Was Santa going to bring him presents, he meant. “Who’s been telling you about Santa?” Angela squatted down to speak with the child so he would know she was on his side even though Santa was not something he had heard about from her and Ennis. Back in Jenkins, Santa had not been allowed in the house because ho-ho-ho did not fit into her father’s theology. The children had always been told gifts came from God.
“Uncle Texas.”
“Well, then I’m sure Santa will come. Uncle Texas knows about these things.”
“What things?” Volos stood over her, looking troubled.
“The Santa Claus things and the Christmas tree things and the things that say you absolutely must get him something, Volos.”
“Get Texas something?”
“Yes. Whether you like it or not. He’ll be hurt if you don’t.”
“Texas believes in Christmas?”
Angela stood up, starting to feel exasperated. In her experience talk about religion was good for nothing except to come between people. “It’s not about that,” she said. “It’s about whether you believe in Texas. Don’t step on the crayons,” she added, as he turned away with a dazed look.
“Mikey put crayons all over the floor,” said Gabe severely. “He should pick them up.”
“Oh.” Volos halted and, to Angie’s surprise, helped gather the bright-colored toys before he wandered out with muted wings.
It was a good thing Gabe and Mikey were around, thought Texas, meditating over his beer. A good thing for him in particular. He needed the little boys to pin Christmas on that year. It was early in December, and already he had sent Wyoma a card, not a box card but one of those big ones from a drugstore rack, he had spent half an hour picking it out and had made triple sure his return address was on the envelope, though he had signed it only “Bob.” But he knew better, really, than to expect anything in reply.
It was a good thing, too, that nothing about Christmas seemed real around this place anyway. Palm trees. Shirtsleeves. No snow. Plastic garland on the lawn flamingos. Not much like West Virginia—which made it easier not to think about West Virginia much. Especially if he kept busy.
So there he was in the middle of the afternoon sitting in the neighborhood bar and thinking about West Virginia. What else was there to do?
Volos came in. Texas saw the feathery shadow in the mirror behind the bottles and knew right away there was something on the kid’s mind. Dark wings. Also, Texas had invited Volos to go drinking with him a time or two before, but Volos would not come into narrow, enclosed places like this dive unless he had his own reasons. The kid wanted to talk.
So the angel sat on the barstool next to Texas, and the bartender came over. Texas did not much like this particular bartender. The guy had spiked hair and a ring in his nose and a ring in his ear and a chain that looked like it had been swiped from a bank’s ballpoint pen strung between the two. Someday there was gonna be a nice big fight to break up and somebody was gonna grab that chain and yank it.
“Gnarly wings, dude,” the bartender greeted Volos. “What’ll it be?”
“Soon, the second week in Advent.”
“Say again?”
“Give him a Mich,” Texas directed.
The place was dark and not real friendly, which worked two ways: Late at night it meant watching your ass, but at this time of day it just meant people were going to leave you alone. Nobody bothered Volos, even though his wings trailed in the aisle. Texas sat sipping his own beer and eyeing the kid, who was watching the bulbs blinking around the Bud Lite mirror, the neon Coors sign blinking in the window, the fake tree blinking in the corner. Blink, Blink, God’s a fink.
“I can’t tell what are Christmas lights and what are just lights,” Volos said.
Texas nodded, waiting.
“I am having trouble with this Christmas thing altogether.”
“You and me both, kid.”
“You, too? But Angela said you understood about it.”
“I guess I do. But understanding don’t always help. Christmas is a family time, see. And I got no family to go home to anymore.”
Of course the kid looked blank. Family wouldn’t mean squat to him. Texas didn’t know sometimes why he bothered talking to Volos.
Trying to keep the weariness out of his voice, he asked the kid, “So what’s the problem with you and Christmas?”
“I find it all very confusing. Do you believe in God, Texas?”
McCardle nearly choked on his beer. It was a moment before he managed to say, “Considering that I believe in you, that’s a real peculiar question.”
“Yes. But do you?”
“Yeah, dammit, I guess I do.” He felt irritated; this was too personal. “Why?”
“Because I do not see how you can believe in God and speak of Santa Claus. God has taken a festival of lights, a yuletide, a Saturnalia, a way to illuminate the dark and warm the winter’s chill, and he has turned it into a celebration of death.”
“Death?”
“Yes. Jesus was born only to be killed. Do you believe in Jesus?”
Texas drained his beer and gazed into the empty mug before he said, “Got to, son.”
“You think he died for your sins? Are you glad he died?”
Texas thought he understood what this was about now. He said very gently, “Hell, no, kid, but I’m glad he lived.”
Volos sat silent in the bar, his wings the color of its scarlet neon darkness. After a while Texas added, “So you don’t like Christmas.”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. What am I supposed to do?”
“Nothing. Except you gotta get the little guys something. Break their hearts if you don’t. And get Angie something nice.” Texas could tell now that Angie cared for Volos. Sweet, grave-faced Angela. Such an innocent, it probably hadn’t occurred to her what went on between Volos and Mercy. She probably didn’t know men could have sex with one another.
Volos remarked, “Neither of you has told me to get something for Mercedes.”
“Well, course you can get him something if you want to.”
The bartender came over again. “Purple eyes today?” he said to Volos. “Christ, man. How many pairs of colored contacts you got?” Not expecting an answer, he set up another round. His T-shirt confronted the world with a Mexican street artist’s primitive rendition of a woman in parturition. Texas loathed this guy, but as he pulled the beers Volos seemed to be looking at him with some interest.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Texas complained after the barman had walked away.
“Pardon?”
There were a lot of slang expressions the kid didn’t understand. Texas translated. “You like the looks of him?”
“I like his chain, that is all. Texas—are you going to give me something for Christmas?”
Texas wanted to say, “Only if you’re good,” but stopped himself. Volos sometimes took teasing seriously. And there was something in the kid’s voice as wide open as the woman in childbirth.
“ ’Course I am, Volos. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know.”
“What should I get you?”
“What is that thing you say? About getting beaten?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“That’s what it does, then.” Without finishing his beer—or paying for it—without a smile or a lift of the hand Volos got up and walked out.
The week before Christmas, Volos canceled gigs and rehearsals and sent his band members, surprised but grateful, to their scattered homes for the holidays.
That same week Angie and Texas ate take-out Chicken Singapore for supper one night, while the little boys, who had not yet cultivated a taste for Chinese cuisine, had Steak-Umms. Something in the Chicken Singapore caused the human body to take exception to it. By midnight Texas and Angie were groaning, and Volos discovered that the care and feeding of the household were up to him.
“Are you going to die?” he asked at first, terrified.
“No, jus
t wish we would,” Texas panted. “Christ, my gut hurts. We oughta sue. It’s food poisoning.”
“Food poisoning?” The concept baffled Volos. “How can you eat food, then, if it poisons you?”
“Just—fucking let me alone, goddammit.”
Texas did not make a good patient. He reacted to every aspect of his illness as if it were a personal affront, and he refused to see a doctor. Short of picking him up and carrying him out to the car, then sitting on him, there was no way to make him go to one. So in the morning Volos left the boys in front of the television and took Angie to the medical center. When they came back with thick, earthy-smelling medicine he waited until she took her dose, and then he forced some down Texas also, none too gently. In fact, he did it while restraining McCardle with one knee on his chest. The bosomy nurse at the doctor’s office had assured him that if Texas was strong enough to swear at him there was nothing to really worry about. Therefore he felt entitled to swear back.
“Just take the fucking medicine, goddammit!”
From the doorway Gabe and Mikey watched, wide-eyed. “Birdman give us lunch?” Mikey chirped after Volos had ministered to Texas.
“Birdman try.” Volos headed toward the kitchen.
Over the course of the next several days he discovered, or rather was repeatedly told, that he was an execrable cook, even though all he had to prepare for the patients was tea, toast, and rice. The first time he tried to make tea, he cut open the teabag and tried to dissolve its contents in hot water from the tap. He burned the toast or served it cold or turned it to Styrofoam in the microwave. His rice, even foolproof instant rice, was sticky and undercooked. When Angie suggested grilled cheese sandwiches for the boys, Volos fried the cheese first, turning it to a brown adhesive in the bottom of a pan, then threw the pan away and sent out for pizza. For that week Gabe and Mikey lived mostly on pizza for supper, peanut butter for lunch, cereal for breakfast.
“It’s a good thing I bought their presents early,” Angie said to Volos in a pale voice. The boys were asleep and therefore would not hear her. Volos had put them to bed. He was getting better at it. He had learned not to let them pour shampoo in the water when they had their bath. He had dried their hair and put them in pajamas and held them in his lap as he read them Little Golden Books about a reindeer in need of rhinoplasty and a hyperactive snowman. Tonight he would stay in the house again in case he was needed. He had not seen Mercedes for five days. Mercy had phoned three times, peevish, but Mercy would have to wait.
Speaking with Angela, he sat on the edge of her bed with his wings blushing petal-pink. It surprised him, the tenderness he felt for her. Odd that he did not mind being her servant. It was true that she did not ask for much, but even if she had called on him more often he would not have minded. It seemed somehow fitting that he should wait on her.
“Do you feel any better?” he asked her. He hated the way sickness made her wretched.
“A little. Volos—I hate to keep asking you to do things, but do you think you could wrap their stuff while they’re asleep?”
“You can ask me anything. Yes, of course I will do it.”
“Volos!” Texas bellowed.
Now that one he minded. He said to Angela, “Sometimes I would like to put him in a sack and take him and drop him from a high place.”
She smiled. “Men are all like that when they’re sick,” she informed him.
“Truly?”
“VO-los!”
He sighed and answered the summons. Texas was feeling somewhat better too, and sitting up in bed. “Volos,” he said with asperity, “my stomach’s rubbing itself. Do you think you could just for once make me some toast that don’t look and feel and taste like old cardboard?”
“Was I like that?” Volos asked him, tangentially.
“Huh?”
“When you took care of me, when my wing was sick. Was I like you, so full of spleen?”
A considerable silence. Then in a different tone Texas said, “No. No, you weren’t. Son, don’t mind me. Forget the toast. I ain’t really hungry.”
Because something other than cardboard toast was troubling him, Volos heard only the first part of this. He blurted, “But Angela says all men are that way. Perhaps it was just that you took better care of me.”
Perhaps it is that I am not a man.
“You do okay. It’s just that—listen, kid, it’s not you, it’s me. Ever since my daddy beat me I get this way. Being laid up just makes me pissing mad.”
Volos drifted out of the room before Texas was finished speaking. Perhaps it is that I am not quite human. He went to the kitchen, put a slice of bread into the toaster. Not quite real. Stood by until it popped, gazing at the machine with an unseeing stare.
The humans, they take this Christmas festival and celebrate it in spite of everything, in defiance of all reason. If I could be that way, if I could understand …
He held the warm toast in his hand and went back to Texas.
“Here.”
“Son, I meant it when I told you not to bother. Hell, I ain’t that sick anymore, I can get up and take care of myself now.” Texas accepted the toast anyway and ate it, then said, “Hey, that was good. Can you fix me another slice?”
The next day he and Angie were tottering around the house some of the time, eating Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, watching TV. Angie even set out a ham to thaw for the next day’s dinner. But Volos had not had a chance to buy anything for either of them. There were no stockings hung from the drum stands with care. There were no tree ornaments in the house. Moreover, there was no tree. And it was Christmas Eve.
Gabriel, who was a thoughtful child, did not fully believe in the Santa Claus mythos to which he had recently been exposed. He sensed an adult smile behind the stories he was told. Also, he did not much like fat people; he found their presence in his world threatening, as if even with all good intentions they had the potential to sit on him by mistake or suffocate him with an embrace. From his small-person viewpoint, they were just too massive. Moreover, he did not think it sensible that a stranger, whether fat or not, would give him presents for no good reason.
Nevertheless, that night when the house was quiet and everyone should have been asleep, he found himself still awake, kept up by an unreasonable sense of expectation. In the distance he thought he heard a noise. Getting out of the double bed he shared with Mikey by climbing over the backs of its guardian chairs, he barefooted his way through the dim house to see if anything was happening.
Nothing was, except that in the living room Birdman was sitting on a tall stool with his newest guitar, bright, slick red, in his lap. This was all right. Birdman was always up at night, though not always in the house—sometimes he went prowling, like a wild animal. The night belonged to Birdman. But knowing that he himself was not supposed to be out of bed, Gabe did not say hello, instead staying back in the shadows of the hallway, watching.
Birdman was very beautiful in a shaft of moonlight from the big window, and his wings were like the blue snow on a Christmas card. He touched his guitar, which was turned down very low. He stroked it like it was alive, so that it hummed notes for him, first one note, then another. Gabe sat down where he was to listen, because he could tell that something good was happening. He had never heard Birdman’s guitar speak so softly, humming like a mother at bedtime.
Birdman touched it again, so that it murmured like a sleepy baby. And then Birdman sang.
Never afterward, though he thought of that night sometimes even when he was a grown man, never was Gabe able to remember any words—just notes, just music. Birdman opened his mouth and sent the notes flying softly around the room, one after another, small, flitting notes of all colors, Christmas red and green, gold, silver, shimmering blue. They were little crested birds, each one round and perfect. Of course they had to be birds, coming from Birdman. The way he made a song and turned it into birds was just the way God made angels because God was a big angel himself. An old witch of a Sunday School
teacher had told Gabe about it once, how for every word God spoke angels were born out of his mouth.
Then Gabe saw how the humming guitar strings were weaving their music into the shadows of one corner of the room and forming something soft and dark and spiky, like a bad kid’s haircut. The guitar purred in Birdman’s lap like a big cat with sheathed claws, and the something in the corner grew, and the birds flew to it. It was a tree—just a round sawtooth sort of tree, not really a Christmas tree by Gabe’s standards, but the birds liked it. Of course, birds need a tree to sit in. But they didn’t just sit on this one, they arranged themselves all over it until they seemed sprinkled onto it like soft little stars onto a shadowy sky, red and green and gold and silver and blue.
It was midnight, because church bells were ringing somewhere out in L.A. Gabe could hear them far away, even though there were people shouting and yipping and fighting in the corner bar, which was much closer. Birdman put down his guitar and sat very still. He was finished singing, and it was the first minute of Christmas Day.
When Gabe went back to bed, Mikey turned over, then seamlessly reentered his dream. In the morning he would remember the dream, but have no memory that Gabe had gone wandering.
Mikey was not convinced about putting his faith in Santa Claus either. He was worried that Santa Claus would forget him because he was new on the list. Therefore Mikey’s dream was straightforward: he would receive presents from someone he could trust. Birdman was the Christmas angel, bringing gifts for Mikey and Gabe and Mommy, but nobody else. Not Daddy. Mommy had explained how there would not be a Daddy in this Christmas. Not for Daddy’s mommy, the Grandma who lived in Arizona, or the other Grandma either, and especially not for Grandpa, because Mommy was very, very mad at Grandpa. And not for all the other children in the world. They had Santa Claus to take care of them. Birdman was just for Mikey, and Gabe, and Mommy, and he would bring gifts for them. And maybe Uncle Texas. But that was all.
To bring the presents, Birdman was riding a slow-prancing high-crested sweet-headed white horse through the night sky, on top of the clouds. His wings rose high in the indigo air and seemed to belong both to him and to his horse. Why he was riding the horse when he could fly was unclear. Mikey had no clear image either of what the presents were or how Birdman carried them. What was important was the way Birdman sat on the white horse, the Christmas horse. His long legs were straight down around its belly, and his knees pressed against its sides, and his dark eyes stared out over its ears like he was looking at something.
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