The Greens of Jericho

    Dale clambered out of bed and took a shaky step towards the spirit. She held out her arms, giving him an encouraging nod. Shivering, he reached towards her.

    The instant he touched her hand, the room around them disappeared and he found himself standing inside a small living room. He knew it instantly. It was the living room of the trailer in which he had lived for most of his life. It was as messy as he remembered, and it was decorated for the holidays, with a small artificial tree, some paper chains, and a stocking Dale remembered attaching to a chair.

     A woman walked into the room. Dale gasped immediately. He hadn't seen her in over a year, but she looked as he remembered her: beautiful, but tired, her curly hair pulled up loosely, her red fingernails chipped just a little. He instantly felt his eyes burning. “Mom,” he breathed.

     He took a step towards her. She didn't notice, but kept getting her coffee ready. The spirit spoke for the first time since they had arrived. “She can't hear you. These are only the shadows of things that have already happened. We cannot change them.”

     He didn't say anything for a moment, but watched his mother as she stirred her coffee. She stared at the carpet as she drank, a faraway look in her eyes. He wished he could ask her what she was thinking, like he used to do sometimes when they were both awake at the same time in the morning. He stayed rooted to the spot, staring.

     After a short while, the sliding door to the smaller bedroom opened and Dale was shocked to see a smaller, pyjama-clad version of himself running into the room. Little Dale ran up to his mother and put his arms around her waist. “Merry Christmas Mommy!” he shouted up at her.

     She smiled and brushed her hand through his hair. “Merry Christmas, angel.”

     “I waited up for a long time, but I think I fell asleep,” he said.

     She gave him a guilty smile. “Sorry, sweetie, it was really hard getting home in the snow. I didn't mean to worry you.”

      “I remember that night,” said Dale, glancing over at the spirit. She nodded encouragingly. “I was so afraid when she didn't come home. I sat up forever watching the snow out the window. I was convinced I'd be all alone when I woke up.”

     He turned back to watch the younger version of himself. His mother was still holding his face in her hands. “Should we go see what Santa brought?” she asked.

    The little boy nodded and they went over to the chair with the stocking. He watched his younger self dump out some oranges, some chocolates, a pair of orange mittens and a green knit hat. He noticed, as he hadn't noticed the first time, his mother's nervousness as she handed him the wrapped present. He did remember tearing off the paper and holding up the box. Little Dale's face fell slightly as he studied the box of Lego.

    His mother was trying very hard to stay cheerful. “I know you were probably hoping for something more like one of those transformers, but I guess maybe Santa wanted you to have something else this year.”

    Little Dale had a very serious expression. “I don't like transformers. It's alright.”

    “Are you sure?” asked his mother in a small voice.

    “It's alright Mom,” he continued. He looked up at her with his most grown-up-serious expression. “I know about Santa. You don't have to worry.”

    “You know, baby?” she asked in a quiet voice.

    “You did your best,” he said matter-of-factly. With that, little Dale opened the box and dumped the Lego blocks onto the floor. Dale had never really like building toys, but he remembered how much he'd pretended he did in this moment.

     Now, he watched his younger self trying to play with his toy, and he watched his mother's eyes well over. She was trying hard to hide it, but eventually, little Dale noticed she was crying.

     “What's wrong, Mom?” he asked.

     “You should have had a transformer. I should have gotten you something better. I wanted to, but they didn't have a lot of things that were good for a boy your age.”

     She was full out crying now. “You're my baby- and – and- you should have the things you really want, instead of this crap,” she said between sobs.

     Little Dale looked uncomfortable, but he patted his mother's arm. “It's okay,” he kept repeating. “It's okay.”

     Dale himself was fighting a lump that was forcing its way into his throat. Part of him wanted to stay and keep looking at his mother, but part of him wanted to get away from this scene forever.

     “Do you remember this as a happy Christmas?” asked the spirit. He suddenly remembered she was there.
       
    “I guess,” he stammered. “I don't know. I felt...it was heavy. I hated how I had to look after her. I hate how I couldn't. She tried, but she needed help.” He turned to stare at his mother again. It was as if he could keep her image etched in his mind forever if he just kept staring.

     The spirit nodded, giving him that same sympathetic smile. “It's time to move on. There's more to see,” she said, taking his arm.

     Once again, the trailer disappeared from around them, and another room materialized. This room was much bigger, and much more crowded. It was a classroom, filled with high-school-sized desks, many of which were covered in torn wrapping paper, small dollar store presents, and cupcake wrappers. There were high school students too. They were obviously not in the middle of a lesson, for some were actually perched on their friends' desks, or sitting in chairs circled around the desks. They were all talking and laughing.

     A tall blond woman wearing a tinsel garland wrapped around her neck like a scarf and a pair of reindeer antlers was walking amidst the desks, handing out chocolates. As she stopped at each cluster of students, she would join in their conversation, laughing along or making her own comment.

    “Miss Sullivan!” said Dale. It seemed like it had been many years ago, but he realized it had only been the year before last that she had been his history teacher. He remembered, then, where he would be sitting. He glanced to the side of the room.

    Over at the window, he could see the curly head of hair he knew to be his own, buried in his folded arms on top of a desk. Asleep, if he remembered correctly. He shook his head. As much as he tried to fight it, he always used to fall asleep in her class.

    The spirit was walking over to his younger self, and he followed her. He noticed several of his classmates as they passed them. There was a particularly large crowd gathered around Skylar Stevens- he quickly glanced away. As he turned around, he realized he was about to collide with Miss Sullivan- but instead of smacking into her, he seemed to fall right through her. Shuddering at the strange feeling, he looked at the spirit. She just shrugged.

     Miss Sullivan, however, continued without interruption, and he saw now that she was headed straight towards his past self. When she got there, she held the box of chocolates as close to his face as she could get. His past self lifted his head quickly and blinked blearily.

    “I knew the smell of chocolate would wake you up,” she said with a maniacal laugh. She held out the box.

    “I'm fine, thanks,” his former self mumbled.

    “Aw, come on Dale. They're home-made,” she said.

    “Okay,” younger Dale said with a grudging smile.

     Emily Sullivan seemed pleased with her success, and pulled up a chair from the vacant desk in front of his. “So, Dale, tired out by all the holiday stuff? Been shopping ‘til you dropped?” she asked.
       
    “Sorry. Didn't mean to fall asleep,” he muttered, his cheeks turning pink.

    “Oh, don't worry about it. I know I'll be glad to catch up on my sleep when the holidays start. Not that I don't enjoy getting up to teach all of you lovely people every day,” she said.

    Younger Dale nodded.

    Older Dale chuckled. “She always said stuff like that, but you could tell she really liked being there. I think hers was the only class no one skipped on the last day before vacation.” He saw that the spirit was giving him a knowing smile, so he added, “Probably because she let us watch movies.”

    If this annoyed the spirit, she didn’t make it known. She turned her head back towards the desk at the window, and grudgingly, Dale did the same.

    “So what are you looking forward to doing during the holidays?” Emily asked.
       
    “I don't know, sleeping,” Dale said.
         
    She laughed. “Well, I guess I can't blame you for wanting to get a head start. But do you have any plans? Are you going to celebrate?”

     Younger Dale fidgeted in his seat. “Christmas isn't really a big deal in my house.”

     She nodded. “Fair enough.”

     “What are you doing, Miss Sullivan?” he asked.

     She smiled. “Well, Christmas wasn't a really big deal in my house either, but I think it's going to be pretty great this year. Roger and I are going to New York for New Years.”

     Dale smiled to himself. “She talked about Roger so much that year. I think he proposed to her that Christmas.”

     He looked back at his younger self. He was smiling dreamily now. Dale almost grimaced as he remembered what was about to come.

     “I hope you have a really great Christmas then, Miss Sullivan,” his younger self gushed.

    He was embarrassed now, watching as his younger self turned a shade of pink. He felt equally uncomfortable about watching this moment with the spirit, and he stared straight ahead to avoid catching her eye.

     Emily just smiled back, though, saying, “Thanks Dale. And I hope you have a great holiday, even if it isn't a big deal. You-” she started to say, trailing off as she glanced at the front of the classroom.

     “Sean Henthorn!” she shouted. “I said you could play hangman on the blackboard, but I didn't mean you could write those words!”
       
     “Excuse me,” she said to Dale, before dashing up to the blackboard.

     Younger Dale watched for a moment as Emily wrestled the chalk from Sean, and went back to watching out the window.

     Dale watched himself, and turned, finding himself face to face with the spirit once more. She wore the same gentle smile as always, but it was unnerving to have her watching him so closely. He thought she'd ask a question, but she kept watching silently. He shifted uncomfortably. He knew she was waiting for him to say something. He cleared his throat, and said gruffly, “Well, what now?”

     She raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure you are finished with this memory?”

     He glanced back over at his younger self, staring at the grey skies outside. “Yes.” he said firmly.

     He felt once again the strange feeling of standing still as the world around him shifted. They were in another living room now.

     He pulled his arm out of the spirit's cool grasp and stepped forward. This room was much larger and richly decorated than the trailer had been, but it was colder too. It looked as though it was afternoon, because the sky visible through the window was pale grey, but inside, it was dark. Dale realized that he himself wasn't feeling cold, but was only thinking of the room as cold because he remembered it so well.

     “No. Not here.” he said, hearing the shudder in his voice. “I don't- not this one.”

     She stared calmly back at him. He looked around wildly, searching for a way out. He did not want to witness the scene he knew was coming.
       
     He implored her again. “Please, spirit. I can't. Not now. Please.”
       
     She shook her head, sympathetically but firmly. He turned from her angrily and paced back and forth along the wall. Any moment...

     A door slammed somewhere and the sound of footsteps coming nearer could be heard. He buried his face in his hands. He didn't want to see.
       
     “Dale!”  He could hear her voice. “Bring it in here!” she shouted. He heard her coming and knew she was in the room.

     He was aware of a cool, but nonetheless comforting hand on his shoulder. He looked back at the spirit. She looked at him deliberately and moved her eyes towards the other person in the room. He sighed and made himself look over too.

     Skylar was pushing a chair out of its spot in front of the window. She was breathless and her cheeks were rosy. When the top of a tree appeared in the doorway, she ran forwards and grabbed some of the branches. She pulled, and the whole tree came into the room. The Dale from this memory also came into view now, pushing the tree through the doorway. He still wore his knit hat and gloves.

    “Over here!” she said excitedly.

     They dragged the tree across the room and pulled it into an upright position. Dale bent down and started fiddling around with a tree stand they'd set out on the floor.

     She stood back and brushed her gloved hands together, letting out a big sigh. She giggled then. “I was sure someone was going to catch us out there!” she said with a laugh.

     His younger self didn't look up as he answered with a snort, “So, what if they did? We didn't take this from anyone, any more than they took gas or medicine, or crops. Besides, we can use it for firewood later.”

     “Are you sure you can figure that thing out?” she asked. “My dad was always trying to get me to help him with it. I guess I should have tried.”

     “Don't worry.” he said, though he was obviously struggling. “I can figure this out.”

     Dale watched his earlier self wrestle with the tree stand for a few minutes, eventually standing up and brushing needles off his pants.

     He and Skylar stood back to admire their work.
 
     “I know you didn't want to put decorations on it...” Dale started.
 
     “No, it's beautiful!” said Skylar. She stepped forward a little and put a hand on her hip, appraising it. “I think it's perfect without. It just seems...new. Unspoiled. You know what I mean?”

      Dale had been looking at her, not the tree, but he glanced back at it now, nodding. “I think so,” he said.

     She laughed again, patting his arm. “You were so funny out there, with the saw. Have you ever tried to cut down a tree before?”

     He shrugged her arm off, pretending to look put out. “What about you? 'Hurry up! Jimmy Taylor might come by and arrest us for wasting resources!'” he mimicked.

     “I did not say that!” she said laughing and playfully swatting him with her scarf.

    “You were thinking it,” he said, leaning towards her and leaning back quickly.

    “Well... thank you,” she said suddenly seriously. She leaned over and hugged him. He slowly put his arms on her back. They stood for a moment. He shivered.

    “Are you okay?” she asked.

    “I guess we should start a fire,” he said.

    “Oh, right,” she said, becoming businesslike. “I'll get the wood.”

    She was out of the room in a second, and past-Dale watched her go for another second before he turned to the fireplace and bent down. Neither of them had had much experience building fires, but they had learned pretty quickly that winter. He poked at the charred wood leftover from their last fire and started arranging kindling from the bucket beside the fireplace.

    When Skylar came back into the room, her arms full of firewood they had collected on their tree-cutting excursion, a small fire was flickering.

    “I swear it's even colder out there now than it was when we got home,” she said, her teeth chattering. She knelt beside him and placed her bundle beside the other wood that they had piled that morning. She pulled off her gloves and held her hands right in front of the fire. She breathed in the warm air.

   “I just love that smell,” she said. “I can't believe we never used this fireplace, back when my parents were...here.” She sighed. “I wonder what they're doing right now.”
         
    Dale, though he had heard this conversation before, felt a pang in his chest. It was a conversation they had tried to avoid most of the time, but sometimes it had come up. His past self was determinedly cheerful.
         
   “I don't know. Maybe they're skating on that rink in front of Rockefeller centre.”
         
    She scoffed. “Yeah, maybe they decided to build an ice rink this year, end of the world and all.”
         
    He smiled. “Okay, now seriously. I think they're sitting by a roaring fire- probably not as nice as this one, of course, but warm. And they're eating some canned cranberries- like the ones we've got in the kitchen. They're talking about how glad they are that you're here, safe, with a nice fireplace and lots of blankets.”
 
    They had pushed the couch up close to the fire, so they could lean against it and feel the warmth of the fire on their skin. They sat there now, with blankets wrapped around their shoulders. Skylar's eyes were getting a gleam in the firelight.

    “I've never spent a holiday without them,” she said quietly. “There was one year where Dad had to go to Denver for a meeting two days before Christmas. Mom and I went with him, and we went to see 'The Nutcracker' ballet at the opera house. I was, I don't know, nine or ten years old, and I was all dressed up, and I felt so important, walking in between my parents. It was nice.”

    “Sounds nice,” said Dale, though he'd never desired to go to a fancy ballet.

    “How about you Dale?” she asked. She was snuggling deeper into the blankets, and closer to him. Their arms were touching.

    “What about me?” he asked.
 
    “I told you about one of my Christmas memories. Your turn.”
 
    He hadn't liked talking about Christmas with Miss Sullivan, or most other people who tried to get him into the festive spirit, but it was easy to tell her anything when she looked at him with those wide eyes. He thought about it for a moment, and staring into the fire, he spoke.

     “We made a gingerbread house,” he said.

     She watched him with a small smile, waiting for him to continue.

     “My mom was working at that discount store in New Bern- Fred's. They had these gingerbread house kits on sale one day, and she got one and brought it home. She was so excited- she'd never made one before. We took it out of the box, and there were these sheets of gingerbread that were supposed to fit together, but the instructions were missing. So Mom just got a knife and tried to cut it into pieces. They were pretty...jagged edged, I guess. We couldn't really fit them together properly, but we did anyway. With all this icing that came in a tube. I got it on my hands and face, and so did she. In the end, she kept laughing, saying it looked one of the 'Who's' houses from 'The Grinch'. We covered it in candies, just stuck on randomly. It looked ridiculous, but we were so proud.”

    Skylar laughed softly. “Did you eat it?” she asked.

    He smiled wryly. “We ate some of the smarties off it, but we just couldn't demolish our creation. We left it up for, I don't know, months I think. Then one day, I noticed there were ants crawling in it. I was really upset, and I showed my mom. She laughed then. She said 'I guess it's not our house anymore.' She put it outside.”

    Skylar giggled again, but stayed silent. They sat there, leaning together, staring at the flames.

    “It's weird. It isn’t the first Christmas Eve I've spent without her, but she always used to make it home as soon as she could,” he said. He swallowed hard. He didn't like to talk about her. “I still feel like she could be out. Just at work, just stuck in a snowstorm. Tomorrow, she could be here when I wake up, ready to open presents. Is that stupid or what?”

    She turned to him with brimming eyes. “It's not stupid.”

     From his place across the room, Dale wanted to turn away. “I don't want to watch this.” He struggled to keep the waver out of his voice. The spirit merely put her hand on his arm again, and guided him to look at the scene in front of him once more.

     Past-Dale was struggling to keep his face still. He looked back into the fireplace. She cautiously put an arm around his shoulders. He didn't pull away, so she leaned against him. “I'm glad you're here,” she said.

    “I'm glad too,” he said.

    She smiled serenely. “If you weren't here, I don't know-”

    They both jumped as the tree tumbled to the ground with a crash.

    After recovering from their initial shock, they burst into laughter. They sat on the floor, roaring with laughter and twisting in their blankets. As he watched, Dale could do nothing but scowl.
         
     After they were finally able to stand, they went over to the tree and tried to right it, laughing the whole time. “I think maybe we'll have to tie it to the window, somehow,” said Skylar between bursts of laughter.

     “Not a bad idea. Do you have any heavy duty string?” asked Dale.

     “Come on,” said Skylar, and she led him out of the room. Their laughter still echoed down the hallway.

      Dale looked angrily at the spirit. “Are you done now, spirit?” he growled.

      “What do you think about this memory?” she asked.

      “Why did you have to bring me here?” he asked, trying to keep the anguish out of his voice.

      “It’s important for you to see. You were a good friend. You knew about love and kindness.” She was calm, but he was seething.

      “It really helped didn’t it?” he shouted. “And you’re really helping. Now that I know what a good friend I am, I can go back and change the way things…the things…” he choked over his words and then gritted his teeth.

       She shook her head slowly. “These are only the shadows of things that have already happened. They are what they are.”

      “No! And I don't want to see any more of your 'shadows'. I want to go home now!” he said.

     She stiffened. “Alright, we will return. I know you have more to see tonight.”

      “I do not have more to see. I'm going to wake up and drink some coffee and stay awake for the rest of the-” he started to say, but the spirit grabbed his arm and the room dissolved again. He tried to pull away from her grasp, and suddenly, he realized he was only yanking his arm out from under his sleeping bag. The room was dark and empty and he was lying in bed.

      At first, he thought he should get up and make some coffee, but as his breathing slowed to a normal rate, he thought to himself about how crazy he sounded. It was just a dream. He could go back to sleep now and hopefully, he wouldn't have any more bizarre and annoyingly festive dreams.

      He rolled over and put the pillow over his head, to block out the empty silence. Sleep didn't come quickly. He tossed and turned, and ended up staring at his ceiling again.

     He tried thinking of something really boring to take his mind off things. He pictured the last town hall meeting in his head. There was Gray Anderson, reading off a list of rules they'd have to follow now that the army was extending their reach into town. He could see other people's bored faces in the crowd. Stanley Richmond, scrunching his face, trying to listen, Bonnie looking down at her feet, not even bothering to watch anymore, Jimmy Taylor, blankly staring, beside him was- no, he wouldn't think about her.

     He shoved the thought out of his mind. He decided to count instead. He ran the seven times table through his head. He'd done that when he was younger, waiting for his mom to come home, or walking the long walk home after school. Seven times six is forty-two. Seven times seven is forty-nine. Seven times eight is fifty-six...
       
    It was too easy now, and about as interesting as watching corn grow. He rolled over in his bed again. It creaked. He felt a jolt. He had heard another creaking sound, coming from somewhere else. He lay perfectly still. He heard it again.
     
    It was just a dream, he told himself, even as he got out of bed and walked down the hall. He could see light coming from the crack under the door of the break room. Taking a deep breath, he continued walking towards it.