Under-Heaven

by Tim Greaton

  "You don't have a pension, money to live on?"

  There was no smile this time. He eyes had gone from brown to a lighter shade of hazel. His words were slow and seemed to be chosen carefully. "I have no option but to be here right now."

  I accepted that, knowing full well there were chapters unspoken. I had apparently touched on a sore point. Everyone had secrets and sins of some kind. What did it matter to me? I'd be gone soon.

  "Were you heading back to the church?"

  "I thought the Father would know where I could eat."

  "I doubt he'd tell you. He'll more likely feed you right there, his own lunch if that's all he has."

  The filthy Santa wig bounced in agreement. "He is a good one. You can see it in his eyes."

  I nodded. I wanted to say something more but realized I didn't even know this man's name. It's funny, because as a homeless person you learn never to give out your name and to never ask each other about them. Names made it too easy for family to track you and too hard to avoid the constant street crime investigations. Detectives roamed the rough neighborhoods almost as often as those of us who lived there. The only names we usually used were handles and nicknames that tended to be changed often and at whim.

  "I'm Skip," I said, revealing my real name for the first time in at least a couple of months. I wasn't sure why, but it seemed important to me that this man knew it. Maybe I was subconsciously trying to be remembered by someone, if only by another poor soul like myself. "Why don't we get something to eat? Martha Big's is only a few blocks this way." I pointed north, toward the industrial park.

  "That a restaurant?"

  I laughed. "In a manner of speaking, I suppose it is. Let's go."

  The afternoon on Albany streets can be deceiving. The buildings were just high enough that the sun, which had really not yet begun to set, looked lower in the sky than it really was. It was only two o'clock as we strolled north toward the food kitchen, but the shadows along the sides of the busy highway were long and growing dark. As we passed from busy street to busy street, the shadows became islands of darkness, spaced in exact rhythm to the height of the buildings on our left. Along the way, I learned his name was Barwood Stone, and that not even he knew how such an odd name had been chosen for him. He'd apparently grown up in an orphanage and never had the chance to ask his parents about his decidedly offbeat moniker. His life had been spent scheduling freight shipments on the northern leg of the Boston and Maine Railroad. The job had ended a number of years before, just phased out, much the way railroads in general had been disappearing for years. He had no children, and though he hinted at having been married he never actually came out and said it.

  Our discussion had grown silent for the last half-block or so. It was my turn to share some personal history, and I was surprised at how difficult it was to begin that verbal journey. Strangely, it wasn't the tragedy of the fire that was so difficult to talk about, it was more that I couldn't seem to mentally get through it to the lifetime I'd had before. I was both perplexed and shocked. I couldn't believe I hadn't realized this sooner, but it had been months since I'd recollected anything about Tabby or Derek from before that Christmas Eve. It was almost as if their deaths had erected a barrier, separating the homeless Skip of today from the working-two-jobs law school student and budding lawyer Skip of my earlier life. The revelation was like a wash of ice cold water down my back. I shivered with realization.

  We now stood before Martha Big's kitchen. Thankful for the excuse, I opened the sagging green door for Barwood and waited a full thirty seconds until I followed him in. It was funny how life was. I couldn't bring myself to talk about my pre-fire past, and now I suddenly knew why. I was afraid that if I remembered any of the good things I might lose the courage to pay for my crime. It was easy to think about the loss of my family, the loss of my job, and even the loss of my self-respect as I joined the street world, because those thoughts fueled my personal disgust and sealed my desire to be done with this life. Those other memories, though, those good things that had happened were much too dangerous to recall.

  Was I really such a coward that I couldn't face life and leave it at the same time? I didn't give myself time to consider the answer because I was already following dirty Santa locks into the dim, basement-level kitchen that we all knew as Martha Big's.

  She wasn't especially tall but was about as large a woman as I'd ever encountered, likely topping four hundred pounds. Her weight, though, most of the homeless soon discovered, didn't slow her down even the slightest. She moved back and forth through the throngs of indigent people and directed her dozen volunteers like a general on a battlefield. One minute she'd be cleaning up a dropped tray at one end of the large, low-ceilinged room, and the next she'd be directing a young girl on how to scoop a fair portion of food into every plate. Every few minutes, she'd disappear into the cooking areas that were off-limits to us, and I had no doubt she was just as busy back there directing volunteers on matters of cooking importance. No, her size was very secondary to her energy and to her heart.

  We got our food and found seats near one wall that afforded a pretty good view of the entryway and most of the dining hall. We might have seen the entire room from here if it hadn't been for the spindly Christmas tree that had been erected about two-thirds of the way down our wall. One of the long tables had been placed at an angle to make room for it. The lighted star was only an inch or so from the low, open-beam ceiling.

  "That's Martha," I said, pointing subtly at the force of nature that moved about the ragtag groups of seated men and women. Almost as if she had sensed our attention, she looked our way and smiled. It was only the briefest of glances before she continued about her business.

  To his credit, Barwood never said a word about her size. Instead he said, "She works hard, doesn't she."

  "Like a whirlwind. The old-timers say she used to be homeless herself, but somehow pulled herself out of the streets. A few years later she was back, but this time to help."

  "You sound like you admire her."

  "Who wouldn't? I don't think I'd have the character to do what she does—obviously don't because I'm here not there."

  "You could be running this place," Barwood said.

  I wanted to say something smart, like 'yeah, you're one to talk,' but I knew where he was coming from. For the first month or two on the streets it was hard to get used to your own failure. It was almost as if you were the only guy on the streets with a clue. And you felt the need to tell others how they could better themselves. Soon, though, Barwood would come to realize that he needed to worry about himself and getting his own life together. Besides, for me it didn't much matter. My life had reached its pinnacle long ago. Things had been heading downhill for quite some time, and I had nowhere but further down to go.

  We finished the meal of fried-potatoes, hotdogs and peas mixed with onions. It was all reasonably good. I was ready to leave but detected that Barwood wanted a few more minutes to talk. I'd spent this much time with the guy, so what were a few more minutes? My plans could wait that long. I had decided, however, that any discussion of my own past was off limits. Now that I knew why I had avoided the subject earlier, I knew there was no sense in making what I had to do any harder. I would pay for the crime, but I wouldn't beat myself with memories beforehand.

  We made our way though the busy cafeteria and refilled our coffee mugs before returning to the table. I saw Martha glance our way. Normally, she asked that diners move back out into the street when they were done with their meal. I knew she didn't mind us being there, it was just that there were only a hundred or so seats, and with several hundred people to feed each meal she had to keep the turnover steady. She must have realized that Barwood was new and that he needed some time, because she nodded silently at me as he and I settled back down in our seats.

  "I was going to kill myself," Barwood said.

  Here it comes, I thought. Father Johnston did set me up.

  "Why didn't you?" I responded hal
fheartedly. The second this turned into a lecture, I was prepared to leave.

  He shrugged. "Things came up."

  I waited but he added nothing to the statement, no long discussions about the value of life or pleadings for me to not do this. Barwood just sat there, a muted sad droop to his face.

  He apparently really hadn't known, because if he had, it was the oddest lecture I'd ever received. I decided to wait him out in silence, make sure I'd seen all the cards before getting any deeper into the discussion.

  "I left Maine to do it," he continued after some time. "Took a bus to Vermont."

  "Why Vermont?"

  "Heard a rumor about a place called Christmas Leap where lots of people killed themselves. I figured with no I.D. on me, they'd never know who I was and my ex-wife would never find out."

  "Where is your ex-wife?"

  "In a hospital in Portland—Maine, not Oregon. She's in the psyche ward. Tried to kill me...almost did. I have a pretty good sense of taste and could tell she'd mixed something in the brandy. I pretended to drink it but really dumped it in the sink. I didn't realize she had spiked her own, too. She downed two full glasses before I figured it out. I called for an ambulance. She's been at the hospital ever since."

  "Why'd she do it?"

  "Women and gambling, mostly."

  "Yours, I assume."

  That brought his great and wonderful laugh back. He nodded in the midst of the guffaw. "Yeah, the women were mine. And I don't think she ever gambled more than a dollar at a time."

  "How long ago?"

  His cheerfulness ended abruptly. I'd touched on a sore point again. Finally, his face calm and voice measured, he said, "Doesn't matter much."

  "How'd you get from Vermont to Albany?"

  "A friend."

  I knew for certain there was something unspoken in his story, some large block of logic that I was missing. I was equally certain that he intended it that way. There was more to this white-haired man than plaid pants and a dirty Santa wig, but as I had determined earlier it made little difference to me. I had a course to follow that had nothing to do with Barwood or his Swiss-hole past.

  "So what's this Christmas Leap thing about?"

  He looked at me then. There was a depth to his stare that was a little spooky. "There's a town called Gray, up to the north of Vermont, near the Canadian border. It's just a bitty place, few houses, couple of stores, and a fast river that runs past. The river comes out of the mountains so fast that it has cut a gorge at least a hundred feet deep. A bridge crosses over it right near town. The locals call it Christmas Leap."

  "So people commit suicide there?"

  He nodded. "River's fast and deep. The locals say one goes over every year, like clockwork."

  "On Christmas?"

  "Christmas Eve, actually."

  "Obviously, you didn't."

  "Like I said, things came up but the attraction was there. It seemed a clean way to go, and I imagined if you had to do it, why not be part of a tradition."

  "Doesn't the town keep police there?"

  "Town doesn't have any police. They're so far up that it sometimes takes an hour just to get one of the sheriffs out their way."

  "Sounds horrible," I said, but I was fascinated. It could be the plan I'd been looking for. Barwood stared at me, that faint smile still playing on his lips.

  He no doubt expected my story then, the story that I had determined was not going to be told. I guzzled the rest of my coffee. It was just hot enough to burn as it went down. "You might want to go back to the chapel," I said to him as I got abruptly to my feet. "I'm sure Father Johnston will let you sleep there tonight. And tomorrow you should go back to Maine. Go back to your life. Trust me, the homeless outdoors thing just ain't much fun."

  He stood, his face a neutral mask. I sensed there were oceans of unspoken secrets in his eyes. I didn't care to know any of them. There was a little town in Vermont waiting for me, and his secrets wouldn't make one bit of difference to what I had to do.

  "Thanks again, Barwood. It was nice meeting you. And good luck."

  He extended a hand. It was clean and soft, not at all like the coarse palm one expected to find out on the streets. This man did not belong, and I hoped he would heed my advice and go back home.

  "Good luck to you, Skip."

  "And you," I said as I turned and left. I could feel his secretive eyes boring into me as I wove my way through the crowds to the door. I followed a smelly, young woman out into the open air. It made me sad to think I would never eat there again.

  "Good luck to you, Barwood," I whispered as I pulled my collar tight around my neck and went in search of a calendar and a map…

  You can purchase the rest of

  The Santa Shop

  at Amazon.com.

  You can also purchase

  The Santa Shop’s Hollywood Ending

  Written for one of the major Hollywood Studios, this extended ending revisits Skip Ralstat one year after he and Karen leave picturesque Gray, Vermont, the birthplace of the Santa movement.

  If like the rest of us you were buoyed by the original Santa Shop journey, your heart will soar at the unfolding miracle of Skip’s new life—a life salvaged from a tragic past.

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  BONES IN THE TREE

  Tim Greaton

  Tombstones in the backyard. Uck!

  Trust me, I know how creepy that sounds, but it’s true. Somehow my father and mother got permits to have their own private cemetery seventy feet from their back deck. In Pasadena, California something like that would have been unheard of, but apparently the State of Maine doesn’t do things quite the same way as the rest of the world. I guess when you live on a hill in the Maine woods, nobody really cares what you do.

  It had been almost a year since my mother died of the same disease that took my father–lung cancer. My brother Ray and I had so far been spared, which was miraculous given that my mother used to smoke four packs a day, which basically meant she had smoke coming out of her mouth from the time she got up in the morning until the time she went to bed at night. My father, on the other hand, had never smoked a cigarette in his life. Thanks to my mother, though, he had inhaled the smoke from thousands of them over their thirty-seven years of marriage.

  I wondered if she had died first, would he have had nicotine withdrawal, maybe enough to need the patch? Since he wound up occupying space under the backyard tombstones five years before she did, we would never know.

  I settled into my father’s Adirondack chair, the last one he built before his ruined lungs made it too hard for him to walk up and down the stairs from his basement workshop. For some reason, his chair seemed a lot more comfortable than the ones he had given Peter and me nearly a decade before at his cookout. I could still see my father wearing that silly John Deere chef’s hat as he expertly flipped grilled burgers and hot dogs during our one visit back to Maine.

  “Eat, eat,” I remember him saying to me several times that weekend. “It’ll put a little meat in those…pecks.”

  I smiled. My dad knew I had been insecure about my chest size, mostly because of a certain jerk of a husband who couldn’t keep his eyes off from anything larger than an A-cup. Little did my dad know that it wouldn’t be his burgers, but a surgeon named Andre, that would finally solve that problem for me.

  I chuckled at the irony and winced. I was still a little tender from having the damn implants removed almost three months to the day after Peter left me for one of his undergrad students, a flat-chested girl with hair as orange as a crayon. I lifted my arm, stretched my left shoulder and gently massaged the narrow scar under my breast. It was getting better, but I wouldn’t be playing volleyball anytime soon.

  That caused another solitary chuckle.

  Volleyball in Maine! That was about as likely as cell phone service north of the Auburn/Lewiston area, which is to say not likely at all. Horseshoes and square dancing were about the only two things to do in Menyon Falls, Maine, and I wasn’t all th
at sure about the square dancing. From what I remembered, what little exercise most people got around here was from either making kids or chasing them. Fortunately, I had left in time to avoid making any, though the Robinson brothers and I had sure done our share of practicing.

  Had anyone been able to hear my thoughts, I would have blushed.

  An acorn struck the deck.

  I glanced up in confusion. The only tree in our yard, a large oak, was twenty feet away, just far enough that no branches actually overhung the deck.

  I kicked the nut off into the grass and returned to thoughts of the twisted childhood love triangle that still made me feel like a tramp. Though I had never dated both Robinson brothers at the same time, I used to swap one for the other on a regular basis. It made for some high drama in Menyon Falls; that much was sure. The brothers had sent each other to the emergency room more than once because of me.

  When I finally hooked up and moved away with my college writing professor, the brothers were still at war. I knew I probably should have felt guiltier but, born almost nine months apart to the day, the brothers had been beating the tar out of each other as far back as anyone could remember. And since I hadn’t dated either of them until we were in the fifth grade, I figured their problems were less about me, and more about just plain hating each other. I often wondered if it had something to do with how much alike they looked. That’s how Jason first got me to swap from Johnny to him, by fooling me into thinking he was Johnny one night. After a while, I learned to tell the difference but most people couldn’t. I’ve since met identical twins that didn’t look nearly as much alike as Jason and Johnny.

  It was hard to believe that fifteen years had passed. The brothers were probably both married and sharing family vacations by now. The thought came with a certain sense of relief. In the last two years of high school, their fights over me had gotten out of control. More than once, I felt certain that one of them was going to kill the other.