Christmas in Culm: Three Stories Read online

  "Did you."

  "It’s been a while," Nicole said.

  "Can I ask you something?" Eddie said.

  "Oh, well . . . yeah, sure, I guess." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "You okay?"

  "Did you . . . do you think I’m a failure? Someone who’s just kind of . . . taking up space?"

  "That’s kind of an odd question, Eddie."

  "I kind of figured you’d tell me," he said. "I don’t have anyone else to ask. I didn’t know if I should call. I know I’m the last person who you want to hear from—"

  "That’s not true, Eddie."

  "—but I just need to know what you think about me. Tonight I . . . I just found something my parents left behind. I think they had these high hopes for me, these ideas that I’d be something more, something that mattered in one way or another. But I've been thinking a lot, you know? I've been thinking about what they’d do if they could see me now. Their son the mailman. Their son who can’t afford anything more than an apartment in Avoca. Their son who’s done nothing of consequence."

  The line fell silent for a moment, and Nicole let out a soft sigh. "Oh, Eddie," she said, her voice like the sound of distant wind. "It’s the Christmas season making you feel this way, isn’t it?"

  "I don’t know," he said. "It could be."

  "You know, Eddie, every week you used talk about the map in your childhood bedroom, the pushpins in the map, the letters you got from all around the world, and I’d say to myself, 'Why doesn’t he do something about that? Why doesn’t he put up a new map, put his finger on it, then say "This is where I’ll be next?"' But you never did. You only sank into yourself. No, Eddie. I never thought you were a failure. I was never ashamed of you. You, Eddie. You were ashamed of you. Ashamed of being a mailman, ashamed of being who you were. I could only take so much of that until, until I just couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t fall into that."

  Eddie nodded, feeling tears fill his eyes as they did on the day she told him she was leaving. "I see," he said.

  "You know," Nicole said, "when I think of you, I always say, 'Hey, did Eddie finally go back to college like he said he was going to?' or 'Hey, I wonder if Eddie finally took that trip to Scotland or Alaska or wherever?' But you haven’t, Eddie. Like you feel unworthy of life or something. You’re a daydreamer," she said, "and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you’ve got to do something with those dreams. They don’t have to be grand dreams, Eddie, but they have to amount to something."

  "I’m sorry I wasn’t better to you," he said.

  "You were fine to me, Eddie. You just weren’t fine to yourself."

  Electronic silence passed between them again, a pause filled with ghosts on the circuits and ghosts of the past.

  "What’ll you be doing this Christmas?" she asked.

  "Nothing I can think of," he said.

  "Maybe you can come to Santa Fe next month or something. We can catch up. We can go skiing up in Taos. You, me, Jim."

  Eddie felt tightness in his chest at the sound of her husband's name, and he cleared his throat. "I don't know, he said. "It's . . . it's kind of busy at work."

  "I see," she said. "I understand."

  The silences between them became more frequent in the following minutes until he blurted the I’m going to let you go, and she said the Okay, Eddie, it was so good to hear from you. And then he replaced the handset back on the telephone's cradle and sat in the cold living room, the windows rattling in the wind.

  That night he lay on his bed, wrapped in the warmth of heavy blankets. He remembered Nicole beside him. He remembered his mother covered in cancerous bruises. He remembered his father sitting by her grave until the night swallowed him.

  That night Eddie slept as shadows circled the room, watching him, protecting him, holding him as he dreamt long and deep.

  ***

  The holiday load was heavy again. More parcels in the back of the mail truck. More mail in the mail trays. And Eddie drove down each street, stuffing mailboxes, leaving packages, drinking coffee, and sitting in parking lots. He knew he’d be delivering late to get the entire truck emptied, so he made Lemontree Lane the final stop for the day.

  The winter darkness covered the sky and streets, and Eddie slowly navigated the twists and turns of Lemontree, noting the shadows and shy, shimmering eyes darting behind tree trunks. Persephone had left the flag up on the mailbox, and he pulled up, unloaded the box, then turned off the engine. He stared at her front door and the glow of the hurricane lamp in her living room window, then got out and walked to the front door. He knocked three times, and the door swung open.

  "Edward," Persephone said, her reading glasses balanced on the edge of her nose. "How are you?"

  "I’m fine, Ms. Simmons."

  "What can I do for you?" she asked.

  "A favor."

  "What kind of favor?"

  "Well, you said to take a train somewhere."

  "That I did," she said. "So much better than those damned airplanes. Much slower, of course, but I prefer the romance of the rails."

  "I was wondering if you’d like to take a trip with me."

  She cocked her head to the side. "Don’t you think I’m a bit too old for you, Edward?"

  He smiled and shook his head. "No, it's just—I don’t have anyone else to talk to," he said. "I don’t have friends. I don’t have family. I’ve never taken a trip anywhere. I don’t know where to go or what to do. I have some money in savings, I have some in checking. I could go by myself, but, well—"

  "Some things are just better with company," she said.

  "Yes," he said. "I still don’t know if you’re on the level, but, and don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re all I’ve got."

  She raised her eyebrows and folded her arms. "I don’t know if I should take that as an insult or compliment, Edward, but I know what you mean." She pursed her lips and nodded. "Do you know where you’d like to go?"

  "Clear across the country. Los Angeles, up the coast, then back again."

  "That's ambitious."

  "I have a lot of catching up to do."

  Persephone let out a deep breath. "If you can afford to wait until spring, I’ll agree. The holiday months are the busiest for me."

  "Me too," he said.

  "We messengers have the same schedules, Edward. Okay, then. Spring it is."

  "It is," he said, smiling. "You think I’m weird, don’t you?"

  She clicked her tongue. "What are you doing this Christmas Eve, Edward?"

  "Sitting in my apartment."

  "Come inside," she said, walking into the living room. Eddie followed, closing the door and stopping at the entrance to the living room.

  The room was a-swirl with shadows, glowing eyes and dark shapes dancing over bookshelves and walls and windows. A warm breeze circulated through the room, and the hurricane lamp dimmed and brightened with a steady pulse. Every corner and surface was painted with swooping and floating shadows, and they whirled like zoetrope projections from floor to ceiling.

  "Like I said, the holidays are the busiest for me," Persephone said. She sat at one of the desks and pulled out a stack of paper and a pen. She leaned back, took in a deep breath, and a thin, slender shadow peeled itself from the floor and stood by her side. She hunched over the desk, placed the pen onto the paper, and began writing, a frenzy of scribbling and scratching. Eddie edged closer and watched Persephone’s hand glide across the page writing out long, cursive script from one edge of the page to the other. She filled one page then moved to the next, then the next, then the next.

  And the shadow stood beside her, a dark arm over her shoulder.

  VI. The Endless Journey

  The silvery train crossed forests, grasslands, and deserts. It passed through cities of old and cities on the edge of new centuries. It crawled up the Pacific coastline where the pines became dense and the skies became heavy with cloud and rain. Whenever it stopped, two f
igures, an old woman and a young man, spoke, walked the streets, smelled the air, and stared up at the glass towers or looked down into the winding valleys. The two could be seen in the observation cars, pointing at the deer running alongside the track or the ruins of old rail towns decaying under an early spring. They’d talk about the strange lore of the small towns in which they'd grown up. They’d talk about past loves and future hopes. They’d pull out maps and trace the routes with their fingers. They’d pull out cameras and record each moment, each sunset, each cloudbank, each smile, and each laugh.

  And the old woman struck up a card game with retirees from Wisconsin, and the young man struck up a conversation with a graduate philosophy student from Pittsburgh named Rebecca. And when the young man and Rebecca said 'Good-bye' at the station they swore it wouldn’t be their last.

  And when the old woman and young man arrived home, the shadows were waiting, so the old woman picked up her pen, and the young man picked up her mail, and the letters continued.

  The wet spring became a stifling summer, and over the following years the letters flew to all the cardinal points of the country, messages written by the hand of an old woman in a lone cottage in a lemon orchard left fallow, letters carried by the hand of a young man whose wife was named Rebecca and whose new apartment overlooked ribbons of long road that carried them on journeys to points indicated on a map in their small living room, a map dotted with red pushpins, a map placed beside a framed photograph of the young man when he was a child sitting close to his smiling mother and smiling father.

  DEAR VIVIAN . . .

  . . . I am hoping this letter reaches you in time for another Christmas season, but the days and months have become a blur to me, like leaves in wind. It is a bit difficult to tell which Christmas is approaching, or whether the holidays are days or months away. Since I left, keeping track of such things is a skill I haven’t mastered yet, but I’m told that I’ll get better at it. But I do know a year has passed, and I wanted to pass along this holiday Hello while I can. Please excuse the rather long length of this letter, but I wanted to tell you as much as I could in the short moment of spare time that I have.

  I’m glad you returned to work in New York and that your husband started his new job at the Gravitar Group. Your new house in Connecticut is a smart buy. With three daughters, you’ll need the extra space. Maybe someday I’ll be able to visit your new home and visit with your little girls, maybe even help you see them off to college or to wherever they choose to go.

  As you know, last January was the third anniversary of your father’s death. It’s a terrible way to mark every new year, but the universe has its own way of timing, and I have mine. I suppose the best news of the month was the burning of the mortgage. Finally, the house your father and I built is now free and clear. I’m quite happy that you were able to attend the burning party that month, and even though we were all sad that he could not be there to see that debt go up in ashes, we all knew he was looking down on us with a smile. In fact, since his passing, I can’t help but think that he was sitting next to me on that back porch every summer when I watched the sun go down over those abandoned railroad tracks behind the backyard.

  It was difficult getting through those days on my own, sitting in that house with no one, passing the time instead of living it. You know that I continued volunteering at the library in Taylor to pass the time, and that I considered returning to my administrative assistant position at the Pittston Area School District, but I eventually decided that twenty-five years was enough, and that, no matter how empty the house was, filling out spreadsheets and invoices was not much better. Still, the house was empty much of the day, and each passing year without your father made it even emptier. I’d have dreams that he’d be sitting on the back porch watching the sunset or in the living room watching football, but dreams don’t fill the home or the heart very much. I stayed out of the house as much as I could and tried to keep myself busy, but one can only do so much of that. Soon, I thought about selling the house and traveling the world, but I’d no idea where to go if I did.

  But last December, the strangest thing that had ever happened to me, well, happened. One night I was awakened by the roar and the light of a train passing over those same abandoned railroad tracks behind the house. The short train rumbled past the house, appearing out of nowhere then disappearing into . . . somewhere. My heart raced the whole night, and the next day I called the rail authority. They confirmed that the railroad tracks behind the house were not only not in use but were actually torn up at both ends about a mile in each direction from my house. I walked the entire length and found it to be true: the tracks behind the house were just a small remnant of what used to be a long line that had passed all the way from Pittston to Scranton. I thought I’d had nothing more but an incredibly realistic dream, until the same thing happened two weeks later, and then two weeks after that. The same train: a black diesel locomotive, five Pullman cars, and a caboose. I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Evanson to have my brain checked, but since it was December twenty-third, I would have to wait to see him until the end of January.

  On Christmas Eve, I awakened in the morning, and, as I usually did, showered, dressed, walked downstairs to the kitchen, and I looked out the kitchen window to see the train sitting right outside, its steel wheels steaming, its black paint clashing with the white dusting of snow we’d had the previous night. It was just sitting there, and this short man and tall man were walking down the line with flashlights and tools, checking the wheels and passenger cars. Not knowing what else to do, I opened the back door and shouted, "What are you two doing there?" and the short man—a dwarf, really—shouted back, "Our jobs, and you?"

  Of course, it angered me quite a bit, so I stomped out to them, and they watched me, this chisel-faced dwarf and this tall wide-eyed beanpole. I told them, "You’re not supposed to be here," and the dwarf just said, "I don’t remember this house being here, what year is it?" The dwarf nodded and said to the beanpole, "So we jumped back twenty." He looked me up and down and asked, "This is still Avoca, right?" before turning to his tall friend and saying, "Check the other lines. They should be okay."

  So here in my backyard was a tall, long-faced man with pale skin and wide eyes dressed in a heavy coat that seemed like it could tip him over, a dark-eyed dwarf bundled in heavy denim, and a train with steaming wheels that should not have been there. Before I could get any words out, the dwarf folded his arms, looked at me, and said, "Everyone on here pulls their own weight, you should know that. We go where we want to go, but no slackers. You got your things?"

  "Things?" I asked. "What things are you talking about?"

  He stepped up to me and said, "Your things. Your belongings. The things you need. The things that you’d pull out of your house in case it was on fire. The things you’d clutch to your chest in the last seconds of your life. The things to which you turn when nothing else brings comfort. Those things. Hopefully you have them all ready. We’ll be leaving in an hour."

  Yes, I ranted. You know my personality. I demanded to know who we was, where his train had come from, what he was doing in my backyard, where he thought he was taking me, and he nodded and said, "It’s okay. Most people don’t know where they’re going or where they want to go until they’re actually there. My name’s Mike, but people call me Ace. And before you get thinking, I’m going to say right now that I’m not some magical dwarf or elf or any other idiotic mythical creation, so don’t even start with any of those ideas. I was born in Dupont back in nineteen-forty-three, and I was born this way. Achondroplasia. I had to put up with a lot of short jokes and midget jokes growing up, and you know what? I didn’t like them then, and I don’t like them now. That tall guy over there? Ray. Don’t know his last name, never talks much, but he’s a good egg and good mechanic. Picked him up years ago outside Lincoln, Nebraska. This train? Former property of the Lackawanna Railroad. Yes, I said former. It’
s ours now. At first I thought I was stealing it because I was tired of putting up with the jokes from other engineers, but, no, I guess the universe had a reason for it."

  He spoke so rapidly I had to ask him to slow down, and he stopped and stared at me in the eye. "You’re right," he said, "we’re not supposed to be here. Everyday physics doesn’t allow for that. But what if I told you we live in a universe that’s just a massive hologram projected onto a flat surface? And what if I told you that you could jump from one point of that surface to another like a fly on a kitchen table? And what if I told you that, sometimes the universe is alive, that it opens little doorways for us, that we have the keys to open those doors and we don’t even know it? Prayers, tears, cries in the night, all little keys that if they’re jiggled and twisted the right way, they open a series of tumblers and a series of doors. Let me ask you this: How’s life been going for you? Happy and jaunty or sad and empty? You see, sometimes that sadness and emptiness sends out signals stronger than quasars, just tugs hard enough at the strings holding everything together and lets us see into that hallway we never knew existed. Interesting, huh?"

  I thought he was insane or that I was insane, but there was the train. There it was steaming on the rails, the tall man, the little man, the smell of oil from the wheels, the smell of coffee on his breath. For a brief moment, I thought of Stanley, and I looked back at the back porch where he once sat with me when we held hands, even in the final weeks when the cancer made his hands so thin and cold. I thought of how I idiotically believed that he would always be there, that he’d never die, and that we’d be together always. I never grew out of that childhood dream, even after he died. I know you nudged me to move on, but I didn’t want to listen. I just wanted things to be the way they were, even if they couldn’t be. I just wanted your father back, I wanted the house filled again, that childhood dream to come true. But it never did.

  But the dwarf kept talking, even when I looked away. "You see," he said, "you called us here. We don’t have a timetable or regular schedule. We go where we want, we stop when we’re called. We made a couple of stops in the area a couple weeks ago, and now we’re back for one more. You. It’s up to you if you want to come along, but we’ll be gone in an hour. If you want to stay, that’s fine, and I hope you find your happiness here. But if you want to come, you’re more than welcome, but everyone has to pull their own weight. It’s the only way to manage this operation. And, no, we’re not ghosts, we’re not here to take you to the great beyond. We travel. We see the world and the people in it. We listen to new music, eat new foods, and we help others like us, others with sadness so deep that even the Challenger Deep can’t rival it.