An Excerpt from The Present from Christmas Past

Bill Johnson had a blank expression as he sat behind a broadcast console littered with paper plates and plastic cups.  There was a small tinsel Christmas tree with half the lights out on one end of the console.  He didn’t notice any of this as he held a cigarette close to his face and listened to a commercial on his headphones tapping his foot impatiently on the floor.  Smoke spiraled slowly upwards to a ceiling that held the residue of a thousand other cigarettes.  Bill watched an electric sign that suddenly flashed the message she was on the air.  He blew out the last of his smoke, smiled, leaned forward, and flipped on the microphone.

“Hello, this is your boy Bill wishing you all a Merry Christmas Eve.  By now you know an Alberta Clipper loaded with snow blew off the lake and sailed into the county just before noon.  The roads are drifted over and it’s still coming down hard.  You late shoppers better hope you got all you need because the stores are closed.  Head on home to wait for Santa Claus because here he comes!”

Bill threw another switch and the song began to play.  The smile drained from his face.  He took a long drag off the cigarette, looked up at the clock and frowned.  There were two more hours before he could leave and drive home through the storm.  He’d had visitation with his three children since this morning and left them home alone to wait out his three-hour shift. The way it was snowing he’d get home after they had fallen asleep.  His ex-wife was picking them up in the morning, meaning there wouldn’t even be time to open gifts.  The thought of it made him angry.  Especially since the ex was off this week and no doubt had a big Christmas weekend planned for the boys in the apartment of the man she’d left him for.

Bill ground out his cigarette and lit another one.  He looked up on the wall where the clock seemed to be moving slower.

At the edge of town, two cops were protecting a deserted coffee shop.  The older one was stuffed into a uniform that might have fit when he was forty pounds lighter.  He was loud and self-important.  The younger cop stared at her and smiled as his partner complained to their waitress about having to work on Christmas Eve.

The girl was a single mom whose boyfriend left when she got too pregnant with his child to be fun.  She pretended to sympathize with the older cop, knowing he was making double-time, holiday pay by sitting in the diner filling his coffee cup, which was free to the police, for the fifth time.  She was making $4.15 an hour and tips, so she was quick to smile at both cops, but saved a wink for the younger cop hoping for some Christmas money.  He winked back as she bent down to wipe the spotless table in front of him.  He smiled and followed every move.

She stood up and looked out the diner’s big glass window as a car drove past the diner.   The blizzard swallowed the car so quickly she thought it might have been an illusion.  No one had been on the road for hours.  She felt a shiver at the thought of driving home through the storm.  She wished the cops would leave so they could close.  But the policemen had nowhere to go until their shift ended.  She thought about her Christmas bills, smiled again and blew the younger cop a kiss. He blushed.

The car that drove past the coffee shop was far into the heart of the blizzard when Bill came over the radio and said, “That’s it from me tonight.  Goodnight and Merry Christmas for any of you who survived the blizzard.”

I’ll be Home for Christmas, played softly over the car radio. The only other sounds were the winter wind, the windshield wipers, and tires grinding against the road.  A man was driving, his face was strained as he gripped the steering wheel and leaned forward, trying to see the road through the glare of his headlights against the oncoming snow.  His wife sat with her back pressed hard against the passenger’s seat.  Her right hand clutched the door, her left was clenched into a fist in her lap.  Her eyes were wide open and frightened.

Neither of them spoke.  Their silence was the remnant of their final argument, the last brick in a wall between them.  The pattern of their argument was as predictable as the tide as they each pointed out to the other the errors of their respective personalities.  It would have been all right, but one of them crossed an invisible line and the other, thus invited, did the same.  They both claimed the victory of declaring the end of their marriage, which neither one of them wanted but could not back away from.  Now, they were traveling together separately, each blaming the other for the way it was with them and being out in the storm.

The music on the radio became another man’s voice, “Good Christmas Evening, everybody.  This is Late Night Nate taking you through to Christmas morning.  I hope you’re all safe at home.  The blizzard closed the Interstates and made any kind of travel dangerous.  If you’re out on the road, why don’t you pull in somewhere and wait it out?  Now here’s Mel Torme singing The Christmas Song.”

The music played for a moment then the radio died.  The woman reached out and twisted the dials.  Every channel was static.  She flicked the radio off and turned to her husband with the fire left over from their argument glowing in her eyes.

“Did you hear that?  I told you we should have stopped when they closed the Interstate.  You had to keep going.  Why?”

Her husband turned to glare at her for a second, then looked back at the road.  He ground his teeth together, choking off the first thing that came to mind.  Then he shot a poisoned glance at her and said, “You wanted to go home to mommy, didn’t you?  Well, you are and then I don’t want to see you or hear another word about you for the rest of my life.”

His words and sneering tone hurt her then made her mad.  She started to speak, knew it was useless, and turned away to look through the windshield where a dizzying pattern of snowflakes rushed through the headlights. She grabbed the door handle tighter.

The man pretended the weather didn’t bother him, but he was scared.  He would have gone to a motel an hour ago if his wife hadn’t suggested it before he could pull over.  There wouldn’t be anything looking like a concession between them tonight.  He told her he didn’t need to stop and turned onto a country road that wasn’t yet closed.  Now he wasn’t sure they would make it through and knew there was no help for them out here.  He blamed her for driving in the storm, which was the only way he could be angrier at her than he was at himself.