Keeping Holiday (21 page)

Clare glanced at Dylan. To her surprise, he was stepping out the door resolutely and replying, “Sure. We’ll help,” then, turning to Clare, “That’s okay with you, Clare, isn’t it?”

“Sure it’s okay with me,” said Clare. “I’d be happy to help. But, Dylan, what about the Founder? What about getting authorized? This is your last day.”

“Hey, Mert,” Dylan called. Mert, elated at having found some volunteers, had hurried to the driver’s side of the cab and opened the door. With one foot already on the floor of the cab, he paused before springing up to the driver’s seat, and looked over his shoulder at Dylan. “How long do you think we’ll be,” Dylan asked, “if all three of us work together?”

“Why, if we make really good time, we may be able to get it all done today!” Mert seemed quite cheerful about this prospect.

“Do you think there’s any chance we could work really fast and be done
before
the end of the day?” Dylan asked.

Mert’s foot came back out of the truck cab, and he turned to face Dylan. He glanced at the abundance in the back of the truck, looked over his long list, and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said slowly, “there’s an awful lot here. We can push for that, but I can’t guarantee anything.” Then he added reluctantly, “If you have another appointment, I suppose you’d better not chance it. You might be late.”

“That’s okay,” Dylan brushed off Mert’s suggestion with a wave of his hand. “It’s okay if we’re late.”

Shocked, Clare whispered, “Dylan, what do you mean it’s okay?”

“It just is,” Dylan answered. “I’m sure it is. I’m sure that we should do this. I think it’s what the Founder would want. I think it’s what the Founder would
do
if he were here. But, let’s hurry!” Dylan said this louder, so Mert would hear too. “It would be really good to be back within an hour or two before sunset.”

“Then step to it, let’s go!” cried Mert, jumping up into the driver’s seat. Relief at not losing his new volunteers had obviously given him a fresh burst of energy. Dylan and Clare scrambled onto the bench seat of the cab. Mert put the truck into gear and they rattled off down the street.

The truck stopped first at a small house inhabited by a very old man and his wife. Mert explained that the couple had adopted their three young grandchildren when the children’s parents had died. They had been faithfully providing them with food and shelter, but they had no extra money for playthings. So out of the truck came a large doll, several books, some cars and trucks, a ball, and a wagon.

Then the truck drove on to the home of a mother of four small children. She lay sick in bed. Dylan and Clare helped to unload a great pot of soup, some freshly baked bread, and a variety of cleaning aids. As the family ate, Mert, Dylan, and Clare swept and cleaned and polished and scrubbed. When they drove away, they left a sparkling clean house, a kettle of simmering stew, and a very grateful mother. On they went, to visit a restless boy who had been confined to his bed for a month; to take clothing to a family whose father had lost his job and had had to start over, working for less pay; to prepare a good meal for a couple who had just returned from a long, exhausting journey.

Dylan worked faster than he had known he could, racing against the shadows that steadily grew longer and longer as the sun traveled across the sky. He so longed to be back at the chapel before sunset, still hopeful that, perhaps, the Founder would come and he would meet him. Even in the middle of such tiring work, Dylan never stopped thinking about the Founder. He found himself, over and over, telling people about him. Even though he was just learning about the Founder himself, what he knew so far begged to be told, and tell it Dylan did. He told tired discouraged adults about how the Founder had called him out of the cave. He told families struggling to meet their own needs how, all along his journey, the Founder had been leaving him everything he needed. When Dylan gave aid to those whose need had resulted from their own poor choices, he freely told them how he had lost his pass in a fight and how the Founder had paid his fine. Everywhere he went, he realized that he knew something about the Founder that seemed helpful to the situation.
And I’ve never even met him,
Dylan thought to himself.
Oh, I hope we get back in time.

Lunchtime came and went and the afternoon wore on. Still the three workers worked, washing dishes, weeding yards, cleaning toilets, cutting grass, heating meals. They visited sick and lonely people; they played with restless children; they delivered gifts and supplies. And all the while, Dylan tried not to notice how late it grew. Finally, they pulled up in front of the last house. This was the home where the refrigerator would be delivered, to an elderly lady whose old refrigerator had finally worn out and who had no money to buy another. Mert had a hand truck that helped him and Dylan a great deal in moving the refrigerator; however, the lady’s house was small and full of her personal treasures, so maneuvering the large appliance through the house and around corners required a great deal of strategy and many starts and stops. They finally succeeded in installing the refrigerator, and in convincing the happy woman that they really must go now, and headed back to the empty truck. Mert jumped in the air, clicking his heels together playfully. “Wa-hoo!” he cried. “We did it! We’re done!”

Immediately, Mert realized that, though Dylan smiled with genuine happiness for him, Dylan himself looked dejected. Mert stopped in his tracks. “Oh dear!” he said. “You wanted to be back at the chapel by sundown, didn’t you?” And Mert glanced at the sun, just about to sink below the horizon.

Dylan shook his head. “That’s okay,” he said. “I still think we did the right thing. I just really would have liked to meet the Founder.” He sighed. “Too late now, though; our passes have expired. Mert, there’s a gate on the road that we came through, just past the overlook where you look down into Holiday. Could you drive us back there, please? It’s time for us to go home.”

“Sure, I can take you wherever you like,” Mert said as they all climbed into the cab and he turned the truck’s ignition. The truck rumbled off down the road. “Do you mean to tell me,” Mert asked, “that you’ve never met the Founder?”

Dylan nodded unhappily.

“Hm,” Mert replied. “I was sure you had met him.”

“
You
haven’t even met him,” Dylan protested. “You said so yourself.”

“I said no such thing!” Mert answered. “Of course I’ve met him. Why do you think I spend so much time at this job?”

“No,” Dylan insisted, “
I
said I’d never met the Founder and
you
said, ‘Neither have I.’”

“No,” Mert corrected him, “you said you’d never
seen
the Founder and I said, ‘Neither have I.’” Then he added, “Are you
sure
you’ve never met him?”

“I’m sure,” Dylan answered with finality. “Do you think you could meet him and not know it?”

Mert considered. “It’s not likely,” he agreed. But then he added, almost under his breath, “But it has happened.”

The truck rumbled on, its passengers riding in silence. It drove through the streets of Holiday, even more beautiful as lights began twinkling on in the gathering dusk—and as Dylan realized he would never come here again. Mert took a steep one-way route up the hill and approached the gate where “Proof of Life” had been required when Dylan and Clare had first entered, four days ago. As they drew near the gate and the truck slowed, Dylan realized a group of—was it people? Or animals?—stood by it. Mert pulled off to the side of the road and shut
off the engine.

Dylan and Clare got out of the truck cab, staring at the figures in front of them. The candlemaker of Holiday Village was there, easily seen by the light of the bright candle he held. In his other hand, the candlemaker held a bell. It looked just like the choir director Dylan had talked with up in the steeple of the church on the hill. With chest puffed up proudly as usual, the penguin stood by the candlemaker, waiting. Near him, on a high stool, sat the man who had first told Dylan he needed to be authorized to get into Holiday. Although before, Dylan would have said that all trees look alike, he was sure that the tree just by the side of the road was
his
tree, the one that had spoken with him in the forest. Yes, and there stood the little tree right next to it. Dylan was half-conscious of a question in his mind—
how did they
get
here?
—but he was too busy looking around for other new acquaintances to puzzle over it now. Yes, down at the bottom of the tree was a poinsettia plant, speaking quietly to a bunch of mistletoe that held to the tree’s trunk. Dylan could just make out the sound of the voice, without discerning any words. The voice sounded like that of his grandmother. Looking up, Dylan could see the very first stars of the evening. There were two. One star was obviously very close, for it shone very brightly. Next to it was a small twinkly one.

Feeling like he was in a dream, Dylan moved slowly toward the group gathered at the gate. Turning around to speak to Clare, who was just behind him, he shut his mouth without saying anything. Someone he had not seen before had just concluded a quick, quiet conversation with Mert and was moving forward too. Dylan stood still and waited for the man to catch up to them. The man wore clothes that were clean, but which were clearly intended for the out of doors. He had a tan, weathered face and carried what Dylan recognized as a shepherd’s staff. Dylan’s eyes quickly darted around, looking for some sheep, but he saw none.

The rugged man drew near to Dylan and smiled, his kindly eyes twinkling. “My friend Mert here says you want to find the Founder,” he said.

Dylan nodded. “But I realize that you don’t find the Founder, he finds you.”

The shepherd smiled again, and nodded once. “That’s right,” he said. “And you don’t think you’ve been found?”

Dylan opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. He wasn’t sure what the shepherd meant.

“There are all kinds of reasons to believe you
have
been found,” the shepherd continued.

A voice spoke from the side of the road and Dylan turned to face the tree. (He had been right; it
was
“his” tree.) “I told you it was the Founder’s voice you heard back in the cave,” the tree said in a grave voice, to which, this time, the lighthearted little tree added nothing. “He called you out. If he hadn’t, you would still be sitting there.”

The gatekeeper stepped off his stool and chimed in. “Yes, and how do you think you found the flyer about Holiday in the first place? Didn’t it look to you like it had been set there on purpose, leaning against the fence like that, just waiting for you to find it?”

It seemed to Dylan that his brain was functioning very slowly. “Did you put it there?” he asked.

The gate guard shook his head hard. “Nope, not me,” he answered. “The Founder did. He
wanted
you to come looking for him.”

Dylan looked down as Missy Mistletoe began to speak.

“Who paid your fine, when you lost your pass?” she asked simply. “And who planned your way through that neighborhood where you saw so many things about yourself that you didn’t like? Could it be that the Founder had found you?”

“Who sent me to bring light when you were lost in the darkness?” the candlemaker asked. “Why did
you
get out into the light while the Darkness Dwellers are still in there?”

From the candlemaker’s hand, the bell spoke up. “Remember how you had plenty of really good things to eat and water to drink, even up on top of the mountain? How did it get there for you, if the Founder didn’t bring it? Why would he give you what you needed if he hadn’t found you?”

There was a pause, then, which Dylan found awkward at first, until he realized that it was the star’s turn to talk, and everyone was waiting for her voice to reach them. Finally it came. She said, in her whispered roar of a voice, “We stars shine on everyone. Everyone sees us. Who hears what we say about the Founder—except those who have been found? You heard us, Dylan. You’ve been found.”

“By the Founder!” said another smaller voice, full of excitement, also coming from high in the sky.

The penguin stepped forward. His chest puffed just a little more. “If you didn’t know the Founder, you’d be just as productive as those dead, bare trees in the winter wasteland, back by my place.”

“If you didn’t know the Founder,” Penny Poinsettia added, “you wouldn’t want to give him a gift.”

Mert stepped forward, eagerly. “But you do know the Founder. And you did give him a gift. You gave your last day in Holiday to helping other people, which is just what he would have wanted.”

Now even Clare got into the act. “And Dylan, you yourself said you wanted to do that because you really thought it was what the Founder would want, that it’s what he would have done himself. You
do
know the Founder, Dylan; you’ve even begun to think like he does.”

Could it be true? Did the Founder know him? Had the Founder found him? Is that why he had been so obsessed with finding the Founder? “But I’ve never seen him,” Dylan still objected.

“None of us have seen him either,” the shepherd answered. “There were those who saw him once, but that was a long time ago. No one’s seen him for a long time now. But we all know him, just the same. And love him. You may not have seen him, but he’s been with you all along. You have a long ways to go in getting to know him. You’ll need to work on that every day of your life. But you can stop worrying about finding him. You
have
found him, because he’s found you.”