December 21, 1999, and I’m upstairs in my office working on a book about joy. Already it’s dark out and snow thick as a test pattern flows past the window.
Suddenly I hear voices downstairs—loud voices. My wife’s, and a man’s. I try to ignore them, until Karen calls up the stairs, “Mike, come and meet someone wonderful!”
I’m not in the mood to meet someone wonderful. Truth to tell, I seldom am.
“Honey,” I call back, “I’m working.” Honey is what I always call Karen when I’m annoyed.
“Too bad,” she replies—a favorite phrase of hers. “You won’t want to miss this.”
With a groan, I rise from my chair and trudge downstairs. In the living room, beside our Christmas tree, stands a tall, lean old man clad in a bedraggled Santa suit. He looks very, very old and his long, straggly beard is the real thing. Not only is this fellow lean, but he leans to one side as if into a wind, or as if unable to support his full height. Even so, he’s taller than the tree. His red suit is both too big and too small, hanging in loose clumps around the middle while his bony arms dangle far below the cuffs.
“This is Chester,” shouts Karen. “Chester Christmas. He’s ninety-three years old.”
As we shake hands I say, “Christmas? Is that your real name?”
“He’s hard of hearing,” Karen yells. “You have to speak louder.”
“Is Christmas your real name?” I shout.
“And a merry Christmas to you, sir,” he replies.
We’re off to a great start. All I can think is—What’s this character doing in my living room? Christmas Eve is three days away; shouldn’t he be in his workshop hammering away with the elves?
“He was hitchhiking,” says Karen. “And with the weather like this, I just couldn’t pass him by.” Karen never picks up hitchhikers. “And now he needs a ride home to Lynden. Will you take him?”
“Lynden? That’s across the border.” Lynden is half an hour away, longer depending on the border line-up, which right now, on a Friday evening, is likely to be long.
“Please?” says Karen.
“Honey, I’m working,” I repeat. “Can’t you drive him?”
“I have to go to that shower. Besides, he’s a wonderful man, and I think you’ll enjoy his stories.”
Great—just the kind of company I like, an old geezer who can’t keep his pie-hole shut. Throughout this altercation, I express my delight by looking daggers at Karen. Our voices, though rising in emotional volume, are kept low enough to be inaudible, I hope, to our guest. Sure enough, Chester looks bemused, swaying a little as though the breeze has picked up.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “If he lives in Lynden, what’s he doing here in Langley?”
“Isn’t it obvious? There aren’t enough Santa gigs in Lynden, so he hitchhikes here on weekends. He’s a dear old soul who’s just trying to pick up some pocket money.”
Not wanting to leave the dear old soul completely out of it, I ask him, “So how’s the weather up there at the North Pole? I gather you left your reindeer at home?”
“Not raining,” says Chester. “Snowing.”
I throw up my hands: This is hopeless.
“Don’t worry,” says Karen. “He’ll carry the conversation. He’s marvelous! Besides, maybe this is a God thing.”
“Or a royal nuisance,” I say.
“Either you drive him,” says Karen, “or else we let him stay the night.”
Hm. She has a point. And so I agree to drive Santa home, but not without thinking: We interrupt this book on joy for an argument with your wife.
And I remain angry all the way to Lynden, whilst Chester Christmas, as promised, regales me with one story after another, all delivered in a nasal, stentorian tenor which all by itself, even if he’d been reciting angelic poetry, would have shredded my nerves. Whether he assumes that I myself am deaf, or whether he bellows because otherwise he can’t hear himself think, who knows? But he drones on and on like a chain-smoker lighting each new tale off the ember of the last. The snow, a little abated, is still heavy enough to make for tricky driving. I stare straight ahead through the tunnel of whirling flakes.
Sure enough, there’s a half-hour wait at the border, but Chester doesn’t miss a beat. One of his stories is about the Pogue carburetor—an automotive version of snake oil that would supposedly give a car two hundred miles to the gallon. Chester had known the inventor, Charles Pogue, and had invested heavily in the scheme and lost his shirt. He’d lost another shirt on a Christmas tree farm growing a variety of tree that had never before been marketed in North America. And now never will be.
That’s just a taste of a couple of Chester’s rambling yarns, and if I tell you all the others this will not be just a short story but a novel.
When finally we arrive at the booth, the customs lady asks absently, “Reason for your trip?”
“Just driving my friend here back to Lynden.”
Peering into the car and spotting Santa, her face lights up. “Why, Chester! Merry Christmas to you!” And she waves us on.
Never before have I seen a customs official smile, let alone beam. You’d have thought I had the great Claus himself in my car. Nevertheless, my gloom only deepens as we arrive at Chester’s dismal trailer park, a dozen ancient mobile units sporting so few seasonal trappings—pitiful wreaths, strings of lights with more bulbs burnt out than lit—as to render the place even sadder.
“Here,” says Chester, “let me give you something for your trouble.”
“No trouble,” I lie. “Please don’t.”
“I insist.” And digging into his worn, brown, many-patched sack, he adds, “It just so happens I have one little present left. Let’s see what it is.”
What he draws out is a cheap costume brooch that spells one word in colored glass beads: JOY. As he hands me this tawdry gewgaw, I stare at it, not believing what I’m seeing. Do I laugh, or cry? It does not escape me that I happen to be engaged in writing a book about joy.
I cry. At least, tears come to my eyes, and I cannot speak as Chester Christmas uncoils himself out of my car. “Good night!” he booms. “A joyful Christmas to you and the wife!”
I wave weakly, and watch the old fellow hobble up the path to the door of his trailer.
For some time I remain motionless in the car, waiting for my feelings to settle, like the snow settling so gently all around.
As I often do at such times—and there have been many in my life—I think of a poem by D.H. Lawrence that ends:
And so,
I missed my chance with one of the lords of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
Today, I realize, once again I have missed my chance with a lord of life.
Finally I get out of the car, stand in the falling snow, and take a good look down the path leading up to the old Santa’s trailer. I know it’s silly—but I have to see whether Chester Christmas left any tracks.
(Photo by Karen Mason)
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