A Christmas Hope (12 page)

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Authors: Joseph Pittman

BOOK: A Christmas Hope
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“Sure, our school class came here, oh, a couple of years ago,” she said. “Our teacher said it was to remember the people who gave their lives for the wars. Then we had to write a report on our thoughts about war, and why these people had to die and what it meant to us. I got an A.”
“Wonderful. That must mean you really understood the lesson,” he said.
She nodded once, yet her eyes were tinged with newfound sadness. “Do you know someone here, Thomas? Is that what you want to show me?”
“Yes, and yes,” he said. “Come with me.”
The first of the marble stones listed names that dated back to the Civil War, the second one represented local residents who died in World War I, and the next one was for World War II. It was to this stone that Thomas led Janey, placing her hand upon the cold stone right where the name Lars Van Diver was engraved. He covered her hand with his, feeling her pulsing warmth. This girl before him was blessed with a big heart and with deep feeling. This moment, for Thomas, was powerful, a long time coming. It was one thing for a teacher to rattle off history to her class, quite another for it to strike a personal, powerful connection in one of the students. Janey again traced the name with her fingers, her red lips moving silently, like she was getting a taste of the name before speaking it aloud.
“Lars? Is that how you say that?”
“Yes, Lars Van Diver.”
“Lars Van Diver,” Janey repeated. Then she looked up at Thomas. “Was he your dad?”
“Yes, he was,” Thomas said.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “I bet you missed him a lot.”
“Yes, Janey, I did very much.”
“I miss my mom very much, every day,” she said. “Brian . . . Dad, he's great.”
“And my mom, she was great, too. She cared for me so much.”
“She didn't want to live in Linden Corners? I mean, after . . .”
“We had to make a sacrifice, just like my father did,” Thomas said. “Like we all do.”
“That's a big word, sacrifice.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“It means you give something up for the better of someone else,” she said.
“Beautifully said.”
“Thank you for showing me and telling me about your dad,” she said.
“It was my absolute pleasure, Janey Sullivan,” he said. “You know, I've been back home in Linden Corners only three months now and this is the first time I've visited the memorial. Ever, in all my life. But today was the day I decided to come here, I just woke up and knew it. I guess I needed some courage, and your being here . . . you gave it to me. I needed a friend.”
“Is that what we are? Friends?”
“I hope so.”
“That's weird, we're not even the same age.”
“That's what makes our friendship so special.”
Janey seemed content with such knowledge, and the two of them left both the memorial and the gazebo, walking down the path back toward the tavern. It was coming on five o'clock in the afternoon, Elsie would be coming for him soon, and that was a good thing, as he was now both physically and emotionally exhausted. Yet while his body was tired, his heart was full, near to bursting from this visit. They reached George's, the lights now blazing inside and out, a few cars already parked in the big lot. Thomas helped Janey up the front stairs and inside the warm coziness of the bar.
“I'll need to see some ID,” Brian said from behind the bar.
Janey rolled her eyes. “He says that to me every time I visit, he still thinks it's funny.”
“Indulge me, little one,” Brian said. “Why don't you head upstairs, Janey, hang out at Mark and Sara's, watch some TV or . . .”
“I know, read a book.”
“Always a good idea.”
Before departing for the upstairs apartment, Janey again wrapped her little self around Thomas and thanked him for sharing his special memories with her. As she bounded up the stairs with an energy possessed only by youth, Thomas sidled up to the bar, settling himself upon a tall bar stool. A quick check of his watch, he decided perhaps he could indulge his nightly Manhattan here while in the company of Brian Duncan and the denizens of George's Tavern. Elsie would find him. He nodded politely at the two gentleman sitting at the bar, both about fifty years of age, then placed his order.
“I'd like to buy you one, too, Brian, if I may. Thank you for that little gift of a girl.”
“Thanks, Thomas, but I'll stick with my seltzer.”
He accepted Brian's answer without question, didn't pry. Like Janey said, everyone has their stories, they share them when they're ready. Just as he had done today, sharing the memory of his father with her. Truthfully, he had journeyed to the park today in an attempt to visit the memorial, still not convinced he would actually go through with it until Janey's presence pushed him over the edge, and happily so. He felt richer for the experience.
“I'll warn you, I don't usually make Manhattans, there's not much call for them in a bar that pays it bills with beer, so pardon me if it's not perfect,” Brian said, setting the highball glass in front of his customer, pouring the whiskey and vermouth into it. Thomas took a sip; he tried to hide his grimace but it was apparent Brian's bartending skills needed more work.
“It's fine. But next time . . . less vermouth. Dry means very little—”
“I barely put any in!”
“Next time, just wave the bottle over the glass, that'll do the trick.”
“Noted,” Brian said with a knowing understanding. “Thomas, may I ask what your plans are for Thanksgiving? I'm sure Edgestone sets out a nice meal, but Janey and I, along with our neighbors Cynthia and Bradley Knight—and little Jake—would be honored if you could join us at the farmhouse. It's a small crowd, since Gerta, Nora, and Travis are headed to New Hampshire for a family dinner with one of her other daughters. But Gerta, she did promise to leave a couple of her pies for us, pumpkin and her special strawberry. . .”
“A strawberry pie? I'm still amazed at such a concoction. How extraordinarily sweet it was that night,” Thomas said, “and Brian, I thank you very much for the invitation. But alas, I have other plans—out of town.”
“Oh, I . . . well then, I hope you have a wonderful holiday.”
“As do I, for me and for you and yours,” Thomas said, sorry not to give Brian more of an excuse. But just as the barkeep had offered up no explanation beyond his choice of seltzer water, Thomas, too, felt that certain facts were best left to the inner soul, to be revealed only when the world forced them upon you. Sometimes you wanted to keep special things private.
“But I hope you'll keep the day before Christmas Eve open,” Brian said. “It's the night of our annual tavern Christmas party, with more food—including Gerta's famous pies—than you can imagine, even gives ol' Martha at the Five O' a break from cooking. The whole village turns out to the point where you'll never see George's more crowded. It's going to be a great night, filled with the kind of surprises Linden Corners excels at.”
“Consider it done, my good son. I wouldn't miss a party such as that for anything,” Thomas said, taking another hesitant sip from his less-than-perfect Manhattan. “And hopefully by then the fair Miss Nora will have found the book I am seeking. The clock is ticking, Brian, time is not on anyone's side, least of all mine. The holidays will be here sooner than we think, and only when I have that book in my hands will my Christmas, at last, be complete.”
It would be like he and his father had been reunited.
As he'd done in Memorial Park, tracing his name, feeling as close to him as he had in years.
For a passing, joyful second, he was reminded of those beautiful golden retrievers, Buster and Baxter, and he smiled at the memory of the dogs happily entwined, their barks and their endless bounds, their uncomplicated lives. They did their breed proud, for they had retrieved a bit of magic for Thomas, their effect indeed golden.
I
NTERLUDE
T
ODAY
F
amily means more than just blood, more than nature's bond, it's created out of the ether from a notion called love; a concept so real and potent, yet so indefinable. That's what I've learned, my dear, a lesson as large as life itself, something I discovered in just the quick passing of a few months. I suppose when I made the difficult decision to come to Linden Corners I was uncertain about what I would find, what ghosts awaited me. Certainly the windmill still stood, healthier today than when I befriended it as a child, my little body trying to reach to the heavens but never able to soar higher than the spinning sails of the windmill. The farmhouse, too, remains as cozy as ever. Also, there is a girl here, and some days I think it is her remarkable spirit that keeps the old windmill turning, and other days . . . it's just the opposite, that she endures only through the energy churned from those magnificent sails.
She has been a dream, this child, and she speaks to my heart. She keeps me going.
Which I hope keeps you going.
There is a lot of talk about Christmas traditions around here, they embrace the holiday with a verve the jaded would sneer at; cynicism may rule the world, but in Linden Corners it is blown far away by the wind, and the cheery residents wouldn't have it any other way. So, my dear, I have set this plan in motion, the Christmas that should be must be, and may well be. I am striving to bring my memories of yesterday into the cherished moment of today. Today it is another holiday that envelops us; it is a day I choose to spend in quiet but not alone. My heart could have soared, embraced by this new family who now live within the walls of my youth. This man and this girl, what a special, unlikely relationship they have formed, and they are not blood; they are a family as much as any. They are together first out of need, now out of want. The world found them, fate pushed their separate souls into one. Like me, like you. How I wonder, would we ever have met if circumstances had been different. Had I not left Linden Corners as a child, where would my years have taken me? Would I still call the farmhouse home, would the sails of that old windmill continue to turn for me, or would it have been destroyed by time, by the reckless disregard of progress? And if so, what of that little girl who breathes its swirling air now? What would her life have been?
But again, I am getting ahead of myself.
Yes, it is Thanksgiving Day, my dear, and I am here with my thoughts, and of course, with you. A plate of food sits beside me, turkey and stuffing, all the trimmings, and I will eat them as I always have. That is another lesson I learned long ago, from a patient mother who had only one son to care for. No matter the sorrow that stalks your heart, there is room for celebration, and it is this notion that I embrace, that I cling to. Provided the woman named Nora can find for me the second best gift I can ask for.
You, my dear, are my first, always.
That elusive book, it's the key to it all, isn't it? I have racked my mind, wondering where it could have gone to after these eighty years. But I know it must be out there, waiting for me; if I can return to Linden Corners and be welcomed into its big heart after all this time, then anything is possible. You just have to wish it, like young Janey would say, set it upon the wind and watch it fly. Sometimes the wind takes your dreams into the future, but mine . . . mine, how I wish to send them back in time. Back to an unsuspecting boy who suffered a great loss, a boy whose appreciation for all that had been given to him was stolen, both physical objects and the intangible, all gone, he thought, never to be found again.
 
I remember that fateful day like one recalls a recurring nightmare, coming to you not just in the dark but whenever shadows crossed over your soul. The sun could be bright, daylight lasting long into the night, summer at its peak and all of sudden there come those images, unwanted and scary, reminding you of what you didn't have. Tossing the ball in the backyard, bouncing it against the house because no one was there to catch it. Wanting to buy a treasured gift for an upcoming birthday, knowing the recipient was no longer around to enjoy it. Reading a poem on Christmas night to yourself, knowing a special memory had been lost to time.
It was the day before Thanksgiving, nearly eleven months after my brave father, Lars Van Diver, went off to fight the war in Europe. We had heard from him periodically, letters that took too many weeks to arrive from overseas, always opening with the same salutation, “My dearest family,” and ending with the hopeful, “Yours, now, forever, and always.” It almost didn't matter what the contents of the letter detailed, just that we knew he was safe and we knew that he loved us. Mama and I survived on written rations just as he dined on dry ones, but truthfully none were satisfying, and we could only hope for a quick end to the war to fulfill us.
Life in Linden Corners was quieter back then, almost an antidote to the explosions that rocked the world across the expansive ocean. Mama and I, we kept the peace and we kept the farm running as best we could, hiring day laborers in the spring for the planting and the fall for the harvest, filling their coffers and our bellies. At night the two of us passed the time listening to the radio or reading by flickering candlelight. Before I slept, I would run my fingers over the photograph of the model train from the Sears catalog, the same train that I didn't get for Christmas the year before. I would imagine my dad journeying across foreign lands hearing languages he didn't understand, packed onto a train that swirled with smoke and whistled in the dark night. To me it all seemed very glamorous, a young boy who had not yet played with toy soldiers failing to understand the harsh reality of battle. Until one day he did.
A light dusting of snow coated the ground that morning, and I was outside trying to form snowballs in my little fists, all to no avail. The powder would disintegrate the moment I tried to pack them, and at last I gave up and threw the puff of snow into the air, watching as it sprinkled down like sugar atop a cookie, sweet upon sweetness. That's when I saw the car pulling up the driveway, its tires crunching against snow and gravel; it was plain, brown in color, what they would have called a sedan. As it came to a stop, a man in uniform emerged from behind the wheel, setting a stiff cap down upon his blond crew cut. He was older than Papa, with several stripes on his shoulders and colorful medals on his chest.
“Hello, young boy, could you tell me, is this the Van Diver home?”
“Yes sir,” I told him easily. It was a different time then, even during war, innocence still reigned over suspicion.
“I'd like to speak with Mrs. Van Diver . . . would that be your mother?”
By now Mama had appeared, dressed in a housecoat dotted with floral colors, her hair in rollers. I think that's what I remember most, how tight she looked, how tense, as though she had been waiting for this very moment. This dutiful call from the United States Army. When she looked at the car, and saw the solemn expression on the officer's face, when she noticed the sealed letter in his right hand, that's when she knew, and when I knew. Her giant, almost stilted sob sealed it, sadness and regret and the hollow sound of loss enveloping her to the point that she dropped to the ground, her body oblivious to the fallen snow. She must have been numb to the cold, then and for days after.
The officer did his duty, speaking with soft authority: “On behalf of a grateful nation . . .”
But the other words he spoke floated into the invisible air, neither of us hearing them or remembering them, neither of us wanting to. As though by failing to acknowledge them, refusing to even open the letter, the truth could be rendered false, the past could be changed. But it couldn't, and it wasn't, and all I knew by day's end was that life had forever shifted. The world might have been emptier by one body, but it was devoid of three souls. Him, her, me, once a family, now a fraction.
Yes, it was the day before Thanksgiving, and the next day the turkey remained frozen and fresh grown peas went uncooked, and the bread for the stuffing grew stale. I don't know what we ate, Mama just sat in Papa's chair and I at her feet, and she stroked my hair for what seemed hours, her touch both embracing and tenuous at the same time, like our connection could be broken at any point. Life came with no guarantees, family could be split in a single second, a boy's heart could be shattered like glass falling to the floor.
Papa had taken a bullet, he hadn't even needed to see a medic. He was gone that fast, in an instant. The incident had happened six days earlier, the word just getting to us now, in time to ruin the holiday and our lives. No matter what day, the latter would have been true, Mama was never the same, and as for me, what I most felt was anger.
Even when I learned years later that we won the war, my young soul still ached for what it had lost.
The next month passed in a blur, like I was living inside a blinding snowstorm.
Christmas Eve came, and rather than being surrounded by a tree that glistened with tinsel, with colored lights and with brightly wrapped presents awaiting discovery underneath its branches, Mama and I lived beside dozens of cardboard boxes, our lives packed up tightly; had they been alive they would have been screaming to be let out, desperate for air. The reality was setting in; we were leaving Linden Corners, headed to Virginia to my maternal grandparents, where we would live for the next two years.
“Thomas, where are you?”
Where was I hiding? Up in the attic of course, but instead of it being a storage room overflowing with our cherished memories, it was bare and empty, wooden beams exposed to me for what seemed the first time; I had never before noticed them. Sometimes you don't see the frame when the picture inside is what draws your attention.
Lying on the floor, not caring about the dust that swirled around me, I flipped through page after page of the book and tried to be engaged by the tale of Saint Nicholas and his flying reindeer who brought gifts to all those little boys and girls who were nice, not naughty. So where were my gifts? I asked myself, all year I had helped Mama with the house and chores. My reward was a holiday that didn't exist, without a father and without a tree to remind us of the joys the season brought with it. Mama had explained that she had had no choice but to sell the house, we couldn't afford to stay on; we had to be out by the end of the year. We put Christmas on hold, to celebrate once we arrived at my grandparents. Our tiny family's traditions, which I had barely gotten to know, were suddenly gone; rather than hear my father's deep baritone reading me this story, me on his lap and my mother smiling from her chair, I was lip-reading, silent, fighting back tears. As Donder and Blitzen and their furry cohorts took to the night sky, as jolly old Saint Nick in his green-colored suit slid down the chimney with a rosy-cheeked goodness, I continued to turn the pages without regard for the words, and when I finished I started over again, and again, but each time I read the story its impact lessened. I was staring at the last page, “And to all, a good night,” when I heard my mother's voice penetrate my mind.
“Thomas, dear . . . oh sweetie,” she said, coming up the stairs, sitting on the landing.
I closed the book, leaving the cover facedown, not that it did any good. She knew what I was reading.
“You want me to read it to you, tonight?”
I shook my head. Definitely not.
“Thomas, talk to me.”
“It's okay, Mama,” I remember saying. “It's just a book.”
She attempted a smile, knowing I didn't mean those words.
“Come on, it's nearly time to go. The movers are here, they're loading the boxes,” she said. “We can make good progress today, and more tomorrow; we should be celebrating not just Christmas late tomorrow afternoon but also your birthday. My precious boy, six years old, my goodness but where does the time go?”
Time disappears into the air, like smoke, you think you see it and then it's just gone, the smell of the past lingering only for as long as you'll remember it. I put up no argument, not if I wanted Santa Claus to remember me for next year; he would know where to find me, didn't he know everything? Santa, who now wore a red suit; everything had changed, that's what my mind told me. Getting up from the floor, I left the book where I'd been reading it.

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