Miracle and Other Christmas Stories

by Connie Willis

  “And what do you intend to do? Drive west until you fall off the Santa Monica pier?”

  “I intend to find Him,” Mel said.

  B.T. opened his mouth as if to say something and then shut it and stormed off down the hall.

  Mel stood there, watching him till a door slammed, down the hall.

  Bring your friends, Mel thought. Bring your friends.

  “For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”

  —I CORINTHIANS 13:12

  “I intend to find Him,” Mel had said, and was glad B.T. hadn’t shouted back “How?” because he had no idea.

  He had not had a sign, which meant that the answer must be somewhere else. Mel sat down on the bed, opened the drawer of the bedside table, and got out the Gideon Bible.

  He propped the pillows up against the headboard and leaned back against them and opened the Bible to the Book of Revelation.

  The radio evangelists made it sound like the story of the Second Coming was a single narrative, but it was actually a hodgepodge of isolated scriptures—Matthew 24 and sections of Isaiah and Daniel, verses out of Second Thessalonians and John and Joel, stray ravings from Revelation and Jeremiah, all thrown together by the evangelists as if the authors were writing at the same time. If they were even writing about the same thing.

  And the references were full of contradictions. A trumpet would sound, and Christ would come in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Or on a white horse, leading an army of a hundred and forty-four thousand. Or like a thief in the night. There would be earthquakes and pestilences and a star falling out of heaven. Or a dragon would come up out of the sea, or four great beasts, with the heads of a lion and a bear and a leopard and eagles’ wings. Or darkness would cover the earth.

  But in all the assorted prophecies there were no locations mentioned. Joel talked about a desolate wilderness and Jeremiah about a wasteland, but not about where they were. Luke said the faithful would come “from the east, and from the west, and from the north” to the kingdom of God, but neglected to say where it was located.

  The only place mentioned by name in all the prophecies was Armageddon. But Armageddon (or Har-Magedon or ‘Ar Himdah) was a word that appeared only once in the Scriptures and whose meaning was not known, a word that might be Hebrew or Greek or something else altogether, that might mean “level” or “valley plain” or “place of desire.”

  Mel remembered from seminary that some scholars thought it referred to the plain in front of Mt. Megiddo, the site of a battle between Israel and Sisera the Canaanite. But there was no Mt. Megiddo on ancient or modern maps. It could be anywhere.

  He put on his shoes and his coat and went out to the parking lot to get his road atlas out of the car.

  B.T. was leaning against the trunk.

  “How long have you been out here?” Mel asked, but the answer was obvious. B.T.’s dark face was pinched with cold, and his hands were jammed into his pockets like the carnival kid’s had been.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, his voice shivering with the cold. “I don’t have to be back until Thursday, and I can fly out of Denver just as easily as out of Omaha. If we drive as far as Denver together, it’ll give us more time—”

  “For you to talk me out of this,” Mel said, and then was sorry when he saw the expression on B.T.’s face.

  “For us to talk,” B.T. said. “For me to figure this—epiphany—out.”

  “All right,” Mel said. “As far as Denver.” He opened the car door. “You can come inside now. I’m not going anywhere till morning.” He leaned inside the car and got the atlas. “It’s a good thing I came out for this. You didn’t actually intend to stand out here all night, did you?”

  He nodded, his teeth chattering. “You’re not the only one who’s crazy.”

  “By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand, and seeing ye shall see and shall not perceive.”

  —MATTHEW 13:14

  There wasn’t a Hertz rental car agency in Zion Center. “The nearest one’s in Redfield,” B.T. said unhappily.

  “I’ll meet you there,” Mel said.

  “Will you?” B.T. said. “You won’t take off on your own?”

  “No,” Mel said.

  “What if you see a sign?”

  “If I see a burning bush, I’ll pull off on the side and let you know,” Mel said dryly. “We can caravan if you want.”

  “Fine,” B.T. said. “I’ll follow you.”

  “I don’t know where the rental place is.”

  “I’ll pull ahead of you once we get to Redfield,” B.T. said, and got into his rental car. “It’s the second exit. What are the roads supposed to be like?”

  “Icy. Snow-packed. But the weather report said clear.”

  Mel got into his car. The kid from the carnival had been right. The ding had started to spread, raying out in three long cracks and one short one.

  He led the way over to the interstate, being careful to signal lane changes and not to get too far ahead, so B.T. wouldn’t think he was trying to escape.

  The carnival must have stayed the night in Zion Center, too. He passed a truck carrying the Tilt-a-Whirl and one full of stacked, slanted mirrors for, Mel assumed, the Hall of Mirrors. A Blazer roared past him with the bumper sticker “When the Rapture comes, I’m outta here!”

  As soon as he was on the interstate, he turned on the radio. “… and snow-packed. Partly cloudy becoming clear by midmorning. Interstate 80 between Victor and Davenport is closed, also U.S. 35 and State Highway 218. Partly cloudy skies, clearing by midmorning. The following schools are closed: Edgewater, Bennett, Olathe, Oskaloosa, Vinton, Shellsburg….”

  Mel twisted the knob.

  “… but the Second Coming is not something we believers have to be afraid of,” the evangelist, this one with a Texas accent, said, “for the Book of Revelation tells us that Christ will protect us from the final tribulation, and when He comes to power we will dwell with Him in His Holy City, which shines with jewels and precious stones, and we will drink from living fountains of water. The lion shall lie down with the lamb, and there … be … more—”

  The evangelist sputtered into static and then out of range, which was just as well because Mel was heading into fog and needed to give his whole attention to his driving.

  The fog got worse, descending like a smothering blanket. Mel turned on his lights. They didn’t help at all, but Mel hoped B.T. would be able to see his taillights the way Cassie had. He couldn’t see anything beyond a few yards in front of him. And if he had wanted a sign of his mental state, this was certainly appropriate.

  “God has told us His will in no uncertain terms,” the radio evangelist thundered, coming suddenly back into range. “There can’t be any question about it.”

  But he had dozens of questions. There had been no Megiddo on the map of Nebraska last night. Or of Kansas or Colorado or New Mexico, and nothing in all the prophecies about location except a reference to the New Jerusalem, and there was no New Jerusalem on the map either.

  “And how do I know the Second Coming is at hand?” the evangelist roared, suddenly back in range. “Because the Bible tells us so. It tells us how He is coming and when!”

  And that wasn’t true either. “Ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh,” Matthew had written, and Luke, “The Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not,” and even Revelation, “I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come.” It was the only thing they were all agreed on.

  “The signs are all around us,” the evangelist shouted. “They’re as plain as the nose on your face! Air pollution, liberals outlawing school prayer, wickedness! Why, anybody’d have to be blind not to recognize them! Open your eyes and see!”

  “All I see is fog,” Mel said, turning on the defrost and wiping his sleeve across the windshield, but it wasn’t the windshield. It was the world, which had vanished completely in the whiteness.

&nb
sp; He nearly missed the turnoff to Redfield. Luckily, the fog was less dense in town, and they were able to find not only the rental car place, but the local Tastee-Freez. Mel went over to get some lunch to take with them while B.T. checked the car in.

  It was full of farmers, all talking about the weather. “Damned meter-ologists,” one of them, redfaced and wearing a John Deere cap and earmuffs, grumbled. “Said it was supposed to be clear.”

  “It is clear,” another one in a down vest said. “He just didn’t say where. You get up above that fog, say thirty thousand feet, and it’s clear as a bell.”

  “Number six,” the woman behind the counter called.

  Mel went up to the counter and paid. There was a fluorescent green poster for the carnival taped up on the wall beside the counter. “Come have the time of your life!” it read. “Thrills, chills, excitement!”

  Chills is right, Mel thought, thinking of how cold being up in a Ferris wheel in this fog would be.

  It was an old sign. “Littletown, Dec. 24,” it read. “Ft. Dodge, Dec. 28. Cairo, Dec. 30.”

  B.T. was already in the car when Mel got back with their hamburgers and coffee. He handed him the sack and got back on the highway.

  That was a mistake. The fog was so thick he couldn’t even take a hand off the wheel to hold the hamburger B.T. offered him. “I’ll eat it later,” he said, leaning forward and squinting as if that would make things clearer. “You go ahead and eat, and we’ll switch places in a couple of exits.”

  But there were no exits, or Mel couldn’t see them in the fog, and after twenty miles of it, he had B.T. hand him his coffee, now stone cold, and took a couple of sips.

  “I’ve been looking at the Second Coming scientifically,” B.T. said.” ‘A great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea and the third part of the sea became blood.’”

  Mel glanced over. B.T. was reading from a black leather Bible. “Where’d you get that?” he asked.

  “It was in the hotel room,” B.T. said.

  “You stole a Gideon Bible?” Mel said.

  “They put them there for people who need them. And I’d say we qualify. ‘There was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair and the moon became as blood. And the stars of heaven fell into the earth. And every mountain and island were moved out of their places.’

  “All these things are supposed to happen along with the Second Coming,” B.T. said. “Earthquakes, wars and rumors of wars, pestilence, locusts.” He leafed through the flimsy pages.” ‘And there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth.’”

  He shut the Bible. “All right, earthquakes happen all the time, and there have been wars and rumors of wars for the last ten thousand years, and I guess this—’and the stars shall fall from the sky’—could refer to meteors. But there’s no sign of any of these other things. No locusts, no bottomless pit opening up, no ‘third part of trees and grass were burnt up and a third part of the creatures which were in the sea died.’”

  “Nuclear war,” Mel said.

  “What?”

  “According to the evangelists, that’s supposed to refer to nuclear war,” Mel said. “And before that, to the Communist threat. Or fluoridation of water. Or anything else they disapprove of.”

  “Well, whatever it stands for, no bottomless pit has opened up lately or we would have seen it on CNN. And volcanoes don’t cause locust swarms. Mel,” he said seriously, “let’s say your experience was a real epiphany. Couldn’t you have misinterpreted what it meant?”

  And for a split second, Mel almost had it. The key to where He was and what was going to happen. The key to all of it.

  “Couldn’t it have been about something else?” B.T. said. “Something besides the Second Coming?”

  No, Mel thought, trying to hang on to the insight, it was the Second Coming, but—it was gone. Whatever it was, he’d lost it.

  He stared blindly ahead at the fog, trying to remember what had triggered it. B.T. had said, “Couldn’t you have misunderstood what it meant?” No, that wasn’t right. “Couldn’t you—”

  “What is it?” B.T. was pointing through the windshield.

  “What is that? Up ahead?”

  “I don’t see anything,” Mel said, straining ahead. He couldn’t see anything but fog. “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. I just saw a glimpse of lights.”

  “Are you sure?” Mel said. There was nothing there but whiteness.

  “There it is again,” B.T. said, pointing. “Didn’t you see it? Yellow flashing lights. There must be an accident. You’d better slow down.”

  Mel was already barely creeping along, but he slowed further, still unable to see anything. “Was it on our side of the highway?”

  “Yes … I don’t know,” B.T. said, leaning forward. “I don’t see it now. But I’m sure it was there.”

  Mel crawled forward, squinting into the whiteness. “Could it have been a truck? The carnival truck had a yellow arrow,” he said, and saw the lights.

  And they were definitely not a sign for a carnival ride. They filled the road just ahead, flashing yellow and red and blue, all out of synch with each other. Police cars or fire trucks or ambulances. Definitely an accident. He pumped the brakes, hoping whoever was behind him could see his taillights, and slowed to a stop.

  A patrolman appeared out of the fog, holding up his hand in the sign for “stop.” He was wearing a yellow poncho and a clear plastic cover over his brown hat.

  Mel rolled his window down, and the patrolman leaned in to talk to them. “Road up ahead’s closed. You need to get off at this exit.”

  “Exit?” Mel said, looking to the right. He could just make out a green outline in the fog.

  “It’s right there, up about a hundred yards,” the patrolman said, pointing into nothingness. “We’ll come tell you when it’s open again.”

  “Are you closing it because of the weather?” B.T. asked.

  The patrolman shook his head. “Accident,” he said. “Big mess. It’ll be a while.” He motioned them off to the right.

  Mel felt his way to the exit and off the highway. At least it had a truck stop instead of just a gas station. He and B.T. parked and went into the restaurant.

  It was jammed. Every booth, every seat at the counter was full. Mel and B.T. sat down at the last unoccupied table, and it immediately became clear why it had been unoccupied. The draft when the door opened made B.T., who had just taken his coat off, put it back on and then zip it up.

  Mel had expected everyone to be angry about the delay, but the waitresses and customers all seemed to be in a holiday mood. Truckers leaned across the backs of the booths to talk to each other, laughing, and the waitresses, carrying pots of coffee, were smiling. One of them had, inexplicably, a plastic kewpie doll stuck in her beehive hairdo.

  The door opened again, sending an Arctic blast across their table, and a paramedic came in and went up to the counter to talk to the waitress. “… accident …” Mel heard him say and shake his head, “… carnival truck …”

  Mel went over. “Excuse me,” he said. “I heard you say something about a carnival truck. Is that what had the accident?”

  “Disaster is more like it,” the paramedic said, shaking his head. “Took a turn too sharp and lost his whole load. And don’t ask me what a carnival’s doing up here in the middle of winter.”

  “Was the driver hurt?” Mel asked anxiously.

  “Hurt? Hell, no. Not a scratch. But that road’s going to be closed the rest of the day.” He pulled a bamboo Chinese finger trap out of his pocket and handed it to Mel. “Truck was carrying all the prizes and stuff for the midway. The whole road’s covered in stuffed animals and baseballs. And you can’t even see to clean ‘em up.”

  Mel went back to the table and told B.T. what had happened.

  “We could go south and pick up Highway 33,” B.T. said, con
sulting the road atlas.

  “No, you can’t,” the waitress, appearing with two pots of coffee, said. “It’s closed. Fog. So’s 15 north.” She poured coffee into their cups. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  The draft hit them again, and the waitress glanced over at the door. “Hey! Don’t just stand there—shut the door!”

  Mel looked toward the door. Cassie was standing there, wearing a bulky orange sweater that made her look even rounder, and scanning the restaurant for an empty booth. She was carrying a red dinosaur under one arm and her bright green tote bag over the other.

  “Cassie!” Mel called to her, and she smiled and came over.

  “Put your dinosaur down and join us,” B.T. said.

  “It’s not a dinosaur,” she said, setting it on the table. “It’s a dragon. See?” she said, pointing to two pieces of red felt on its back. “Wings.”

  “Where’d you get it?” Mel said.

  “The driver of the truck that spilled them gave it to me,” she said. “I’d better call my sister before she hears about this on the news,” she said, looking around the restaurant. “Do you think the phones are working?”

  B.T. pointed at a sign that said “Phones,” and she left.

  She was back instantly. “There’s a line,” she said, and sat down. The waitress came by again with coffee and menus, and they ordered pie, and then Cassie went to check the phones again.

  “There’s still a line,” she said, coming back. “My sister will have a fit when she hears about this. She already thinks I’m crazy. And out there in that fog today I thought so, too. I wish my grandmother had never looked up verses in the Bible.”

  “The Bible?” Mel said.

  She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s a long story.”

  “We seem to have plenty of time,” B.T. said.

  “Well,” she said, settling herself. “I’m an English teacher— was an English teacher—and the school board offered this early-retirement bonus that was too good to turn down, so I retired in June, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I’d always wanted to travel, but I hate traveling alone, and I didn’t know where I wanted to go. So I got on the sub list—our district has a terrible time getting subs, and there’s been all this flu.”