Miracle and Other Christmas Stories Part 28

It was nice all the next week. Allison called to tell me Dakota was back home. "The doctors don't know what it was, some kind of bug or something, but whatever it was, it's completely gone. She's back taking ice skating and tap-dancing lessons, and next week I'm signing both girls up for Junior Band."

"You did the right thing," Gary said grudgingly. "Marcie told me her knee was really hurting. When she was still talking to me, that is."

"The reconciliation's off, huh?"

"Yeah," he said, "but I haven't given up. The way she acted proves to me that her love for me is still there, if I can only reach it."

All it proved to me was that it took an invasion from outer s.p.a.ce to make her seem even marginally human, but I didn't say so.

"I've talked her into going into marriage counseling with me," he said. "You were right not to trust me either. That's the mistake they always make in those body-s.n.a.t.c.her movies, trusting people."

Well, yes and no. If I'd trusted Jim Bridgeman, I wouldn't have had to do all those thermostats alone.

"You were the one who turned the heat up at the pizza place where Sueann and her fiance were having dinner," I said after he told me he'd figured out what the aliens' weakness was after seeing me turn up the thermostat on fifth. "You were the one who'd checked out Attack of the Soul Killers."

"I tried to talk to you," he said. "I don't blame you for not trusting me. I should have taken my hat off, but I didn't want you to see my bald spot."

"You can't go by appearances," I said.

By December fifteenth, hat sales were down, the mall was jammed with ill-tempered shoppers, at City Hall an animal-rights group was protesting Santa Claus's wearing fur, and Gary's wife had skipped their first marriage-counseling session and then blamed it on him. It's now four days till Christmas, and things are completely back to normal. n.o.body at work's wearing a hat except Jim, Sol-veig's naming her baby Durango, Hunziger's suing management for firing him, antidepressant sales are up, and my mother called just now to tell me Sueann has a new boyfriend who's a terrorist, and to ask me if I'd sent out my Christmas newsletters yet.

And had I met anyone lately at work.

"Yes," I said. "I'm bringing him to Christmas dinner."

Yesterday Betty Holland filed a s.e.xual hara.s.sment suit against Nathan Steinberg for kissing her under themistletoe, and I was nearly run over on my way home from work. But the world has been made safe from cankers, leaf wilt, and galls.

And it makes an interesting Christmas Newsletter.

Whether it's true or not.

Wis.h.i.+ng you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Nan Johnson.

EPIPHANY.

by Connie Willis.

"But pray ye that your flight he not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day."

- MATTHEW 24:20.

A little after three, it began to snow. It had looked like it was going to all the way through Pennsylvania, and had even spit a few flakes just before Youngstown, Ohio, but now it was snowing in earnest, thick flakes that were already covering the stiff dead gra.s.s on the median and getting thicker as he drove west.

And this is what you get for setting out in the middle of January, he thought, without checking the Weather Channel first. He hadn't checked anything. He had taken off his robe, packed a bag, gotten into his car, and taken off. Like a man fleeing a crime.

The congregation will think I've absconded with the money in the collection plate, he thought. Or worse.

Hadn't there been a minister in the paper last month who'd run off to the Bahamas with the building fund and a blonde? They'll say, "I thought he acted strange in church this morning."

But they wouldn't know yet that he was gone. The Sunday night Mariners' Meeting had been cancelled, the elders' meeting wasn't till next week, and the interchurch ec.u.menical meeting wasn't till Thursday.

He was supposed to play chess with B.T. on Wednesday, but he could call him and move it. He would have to call when B.T. was at work and leave him a message on his voice mail. He couldn't risk talking to him-they had been friends too many years. B.T. would instantly know something was up. And he would be the last person to understand.

I'll call his voice mail and move our chess game to Thursday night after the ec.u.menical meeting, Mel thought. That will give me till Thursday.

He was kidding himself. The church secretary, Mrs. Bilder-beck, would miss him Monday morning when he didn't show up in the church office.

I'll call her and tell her I've got the flu, he thought. No, she would insist on bringing him over chicken soup and zinc lozenges. I'll tell her I've been called out of town for a few days on personal business.

She will immediately think the worst, he thought. She'll think I have cancer, or that I'm looking at another church. And anything they conclude, he thought, even embezzlement, would be easier for them to accept than the truth.

The snow was starting to stick on the highway, and the winds.h.i.+eld was beginning to fog up. Mel turned on the defroster. A truck pa.s.sed him, throwing up snow. It was full of gold-and-white Ferris wheel baskets. He had been seeing trucks like it all afternoon, carrying black Octopus cars and concession stands and lengths of roller-coaster track. He wondered what a carnival was doing in Ohio in the middle of January. And in this weather.

Maybe they were lost. Or maybe they suddenly had a vision telling them to head west, he thought grimly.

Maybe they suddenly had a nervous breakdown in the middle of church. In the middle of their sermon.

He had scared the choir half to death. They had been sitting there, midway through the sermon, and thinking they had plenty of time before they had to find the recessional hymn, when he'd stopped cold, his hand still raised, in the middle of a sentence.

There had been silence for a full minute before the organist thought to play the intro, and then a franticscramble for their bulletins and their hymnals, a frantic flipping of pages. They had straggled unevenly to their feet all the way through the first verse, singing and looking at him like he was crazy.

And were they right? Had he really had a vision or was it some kind of midlife crisis? Or psychotic episode?

He was a Presbyterian, not a Pentecostal. He did not have visions. The only time he had experienced anything remotely like this was when he was nineteen, and that hadn't been a vision. It had been a call to the ministry, and it had only sent him to seminary, not baring off to who knows where.

And this wasn't a vision either. He hadn't seen a burning bush or an angel. He hadn't seen anything. He had simply had an overwhelming conviction that what he was saying was true.

He wished he still had it, that he wasn't beginning to doubt it now that he was three hundred miles from home and in the middle of a snowstorm, that he wasn't beginning to think it had been some kind of self-induced hysteria, born out of his own wishful thinking and the fact that it was January.

He hated January. The church always looked cheerless and abandoned, with all the Christmas decorations taken down, the sanctuary dim and chilly in the gray winter light, Epiphany over and nothing to look forward to but Lent and taxes. And Good Friday. Attendance and the collection down, half the congregation out with the flu and the other half away on a winter cruise, those who were there looking abandoned, too, and like they wished they had somewhere to go.

That was why he had decided against his sermon on Christian duty and pulled an old one out of the files, a sermon on Jesus' promise that He would return. To get that abandoned look off their faces.

"This is the hardest time," he had said, "when Christmas is over, and the bills have all come due, and it seems like winter is never going to end and summer is never going to come. But Christ tells us that we 'know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the c.o.c.kcrowing, or in the morning,'

and when he comes, we must be ready for him. He may come tomorrow or next year or a thousand years from now. He may already be here, right now. At this moment. . ."

And as he said it, he had had an overwhelming feeling that it was true, that He had already come, and he must go find Him.

But now he wondered if it was just the desire to be somewhere else, too, somewhere besides the cold, poinsettialess sanctuary.

If so, you came the wrong way, he thought. It was freezing, and the winds.h.i.+eld was starting to fog up. Mel kicked the defrost all the way up to high and swiped at the winds.h.i.+eld with his gloved hand.

The snow was coming down much harder, and the wind was picking up. Mel twitched on the radio to hear a weather report.

". . . and in the last days, the Book of Revelation tells us," a voice said, " 'there will be hail and fire mingled with blood.' "

He hoped that wasn't the weather report. He hit the scan b.u.t.ton on the radio and listened as it cycled through the stations. ". . . for the latest on the scandal involving the President and . . ." the voice of Randy Travis, singing "Forever and Ever, Amen" . . .

"hog futures at" . . . "and the disciples said, 'Lord, show us a sign '"

A sign, that was what he needed, Mel thought, peering at the road. A sign that he was not crazy.

A semi roared past in a blinding blast of snow and exhaust. He leaned forward, trying to see the lines on the pavement, and another truck went by, full of orange-and-yellow b.u.mper cars. b.u.mper cars. How appropriate.

They were all going to be riding b.u.mper cars if this snow kept up, Mel thought, watching the truck pull into the lane ahead of him. It fishtailed wildly as it did, and Mel put his foot on the brake, felt it skid, and lifted his foot off.

Well, he had asked for a sign, he thought, carefully slowing down, and this one couldn't be clearer if it was written in fiery letters: Go home! This was a crazy idea! You're going to be killed, and then what will the congregation think? Go home!

Which was easier said than done. He could scarcely see the road, let alone any exit signs, and the winds.h.i.+eld was starting to ice up. He kicked the defroster all the way up and swiped at the window again.

He didn't dare pull over and stop-those semis would never see him-but he was going to have to. Thedefroster wasn't having any effect on the ice on the winds.h.i.+eld, and neither were the winds.h.i.+eld wipers.

He rolled down the window and leaned out, trying to grab the wiper and slap it against the winds.h.i.+eld to shake the ice off. Snow stabbed his face, stinging it.

"All right, all right," he shouted into the wind. "I get the message!"

He rolled the window back up, s.h.i.+vering, and swiped at the inside of the winds.h.i.+eld again. The only kind of sign he wanted now was an exit sign, but he couldn't see the side of the road.

If I'm on the road, he thought, trying to spot the shoulder, a telltale outline, but the whole world had disappeared into a featureless whiteness. And what would keep him from driving right off the road and into a ditch?

He leaned forward tensely, trying to spot something, anything, and thought he saw, far ahead, a light.

A yellow light, too high up for a taillight-a reflector on a motorcycle, maybe. That was impossible, there was no way a motorcycle could be out in this. One of those lights on the top corners of a semi.

If that was what it was, he couldn't see the other one, but the light was moving steadily in front of him, and he followed it, trying to keep pace.

The winds.h.i.+eld wipers were icing up again. He rolled down the window, and in the process lost sight of the light. Or the road, he thought frightenedly. No, there was the light, still high up, but closer, and it wasn't a light, it was a whole cl.u.s.ter of them, round yellow bulbs in the shape of an arrow.

The arrow on top of a police car, he thought, telling you to change lanes. There must be some kind of accident up ahead. He strained forward, trying to make out flas.h.i.+ng blue ambulance lights.

But the yellow arrow moved steadily ahead, and as he got closer, he saw that the arrow was pointed down at an angle. And that it was slowing. Mel slowed, too, focusing his whole attention on the road and on pumping his brakes to keep the car from skidding.

When he looked up again, the arrow had slowed nearly to a stop, and he could see it clearly. It was part of a lighted sign on the back of a truck. "Shooting Star" it said in a flowing script, and next to the arrow in neon pink, "Tickets."

The truck came to a complete stop, its turn light blinking, and then started up again, and in its headlights he caught a glimpse of snow-spattered red. A stop sign.

And this was an exit. He had followed the truck off the highway onto an exit without even knowing it.

And now he was hopefully following it into a town, he thought, clicking on his right-turn signal and turning after the truck, but in the moment he had hesitated, he had lost it. And the blowing snow was worse here than on the highway.

There was the yellow arrow again. No, what he saw was a Burger King crown. He pulled in, sc.r.a.ping the snow-covered curb, and saw that he was wrong again. It was a motel sign. "King's Rest," with a crown of sulfur-yellow bulbs.

He parked the car and got out, slipping in the snow, and started for the office, which had, thank goodness, a "Vacancy" sign in the same neon pink as the "Tickets" sign.

A little blue Honda pulled up beside him and a short, plump woman got out of it, winding a bright purple m.u.f.fler around her head. "Thank goodness you knew where you were going," she said, pulling on a pair of turquoise mittens. "I couldn't see a thing except your taillights." She reached back into the Honda for a vivid green canvas bag. "Anybody who'd be on the roads in weather like this would have to be crazy, wouldn't they?"

And if the blizzard hadn't been sign enough, here was proof positive. "Yes," he said, although she had already gone inside the motel office, "they would."

He would check in, wait a few hours till the storm let up, and then start back. With luck he would be back home before Mrs. Bilderbeck got to the office tomorrow morning.

He went inside the office, where a balding man was handing the plump woman a room key and talking to someone on the phone.

"Another one," he said when Mel opened the door. "Yeah."

He hung up the phone and pushed a registration form and a pen at Mel.

"Which way'd you come from?" he asked.

"East," Mel said.The man shook his balding head. "You got here in the nick of time," he said to both of them. "They just closed all the roads east of here."

"And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat upon them."

- REVELATION 9:17.

In the morning, Mel called Mrs. Bilderbeck. "I won't be in today. I've been called out of town."

"Out of town?" Mrs. Bilderbeck said, interested.

"Yes. On personal business. I'll be gone most of the week."

"Oh, dear," she said, and Mel suddenly hoped that there was an emergency at the church, that Gus Uhank had had another stroke or Lottie Millar's mother had died, so that he would have to go back.

"I told Juan you'd be in," Mrs. Bilderbeck said. "He's putting the sanctuary Christmas decorations away, and he wanted to know if you want to save the star for next year. And the pilot light went out again. The church was freezing when I got here this morning."

"Was Juan able to get it relit?"

"Yes, but I think someone should look at it. What if it goes out on a Sat.u.r.day night?"

"Call Jake Adams at A-1 Heating," he said. Jake was a deacon.

"A-l Heating," she said slowly, as if she were writing it down. "What about the star? Are we going to use it again next year?"

Is there going to be a next year? Mel thought. "Whatever you think," he said.

"And what about the ec.u.menical meeting?" she asked. "Will you be back in time for that?"

"Yes," he said, afraid if he said "no," she would ask more questions.

"Is there a number where I can reach you?"

"No. I'll check in tomorrow." He hung up quickly, and then sat there on the bed, trying to decide whether to call B.T. or not. He hadn't done anything major in the fifteen years they'd been friends without telling him, but Mel knew what he'd say. They'd met on the ec.u.menical committee, when the Unitarian chairman had decided that, to be truly ec.u.menical, they needed a resident atheist and Darwinian biologist. And, Mel suspected, an African-American.