. It’s boring, and I don’t want to talk about it. I just need some sleep.”

“It’s because it’s Christmas,” Cindy said.

“You’re trying too hard, Elinor,” said Jennifer. “You don’t know it, but we do. You’re trying too hard to keep things from your friends.”

Yes, that’s it, Elinor thought. Clever Cindy/clever Jennifer, or maybe it’s something completely different. Oh too bad, Jennifer/Cindy, looks like you’ve both missed the mark—

It’s when her brakes fail one more time, and in her mind, she screeches to a stop at the gate. The gate that opens with a creak, so she can’t ignore it, and she sees it from her side of the picket fence. A momentary summer, a familiar child, warm in the yard. The kitchen door’s open, but the screen door’s closed. The little girl with a ragdoll. But Elinor can never hold on to it. What she sees always vanishes, but somehow she knows the grass keeps growing.

“I left my childhood somewhere,” she whispers. To hell with them, the whisper belongs to her. Then not much louder, “And I can’t find her. My responsibility, but one day she just wasn’t there. Lost on a sidewalk or at a bus stop somewhere nearby, but invisible. And she took so many memories with her, the feelings and flavours. How I saw things through those eyes; it’s all gone. And she took some of the people I loved most with her, the brat. I don’t know why it’s all coming out now.”

“It happens to us all,” said Cindy, as the ceiling lights dimmed, and a waitress lit a candle on their table. Formal dining begins soon.

“Yeah, Elinor,” Jennifer said. “Everyone.”

“Is that what this journey’s about?” Margy asks.

You’re doomed, Baby Jesus. Run like hell as soon as you’ve got the legs for it, the world can’t leave itself alone. The stars are brightly shining.

“I’m getting out in Winnipeg,” said Elinor. “Renting a car, driving home to Grunthal.”

This was unexpected. There are seconds of surprise, a quickly evolving empathy. Heads tilted ever so slightly.

“Winnipeg?”

“Yes.”

“I think you’re expecting too much of that little town,” Jennifer said, “if you’re going there for what I think you are. Grunthal’s not your home anymore. You know that, right? I mean, sure, get out at Winnipeg. Rent a car, by all means. Drive there and visit. Give everyone lots of hugs. Hell, hug ‘em all for me. But go there for family, not to break your own heart.”

“The Grunthal you grew up in is gone,” said Michelle. “All you’ll find there is the person we’re talking to right now. Come back and sit with us.”

Elinor wants another drink. She wants to say, “Line ‘em up.” But instead, she said, “I’m going for a walk,” and stands up.“ I want to check out second class. I’ll be back in a while.” But she knew that wasn’t true.

It was time for her and the private car to meet.

The Coach wasn’t difficult to find, at the end of the long of line of cars. It had been a miracle of unlocked doorways, even through the luggage car. And when she arrived, it was just how Maurice had said, the brass sign on the door said, Private, go away. But  the door was unlocked when she turned the nob, leaving the question: should she enter or go away? But walking away would ensure the melancholy she’d brought with her on the journey would remain. To enter, however, would be a fantastic distraction. Perhaps a solution to an unconscious yearning, an operatic climax caused by the crime of trespass. Just what she needed. She opened the door and stepped over the threshold.

The scents of sandalwood and cinnamon greeted her as she entered the car, and the pale chiming of tiny bells. The walls were panelled in dark mahogany, and lined with shelves, floor to ceiling, each filled with ancient leather bond tomes and stacks of pulpy paperback detective novels, each row of books punctuated by small Baroque and Renaissance figurines and exquisitely carved statuettes of Shiva, Buddha and Ganesha, making each shelf an avenue of silver and gold, marble and teak, and  hundreds books.

The coach was dim, though. The bulbs in wall sconces turned low, while the lighted candles set in strangely designed candelabras did little to compensate. From somewhere out of sight came the voice of Blossom Dearie singing Comment allez-vous, and in a far corner stood a tall sparkle-lit Christmas tree. Enchantment surrounded her.

Further into the coach, she found another floor to ceiling item, a cabinet topped with a brilliant dome of stained glass. Behind its bevel glass doors were shelves crowded with age-old toys, dolls with untidy hair and fixed gazing eyes, and other toys, fading tin cars and soldiers, slightly dilapidated dollhouses once crafted with care, cowboys hats and cap-guns, and more. Each, she was certain, having once belonged to a child long passed away. It was a museum. She touched the glass, wanting to know the stories.

Then down the way she saw what she hadn’t before, a sliver of light escaping from a door slightly ajar. Now nothing else mattered. She was overwhelmed with curiosity. She’d come this far, just a little further might answer every question. She stepped up the door, and opened it a little more. And peeking in with one eye, she saw him, the large man, a little on the fat-side she decided, and now up close, a little white around the beard.

He sat at a table in his shirt sleeves and red socks, with the young man and woman who’d boarded with him, each of the two pale with white hair and sapphire eyes. All three were making notes as they scanned ledgers. And without looking up or turning round to look, the big man said, “You must be Elinor, that clutter woman.” Then he turned a page in his ledger.

“Well, come in.” He pushed the heavy book away, and looked at her peeking in. “You’ve found us now, so come in and stop your spying. You two,” he said to the pale man and woman, “it’s break time.” They stood and walked away.

“They call me Sam,” he said, holding out a hand to shake, so they shook, Elinor seeing a fine kindness in his eyes.

“It’s a couple of days early, but I’m glad you came,” he said taking a key from his pocket, “and since we won’t meet again, I’ll give you the gift I have for you.”

Sam escorted Elinor out of the room with ledgers, and to the cabinet of toys.

“All so wonderful,” he said, smiling, seeming deeply move as he looked through the glass. Then, sighing, he said, “Each has come back to me all on its own.” He unlocked and opened the cabinet and took out a small wooden horse. It stood on a small wheeled platform, that had allowed it to gallop through many-an-adventure. He put it into Elinor’s hand, and said, “Go ahead, turn it over and take a look.”

She did, and saw, written in fountain pen ink, in a very serious child’s hand, a name so familiar to her. The name of her grandfather, Peter Klassen.

“Sometimes a toy will find its way back to me,” said Sam. “Part of its journey, you might say. It belonged to Peter. It was a Christmas gift. He loved it for a long time, but grew up. The way children do, and he didn’t love it anymore. So, it came to me to stand in my little museum. Now it’s yours. He’d want you to have it.” It was yellow, with a blue mane and tail, faded and a little scratched.

“How can this be possible? I don’t believe you.” She wanted to throw in to the floor, but couldn’t.

“He’d a green thumb, sat at your beside and told the most wonderful stories.  Some called him Watermelon Klassen. That’s just a bit of the man, of course. There’s an entire universe more.”

“This is cruel.” Elinor handed it back, but he wouldn’t take it. “Who have you been talking to, getting this information from? One of my friends I bet. The joke’s on me.”

“Do any of them know about your grandfather?”

“No,” she said. But was she wrong?

“You believe me though, don’t you. Like anyone else, you can’t help it.”

She wouldn’t, and mustn’t. How dare he. But with holding the little toy horse came feelings, remembered times. If this was magic, then it was too much at once.

“Please keep it,” Sam said, the kindness shining in his eyes. “It’s yours now. Remember it’s on a journey. You’re only one stop along its way.”

From somewhere unseen, there was a click and a plop, the sound of a wax disc dropping onto another on a turntable. The one playing Blossom Dearie when she entered the coach, and then something after that, that she couldn’t remember. Now, after a scratchy wax  intro, Sarah Vaughan began to sing It Might as Well Be Spring.

“Ah, Sarah,” he said, whimsically.

“You’re him!” said Elinor.

“Him who?”

“Or some fraud who likes to play him.”

“We believe what we must,” Sam said, “but that’s all beside the point. Just remember this, a toy once loved never lies.”

*   *   *   *   *

Later in her sleeping compartment, warm in the soft lamplight, she looked once more at the wooden toy on the shelf next her bed. She’d taken it from Sam, the old fraud, and not left it behind, to not break his heart, but she’d wonder if that was true if she looked deeply inside of herself. Then against her better judgement, she took it from the shelf, and gave it another good look before holding it to her heart and closing her eyes. And then like a theatre gone dark, and a motion picture just beginning, what was once lost was found again, as vivid visions of childhood flickered on a screen, summer after summer, Christmas after Christmas, and wonderful story after wonderful story, until morning, the morning of Christmas Eve.

Waking, Elinor quickly dressed and rushed through the cars to the private coach. She didn’t even know why. To thank him? But thanking Sam would be like accepting the magic as real, not a dream, not merely suggested. But she’d decide what to say when she met him again.

Now she was at the door of the coach and pushed it open, and when she did, she saw the walls were bare, the avenues of books and statues, silver and gold, marble and teak were gone. The toy museum, vanished. The Coach was bare of furniture and the Christmas tree.

She found Maurice in the little room at the back, wearing his immaculate costume, supervising a cleaning lady washing the floor. Nothing of the table, chairs or ledgers remained. There was an unplugged  Hoover just outside of the door.

“Where is he?” she said, nearly shouting.

“Sam, you mean?”

“Yes, damn it, Sam.”

“He’s gone, of course.”

“Gone where, how? The train hasn’t stopped all night.”

“Well, it’s a busy day for him,” said Maurice. “He can’t loiter to say his farewells.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Maurice just shrugged, and directed the cleaning lady to a spot she’d missed.

It had been a slow walk back to the seat at a window Elinor now occupied, with a cup of coffee. The sun had come out, to shine on the snowy white landscape, and she smiled between sips of coffee. She’d searched every seat in every car for him, but he was absolutely gone. They’d be rolling in to Winnipeg soon, where she’d step off the train long enough to make a Merry Christmas phone call to family and friends in Grunthal, then board the CN Super Continental for the rest of the journey.

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