The Santa Shop

I woke with a sharp pain in my thigh. The cardboard I had earlier pulled over me for protection against the wind was gone and the frigid wind stabbed easily through my ragged clothes. The policeman kicked me again, in the stomach this time.

  "Move on, buddy. You can't stay here." His voice was callous and cracked with age.

  I didn't argue, didn't even look up, just staggered to my feet and made my way out of the small alcove of the brick apartment building, back into the dark street. I knew I had to go at least a dozen blocks to be out of his beat. With luck, the next policeman would be younger and not so street-hardened. I longed to settle down and sleep in one spot for more than a few hours. How long had it been since I'd slept peacefully? A lifetime — no — two lifetimes... the lifetimes of my wife and little boy.

  I gritted my teeth and trudged on, thankful there was no snow yet. Christmas lights glared at me from many of the apartment windows I passed. I didn't know for certain, but it seemed to me the dreaded holiday was only a week or so away. Just the thought of it gave me a sinking feeling inside.

  I fought against it, but the memories of my last Christmas flooded my mind. I remembered the way Tabitha had laughed and joked until I broke the news. I remembered the way she had coddled Derek as I left the apartment that night. The accusation in her eyes had stayed with me every day since.

  How could I have known? How could anyone have known that Santa Claus would be a jacked-up teen with an addiction in the apartment below ours? And who could have guessed that the kid would attempt to light a cigarette with his gas stove and instead catch his hair on fire? Like a campfire to kindling, the flames had spread rapidly through the dried wood of the old building. In just moments, all four stories had erupted into flames.

  I rounded a corner and made my way east, my mind still toiling through the memories. I should have been there. I had desperately needed to be there. But once again my work had taken priority. "Another few months," I remembered telling her, "and we'll have all the time in the world. Another few months and we can move out of this apartment and get someplace nice for Derek."

  "But we need you now," she countered. "It's Christmas Eve."

  "I know, Tabby, but the partners are expecting me. We can still get a sitter if you want to go to the party with me."

  "No!"

  She hadn't been about to leave the baby alone on Christmas Eve. I might have been a heartless parent, but she wasn't. Ultimately, I had gone alone to the firm's Christmas party without her. I had left my family alone, instead choosing to be with a bunch of lawyers who neither thought about nor cared a single iota for me or for my family.

  For those people and for my own warped sense of priorities, I had left my family alone to die.

  In all, twelve tenants had been pulled from the building and laid with sheets over their bodies. Most, like my wife and son, had suffocated in the thick smoke. The police said Tabitha made it all the way to Derek's room, but there she collapsed. They found her beside the crib, her hand still grasping the lower rail. Neither she nor Derek had survived.

  I was near the Holy Trinity Church when I finally shook the flashback. The biting wind didn't matter any more. I could never endure enough pain to wash my wife and son's blood from my hands. Even if I had been able to get a job and put my life back together, it just wouldn't be right. How could I continue in comfort in this world when the two most important people in my life now lay dead in their coffins?

  I had been toying with the idea for months, and once again, thoughts of suicide ran through my head. Why should I enjoy the breaths that they could no longer take?

  I wondered what had ever happened to the crack-head. Yes, he had survived the fire. Other than some singed hair he'd been fine. At first, I had hated him. I had even searched for him in a couple of halfway houses in the two months that followed the funerals. He wasn't at either place. The police told me they didn't know where he'd gone, but I suspected they really just didn't want me to know. It was my guess that the strung-out teen had followed his drug habit into the back seat of some drifter's van. He was probably lighting cigarettes with a gas stove hundreds of miles away.

  It no longer mattered to me where he was. I ultimately knew who was to blame for the death of my family. And only a mirror could show me his guilt-ridden face.

  As I approached the church, I once again wondered how I could manage to shoot myself. I didn't have a gun or the means to buy one. Money didn't come easy to the homeless, even those who were self-made.

  Of course, I could have always called my father in Virginia and asked to borrow the money. I could have said I needed to buy a suit for job interviews. The fact that the old buzzard hadn't known or cared where I'd been in the last twenty years presented a bit of a problem. My last memory of him was his fist hitting the side of my forehead just before he threw me out his front door. No, asking him hadn't been an option, and even if it had, I would never have communicated with the monster. A wife-beater and a card shark were the kindest terms I could think of.

  Though my mother had died when I was only six, I remembered her to be a wonderful and loving woman. But I also remembered her as a woman with bruises and lots of tears. After her death, my father had systematically beaten his next two wives who had both ultimately divorced him. He'd been pounding on a live-in girlfriend when, at fourteen years old, I had finally had enough. I stepped between him and the mousy woman and took one swing.

  I've often wondered if I could have done more with my youthful anger, but I'd been so surprised by my solid jab to his eye that I hadn't thought in time to block his return punch. I had still been in shock as he launched me backward though the door, my hind-end slamming solidly onto the covered front porch of our house. I could still see the hatred on his face as the door slammed shut, and I remembered smiling at that last glimpse of his rapidly swelling eye. My single punch had been a good one.

  I didn't have any other family, and I couldn't think of anyone else who would have helped with money. The twenty years since being thrown from my father's house had been filled with lots of hard work and schooling. Though I never borrowed a penny to pay for my six years of college, my round-the-clock work and school schedules hadn't left much time for socializing.

  My only friends had been those I'd met at the law firm. And just how close we were became evident shortly after the double funeral. The first week brought me a large stack of cards and heaps of voiced sympathy, but by the second and third weeks I was struggling to stay ahead of the office innuendo that began to swirl all around me. I was making too many mistakes, missing large references in my legal briefs, not conversing well with clients and so on. Though some of the comments were partly true, most were just nonsense, voiced only to push me down and to make way for others to climb past me during my personal crisis. The way I saw it, the youngest lawyers, my 'closest' friends, all had begun to vie and scheme for my slightly larger office and my upcoming partnership position.

  I didn't know if all the whispering and manipulation had any effect on my position at the firm or if it had been just a standard inquiry that brought me to the partners' notice. Whichever it was, just five weeks after the fire, I found myself sitting before all six of the senior partners, four men and two women. Not one of them offered a single condolence or even pretended to care about the loss of my family. The only issues discussed that day were the drop in the hours I'd billed out to clients in the last few weeks, and the problems I 'seemed' to be having with my written arguments. I remembered stuttering some vague excuses and assuring them that I would pull things together. I'd be back on track again soon.

  I was on track, all right. Two days later, I quit. What was the use? I just couldn't bring myself to continue working with the hatefulness and deceit of the people around me. Besides, who really cared why one person was suing another? Did it really matter that someone's basketball had left black marks on their neighbors' fence, or that one woman's shed was built six inches too close to her back setback line?

  I'd been reliev
ed to get away from the entire pile of foolishness. But, there in front of the church, I knew those bridges had been burned. Whether by choice or happenstance, they just weren't there anymore. I had used up all my friends and close acquaintances with one simple tragedy—a tragedy that I had brought upon myself.

  I tried to let the bitter memories go as I settled down into that sunken archway surrounding the church's main entrance. It seemed colder there than it had been at the apartment building, but by pushing back against the weathered bricks at the corner of the door I did manage to foil the worst of the wind. I had even imagined that a tiny bit of the heat from inside was seeping out through the edges of the door.

  Thoughts of suicide had continued to churn through my head. I tried to remember every self-murder I'd ever heard about or seen on TV. For the longest time I concentrated on the problem. Finally, I decided that that throwing myself from the top of a building or in front of a truck would be the only options for me. God knew Albany offered many opportunities for both. I had come to this same conclusion many times before. Was it possible that I was finally ready to act on the thoughts?

  I fell asleep for a time and failed to dream. When I woke, it was to a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  "Come inside, my son." The priest's soft voice was accompanied by a warm smile that seemed to prove the sincerity of the offer. "You are cold and it's warm inside. Please come in."

  He was a tall and good-looking man with gray hair and glasses. Though likely in his sixties or early seventies, his grip was strong as he helped me inside the building. As we walked through the main chapel, I couldn't take my eyes off the huge crucifix that hung over the dais. A separate light illuminated it nicely, though the rest of the lights in the large chamber were dim. Christ hung there, a crown of thorns surrounding his head, painted-on blood trickling down from the pricks in his forehead and the nails that went through his hands and feet. As large as he was, probably a little over six feet, and with all the detail of the sculpture, he looked convincingly real.

  I might soon be sacrificed just like Him.

  I immediately felt the sacrilege of the thought. There were no parallels here. Christ had died for something, in defense of the people he loved. I would be dying for no noble reason. I would be dying for my crimes, for my failure to protect my family, for my failure to shoulder the guilt and move on.

  Again, as always, visions of Tabitha and little Derek came to my mind. Why couldn't it have been a pleasant picture of them full of happiness and life that haunted me? No, it was always the same, always the same image of them lying cold in their coffins.

  "This way," the Priest said, drawing me from my reverie. We were at the base of the dais, and I realized I had been craning my neck to see Christ hanging some twenty feet above us. The blood was so real I imagined it would drip on me at any moment.

  "He's still with us, you know."

  I turned my attention to the kindly old priest. I nodded. "I suppose he is with you."

  "With you, too," the priest said as he gently took my elbow and led me toward the small rooms that were his living quarters.

  We entered into a medium-sized room, a combination kitchen-living area. There was a sink, a small refrigerator, a stove and some dark, wooden cabinets off to our right. A well-used couch and a wooden rocking chair backed up against the wall to our left. In the center of the room sat a chrome-edged table surrounded by three chrome and red chairs. There was no fourth chair, left out likely to allow more room to move around.

  The doorway beside the refrigerator likely led into a bathroom and the other arch, behind the kindly priest's rocking chair, was no doubt a bedroom entrance. There were a few prints of Jesus on the cream-colored walls, and one small, brass crucifix hung above the bedroom door, but otherwise the place was unadorned to the point of austere. I imagined that many priests probably lived with reasonable luxury. However, if those rooms were any indication, this one man's values were exactly where I suspected God wanted them to be; strictly and solely in the Lord.

  Everything was immaculately cleaned, and I couldn't say exactly why, but I guessed the priest took care of that on his own. I suspected he would have been as comfortable scrubbing floors as giving sermons.

  He patted my shoulder, and I didn't shy away as I would have with most people. "Family around here?"

  "Not anymore," I answered. "My wife and son died."

  "I'm sorry. The Lord sometimes can be a difficult master." He looked into my eyes and there was a genuine sympathy in his own.

  "I don't blame him. God, I mean. I'm pretty sure he didn't have much to do with the dope-head who started the fire."

  The priest nodded as he offered me one of the padded chrome chairs. He moved across the room and rummaged in a cabinet, pulling out a couple of mismatched cups. "Coffee?"

  "Sure."

  "You been on your own long?"

  "If you mean homeless, not too long I guess. Only a few months, maybe six."

  "You like it?"

  "It's all I deserve. More than I deserve, really."

  He scooped a teaspoon of instant coffee into both cups and poured water from an already warm pot into each. "You think it was your fault... them dying?"

  "Why me, Father?"

  "It's hard to know why God tests one and not the other."

  "No, I mean why take me in like this? There must be dozens of homeless people all over the block."

  He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, the right side of his lips turning up slightly more than the left, a kindly expression, somehow filled with wisdom and sympathy and understanding all at once. "You were the only one at the door tonight."

  I couldn't help but laugh. I nodded. "You take people in every night?"

  "No, most have learned to ignore my door. They don't come this way often."

  "You torture the homeless?"

  Again the slightly lopsided smile. He slid the black coffee across to me. "In a manner of speaking. Sometimes the right questions can be torture. Do you miss them?"

  "No." I shook my head. Tears had somehow already formed in the corners of my eyes. Droplets began to course downward. "No, 'miss them' doesn't begin to describe it. Crave them. Need them so much my soul can barely stand the memory. That's more like it."

  "And the guilt?"

  "Nearly every minute of every day." I wiped my cheeks. "If I'd been there, I could have done something. I could have saved them."

  "How do you know?"

  "I don't. But by not being there I didn't even give them the chance."

  "So it's all your fault?"

  I shrugged. "From where I sit there just isn't anyone else to blame. I left my family alone on Christmas Eve, and now I don't have a family."

  "Sugar? Cream?"

  "No. Black is fine." I took a sip. It was bitter and warm.

  "What next?"

  "There is no next. I'm living better than I deserve, and I can't allow even that to go on much longer."

  "You leaving us?"

  "You know what I mean. I don't deserve anything."

  The priest nodded, sipped at his own coffee, eyes half-closed, probably thanking God for the nourishment. He was the picture of contentment. I envied him. He looked at me then, really looked. His dark eyes, magnified by his glasses, were pools of both understanding and forgiveness. His was a gaze that children would long for and adults would seek. "What you don't deserve is the guilt. It wasn't your fault. There are invisible battle lines drawn all across our world. How could you have known your family was standing on one of them?"

  "But it was my job to recognize there was a war, that there was danger. You can't just leave your family when there's danger."

  The priest nodded. "I'm sorry, my son. It saddens me that you have been drawn into the horrible clutches of this guilt. I will pray for you."

  "Thank you, Father—I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name?"

  "Father Johnston, or Brian if you prefer."

  "Thank you, Father Johnston. It was good to h
ave been seen tonight." Not many people understood what it was like to be homeless. It was as close to invisibility as you could get. I really did enjoy being noticed. "I can let myself out." I took another sip and stood.

  He immediately got to his feet and was somehow taller this time. "You will sit and finish your coffee," he said firmly. There was no menace in his voice, but the tone was demanding, akin to the firmness of a parent to a teen-aged child. "We can have toast and eggs tonight, or in the morning when we wake. Either way, you will be sleeping in the warmth of the chapel this night."

  I nodded.

  "Now that you have been 'seen', there is no escaping my notice."

  I could tell that this man understood the plight of the homeless. He was one of the very few who did. I slumped back into my seat and took another sip of the warm bitter beverage.

  "If you'd like to take a shower, you're welcome to the bed." He pointed toward the doorway behind the rocker. "Or, if you prefer, the couch is fine just as you are."

  Thoughts of Tabitha and Derek in their caskets came, as they often did, to my mind just then. "I don't feel like being clean right now, Father, if that's alright with you. The couch is fine."

  He smiled again, warmth radiating from him as surely as from a flame-filled hearth. It was just unfortunate that I didn't deserve a reprieve from the cold.

  I sipped again. The coffee was good.

 

  Chapter Three

  The Vagrant