Keeper of Dreams (45 page)

But here’s the problem. I’m working on justice, protecting kids from each other, trying to help change kids who’ve fallen in love with cruelty, help them start being a little more decent, learn a little compassion. But when you come right down to it, what am I actually doing? Causing pain. Hurting people. All in a good cause, right? But remember, the guy who judges you is the same one who said, “Turn the other cheek.”

I tell myself, I’d turn my
own
cheek. But he never said I have to turn away and not notice when somebody else is getting slapped, right? I mean, he also said that it was better to tie a millstone around your neck and jump into the sea than to hurt one of the little ones.

But then I also have to be honest and tell myself that I’m hurting some of his little ones, too. The mean ones, the vicious ones, the ones that
maybe he doesn’t really think of as his. But if his capacity for forgiveness is infinite, the way some people say, then they’re
all
his. Didn’t he get ticked off at some moneychangers, though, and lash out with a scourge and knock over some tables? Surely he understands how we feel, those of us who are working on trying to stop the bullies.

You know the real problem? There are so few of us. Few who have the ability even to see the living—can’t do much unless you can see what’s going on!—and even fewer who, seeing, care. Because most of the dead, they just disconnect from the living. So mortals are mean to each other. Big deal. Get over it. Get on with your . . . well, your death. Whatever this is. You can’t fix anything in the mortal world. You get no credit for it. You’re already judged to be unworthy of heaven. So it’s not like you’ve got a stake in what’s going on.

Just a few of us who care about the kids and have the ability to do anything about it. So even if we’re making a difference in the lives of some kids, there are thousands, millions of others that we never see. That’s not a reason to stop, though. It’s a reason to try harder. It’s not like we sleep. That’s something, anyway. We got twenty-four hours a day.

You do get tired, though. Not physically tired. Just tired in your soul. Seeing how many mean people there are. Seeing how eagerly the victims keep hoping that their parents will love them, that they’ll find friends at school. And here we are, trying to help keep those hopes alive. It breaks your heart. It makes you want to despair sometimes, that despite all that hope, there’s always a bully to dash it. Why do they hate happiness in other people so much? Especially the children—where do they learn to take such pleasure in someone else’s misery?

Was I like that?

Oh, man, that’s the thing that comes back again and again. Every rude thing I ever said to another kid. There was this guy in junior high and high school, we were friends, you know? In plays together, in band. He was smart and talented, and I liked him. But one day, I’m sitting there with a song going through my head, and for some reason I come up with a new lyric for it that makes fun of this friend. A song about Bruce, talking about how conceited he is. And, well, he
is
, not so much conceited as really excited about all the cool things he can do. I think back on it and I realize, he wasn’t vain, he was just thrilled to keep discovering new
things he could do, and he thought he could share his excitement with his friends. Well, I cured him of
that
. Cause it wasn’t just the one song. I sang that to my friends and they all laughed and that was it for me, the first talent I ever had—a talent for musical meanness. I must have written twenty Brucie songs. Till Bruce stopped hanging around with us and it was no fun to sing it when he wasn’t there. Made me look bad instead of clever.

I think back on that, I wonder where Nick was. Maybe Nick’s gang saw me but figured, Bruce really
was
talented and smart, he really
didn’t
need a loser like me for a friend. They didn’t have to stop me, because I just wasn’t important enough in Bruce’s life for him to need rescue. I sure hope that’s it. I hope I did no harm.

That’s the kind of thing that goes through your mind when you’re on bully patrol. Way too much self-examination, if you ask me, but you can’t help it, you keep seeing yourself in the bullies as much as in the victims. They’re all kids, after all. Even if they’re rotten and mean, they’re kids. They might still become something worthwhile.

Christmas, that’s the tough time. I had a whole year of learning, mostly on American streets because I knew the culture well enough to recognize what was going on with the kids and to be able to think of ways to help them. And just when I’m getting pretty deft and clever at bully-stopping, Nick comes to me and says, “It’s the Christmas rush. Bully patrol is over till after the big day.”

It’s obvious that it’s Christmas. I mean, there’s no missing it—because Nick’s in a red suit. When the decorations go up, there’s all these pictures of him looking like Norman Rockwell’s Coke-drinking Santa, and he just can’t hold on to his civilian image, the red suit just pops right out of him and that’s how he looks. And it’s a good thing I can’t see myself in mirrors, because I’ve got to tell you, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that I look really small and I’m wearing green. Sometimes you just want to yell at those advertising guys. Can’t they leave us a little dignity?

Christmas and the elves. That’s when the serious thievery begins.

Right, like you thought we actually made the toys! We’re dead, and even if we were alive, most toys that kids actually want require serious machinery. Do you have any idea just how much equipment it takes to
make one lousy little Lego? Let alone a whole
Toy Story
action figure. No, we don’t make toys. We just redistribute them.

And not in the stores. Think about it—who goes to Toys R Us? People with no money? Hardly. So going to the parking lot and taking things out of one shopping cart and putting them in another, what good is that going to do? We can’t move things far anyway—it just wipes us out even to jostle stuff. So none of this stuff about bags of toys going down chimneys. It’s pretty rare for something to show up under the tree that Mom and Dad didn’t know about in advance.

Besides, we have to be really intense in order to move things, right? So here’s what we do on Christmas patrol.

We watch for people with more than they need to be out around poor people. Or for poor kids to be in a place where there’s plenty of money changing hands. I’ll be teamed up with one of the singing elves, and she’ll distract the rich guy while he’s handling his money, while I liberate a five-dollar bill or sometimes even a twenty and cause it to drift down to the floor. Then I stand watch over it, keeping it from being noticed by anyone until the singer is able to entice some poor kid to be close enough, and then I push the five or the twenty—or, heck, the buck or the quarter, cause sometimes that’s all I can get—out into the open, where the kid can see it.

You know the amazing thing? The number of kids who immediately try to give it to the store owner, or take it straight to their parents. Well, once we give it to them, it’s theirs to dispose of. The gift has been given. And when you think about it, maybe the best gift is for the kid with no money to give that twenty to the store owner, to prove that he doesn’t really
need
that money, that it’s more important to be a decent person than to have what money can buy. Or if he gives it to his parents, well, maybe that’s food on the table. Sure, maybe it’s booze, too, and that’s why they’re poor, but it’s not the kid’s fault, the kid did the right thing. He contributed to the family.

About half the kids, though, they hang on to the money, and that’s fine, that’s even better, because you know what? Almost every time, they use some of it to buy themselves a treat—ice cream or a candy bar, maybe a cooky—but then the rest of the money goes straight into buying a gift for somebody else. A little brother or sister. Mom or Dad. Sometimes a
teacher who’s been good to them. I even saw one kid who had four dollars and twenty-eight cents in his fist—change from the ice cream bar—and he sees a kid who looks even more poor than him, and he just walks up and gives it to him and says, “Merry Christmas.” Right then I loved that kid so much. Because he got it. He understood. None of that stuff goes with you when you die. Only what you did for other people, or to them, and what they did for you, and to you. That’s all you have with you when you’re dead. That kid, when he dies, he’s going to have so much cool stuff. Because he has a good heart. He won’t be walking around the streets of hell, no place to stay. He’ll fit right in with the light, he’ll pass that entrance exam, they’ll greet him with songs, you know? And I got him the fiver that he was able to mostly share. That’s something.

That’s Christmas. We just use the season to get gifts into the hands of children who don’t have anything. It’s about hope, just like what we do the rest of the year. That’s what Nick does—he’s in the hope business.

So it’s the day after Christmas, and we’re back on the regular schedule, but Nick, he comes to me—and the red suit hasn’t faded yet, so he really looks like Santa Claus—he comes to me and says, “Want to take the long hike with me?”

I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I say, “Sure,” because he wants me to and it’s only thanks to him that I feel like I’m worth the space I take up, even on the streets of hell. Whatever the long hike is, it’s not like I’ll get tired or have to carry a pup tent on my back. So I say sure and off we go.

Straight up to the light.

And it’s not a very long hike at all, not heading there. It’s like, no matter where you are on earth, once you decide to find the light, there it is, just a little out of reach, up and over your shoulder. Nick, he goes like he knows the way, and I guess he does. Every year after Christmas, he goes back to the light and tries to get in. That’s what I was along for. The other elves, I guess most of them have gone with him, some of them more than once. And I guess they were just as happy to have the new guy go along.

Because there goes Nick, straight into the light, and you think, “Man, this time he’s going to make it. This time he’s getting out of hell!”

He’s in there so
long
. You have so much hope for him.

And then . . . pop. He’s right back out. He looks at you. Shrugs his shoulders. “Better luck next time,” he says.

Only I was new at this. And I’d been working on my sense of outrage all year, you know? And it’s not like
I
was getting into heaven any time soon. I mean, if Nick can’t pass the entrance exam, you think
I
stand a chance?

So I stand there and yell—not speaking loud, because it’s not actually, sound, but I’m really intense, you know?—and I know I’m not supposed to get ticked off at the
light
for heaven’s sake, but anyway, I yell, “Did you ever think that your stupid requirements might be too high? What’ve you got in there anyway, a bunch of pious martyrs? A bunch of goody-two-shoes never broke a rule in their lives? Well take a look at Nick here, he’s on the front line, dead though he may be, he’s trying to do something about it! I don’t see
you
down there on the streets trying to make life better for kids! So what about
that
, huh? Ever think about how maybe some of the people in heaven aren’t doing diddly-squat and maybe some of the people in hell are actually doing some good in the world?”

Finally I say enough that the intensity wears off and I remember who I’m talking to and I think, Man, it’s going to take, like, ten thousand years to work off the sheer blasphemy of what I just said.

Only right then I hear something inside my mind, the way it must be when the singers do their lullabies for the suffering children. This voice, so soft, so kind, and all it says is, “Whatever you do for the least of my little ones, you’ve done it for me.”

And it about knocks me over. He sees. He knows. What we’re doing. What our work is. He knows, and he loves us for it, and yet . . .

And yet Nick still can’t get in.

I look at him, and he shrugs again. “Yelling doesn’t solve anything,” he says.

And then he leads me on the long hike back. Yeah, that’s the “long” part of the long hike. Getting to the light is quick. Getting back, that’s hard and slow, because every step hurts, coming away from that beauty and going back to the plain old world with all the dead people preaching or being cool, and all the living people going about their business as if life were really long and they had all the time in the world. And you can’t help but think, when you look at the living, you think: It’s so easy for
them, they can just
do
things, only they so rarely do anything that matters. So many children, all they need is a word and a smile, all they need is an act of kindness and generosity, something that any living person could give them, but so often they leave it up to the dead. But the ones who don’t leave it up to us, the ones who are good to the kids, they’re my friends, you know? They’re my sisters and my brothers. I can’t do anything to show them how I feel, but I’m glad they’re alive. They’re the only reason hell isn’t more, well, hellish.

Finally we got back, down on the streets of hell. And Nick says, “Another year to go.”

And I say, “Nick, thanks for letting me be part of it. Maybe it’s not good enough for them, but it’s good enough for me.”

And he grins and even though he doesn’t move, it feels like he just clapped me on the shoulder, and he says, “Then it’s good enough for me, too.” And off he goes.

Only there’s something wrong with this picture. I’m seeing him but there’s more to him than the red suit. There’s a kind of jauntiness in his step, and even though that’s probably my own mind creating the image that fits what I’m sensing about him, the fact is that it’s still
true
. Nick just failed for the fifteen hundredth time to get into heaven, and he’s almost dancing.