This is what became of my attempts to write an advent story. It's a little long. And I don't have many pictures to accompany it. But here ya go. Merry Christmas to all and, to all, a good night.
At those bright, shining, over-lit way stations along the American highway, the bathrooms were somehow factory-like. Station after station to set about your work. Careening, efficient rows of urinals and stalls like at an airport or stadium. In these he’d gladly piss his caustic caffeine-driven piss. It was those damp, grey cement bathrooms he was in hope of perpetually. Something single-use and reeking of every other fellow’s bad aim. Some place with a drain in the floor and no tile or mirrors. It was in a place like this, a place with an air-dryer for your hands instead of paper towels, that Eric could turn the rickety padlock and fill his lungs, for a few moments, with heavy, ammonia-laden breaths. With his greasy jeans splayed at the fly and wracked halfway down his thighs, he’d spit in his palm and sprawl across the cool, grimy seat, rubbing one out to the thought of the last time Rebecca shared his bed. Sometimes, if someone shouted through the door, he’d clutch the hair on the back of his head the way her slender fingers had. He’d gasp a little and stare agape without seeing.
This road, like many of the others, was long and straight with a lane in either direction. The fields on either side bore the blonde, wiry stubble of cut down corn stocks. Rabbits and skunks slept mutely in boroughs along the banks of the dry irrigation ditches. The snow that lay an inch on every surface was fresh and dry and blew in wisps across the plain. Eric, driving and ensconced in all that hurtling steel, would come to drift askew a troubling angle for a hundred feet or so. The lengths of ice were invisible on the pavement, but if the wheels stayed as straight as the road, they would quickly catch rough pavement again. Eric would ease back into his lane, his eyes a little brighter and his heartbeat a little louder over the wind. Every few hours he would stop and fill the same Styrofoam cup with bitter gas-station coffee. He’d tip a few of those coins he’d fished from a fountain in Boone, Iowa out of another Styrofoam cup onto the counter next to the cash register and ask where the bathroom was.
It was a hell of a car to be driving in the winter. The heater worked, but it blew a heavy, oily air into Eric’s eyes. And though it kept his hands warm, he drove with his coat on. The coat stayed buttoned to the throat on account of the electric window motors had long ago failed at almost-closed. Each nostril was ringed in chaffed, red skin from where he’d wipe with woolen sleeves at his unending sniffle. The dry, split leather of the seats would abrade lines of pilling up the peacoat’s back. The foam-rubber headrest was crumbling and Eric would find bits of it in his hair at night, like pieces of oversized novelty dandruff. The ceiling upholstery had dangled nearly into his line of sight for days, until he cut it out with a pair of stolen scissors somewhere east of Omaha. He’d sometimes, while pumping gas, pick with the toes of his shoe at the climbing, two-dimensional stalagmites of rust on the exterior metal panels. The elderly fellow who pumped gas for him in Oregon had crouched by his rear tires for a moment and whistled one slow mournful whistle, but not said another word as he tucked a penny back into that tiny, fifth pocket of his jeans. For all of it, the car ran along well enough and unhurried, like the most of us ineligible for redemption.
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The man feeding pigeons wore one on his shoulder like a pirate. Another, speckled black across its dull white feathers, perched at the bird-man’s wrist, pecking bread crusts from his hand. The man wore layers of tired and ill-fitting clothes. His shoes were once white, though the only evidence for this was the sliver exposed by a twisted and leering tongue, bound in fraying laces. Eric watched the pigeons bob and sidle around the man in a great swarm. Some hopped about on mere stubs of limbs. Some were great big birds, with iridescent washes of purple upon their necks like they’d wandered beneath some drooling, magical beast. Eric smoked and leaned against the front bumper of the car he’d slept a frigid, fitful night’s sleep inside.
“You do this every day?” Eric spoke across the small town square to the man. No one else but a newspaper man milled about the scene.
“I’m not hurting ‘em.” Replied the man, his smile suddenly gone. Eric looked around.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Pigeons can eat bread. It don’t hurt ‘em none.”
“Yeah, but are you here everyday?”
“Everyday. Me and them, we,” the man gestured expansively, sending the pigeon on his wrist into flight, “greet the day.”
“You greet the day?”
“Together. Yes.”
“Are they your friends?”
The man’s smile returned and, moreover, he laughed. “No. I don’t think pigeons are much for friends. No birds at all, I’d guess.”
“You know much about birds?”
“I know pigeons can eat bread and that they aren’t much for friends. Ask me something else. Maybe I’ll know it.”
“Nah, sir. I think you’ve got it about figured out.” Eric tossed his cigarette butt into the gutter and circled around to the driver door. “Give the day my greetings,” he offered over the top of the car door and the man turned back to whatever it is one says to pigeons. The coffee Eric reached to sip had ice floating in it.
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At the diner counter, he counted out four bills and a pocket’s worth of change on his paper mat before ordering. He ordered the pancakes with eggs and a cup of coffee. He sipped the coffee black and stared at his face in the greasy glass between the counter and the kitchen. His dirty black hair stood at some odd wiry angle across his forehead and grey had crept in crackling bolts. The lines coursing his forehead beneath the bangs and in the flesh around his mouth were getting worse. He’d left the city with boyish features and now there was this man who looked back at him. For some, years pass before we are strangers to our own faces. For Eric, eight months.
“I drove my baby round in that same car. Make and model.”
Eric looked down the counter at a woman his mother’s age in black slacks, a mauve blouse and graying apron. Her hair was long, but up, loosely, in a bun at the back of her head. She’d been pretty, but not for decades. She squinted nostalgically over her glasses at his Volvo. He drank from his mug while looking at her, burning his tongue.
“Fell apart around me, but didn’t I ever put that key in and it didn’t start up.”
“My experience has been selfsame.” Eric offered, looking down into his mug, accusatorially.
“Took that little girl to Sunday school, to regular school day after day with that car. Parked it out back. Near anyone round here could tell you so. Plain spooky seeing it pull up like you’ve done.”
“It was a popular car at one point, I’m told. Safe.”
The woman nodded solemnly. She looked across her shoulders at Eric.
“On your way, home, Sweety? From school?” Eric read her name tag. Hillary.
“No… No, I’m just driving.”
“Well, you in some hurry to get where you’re driving to?”
Eric laughed. “No, ma’am. I’ve had no hurry for quite a while now.”
“Alright then,” Hilary said and turned to the kitchen window and slid a piece of paper across its threshold. “Well, sweetheart, everyone calls me Hill and you’re meal will just be another few minutes.“
Soon enough, out came a stack of pancakes leaning jauntily, capped with butter. A second plate arrived with eggs and meats. A glass of orange juice found their shared counter space. Eric looked around. Hillary emerged from the kitchen.
“I can’t pay for all this, ma’am.”
“You’re certainly right. Wouldn’t have your money.”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be equal to this much food either.”
“Don’t you dare. You’ll insult me if you won’t eat every crumb.”
“Ma’am.”
Eric ate every crumb. He left all four dollars as a tip for the check that never came. He didn’t bother with the change and gathered it back up.
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He sat for a long time on that front step, hoping someone might be on their way home. He sat until the cold cut all the way through his clothes and he couldn’t feel his toes. He wished he had a cigarette to pull at furtively. The wind blew furiously for a while, and then was still and that was all the worse. That silent plane lay out around him like some bed long ago made and never slept in. He tried all the doors and all were likewise locked. Every window was latched to its sill. Every light was out. Every car was gone. Rebecca and her people, it seemed, travelled for the Holidays and the New Year. The Christmas tree was inverted in a cardboard box by the trashcans, tinsel clinging and a few fractured ornaments strewn at the box’s bottom.
Eric wedged his fingers under the garage door and it lifted with some effort. Across the polished cement, the door to the kitchen was unlocked and Eric let himself in. He slid each shoe off his heel and left them neatly by the door like he had the year before. For a moment he heard a whole family’s chatter of joy and anxiety and conflict. He heard the skitter of canine claws across kitchen tile. The whistle of tea kettles before bed. The creak of an insomniac grandmother shuffling to the porch for early-morning cigarettes. But the inside view was still dark and everything tidy and in its place. It was all but a corpse of a home, laying in wait for a Christ-like return to resurrect it. Eric was colder now than before.
Up the stairs and into her room, he sat the edge of the bed. He turned to address the window, ensconced in frost.
“I guess…” Eric wiped at his nose with that woolen sleeve.
“I guess I though this was the piece that would make sense if I just did some stupid heroic thing. Surprise you and come inside and you’d be mad at first, but in that way you forget quickly. I’d stand here looking so tired and you’d touch my sleeve and your dad would shake my hand and your mom would pour me a secret brandy and park me next to grandma, asleep and…”
Out in a field, two deer dipped their heads to stalks that broached the snow. Eric stared at them and they seemed to notice. For a moment, Eric laid his sight at where it seemed their dark eyes were aimed. Then, they returned to their chewing and Eric found he’d slipped his hand between the pillow and its case.
Standing, Eric crossed the room to her dresser. He slid open the bottom drawer, full of sweatpants and socks. His fingers rifled a stack of cotton and came up with a grey t-shirt with a city’s outline in crackling screen printing across the breast. Unfolded before him, he breathed in its thrift store sweetness. It didn’t betray the scent of its newest owner even a little.
“It’s not like I could ever wear this again. But it just isn’t right,” Eric said, turning for the door.
He stopped short and turned back.
“Fuck it. I’ll trade you.”
Eric reached into his coat and brought to bear a folded wad of paper, splitting and softened at its edges. Inside the folds was a note she’d written that previous year on a paper table covering, just beneath the edge of her plate. It was something her mother would have hated and her father would never see. It was written in blue pen. It was a secret shared before everyone and that he’d only spoken of once, towards the end. She’d heard it mentioned and turned immediately for the door. They spoke after that, but not easily. She didn’t even know he’d saved the scrap.
But how could he not? And leaving those blue-inked words on the duvet, he descended into the broader quiet of the kitchen and out the door.
Eric pulled the garage door back down into place with a crash and climbed back into his frigid vehicle. Back in town, he bought some cigarettes and matches with his coffee at the gas station, but did not ask about the bathroom. When he refilled the gas tank, he spilled a little on the wadded up cloth at his feet. Eric sealed up the gas tank and leaned against the door to light a cigarette with his back to the breeze. He made sure the lit match fell to the wreaking rag on the cement. It smoldered and crackled, fighting against the incipient cold as he drove away.
In the end, the city of Chicago lay in ashes and Eric would see its outline resurrected on the horizon in less than a day.
