A Lot Like Christmas: Stories

by Connie Willis

  Her hand was red with cold. Mel wished he had taken his gloves back when the kid from the carnival offered them. He took her icy hand between his own and held it tightly.

  “I was so sure,” she said.

  “Mel,” B.T. called from above them. “I’ve had four semis go by without stopping. I think it’s the color.” He pointed to his black face. “You need to come up and try.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Mel called back up to him. “I’ll be right back,” he said to Cassie.

  “No,” she said, clutching his hand. “Don’t you see? It didn’t mean anything. It was nothing but menopause, like my sister said. She tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen.”

  “Cassie,” Mel said, gently releasing her hand, “we need to get you out of here and into town to a hospital. You can tell me all about it then.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” she said, and let go of his hand.

  “Come on, there’s another truck coming,” B.T. called down, and Mel started up the slope. “No, never mind,” B.T. said. “The cavalry’s here,” he said, and, amazingly, he laughed.

  There was a screech of hydraulic brakes. Mel scrambled up the rest of the way. A truck was stopping. It was one of the carnival’s, loaded with merry-go-round horses, white and black and palomino, with red-and-gold saddles and jeweled bridles. B.T. was already running toward the cab, asking, “Do you have a CB?”

  “Yeah,” the driver said, and came around the back of the truck. It was the kid Mel had picked up, still wearing the gloves he had given him.

  “We need an ambulance,” Mel said. “There’s a lady hurt here.”

  “Sure thing,” the kid said, and disappeared back around the truck.

  Mel skidded back down the slope to Cassie. “He’s calling an ambulance,” he said to her.

  She nodded uninterestedly.

  “They’re on their way,” the kid called down from above them. He went over to the Honda, B.T. following, and stuck his head under the back of it. He walked all around it, squatting next to the far wheels, and then disappeared back up the slope again.

  “He says his truck doesn’t have a tow rope,” B.T. said, coming back to report, “and he doesn’t think he could get the car out anyway, so he’s calling a tow truck.”

  Mel nodded. “I saw a sign that said the next town was only ten miles. They’ll have you in out of the cold before you know it.”

  She didn’t answer. Mel wondered if perhaps she was going into shock. “Cassie,” he said, taking her hands again and rubbing them in spite of what he’d told the kid about frostbite. “We were so surprised to see your car,” he said, just to be saying something, to get her to talk. “We thought you were going down to Red Cloud. What made you change your mind?”

  “Bartlett’s,” she said bitterly. “When I was putting my tote bag in the car, it fell out onto the parking lot, and when I picked it up, the first thing I read was from William Blake. ‘Turn away no more,’ it said. I thought it meant I shouldn’t turn south to Red Cloud, that I should keep going west. Can you imagine anybody being that stupid?”

  Yes, Mel thought.

  The ambulance pulled up, sirens and yellow lights blazing, and two paramedics leaped out with a stretcher, skidded down the slope to where Cassie was, and began maneuvering her expertly onto it.

  Mel went over to B.T. “You go in with her in the ambulance,” he said, “and I’ll wait here for the tow truck.”

  “Are you sure?” B.T. said. “I can wait here.”

  “No,” Mel said. “I’ll follow the tow truck to the garage and find out what I can about her car. Then I’ll meet you at the hospital. What time’s the earliest flight home from Denver tomorrow?”

  “Flight?” B.T. said. “No. I’m not going home without you.”

  “You won’t have to,” Mel said. “What time’s the earliest flight?”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Or we can drive back. If we take turns driving we can be back in time for the ecumenical meeting.”

  “But—” B.T. said bewilderedly.

  “I wanted a sign. Well, I got it,” he said, waving his arm at Cassie, at her car. “I don’t have to be hit over the head to get the message. I’m out here in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter on a fool’s errand.”

  “What about the epiphany?”

  “It was a hallucination, a seizure, a temporary hormonal imbalance.”

  “And what about your call to the ministry?” B.T. said. “Was that a hallucination, too? What about Cassie?”

  “The Devil can quote Scripture, remember?” Mel said bitterly. “And Bartlett’s Quotations.”

  “Can you give us a hand here?” one of the paramedics called. They had Cassie on the stretcher and were ready to carry it up the slope.

  “Coming,” Mel said, and started toward them.

  B.T. took his arm. “What about the others who are looking for Him? The watchman website?”

  “UFO nuts,” Mel said, and went over to the stretcher. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Cassie lay under a gray blanket, her head turned to the side, the way it had been when Mel found her.

  “Are you all right?” B.T., taking hold of the other side of the stretcher, asked.

  “No,” she said, and a tear wobbled down her plump cheek. “I’m sorry I put you to all this trouble.”

  The kid from the carnival took hold of the front of the stretcher. “Things aren’t always as bad as they look,” he said, patting the blanket. “I saw a guy fall off the top of the Ferris wheel once, and he wasn’t even hurt.”

  Cassie shook her head. “It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Don’t say that,” B.T. said. “You got to see Mark Twain’s house. And Gene Stratton-Porter’s.”

  She turned her face away. “What good are they? I’m not even an English teacher anymore.”

  Things might not have been as bad as they looked for the guy who fell off the Ferris wheel, but they were even worse than they looked when it came to the snowy slope and getting Cassie up it. By the time they got her into the ambulance, her face was as gray as the blanket and twisted with pain. The paramedics began hooking her up to a blood pressure cuff and an IV.

  “I’ll meet you at the hospital,” Mel said. “You can call Mrs. Bilderbeck and tell her we’re coming.”

  “What if the roads are closed?” B.T. said.

  “You heard the clerk last night. Clear both directions.” He looked at B.T. “I thought this was what you wanted, for me to come to my senses, to admit I was crazy.”

  B.T. looked unhappy. “Animals don’t always leave tracks,” he said. “I learned that five years ago banding deer for a Lyme disease project. Sometimes they leave all sorts of sign, other times they’re invisible.”

  The paramedics were shutting the doors. “Wait,” B.T. said. “I’m going with her.”

  He clambered up into the back of the ambulance. “Do you know the only way you can tell for sure the deer are there?”

  Mel shook his head.

  “By the wolves,” B.T. said.

  “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign.”

  —Isaiah 7:14

  It took nearly an hour for the tow truck to get there. Mel waited in his car with the heater running for a while, and then got out and went over to stare at Cassie’s Honda.

  Wolves, B.T. had said. Predators. “ ‘For wheresoever the carcass is,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘there will the eagles be gathered together.’ MT2428.”

  “The Devil can quote Scripture,” he said aloud, and got back into the car.

  The crack in the windshield had split again, splaying out in two new directions from the center. A definite sign.

  You’ve had dozens of signs, he thought. Blizzards, road closures, icy and snow-packed conditions. You just chose to ignore them.

  “Why, anybody’d have to be blind not to recognize them,” the radio evangelist had said, and that was what he had been, willfully bl
ind, pretending the yellow arrow, the roads closing behind him, were signs he was going in the right direction, that Cassie’s “Westward ho!” was outside confirmation.

  “It didn’t mean anything,” he said.

  It was getting dark by the time the tow truck finally got there, and pitch-black by the time they got Cassie’s Honda pulled up the slope.

  And that was a sign, too, Mel thought, following the tow truck. Like the fog and the carnival truck jackknifed across the highway and the “No Vacancy” signs on the motels. All of them flashing the same message: It was a mistake. Give up. Go home.

  The tow truck had gotten far ahead of him. He stepped on the gas, but a very slow pickup pulled in front of him, and an even slower recreation vehicle was blocking the right lane. By the time he got to the gas station, the mechanic was already sliding out from under the Honda and shaking his head.

  “Snapped an axle and did in the transmission,” he said, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “Cost at least fifteen hundred to fix it, and I doubt if it’s worth half that.” He patted the hood sympathetically. “I’m afraid it’s the end of the road.”

  The end of the road. All right, all right, Mel thought, I get the message.

  “So what do you want to do?” the mechanic asked.

  Give up, Mel thought. Come to my senses. Go home. “It’s not my car,” he said. “I’ll have to ask the owner. She’s in the hospital right now.”

  “She hurt bad?”

  Mel remembered her lying there in the weeds, saying, “It didn’t mean anything.”

  “No,” he lied.

  “Tell her I can do an estimate on a new axle and a new transmission if she wants,” the mechanic said reluctantly, “but if I was her I’d take the insurance and start over.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Mel said. He opened the trunk and took out her suitcase, and then went around to the passenger side to get her green bag out of the backseat.

  There was a bright yellow flyer rolled up and jammed in the door handle. Mel unrolled it. It was a flyer from the carnival. The kid must have stuck it there, Mel thought, smiling in spite of himself.

  There was a drawing of a trumpet at the top, with “Come one, come all!” issuing from the mouth of it.

  Underneath that, there was a drawing of the triple Ferris wheel, and scattered in boxes across the page, “Marvel at the Living Fountains,” “Ride the Sea Dragon!,” “Popcorn, Snow Cones, Cotton Candy!,” “See a Lion and a Lamb in a Single Cage!”

  Mel stared at the flyer.

  “Tell her if she wants to sell it for parts,” the mechanic said, “I can give her four hundred.”

  A lion and a lamb. Wheels within wheels. “For the Lamb shall lead them unto living fountains of waters.”

  “What’s that you’re reading?” the mechanic said, coming around the car.

  A midway with stuffed animals for prizes—bears and lions and red dragons—and a ride called the Shooting Star, a hall of mirrors. “For now we see in a glass darkly but then we shall see face to face.”

  The mechanic peered over his shoulder. “Oh, an ad for that crazy carnival,” he said. “Yeah, I got a sign for it in the window.”

  A sign. “For behold, I give you a sign.” And the sign was just what it said, a sign. Like the Siamese twins. Like the peace sign on the back of the kid’s hand. “For unto us a son is given, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Prince of Peace.” On the kid’s scarred hand.

  “If she wants an estimate, tell her it’ll take some time,” the mechanic said, but Mel wasn’t listening. He was gazing blindly at the flyer. “Peer into the Bottomless Pit!” it said. “Ride the Merry-Go-Round!”

  “ ‘And thus I saw the horses in the vision,’ ” Mel murmured, “ ‘and them that sat upon them.’ ” He started to laugh.

  The mechanic frowned at him. “It ain’t funny,” he said. “This car’s a real mess. So what do you think she’ll want to do?”

  “Go to a carnival,” Mel said, and ran to get in his car.

  “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun.”

  —Revelation 22:5

  The hospital was a three-story brick building. Mel parked in front of the emergency entrance and went in.

  “May I help you?” the admitting nurse asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’m looking for—” and then stopped. Behind the desk was a sign for the carnival with dates at the bottom. “Crown Point, Dec. 14” it read. “Gresham, Jan. 13. Empyrean, Jan. 15.”

  “May I help you, sir?” the nurse said again, and Mel turned to ask her where Empyrean was, but she wasn’t talking to him. She was asking two men in navy blue suits.

  “Yes,” the taller one said, “we’re starting a hospital outreach, ministering to people who are in the hospital far from home. Do you have any patients here from out of town?”

  The nurse looked doubtful. “I’m afraid we’re not allowed to give out information about patients.”

  “Of course, I understand,” the man said, opening his Bible. “We don’t want to violate anyone’s privacy. We’d just like to be able to say a few words of comfort, like the Good Samaritan.”

  “I’m not supposed to…” the nurse said.

  “We understand,” the shorter man said. “Will you join us in a moment of prayer? Precious Lord, we seek—”

  The door opened, and as they all turned to look at a boy with a bleeding forehead, Mel slipped down the hall and up the stairs.

  Where would they have taken her? he wondered, peering into rooms with open doors. Did a hospital this small even have separate wards, or were all the patients jumbled together?

  She wasn’t on the first floor. He hurried up the stairs to the second, keeping an eye out for the men in the navy blue suits. They didn’t know her name yet, but they would soon. Even if they couldn’t get it out of the admitting nurse, Cassie would have given them her health insurance card. It would all be in the computer. Where would they have taken her? X-ray, he thought.

  “Can you tell me how to get to X-ray?” he asked a middle-aged woman in a pink uniform.

  “Third floor,” she said, and pointed toward the elevator.

  Mel thanked her, and as soon as she was out of sight, he took the stairs two at a time.

  Cassie wasn’t in X-ray. Mel started to look for a technician to ask and then saw B.T. down at the end of the hall.

  “Good news,” B.T. said as he hurried up to him. “It’s not broken. She’s got a sprained knee.”

  “Where is she?” Mel asked, taking B.T.’s arm.

  “In 308,” B.T. said, and Mel propelled him into the room and shut the door behind them.

  Cassie, in a white hospital gown, was lying in the far bed, her head turned away from them as it had been in the frozen weeds. She looked pale and listless.

  “She called her sister,” B.T. said, looking anxiously at her. “She’s on her way down from Minnesota to get her.”

  “She told me I was lucky I hadn’t gotten into worse trouble than a sprained knee,” Cassie said, turning to look at Mel. “How’s my car?”

  “A dead loss,” Mel said, stepping up to the head of the bed. “But it doesn’t matter. We—”

  “You’re right,” she said, and turned her head on the pillow. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve come to my senses. I’m going home.” She smiled wanly at Mel. “I’m just sorry you had to go to all this trouble for me, but at least it won’t be for much longer. My sister should be here tomorrow night, and the hospital is keeping me overnight for observation, so you two don’t have to stay. You can go to your religious meeting.”

  “We lied to you,” Mel said. “We’re not on our way to a religious meeting,” and realized they were. “You aren’t the only one who had an epiphany.”

  “I’m not?” she said, and pushed herself partway up against the pillows.

  “No. I got a message to go west, too,” Mel said. “You were right. Something important is going to happen
, and we want you to come with us.”

  B.T. cut in, “You know where He is?”

  “I know where He’s going to be,” Mel said. “B.T., I want you to go get the road atlas and look up a town called Empyrean and see where it is.”

  “I know where it is,” Cassie said, and sat up all the way. “It’s in Dante.”

  They both looked at her, and she said, half apologetically, “I’m an English teacher, remember? It’s the highest circle of Paradise. The Holy City of God.”

  “I doubt if that’s going to be in Rand McNally,” B.T. said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mel said. “We’ll be able to find it by the lights. But we’ve got to get her out of here first. Cassie, do you think you can walk if we help you?”

  “Yes.” She flung the covers off and began edging her bandaged knee toward the side of the bed. “My clothes are in the closet there.”

  Mel helped her hobble to the closet.

  “I’ll go check her out,” B.T. said, and went out.

  Cassie pulled her dress off the hanger and began unzipping it. Mel turned his back and went over to the door to look out. There was no sign of the two men.

  “Can you help me get my boots on?” Cassie said, hobbling over to the chair. “My knee’s feeling a lot better,” she said, lowering herself into the chair. “It hardly hurts at all.” Mel knelt and eased her feet into her fur-edged boots.

  B.T. came in. “There are two men down at the admissions desk,” he said, out of breath, “trying to find out what room she’s in.”

  “Who are they?” Cassie asked.

  “Herod’s men,” Mel said. “It’ll have to be the fire escape. Can you manage that?”

  She nodded. Mel helped her to her feet and went and got her coat. He and B.T. helped her into it, and each took an arm and helped her to the door, opening it cautiously and looking both ways down the hall, and then over to the fire escape.

  “I should call my sister,” Cassie said, “and tell her I’ve changed my mind.”

  “We’ll stop at a gas station,” B.T. said, opening the door fully and looking both ways again. “Okay,” he said, and they went down the hall, through the emergency exit door, and onto the fire escape.