by Marcy Wilson-Cales

Noel is leaving us,
Sad to say,
But he will come again,
Adieu, Noel...

It's late, he thought, dazedly, and pulled out his watch to peer at the numbers. TEN PRECISE looked back at him, phosphorously limpid under the swirling storm-lit streetlamp. With a sigh of regret, he put it away with a crisp snap of its brass latch (like a tiny bell) and wondered what his next step would be.

The weather was only getting worse, but he had seen absolutely no hotels or places to spend the night; that meant, if he didn't find Julia, he would have to drive back to Philadelphia and return here tomorrow after he slept.

His wife and his children
Weep as they go
On a gray horse
They ride through the snow...

And he was so tired. his neck was stiff from staring out the train window. The blur of the day loomed upon him, very much like a train itself, threatening to trample him under its weight.

Julia, please be here...

Please.

He rubbed his eyes against the frozen desert that pierced thorns of ice into his exposed flesh. Like a storm off African dunes, the wind forced its way into his lungs with sandgrains of cold, battling the warmer snow clouds. He worried that the snow would lose the battle. He remembered cold so intense that one's own breath could freeze inside their lungs.

Before leaving the lamp, he examined the map and finally reassured himself of where he was. He was afraid to let himself be encouraged at the results: Where Julia MIGHT be was less than six blocks away. He wondered if he should drive, then worried that he might fall asleep if he got into the warm car again. Best to wait until he had to.

The kings ride away
In the snow and the rain;
But after 12 months
We shall see them again...

The church bells hushed, softly, notes still humming in the night air.

It was the kind of neighborhood that quietly slept; safety hung like a placid stupor over the well-kept houses. Barnabas sensed a relaxed air that spoke of middle class more than moneyed gentry. Most of the buildings were old; he passed two log cabins with green historical plaques on the front doors bearing the year of construction, and--astonishing to him--a large tobacco barn converted to shelter humans. Christmas was far from gone here; the holly and ivy still adorned the world, and through darkened glass windows, evergreens still shone with colored lights; silent guardians over sleeping families.

The holly and the ivy, he thought, recalling the songs of his youth--songs that, he had been deeply grateful to learn, had not died out as so much of his time had done.

And this night reminded him of nothing so much as a song for the children...they had had to change the wording of it every year, part of the game, but he remembered especially the version he had given to Sarah...

Hear the howling, sharpened wind
O'er the rooftops humming
Like a fury never-ending
Through the solid, sheltered chimney
Hear it fiercely blow.
Will then Old Belsnickle
Motley clad and whitely grinning
Still on his way be coming
Through the storm and snow?

Can he, his ear, our hearts a-beating
Beating, beating and entreating
Surely he would not ride past
Surely he would not away?

Homesick and heartsick, his lips shaped the words without being fully aware of what he was doing. Weak fog escaped from his lips to die a cruel death in the harsh night air. Anyone to see his face then, would have recognized the open longing it housed.

The street turned flat and exposed to the weather; sleeping maples carved whistling holes in the passing wind in their black and bare branches. He found himself obligated to keep his collar up around his neck, and he kept one hand under his coat to shelter while the other held his cane. Under his feet, the brick road turned slick under a glaze that looked like the hard sauce over a pudding. His journey tracked the source of the frozen puddle to a tiny spring in a front yard, ringed with stones and masoned together with its own water.

The cold hammered him with mallets; he wished now he had taken the car, and risked getting lost trying to detour around the pedestrian street.

He almost missed the simple two-story, made of yellowed brick in a small front yard and a large, sweeping back yard ringed with a low hedge. Bare and black grapevines grew up the front of the house like ship's rigging; sand had been sprinkled in the short brick walk. Soft lights glowed in the windows; the bayberry candles in the frost-lined window were real, as were the small cluster of golden holly and dark ivy.

He searched with his eyes, but found no visible sign that it was Julia's hand behind any of it, although it would be like her. He did not see her car.

He sighed, cautiously, aware of the icy cold. He was so tired, he needed to find out whether or not Julia was here as soon as possible.

He stepped through the open gateway, and rested his cane on the doormat.

A moment's courage, he told himself, and he would at least know.

A moment's courage, he had told Sarah, who had shown the first signs of apprehension at the rhyme, and the knocking on the other side of the door.

Who is knocking, children?
Who is rapping, children?
Who taps to soft upon my pane?

Surely there a stranger,
Surely here a stranger,
Let him in and let us ask his name...

His hand was cold and brittle against the door.

The Santa Claus rhyme I borrowed from a modern, and far shorter Dutch Xmas rhyme, and could not resist adding more words and extra rhythm to it. Call me Shakespeare, the Great Plot-Cribber! --Marcy

To Be Continued

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