The voice faded away but he knew the whole thing now. That boy was Christ. There wasn’t any doubt about it. The boy was Christ and he had come up from Tucson and now his mother was hunting and crying for him. He could see Christ coming up from Tucson trembling out of the desert heat waves with purple robes flowing from him like in a mirage. Christ came right into the railway station and sat down with them.
It seemed like there must be a little room somewhere off from the station and they were playing blackjack there waiting for the train to go. He didn’t know the other guys and they didn’t know him but it didn’t seem to make any difference. Outside the crowds were yelling and the bands were playing and here he was with four or five guys in a quiet little room and they were playing blackjack when Christ came up from Tucson and walked in on them. The guy with red hair looked up and said you play blackjack? and Christ said sure and the guy who looked like a Swede said then pull up a chair. Table stakes said the guy with red hair and be sure your bet’s out before the first card. Christ said okay and fished around in his pocket and pulled out a quarter and laid it down.
The guy with red hair began to deal and everybody began to watch the cards except the Swede who grunted and said Christ I wish we had a drink here. Christ kind of grinned and said why don’t you drink it if you want it so bad? The guy who looked like a Swede turned and looked at Christ and then he looked down at the table and sure enough there was a glass of whiskey sitting by his right hand and everybody had a drink of whiskey sitting there. They all looked up at Christ and the guy with red hair said how in hell did you do that? Christ just smiled and said I can do anything hit me only not too hard. The dealer hit him and Christ looked at the card like it was bad news. Then he pushed his money toward the dealer. I never could hit a twelve he said in a complaining voice. I don’t understand it because a twelve shouldn’t be any harder to hit than a thirteen should it? It shouldn’t be only it is said the guy with red hair. There is nothing to that it’s all the bunk said the guy who looked like a Swede a twelve is just like any other number above it only better and anybody tells you any different is filled with superstition. Gosh said a quiet little guy who had been winning and now was sampling the whiskey this stuff is mighty good liquor try it. It ought to be good said Christ still looking at his dough out there on the table it’s sixteen years old.
All of a sudden the guy with red hair threw down his cards and stood up stretching and yawning. Well he said it’s all aboard outside I got to go. We all got to go. I’m going to be killed on the twenty-seventh of June and I got to say goodbye to my wife and kid. The kid he’s only a year eight months but smart as hell already I’d like to see him when he’s five. I can see myself getting killed plain. It’s just after daybreak all cool and nice with a brand new sun and the air smelling good. We’re going over and I’m a sergeant by then so I go over first. Just as I get my head over the edge a bullet hits me like a hammer. I fall back clear across the trench and try to tell the other guys to go on without me only I can’t talk and they go over anyhow. I lie there seeing only their legs as they run by and climb up and disappear. I kick and squirm for a minute like a chicken and then I snuggle down against the dirt. That bullet got me in the throat so I just snuggle down there peaceful like and watch the blood run out and then I’m dead. But my wife don’t know it so I got to tell her goodbye just like I thought I was coming back.
Hell said the little guy who had been winning you talk like you was the only one. We’re all going to be killed that’s why we’re here. Christ he’s already dead and the big Swede over there is going to catch flu and die in camp and you in the corner you’re going to get blown so damned high nobody’ll ever have a souvenir and me I’m going to get buried in a trench cave-in and smother now isn’t that a hell of a way to die?
All of a sudden they were all quiet listening and the guy with red hair said what’s that? Somewhere in the air way far above them there was music. It was high thin music like a ghost passing through the sunlight. It was pale white music so beautiful so very faint and yet loud enough for all of them to hear. It was music like a soft breeze that finds it way out beyond the place where there is air where there is only space. It was music so faint so shivery so sweet that it made them all tremble as they stood and listened. It is the music of death said Christ the high thin music of death.
Everybody was still for a minute and then the little guy who had been winning said what the hell’s this other guy doing here he ain’t going to die. And then everybody looked at him. For a minute he didn’t know what to say he felt like somebody who’s come to a party he hasn’t any invitation to and then he cleared his throat and said maybe you’re right but I’m going to be the same as dead. You see I’m going to have my arms and legs blown off and my face shot out so I can’t see or hear or talk or breathe and I’m going to live even if I am dead.
They all looked at him and finally the guy who looked like a Swede said Jesus he’s worse off than we are. There was a little more silence and all of them seemed to be looking at the guy with red hair as if he was the boss. Hell said the guy with red hair after staring hard at him he’s all right leave him alone. So they all went out to the train.
On the way out to the train the little guy who had been winning said to Christ Christ are you going with us? And Christ said for a little ways but not far I got lots of trains to meet lots of dead men lots of them you wouldn’t believe it. So they climbed on the train and Christ made just an easy little jump and swung right smack up on top of the engine. When the train started up everybody thought it was the train’s whistle made the noise but it wasn’t it was Christ perched up there and screaming that made the noise. So the train went rushing and screaming away with Christ perched on top of the engine his clothes trailing after him and hollering at the top of his voice. The train went so fast all you could see looking out of the window was a line between the sky and the earth and nothing else.
Pretty soon the train was in the middle of a big desert a hot yellow desert that shivered under the sun. Away off in the distance there was a cloud—a haze that was floating between the sky and the earth but nearer to the earth. And out of the haze was Christ coming up from Tucson. Christ floated there above the desert with purple robes drifting down and the heat waves swimming up around him.
Looking at Christ there above the desert he couldn’t stand it any longer on the train. Dead men were on that train dead men or live men and he wasn’t either so he had no business being there. He had no business being anywhere there was no place for him he was forgotten and abandoned and left forever alone. So he jumped out of the train right through the window and started running toward Christ.
The nightmare train went on through the sunlight its whistle screeching and the dead men inside laughing. But he was alone in the desert running running till his lungs squeaked running toward Christ who floated there in the heat with purple robes. He ran and he ran and he ran and finally he came up to Christ. He threw himself into the hot sand at the feet of Christ and began to cry.
xvii
He awakened as a man awakens out of a drunk—hazy-brained and foggy swimming slowly and painfully back toward reality. He awakened tapping with his head against his pillow. The tapping by now had become so much a part of awakening that the first glimmer of consciousness found him already tapping and later on when exhaustion overcame him and his mind began to grow dim and sleep crept over his body he was still tapping. He lay there not thinking of anything his brain aching and throbbing and his head tapping against the pillow. SOS. Help.
And then as his mind sharpened and began to think instead of only to feel he stopped his tapping and lay still. Something very important was happening. He had a new day nurse.
He could tell it the minute the door opened and she began to walk across the room. Her footsteps were light where those of his regular day nurse his old efficient fast-working day nurse were heavy. It took five steps to bring this new one to his bedside. That meant she was shorter than th
e regular nurse and probably younger too because the very vibration of her footsteps seemed gay and buoyant. It was the first time within his memory that the regular day nurse had not appeared to take care of him.
He lay very still very tense. This was like learning a new secret like opening a new world. Without a moment’s hesitation the new nurse threw back his covers. And then like all of the others before her she stood quietly for a moment beside his bed. He knew she was staring down at him. He knew she must have been told what to expect. Yet the sight of him was probably so much worse than any description that she could do nothing for that first instant but stare. Then instead of hastily throwing the covers back over him as some of them did or running out of the room or standing and weeping and letting the tears fall against his chest she put her hand against his forehead. No one had ever done it before hi just this way. Perhaps no one had been able to do it. It was like putting a hand near an open cancer something so terrible and sickening that no one could endure the thought much less the action. Yet this new nurse this nurse with the light happy step was not afraid.
She put her hand to his forehead and he felt that her hand was young and small and moist. She put her hand to his forehead and he tried to ripple his skin to show her how much he appreciated the way she had done it. It was like resting after a long long period of work. It was almost like sleep it was so lovely and soothing to have her hand against his head.
Then he began to think of the possibilities of this new nurse. For some reason the old one was gone. The old, one had never understood what he was trying to do had never understood that he was trying with every ounce of his strength to talk to her. She had paid no attention at all to his tapping except to try to stop it. But she was gone and in her place he had a new nurse a young new nurse who was unafraid and gentle. How long he would have her no one could tell. She might leave the room and never come back again. But for the moment he had her and he knew that somehow she felt as he felt or she couldn’t have put her hand so quickly to his forehead. If he could tap very firmly very clearly very plainly to her she might understand what no one else had considered worth trying to understand. She might understand that he was talking. The old nurse might return and he might never hear the footsteps of the new one again. If this new one went his last chance would go with her. He would go on through the rest of his life tapping tapping tapping with no one understanding that he was trying to work a miracle. The new nurse was his reprieve his one tiny opportunity in all the hours and weeks and years of his life.
He stiffened the muscles of his neck and prepared once more to start tapping his head against the pillow. But another strange thing was happening to arrest him. She had opened his nightshirt so that his breast was now naked to the air. She was moving the tip of her finger against the skin of his breast. For a moment he was merely puzzled unable to understand what she was doing. Then by concentrating all of his mind on the skin of his breast he began to understand that her finger was not travelling aimlessly. It was making a design against his skin. It was making the same design over and over again. He knew there was some purpose behind such repetition and he grew tense and alert to discover it. Like an eager dog spoken to by its master and trying very hard to be good and to understand he lay stiffly and concentrated on the design the nurse was making.
The first thing he noted about the design was that it had no curves. It was all straight lines and angles. It began with a straight line moving up and then it went down at an angle and then it came up again at an angle and then it went straight down and stopped. She repeated the design over and over now slowly now rapidly now slowly again. Sometimes she paused at the finish of the design and with the strange understanding that seemed to have sprung up between them he knew that her pauses were question marks that she was looking down at him and asking him if he understood and waiting for his response.
Each time she paused he shook his head and then she repeated the design once more and in the midst of this patient repetition the barrier between them suddenly broke down. With one quick rush of comprehension he understood what she was doing. She was tracing the letter M against the skin of his breast. He nodded quickly to tell her that he understood and she patted his forehead encouragingly as if to say you are remarkable you are wonderful how hard you try and how quickly you learn. Then she began to trace other letters.
The others came easier because he now understood what she was doing. He tightened the skin of his chest so that he could better receive the impression of her finger. Some of the letters she had to do only once he was so quick at getting them. He got the letter E and he nodded and the letter R and he nodded and again the R and then he got the letter Y and he nodded and there was a long pause. The rest of the letters tumbled into his mind in a perfect torrent. There was C and H and R and I and S and T and M and A and S and the whole thing spelled merry christmas.
Merry christmas merry christmas merry christmas.
Now he understood. The old nurse had left to spend the christmas holidays away from him and this new nurse this young lovely beautiful understanding new nurse was wishing him merry christmas. He nodded back at her frantically and his nod meant merry christmas to you merry christmas oh a merry merry christmas.
He thought to himself with a kind of hysterical happiness four years maybe five maybe six years I don’t know how many years but I’ve been alone through all of them. He thought all my good work is gone all my way of keeping time has been forgotten but I don’t care I am no longer alone. The years and years and years that he had been alone and now for the first time someone breaking through someone talking to him someone saying merry christmas. It was like a dazzling white light in the midst of darkness. It was like a great beautiful sound in the midst of silence. It was like an enormous laugh in the midst of death. It was christmas and someone had broken through and was wishing him merry christmas.
He heard the sound of sleigh bells and the crunch of snow and he saw candles in windows shining out upon the snow warm and yellow and there were wreaths of holly with red berries nestling like hot coals against them and there was a clear sky overhead with clean blue-white little stars and there was a feeling of peace and joy and relief because it was christmas. He had been taken back into the world.
Merry christmas merry christmas merry christmas.
Twas the night before christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…
In every christmas eve since he could remember his mother had read the poem. Even after he was much too old to believe in Santa Claus even after he was a man maybe sixteen or seventeen years old still she read the poem on christmas eve. In the beginning when they were all together it was a wonderful thing to hear her read it. They gathered in the living room of the house in Shale City every christmas eve before going to bed to listen to his mother read the poem. His father would have been working late at the store filling last minute christmas orders but at ten o’clock the store closed and his father came home. It was snowy and cold outside but the living room was always very snug and the pot-bellied coal-burning stove would be glowing a warm dusty red around its base.
Elizabeth being very young would be asleep in her bed but Catherine would be there and his father and mother and himself. Catherine would be in her nightgown her discarded clothes in a heap near the stove so they would be warm when she scrambled into them on christmas morning. They had no fireplace so the back of a chair served for a mantel. Hung on the chair were all of their stockings his father’s his mother’s Elizabeth’s tiny little baby stocking Catherine’s and his own. His father would be sitting back in the morris chair and Catherine would be snuggled against his legs. His mother would be in another chair with the opened book before her. Why his mother read the poem from a book no one could imagine except that it was a custom because they all knew it by heart. He would be on the floor huddled up with his hands around his legs st
aring at the door of the stove where the flames leaped behind isin-glass windows.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a lustre of midday to objects below when what to my wandering eyes should appear but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer…
None of them ever forgot the poem. They could recite the whole thing any time of the year because it was the poem of christmas. As they listened to the poem it seemed that a delicious air of mystery stole over the room. Each member of the family had a little cache of gifts hidden somewhere in the house away from the others. It was very dishonorable for anyone to snoop on the day before christmas so no one ever did but there was no harm in speculating upon where the gifts might be hidden.
His mother’s face as she read seemed to take on a warm happy glow. She was there in her own house with her family around her and they were all alive and it was christmas eve and she was reading the poem she always read. It was so warm so secure so comforting to be home on christmas eve to be in a nice room with a good stove to feel somehow that here was a place in the wilderness a place forever safe a place that could never be changed could never be harmed could never be intruded upon. And now…he wondered about his mother tonight…his father gone and him away and it being christmas eve again. He wondered if somewhere in the world his mother at this moment might not be reading the poem. He could almost hear her voice thrill with excitement as she came to the climax.
Now Dasher now Dancer now Prancer and Vixen—on Comet on Cupid on Dunder and Blitzen—to the top of the porch to the top of the wall now dash away dash away dash away all…