She squinted. “Davey? Not nobody here by that name.”
“Ehhh, then a small boy. Yea high, eight or ten years of age, no more.”
She still looked puzzled.
“Miss, is your son home?” I asked.
“My son?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Santa said. “We have something for him.”
“No, he’s not. My son died. Near a year ago. What is it you brought?”
Santa was temporarily dumbfounded, but the woman was eyeing the bag with the vase so I took it from his hands as he sputtered to think of something to say.
“There’s been some confusion,” I said. “We’re so very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, sir. As I say, though, it’s been a year. The sorrys were plenty last Christmas. What kind of confusion do you say?”
“We’re only here to give you this, and then we’ll leave you be.” I elbowed Santa. “Right?”
“Yes! Little Davey… or someone wanted you to have this.”
I pulled the vase from the bag and handed it over. The woman’s eyes widened when she saw it.
“Oh, Lord.” She let out a little cry, and took it from me as one might take a baby. “My mother’s, oh I never thought I’d see it again.”
“Merry Christmas, madam,” Santa said.
He was tearing up at this little reunion, and if I’m being completely honest I was feeling pretty good too. I got to experience a tiny bit of the joy my friend had been trying to fill me with, and I admit I sort of liked it.
For about five seconds.
“Are you the ones that took it, then?” the woman asked.
* * *
I learned a number of things very quickly.
First, the vase had not been hocked by this woman, or by anyone else in the household. It had been stolen, one year earlier, on the occasion of her son’s wake. Evidently a large procession of locals had passed through the apartment to pay respects, and one of them decided to take a precious example of Polish ceramics on their way out.
Second, the woman’s husband and brother-in-law were both longshoremen, neither currently at their jobs, both sitting in the kitchen up until she began shouting for them. Both were also very large and not at all interested in hearing our side of any story we wished to tell.
Third, Santa can run a lot faster than his stature might suggest.
We were running and hiding for about an hour, through a neighborhood that was entirely capable of not being friendly, given we weren’t dressed like people who belonged there and were being called thieves loudly by large men.
We didn’t stop looking over our shoulders until we were back at the Irish pub again.
Then things really got out of hand.
“It was a ghost!” Santa said. “That poor boy’s spirit visited us to get his mother’s vase back! It’s a Christmas miracle!”
We were the only ones in the pub, as it was just past noon. O’Shea was there, stocking the bar and filling up our pints, but thankfully nobody else was, because Santa sounded insane.
“It wasn’t a ghost,” I said, for probably the third or fourth time.
“There’s no other explanation!”
“Yes there is, we just haven’t found it yet.”
“Then there’s no better one!”
“Whether it’s better or not, there’s an explanation that doesn’t involve ghosts. Look, it makes for a fantastic story. It does. But if there is anybody on Earth who can attest to the fact that there is no such thing as ghosts, it’s me. I’ve seen more people die than you’ve seen alive, and I’m telling you, they don’t exist. They certainly don’t manifest in department stores to ask strangers for favors.”
“A miracle, I tell you. A little boy’s sad spirit couldn’t be freed from this world until his mother was made whole again. Admittedly, it works much better if she’d actually pawned it to buy little Davey his medicine, but even so…”
“…Even so, you’ll be telling it that way from now on, I’m sure. You should also leave out the part where we were nearly beaten to death. And the part where her son’s name wasn’t even Davey.”
“Stanley, you disappoint me. You’ve been given a gift and yet you are just as grouchy as ever.”
“I have a talent for preferring reality to whimsy, Santa. It may mean I’m more prone to seeing the worst in everything, but my way has a better survival rate.”
“Fine. Then tell me a better story.”
“I’m working on it.”
I didn’t have anything better. But this is the thing about supposedly supernatural events, and why it’s always a good idea to wait until a more complete explanation comes along: magic is never the best option.
I have the luxury of being alive for long enough to see the things we used to call magic explained in ways that don’t require magic. Magnets, for instance, would have been considered magic up until recently. The same thing could be said about gunpowder, or a solar eclipse, or slow-acting poisons, or Greek fire. The supernatural is always going to be a placeholder explanation until a better one comes along.
* * *
We stayed at the bar the entire day. Santa got jollier and jollier as time went by, perhaps not coincidentally at the same rate his beer stein got refilled. I heard him tell the story of little Davey and the magic flower vase at least fifteen times, with each version a tiny bit different from the one before. It was like that game where people take turns telling a story, until by last person there’s no resemblance to the original tale. Except in this case only one person was telling it.
Imps, as I’ve said, are primarily known as gifted storytellers. I’ve known this for a few thousand years, but this was probably the first time I’d seen one of their stories evolve right in front of me. I won’t go through all the iterations of Davey’s story for you, but let’s just say by the end of the night Davey had turned into a little girl, I was an angel, and the vase had become a locket. Also, this event somehow occurred at night in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve, which was still a week away.
None of this did a thing for my mood, which as Santa repeatedly noted had not improved.
I’m unaccustomed to being around someone for long enough to have my mental state the subject of conversation. I’m also not tremendously self-reflective, so I wouldn’t have thought my apparent depression was notable until there was someone else attempting to cure me of it. The thing is, I’ve been known to be depressed for entire centuries, and I usually plan ahead. Depression was why most of my money—however much I had—was a phone call away instead of sitting in a steamer trunk somewhere, because when you’re expecting to be on a hundred-year lousy-mood drinking bender it’s always a good idea to lock up your valuables first. It was also why while I had decided on this occasion to live in a hotel, I picked one close to an area where, if I passed out someplace public, I wouldn’t draw any particular attention.
That I live a lot of my life in a dark mood is my point, and I don’t really notice until someone else points it out, and then it becomes barely tolerable until I either stop spending time around that person or forget about it. Only very rarely am I cheered up and out of this mood. And when that happens a woman is usually involved.
“Stanley, I don’t know what to do for you,” Santa said, much later on in the evening. He’d bought one or two rounds for the now quite ample collection of patrons, it was past ten in the evening, and we were both substantially drunker. “This was a good day! Yet a cloud remains over your head.”
“Yes, well I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Never mind that! Did you see the look on the mother when she laid eyes on that vase? How can that not warm your heart?”
“It did at first, but that feeling was quickly driven out by the immediate threat on my life. I don’t often associate impending death with a sense of joy and oneness with humanity. Although surviving impending death can sometimes feel that way for a few minutes.”
“Aaah!” He clapped me on the shoulder. “I’m not givin
g up on you yet. The secret to happiness in this life is bringing joy to others. That’s true whether you’re Santa, a small boy, or Lazarus himself.”
“Like how you’re bringing me so much joy right now?”
“I’m doing a better job of it than you are.”
And so it went for the rest of the evening. Santa would go off and tell another newcomer this fantastic story of his, and periodically return to the corner I was sitting in to try and convince me I was actually happy, and then he would go back to making everyone else happy for a while. He was incredibly good at this as far as most of the bar was concerned. I just couldn’t bring myself to see things the same way.
It’s probably true that once one has lived through as much history as I have, cynicism is the default outlook. I appreciated that Santa was always expecting the happy ending and the good outcome and all of that, because as old as he was, he’d still come of age in a modern world where violence is largely an exception rather than an expectation. In his understanding of things, the sad part of any story always has a happy counterpart, or if not happy at least bittersweet. That was why he preferred to focus on the reuniting of the heirloom with the family, while I couldn’t ignore the part where their son died at Christmas.
I’ve been told before, by a number of people, that my attitude toward death and tragedy is casual and indifferent, almost callously so. I never thought that was true. I think what comes off as indifference is only a lack of surprise. I expect tragedy, in the same way Santa expects his good story with a happy ending. When I’m right—and I often am—I’m the least surprised person in the room.
* * *
When in a gloomy mood it usually helps to be around other people who also happen to be gloomy, which is one of the appeals of dive bars like this particular pub, but since Santa was livening up the place I had little in the way of like moods to latch onto, so I mostly stayed in the corner and watched the room.
Watching humanity at a remove is a normal state of being for me as well, and probably began as a survival technique. It was what I was doing when I noticed something peculiar about O’Shea.
It was a Saturday night, so the taps were busy all evening. A few ran dry on O’Shea, and when that happened he did this weird thing where he stomped his foot hard, twice. A few minutes later he’d lean down beneath the bar as if talking to it, and maybe he was, because a minute or two after that, the tap wasn’t dry any more.
He had a few people working for him—two barmaids and a guy who dealt with dirty dishes—but nobody else went behind the bar that I could see. He also never addressed anybody regarding the dry taps. I was assuming the kegs were in the basement since he didn’t roll anything out under the bar, and the stomping was an obvious attempt to communicate to someone beneath our feet, but a foot-stomp didn’t really convey all of the necessary information, such as which keg needed work. So that had to have been what he was doing when he leaned over and spoke to someone small enough to fit in the cabinet.
I leaned over the bar and took a peek at the underside of it, but the only interesting thing was that there was nothing interesting to see: stored boxes and glassware and the closed cabinet door, but that was all.
So when O’Shea was on the other side of the bar, I stomped on the floor myself.
A few seconds later the cabinet door opened, from the inside. This O’Shea did notice. He leaned over and whispered something I couldn’t hear over the racket in the barroom, and then slid the door closed again.
I didn’t get a look at who was on the other side of that door, but I had a good idea who it might be.
* * *
“Tell me again why we’re standing out here?”
Santa was confused. We’d gone from opening the bar to closing it, and now instead of wandering off to our respective beds we were standing in an alley.
This was, for wont of a better term, the bar’s piss alley. There was a bathroom to be found inside O’Shea’s, but it was a terrifying place with only one toilet that few had seen. It was difficult to tell, on most nights, if it was occupied or if the owner had just never unlocked the door. Either way, it made more sense to continue past the bathroom door to the rear exit and take a leak in the alley instead. This worked fine for everyone, by which I mean basically no women went to the pub on anything like a regular basis.
It was not where one lingered, and certainly not at the end of a day of drinking when one’s body is very much interested in shutting down.
“I told you,” I said, “we’re ghost-hunting. Now keep your voice down or this won’t work.”
We were in the shadows. Other than the bulb above the bar’s exit the only light came from the streetlamps, and those had a diminished impact in the narrow alley, so there were plenty of shadows to choose from. We were halfway down the wall, could see the back door clearly, and were pretty sure we couldn’t also be seen from that door. It was actually only the second-best hiding place, with the best being behind a Dumpster. But the trash really smelled.
“Are you practicing divination?” he asked. “I’m growing concerned that madness might be an aspect of your extreme age, Stanley.”
“No, this isn’t madness. Trust me. It is a guess, but a decent one.” Not that he was wrong to suggest this; I do go mad now and then.
“How exactly will we know when your guess is officially incorrect? I’d like to get some rest or I’ll fall asleep on my throne tomorrow.”
“You can sleep after Christmas. The bar turns off the light when everyone’s out, that’s how we’ll know I’m wrong.”
“How do you know that?”
“I fell asleep back here one night,” I said. This wasn’t really true, but it sounded good.
“But how…”
“Shh!”
The back door, which was mostly left open during business hours, had been closed since the bar shut down. But now someone inside had opened it, and a few seconds later that someone was revealed as little Davey.
Santa gasped.
The kid looked more or less the same as he’d appeared in the store. Different clothing, but clearly the same child. And definitely corporeal, unless we also believe ghosts cast shadows.
The kid looked down along both ends of the alley—failing to spot us—then reached inside and turned the light off. As our eyes adjusted we could hear the door being closed and latched. The next time I was able to see him it was in the faint light coming from the street lamp at the far corner of the alley. He was walking away from us.
Santa was ready to leap forward and probably embrace Davey. I was more inclined toward strangulation, myself. But neither of us much moved because it turned out another man was in the alley, on the other side of the Dumpster, who was also there to intercept the boy.
The ensuing conversation between them didn’t look friendly. We couldn’t hear what was being discussed, but when the guy grabbed Davey by the shoulder in a way that looked painful, it was clear this was no social chat.
Santa toddled down the alley, not in any way sober at the time or formidable on any occasion, but also not about to let someone beat up a child in front of him.
“Here now, what are you doing with that boy?”
Startled, the man turned, but didn’t let go of the kid. “This is none of your business, go on.”
I expected to recognize him from the bar, only because at this time of the night the only people lingering in the area were patrons. But I had never seen him before. He was large and sloop-shouldered, but in the light there wasn’t much more to see. I couldn’t tell how he was dressed or anything useful like that.
“I’ll do just that the moment you unhand the child,” Santa said.
“Walk away, mister.”
I stepped into the light. “How about if you walk away instead?” I said.
The man held onto Davey for another beat or two, possibly considering whether it was worth his trouble to deal with two full-sized people in addition to the half-sized one already in his grip. Then he let go,
his palms in the air.
“All right, fellas, he’s all yours.” To Davey, he said, “Me and you, we aren’t finished.”
He walked out of the alley in a direction that didn’t require also walking past us.
As soon as he was gone, Davey turned to look at his rescuers for the first time, and the thanks that was sure to follow died on his lips.
“Aw, geez, you guys? This night just gets better and better.”
* * *
The all-night diner may be the greatest invention of the Twentieth century. I realize the list of inventions to choose from is very long indeed, and I may be overstating my point somewhat, but it’s a reasonable conclusion to draw if one happens to be awake at one in the morning and in need of food and a place that’s warm and dry. This is especially true for someone who only occasionally has a place to call home.
The ready availability of unspoiled food is really something taken for granted by most people nowadays, at least in the West. I don’t mean that as a commentary on First World vs. Third World economics at all, only that it’s incredibly difficult to grasp how much of one’s day has to be devoted to obtaining food when the option of purchasing it in a store is taken away. I was a farmer on several occasions, and spent most of my waking hours either tending to the food I was growing for myself or eating that food. I had no time to do anything else.
If you want to know why the great works of art and philosophy and science and history and religious thought were performed by the wealthy classes of the world, it was because they were the only ones with the requisite leisure time.
We were in one such diner as Davey attempted to defend himself.
“Aw c’mon, guys, it was just a joke,” he said, between bites of food. Santa thought it would be best to ply the young man with the bribe of a full stomach, which was a better idea than mine, which was to pick him up by the scruff of the neck and drag him someplace where the lighting was worse. Admittedly, my approach didn’t differ much from the one of the fellow in the alley, but moral equivocation wasn’t something I had the patience for at this point in the evening.
Yuletide Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles Book 4) Page 4