Then came November, and Gina made a trip back to Florida to see family. She would be gone a week, she said. I drove her to the airport in Bangor, got her luggage out of the trunk, and kissed her good-bye, blissfully unaware that it was the last time I’d ever see her.
She called a few days later—the one-week visit was going to have to be two, she explained. There was some family drama, there were old friends to catch up with, and, she added with a laugh, the Florida weather didn’t seem all that bad after leaving Maine in November.
Maybe I should have been smart enough to have a bad feeling then. I didn’t, though. I just told her how much I missed her and told her to keep having fun.
After two weeks, she informed me that she’d decided to stay until January, and get her affairs in order before moving back to Maine permanently. I wasn’t clear on what affairs needed to be ordered, but it sounded like a funeral process, and in a way it was. I had the first sense of disaster during that call, so I suggested I come down to visit for a week or so, meet her family, meet her friends.
When she responded to that offer by saying she didn’t want me to waste my money on a trip like that, I knew how things were going to end. The writing on the wall, as they say. I kept up the pretense, though, kept lying to myself and those around me, saying she’d be back by the first of the year, and back for good.
It was on Christmas Eve that one of her friends posted a photo of Gina kissing another guy under mistletoe hung from a fucking palm tree. There was some text accompanying the photo, something about how great they were together, how friggin’ adorable they were as a couple, but all I could focus on was that picture. I’d known it was over for a while, had understood that she probably wasn’t coming back, but it’s one thing to sense a situation like that, and another to see it.
I was supposed to be at my parents’ house that night, to do the family Christmas Eve festivities and wake up in my childhood bed on Christmas morning. That was the plan, and no matter how impossible it seemed to bear, I started the drive with good intentions. Or pointed in the right direction, at least, numb and hollowed out. As the miles went by, though, the reality of having to go through the Merry Christmas charade landed on me, and that photo of Gina Garcia and her nameless but oh-so-adorable new boyfriend danced before my eyes, and I knew I just couldn’t do it. I called my parents and told them I had the flu, and then I exited the highway and took the back roads, driving without purpose, driving with tears stinging my eyes and the pines a blur.
It was an hour or so before I decided that I needed a drink.
It took a while to locate a bar that was open on Christmas Eve, and then it was, as you’d expect, a real dive. But that felt right. That felt perfect.
I drank beer first, and then whiskey, and at some point a grizzled old bastard with yellow teeth bought everyone a shot of something milky and sweet, and then I think I had some more beer. My skull was feeling high and tight and the room had a little spin to it when I heard someone talking about the Appalachian Trail.
“Dumb bastards hiking it right now in the snow,” he was saying. “Only a few inches are down, sure, but what in the hell would anybody want to be out there in December for?”
“Was it a couple?” I said, turning on my stool. The guy and his buddy stared at me.
“I mean, were they, you know, dating or married or something?”
“How would I know? And what the hell does that matter for?”
“Romance,” I told him, working hard to present a sober voice and failing miserably. “That’s what they’re doing it for—romance. It’ll give them a story, someday. The romantic Christmas hike in the snow. They want the story, don’t you see?”
“I got plenty of stories, and I ain’t hiking in the fucking snow to find them,” he replied, and his buddy laughed and so did I, and then they moved on in their conversation and pointedly left me out of it. I turned back to the bar, thinking about what it would have been like to hike in the snow on Christmas Eve with Gina, make love under the stars in a sleeping bag, and somewhere along that train of thought a subtle dilemma occurred to me: I had nowhere to stay the night. I was in a dive bar in the middle of nowhere, I’d canceled on my parents, and I was hardly in shape to drive far looking for a hotel. I did have a sleeping bag in the trunk; I always kept some loose camping gear in there. But if I was going to sleep in the cold on Christmas Eve, I sure as hell didn’t want to do it in the parking lot of that shitty bar. Wake up with a headache in a parking lot next to a Dumpster—Merry Christmas, right? But there’d once been a place that got my heart right, there’d once been a goal for the year, back before Gina Garcia had come along. I’d tossed the goal aside for her the way she’d tossed me aside for the guy in Florida, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get a night of it back.
“You say the A.T. crosses near here?” I asked the two old guys, who took this fresh interruption in with less patience than they had the first time.
“Less than a mile down the road.”
“I might take a walk,” I said. “A walk in the snow on Christmas Eve. That’s a nice thing to do, right?”
The guys gave me a long look, and then one of them said, “Son? In your condition, if you go out walking in the snow tonight, the Warden Service will be looking for your body soon enough.”
“And finding it,” his buddy put in.
I laughed like they’d been joking.
They didn’t join in.
* * *
—
The road seemed to have four centerlines, but when I closed my right eye and drove with only the left eye open, the four centerlines merged into two that stuck fairly close together. No cars passed, which was good for me—and for them. The best thing for everyone would have been if a state trooper had come up behind me, but it didn’t happen. It was just me and the dark night road and the blowing snow.
On Christmas Eve, everybody has someplace to be.
I still found the trail crossing, though. Even drunk and even in the snow, I recognized the gap in the trees. I’d spent a lot of time down here, pre-Gina. A lot of preparatory hikes for the dream journey I’d given up on the first time she’d so much as smiled at me.
I pulled the car off to the side of the road and killed the engine. There was a moment, right then, when I thought about staying there and sleeping it off. The old-timers at the bar hadn’t been entirely wrong—it was bad weather for hiking even if you were sober, and if you were in my condition, as they’d termed it, it could be damn near suicidal.
Three things talked me out of staying in the car, though: I was experienced in the woods; I didn’t mind the idea of dying there in the snow because I hoped the vision of my frozen corpse might haunt Gina the way that cute little Facebook picture was haunting me; and, most critically, I needed to piss.
There was no reason to go far. Hell, there was no reason to close the car door. But the moonlight on the snow gave the trail a sort of blue luminescence that looked like a tunnel. It drew you toward it.
Drew me, anyhow.
I went maybe a hundred yards along before I stopped, and then I stood like any good drunk and watched the steam rise off the snow where I’d pissed as if it were a fascinating natural phenomenon, worthy of deep study. When I finally looked up again, the trail around me was the same—bare limbs weaving in a light wind and silvery moonlight—but there was an addition to it that I didn’t understand yet, only felt. A shift in energy, like the air had been infused with a low electric current.
Then I heard the noise. Soft at first, very soft, and in two pitches, one a bit higher than the other. Two different whispers. I stared down the trail in the direction it was coming from—deeper in the woods, not back toward the road, and didn’t see a thing. The volume changed, though. The whispers got rough around the edges. Pop, crunch, pop, crunch.
Someone was walking my way. I understood that from the sound
before the shape even became visible. Then the silhouette appeared and I finally understood the sound—the first tone, that soft pop, was a walking stick plunging through the crust of the snow. The other sounds were the footsteps following it. Crunching toward me.
“Hey there,” I said, just to make some sound of my own, blurt something out in the way you do when you’re nervous.
No answer. Not words, anyhow. Just that pop, crunch, pop, crunch.
Closer. Not a hurried pace, just steady. And relentless.
“Hello?” I called, and once again, I received no answer.
I remembered the story about the witch then. That summertime story, the one that had been told around a warm campfire on the eve of a blue-sky day.
You always start these trips in the sun.
As the figure crunched on toward me, closing the gap steadily, I had an urge to run, and I think I might have, I think I could have gotten all the way back to the car and the hell out of there, been at my parents’ by Christmas morning after all, because I’d gotten a little more sober with each second, each footstep. I really believe I could have done that…if I hadn’t already called out. There was something about breaking the silence in the moonlit snowfall that seemed to anchor me. Like I had to wait for a response now, whether I wanted one or not.
The figure came closer, and I could see her face. She was lost between beauty and years, with traces of what she’d been and promises of what she’d become. Gray hair down to her shoulders, no hat even in the cold, and the snow didn’t seem to stick in her hair, it just passed through it. The clearest thing in the moonlight wasn’t any of her features; it was the walking stick. A polished and knotted piece of hardwood, like the railing at an old-time general store. Too big and too heavy for hiking. Or for hiking comfortably, anyhow.
She was about twenty paces from me when I tried again.
“I thought I’d be alone out here,” I told her. “Christmas Eve, and in the snow…I figured it would just be me.”
Pop, crunch, pop, crunch.
“Or maybe it’s already Christmas,” I said, realizing how damn late it was, and how far out in the middle of nowhere I was. “I bet it is by now.”
I laughed awkwardly into the silence. She was ten feet from me.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
She looked right at me. Not through me, but at me—it was absolutely a gaze of awareness, of acknowledgment, but her expression didn’t change, and she didn’t say a word, or break stride.
I’d been scared, but all of the sudden I got angry, too. That’s how I’d always been with fear, even as a little kid. I lashed out like anger was courage.
“Hey, what the fuck is your problem? I’m not asking for a fucking gift, I’m just saying hello! It’s Christmas, damn it.”
Looking back, I think the word gift mattered. I’ve had a long time to think about it, and I’m pretty sure it mattered a lot. It seemed like there was little light in her eyes then.
At any rate, she stopped. For the first time, she stopped.
Still she didn’t speak. She just held out the walking stick.
I should have known better than to take it. Any fool would have known better. But it was the first recognition she’d shown, and the way she extended it to me was with this sort of deep relief that I couldn’t ignore. It was like a drowning woman’s hand reaching for you out of the water.
I took the stick. It was smooth and cold and very heavy, like it was carved out of lead rather than hickory.
That night, at least, it was heavy. I’ve gotten not to mind it so much.
She never did speak. She left the walking stick in my hand and went on into the moonlight and through the snow toward the road, toward the place where I’d come from not that long before. The sound was different now, just the crunch of her footsteps, no longer the pop of the walking stick, and she moved a little lighter, more fluidly, more naturally.
I just stood there and watched her go. I didn’t try to call after her, even though it would be a little while before I realized it wouldn’t have mattered if I did.
* * *
—
It took them about six months to make me the star of the stories. The winter was long and lonely, of course, because there weren’t many people around after the search parties were gone. Then spring came and the snow melted and the first bands of thru-hikers began to appear. They don’t seem to notice me when they travel in groups. They have to be alone. Even then, most of them don’t try to speak. Not beyond a muttered greeting, at least. Anything beyond that is rare. There’s something primal about me now, I think, something that warns them a little.
A few times, people have yelled at me, annoyed as I passed silently by, but nothing anyone has ever said has made a difference. I just get pulled on, like it’s not a trail under my feet but one of those conveyors at the airport, and I’ve got no choice in the matter. Then whoever tried to engage me falls behind, and I’m gone, hiking on, alone again.
They do tell good stories, though. I’ve heard plenty of versions of my fate by now. Some of them are mean, sure, but sometimes they’re sad and even a little sweet. A lot of the time, they’re funny. What they say to each other, out there around the campfires, doesn’t matter at all. What they say to me might. I’m not sure, but I think for it to matter, I’ll need to find one of them alone, and then they’ll need to say the right word.
I think they’ll need to say gift.
Like I said, I’ve had a lot of time to consider it by now.
This fall I heard a girl ask an interesting question. She was one of the sad/sweet types, not one of the mean ones, or the funny ones. She was taking it very seriously, wondering about me and how it had ended and how bad it had been, and then she asked the one in their group who’d seen me—he was a college boy who’d yelled at me, as a matter of fact—if I’d looked hungry to him.
He said he wasn’t sure. He sounded uneasy with the question. Even if I could have argued with him, I wouldn’t have. Because I don’t feel hungry.
Yet.
THE HANGMAN’S BRIDE
SARAH PINBOROUGH
“Don’t you worry, young Alexander,” the old man said, looking up from the fire that crackled in the grate beside his chair. “In a day or so your parents will be here for Christmas and Mrs. Carmichael shall cook a fat goose and once we’ve eaten our fill we will sing carols and open presents. Their ship has already docked and this weather won’t keep them away.”
The boy stood by the window staring out at the dark afternoon and the thick snowflakes that gusted out of nowhere and died in their hundreds against the glass as the wind whistled once more, dashing around the huge house and darting down the chimneys. The boy flinched and glanced over his shoulder. The old man didn’t blame him. The house was large and, when only half the gas lamps were lit, full of shadows. Even when the weather was fine the walls and floors creaked and groaned like the old man’s stiff bones.
“It’s natural to think of ghosts at midwinter,” he said, reading the child’s mind in his nervous tics. “The dead walk close in where there is more dark than light in a day. But there are no spirits abroad in this house, I can guarantee you that.” The boy looked at him then, small in his smart trousers and shirt, his eyes doubtful. He looked younger than his eight years, and the old man smiled. “But I can tell you such a winter’s tale, if you’d like? It’s about a little boy, not very much younger than you.” Alexander was a naturally curious young soul, and despite his tremors at the raging weather, not overly fearful, and he looked up with interest.
“Come and sit with me by the fire,” the old man said. “And I will tell you the story. It will fill the time before Mrs. Carmichael comes to take you off to bed. It hasn’t been told for a very long time, and I think you will like it.”
As soon as his grandson had taken his place on the rug before him, the old man
stared back into the hypnotic flames of the warming fire. He listened to the spit and hiss from within for a moment, before starting to speak, and the boy listened, rapt, to his story.
* * *
—
It was sixty years ago or so, almost to the day, but the world was a harder place then. There were no carols or Christmas trees, and for most the approach of Christmas was simply a breath of something intangible. A dream that belonged to others who had warm beds and full stomachs. A day for those who could afford a whole day to themselves. Most had other concerns. The simple business of staying alive.
Winter was bitter that year. A fog coated the city like darkness personified, and within a month or so, the ice in the river would be so thick that a fair would be held there, but such frivolities were in the future, and throughout that December there was just the icy cold and drifting snow filling the streets.
The boy was found by his dead mother’s side, still wrapped in her frozen arms where he had been pressed against her for a warmth now long gone. She had been singing to him when she died and he couldn’t remember hearing her stop. He was sure she still sang, whispering out the tune—lavender’s green, diddle, diddle, lavender’s blue. You must love me, diddle, diddle, ’cause I love you—even as she froze solid and cold beside him, the tune she’d always shared when he was frightened, perhaps when she was frightened too. He was so close to death that when the man emerged from that awful fog, top hat and tails over his greasy hair and thin frame, the barely conscious boy thought it was the final undertaker, Death himself, come to carry him to his grave. He found he didn’t mind so much. But the suit was worn and frayed and an inch too short on the leg for its current host, and as he pressed the boy into his chest, all the child could smell was smoke.
To a passerby this might have looked like an act of Christian charity, the master sweep saving a poor urchin from his imminent demise, but in fact the sweep, one Mr. Arthur Crockett, was thinking of his business. He’d just lost one boy, Tom, and needed another to replace him. This happenstance would save him the cost of apprenticing one from the workhouse. So yes, he held the boy close to keep him warm, and yes, he nursed him back to health with a warm bed and hot soup, but only so that once he was well, he could put him to work.
Hark! the Herald Angels Scream Page 29