“Come on, darling, keep up.”
The boy glanced up at her. She was smiling, but he could see a spark of urgency in her eyes. They had to get there on time. He gave a nod, trying to make his footsteps more purposeful as he raised each boot high above the snow.
He had been admiring the tracks he was leaving, deep holes in the snow, imprinted with squiggles and triangles of definite proportions. Now he marched alongside her, keeping up with her purposeful strides.
He snatched a glance around him every so often, taking in the reindeer hanging over the intersection, crossing Delaney Avenue with a flying bound, staring at the brightly dressed gingerbread people in the window of Bradshaw's bakery, looking up at the wreaths hung on the lamp posts. Every now and then he'd look at her. She had a kind of energy in her steps that seemed unusual. A brightness. Once in a while, she'd look at him, they'd catch each other's eye, and she'd send him that small smile.
It wasn't a secret, where they were going. Dad knew about it and her name was on the list up at the church that they passed every Sunday. But somehow when she caught his eye, he'd feel like there was something that they both knew and they weren't going to tell.
They'd been coming a few weeks now, Tuesdays after school. She would meet him and they would walk downtown to the church instead of straight back to the house. It seemed to stretch out far into the past, this normal routine, but he could vaguely remember that they hadn't been going when Halloween had passed through, also incidentally on a Tuesday.
He might've grumbled once at the beginning, when he was first assigned that bench in the back to sit and wait. He couldn't quite remember. That seemed long in the past, and sinking into the smooth and shiny bench, swinging his feet as he looked through his school books or lined his toy soldiers up for battle along the edges of the seat, were a normal part of his week. He would imagine himself leading whole squadrons across enemy lines, or taking a group on a wagon train across the country to some unclaimed land (because the toy soldiers didn't always have to be in a war), and he would listen to the aged piano and the voices fill the big empty space in the church, and it was the nicest time.
The secret that they both knew concerned that time in the church, after they arrived and shook the snow off their boots, after Mrs. Watson called out (because she was always first to notice anyone in a room), “Ah, there's Susan now, and hello there, Gray!” and Mr. Leonard called the singers to their places. It was over by the time they pulled on their coats and scarves, bracing for the walk home, his mother mentioning dinner and him thinking about this week's Bonanza.
Every week, between those things, while he'd plan safaris and military occupations of the high lands above the cross etched into the back of the bench, some kind of change would come over his mother. He wasn't sure what to call it, but there was something different about her face, when he'd glance up to the front of the room and see her holding her hymnal, watching Mr. Leonard for cues and joining in the soaring and dipping harmonies. She was different than she ever was at home, ironing pants and shirts, squinting over grocery lists, picking up cigarettes, watching out the window. She never stopped moving, through the whole week, but it was like something really started when she stood up with the other altos and stretched her voice to the ceiling. This person, standing up there singing, was different, and sometimes he wondered if she was really his mother, because she seemed so different she might fly away out the door, off to some far away place just like the notes she sang, floating up to the ceiling and away into the evening.
She might forget she had a son. This thought rarely worried him, though. She always remembered in the end, pressing a kiss to his forehead, thanking him for his patience, smiling at her colleagues as they promised to see them next week and wrapping that yellow scarf around her neck. And the singer with the strength to float away was gone, and Mom was ready to put on the potatoes and finish the hemming. She would take his hand on the way out the door, squeeze it in hers, and the secret would flash through his mind once more before he began swinging his lunch box, matching her quick strides once more. The darkness was always sneaking up on them, and they admired the lights, but they looked straight ahead as they walked towards home. He liked the walk there much better.
The singing had stopped.
He blinked, squinting his eyes at the bright white blankness ahead. No sound but the faint whistle of the wind across the flat land and the muffled steps as he slowly moved forward.
He hadn't welcomed the voices earlier. He had panicked, wondering how long before he'd start to see the ghosts, start to lose feeling in his limbs, and lose track of everything in his mind. But he had kept going, and after a while they had been soothing.
He took a slow, blistering breath. He had known before, how lonely the snow could be. He'd been through a storm or two, and the bitter cold winters without heat and light that'd plagued them after the September attacks. He'd known, too, about the tricks the cold and blinding snow could start to play on your mind. He hadn't known how real they would seem, taunting, dancing so close to you, impossibly near in the powdery quiet world.
Then gone, so suddenly, in a moment of weakness; a stumble and he'd readjusted his boot. Hitching his scarf up around his face, he dared to take another deep breath. Carefully, he fumbled for the compass and peered down at it. He was going in the right direction still, that much he could tell. The voices wouldn't lure him away, no matter what. He trudged forward.
As the wind whistled mournfully, he strained to hear again.
“Coffee?”
Robert Hawkins turned. “What are we calling coffee these days?”
“That powdered stuff they got in at the store,” shrugged Jimmy Taylor, unscrewing the thermos. “It's not bad, and it's hot.”
“I'll risk it then,” said Robert with a shrug of his own. “Thanks,” he said as Jimmy poured him some. He poured his own and raised his thermos lid cup. “To your first Christmas back in town.”
“It's the twenty-third,” said Robert, but he dutifully raised his cup and gave a small nod.
“Well, to getting patrol duty today instead of tomorrow,” added Jimmy with a chuckle, hoisting his mug once more before taking a deep inhale of its contents.
Robert chuckled before sipping his own drink. The heat was a pleasant contrast with the cold air he'd been breathing.
“Kids are pretty excited,” said Jimmy, leaning back in his seat. “They've been packing a whole survival kit just for going to get the tree. You know, with maps and rations and stuff. I told them they can't count on the weather just yet, but they're still really psyched.” He chuckled again. “Almost as much as Bill. He's been talking about dinner all week. I guess after last year, he's looking forward to being anywhere he doesn't have to ventilate and dig himself out of.” Jimmy sighed, but then his eyes widened and he glanced towards his colleague. “Sorry, man. That was a really insensitive...I know there are a lot of worse places to be than snowed into a border shelter.”
Robert glanced across the landscape for a moment. Jimmy was right, there were, but he couldn't know how easy it could become, to push those places away and keep them distanced, waiting across that frozen flat field. He looked over at Jimmy and offered him an easy smile. “It's alright. I hear Bill and Monty both had frostbite.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn't mention it, or Bill will try to show you his toe,” said Jimmy, shaking his head with a look of wise experience. He paused to sip his drink, looking out at the road ahead of them. “So, you looking forward to it?”
“To seeing Bill's toe?” asked Robert.
“No, I mean being home for Christmas,” said Jimmy. “I mean, I guess you'll be at our place, technically.”
Robert chuckled again, only momentarily allowing himself to be thrown by Jimmy's word choice. “Yeah, I guess I am,” he said.
“This'll be your what, third Christmas here?” asked Jimmy. “It should be good, I hope. It's too bad you never got to see it before everything. It used to be really nice, with Main Street all decorated, and there was a Christmas party at town hall, and a nativity play at the church. My favourite time of year here,” he added. He smiled then, with just a hint of a self-conscious shrug. “Still is pretty nice, if we're not all freezing and starving.”
“Yeah,” said Robert. He was staring at the road, scanning as they routinely did as part of this most routine of sheriff's department tasks, but he was also allowing those faraway scenes to flicker to life for a moment.
Third Christmas here. The second was a jumble of feelings and impressions in his memory, happy enough not to have been filed away in a careful timeline and point-by-point analysis. The first had been the strangest. His household had been so secret and self-enclosed back then, filled with individual pockets of self-enclosure, reflecting inward. They'd each moved around its hallways and rooms, glancing over shoulders and around corners. Darcy, becoming less suspicious and more protective of her expressions and observations with each new intrusion into her world, drawing herself up and casting her certain and secret knowledge over few others. Sarah had been hiding and recovering from wounds, wildly creeping and infiltrating the structures of their house. His daughter had been his best ally, but she'd been building a secret world of her own too, stockpiling its defences. And Sam was the most surprising, expecting holidays, football games, and birthday cards, in this strange place. Thoughts about Christmas had been far from his own mind, with the weighty decisions that occupied it at all hours.
“I don't know if we'll have much more to eat this year, but kids've promised they'll get the best tree ever,” said Jimmy. “I don't know, though. Last year, Allison really got a beauty. Somehow she got it home all in one piece, no damage or anything. Pretty strong girl you've got.”
“Yeah, she is,” said Robert, a small smile on his face.
“We didn't have lights or tinsel or even that popcorn string they like to make, but it sure looked nice when they put it up,” said Jimmy. He grimaced. “Sorry, man. I don't mean to keep bringing it up.”
Robert chuckled. “Jimmy. I'll be happy to be there.” At his friend's still-worried expression, he raised his mug again, giving him a nod and taking a sip. “Look at it, out there,” he mused, pointing at the grey-white horizon. “You'd never know there was ever anything else, would you?”
“We've gotta ho-old on to what we've got,” came Cheryl's voice from the passenger's seat. Jimmy glanced sideways. She was bobbing her head, as she had been throughout the song, getting more intense as the song built to the chorus again. He glanced in the rear view mirror just in time to catch one of Diane's famous eye rolls. He chuckled, reaching for the dial.
“You're turning it up?” came Diane's protest from the back, but he chuckled again. Having the privilege of controlling the radio was relatively new to him, and they were still adjusting to it too. He glanced in the mirror again and caught her eye, a look passing quickly between them. He glanced towards Cheryl and joined her on “we'll give it a shot!”
As he had anticipated, he could hear Diane joining them as the chorus went into full swing. Emboldened by each other's loudness, all three belted along as the car made its way through the darkness, giving up all restraint on each “Whoa-oh!” He kept his hands firmly on the steering wheel, but bobbed his head along with Cheryl and he could feel Diane drumming on the seats from the back.
As the song finished, a temporary silence fell over them, one of the first since they had first piled Cheryl's bags into the trunk. Soon enough though, Cheryl launched into another story about her apartment, this one about the haunted sort of way the shower had of turning on for brief intervals in the middle of the night. Jimmy nodded periodically, keeping a careful watch on the road, smiling as he took a left turn towards a familiar view. “Look, see the lights up ahead!” he said, pointing out the window. “Aren't you glad we were late now? Now you get to see the town all lit up, first thing when you get back.”
“Joy to the world,” said Cheryl.
He kept smiling as he had throughout the drive and through at least three standoffs between Cheryl and Diane. “Come on, you always loved the lights,” he said. “How about the tree? Do you want to stop and see the tree?”
“Cheryl doesn't need to see the tree. They probably have a huge tree in Wichita,” piped up Diane.
“Can it, shrimp,” said Cheryl, in the bored tone she had long ago perfected, that he had almost forgotten in the three months she'd been gone. “Fine, Jimminy. We can go look at the tree. Fulfill all your Christmas wishes.”
Jimmy smirked. “Does this mean we'll be calling you the Christmas fairy from now on?”
“Excuse me, I think we're the ones fulfilling your Christmas wishes,” piped up Diane. “Unless your wish was to hitchhike home from the bus stop in some farmer's truck, with your presents stuck in with the chickens and pigs.”
“Who says I brought you presents?” asked Cheryl. “Oh Jimmy, wanna park on Logan?”
Jimmy turned onto the side street and pulled the car into a space. His sisters scrambled out of either side and for a moment, he breathed in the quiet before getting out of the car. A dusting of snow had fallen earlier in the day, and the lights reflected through it, soft and twinkly. As they turned the corner and walked onto Main Street, Cheryl was smiling, losing her cool demeanour at least momentarily before getting back into something with Diane, who was walking ahead of her.
“You should especially be nice to Jimmy. Steven isn't even coming for Christmas, because he couldn't afford a ticket home,” she was saying.
“I guess that's a risk he took when he moved three states away,” shrugged Cheryl. “Whoa, look at that gingerbread house.” She was pointing at the window of the drugstore. “That's almost as bad as the ones we used to make.”
Jimmy chuckled as he peered in to look.
“What do you mean? Ours were works of art,” proclaimed Diane, flashing them a goofy grin, but pressing her own mittened hand against the window as she leaned in to get a better look. “It is a little bit of a fixer upper I guess.”
“I don't know, I think it kind of looks like Grandma's house, from that side,” suggested Jimmy, turning his head. “You know, after the damage from all the times we played ball in the yard.”
“Looks like it'd taste good, though,” said Cheryl. “Come on,” she linked her arm through Diane's and kept walking.
Jimmy followed, shaking his head in bemusement.
As they approached the end of the street, they could hear the tinny sound of a recorded Christmas song playing from the market. Jimmy had already visited Main Street several times since it had been decorated for the season, but he tried to imagine how it might look if he were seeing it for the first time. It was a difficult thing to imagine, being away, breaking out of the same routines they'd followed since they were young. Everything looked the same right now. But would that be the same, if you left it behind? The town suddenly seemed small even though most of the year, everything from the homecoming football game to a night by the river with his friends, to tense conversation over dinner or a slow day washing cars seemed monumental.
The tree was still impressive though. They had turned on to Spruce Lane and gone past the hardware store and the dentist's office. There was the tree, simply decorated with lights and one star, reaching higher than them but certainly no taller than anything else around here. Still, the three of them stood for a moment, looking up at it.
“It's a nice tree,” said Cheryl, sending him a soft smile. “Good idea, Jimminy.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled, mirroring her, putting his hands in his pocket. They stood in silence for a moment or two longer. He didn't want to break the spell of quiet, but finally he realized he should speak. “We should probably head home. Mom's making a welcome dinner,” he said.
“It's a whole production,” said Diane. “There are cloth napkins.”
“Why? I thought that fancy stuff isn't supposed to start 'til the twenty-fourth,” said Cheryl.
“She's trying to make it all nice for when we're there, before we have to go to Rogue River I guess,” said Jimmy, trying to keep his tone casual but pointed.
“They're her relatives,” said Cheryl, though he could see the realization grudgingly settling on her face. “But since we're there Christmas eve, it's her only time with just us,” she muttered.
He nodded. “She's really excited. She's trying hard.” He could hear Cheryl sigh, but he didn't look at her.
“One day, I'm going to have my own family,” said Diane, from his other side.
“What are we, chopped liver?” asked Jimmy, sending her a teasing grin.
“No, you know,” said Diane. “My own husband and kids, and I will get to decide all the family Christmas arrangements. It'll be much less busy.”
“How are you going to do that?” asked Jimmy.
“Just be in one place the whole time, and people can do whatever they feel like,” said Diane, with a nod of certainty.
“What about us, shrimp?” asked Cheryl.
“Oh, you can visit,” said Diane. “But don't get upset, there won't be any cloth napkins.”
“I'm sure it'll be great,” said Jimmy. They stood in silence for a moment. The tree seemed smaller, but it was still beautiful.
“Should we go?” asked Cheryl. Three months before, she would've just ordered them to. Jimmy glanced at Diane, who grinned at him. “Lead us onward, driver!” she declared.
Jimmy and his siblings sing along to Bon Jovi's “Livin' on a Prayer,” which came out at the end of 1986.
“I'll Be Home for Christmas,” the classic song by Kim Cannon, Walter Kent and Buck Ram and originally released by Bing Cosby in 1943, contains the line “It's a long road back,” providing inspiration for this story's title.