Christmas Beyond the Box

by Josh Langston

  "I just don't understand people any more," Mr. Bolen said. "In my day, when someone had a job, they stuck with it. Now, people just up and quit in the middle of a contract. We've lost three from the school system just this past week."

  "Three?" Casey asked.

  "Your new teacher, the principal, and Mrs. Groves, from the Superintendent's office. They all took off without so much as a how-do-you-do."

  "Weren't they all new this year?" Mrs. Bolen asked.

  Just then, the doorbell rang. Casey ran to the front hall and welcomed Miss Emry into the house. She gave a basket of plump, hot dinner rolls to Casey's Mom, then went back out to her car for something else. Casey waited patiently for her to return.

  Casey's dad gave a little wolf whistle as she walked out to her car.

  Casey's mom jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. Moments later the slender Miss Emry returned to the house.

  "I have a favor to ask of you," she said. She held something large, square, and covered with a sheet in her arms. She brought it inside and put it on the floor.

  "Sure," Casey said. He couldn't remember Miss Emry ever looking so pretty. "What do you need me to do?"

  "Well," she said, smiling, "I'm still trying to sort everything out, but when I returned to our classroom, I found two animals in cages at the back of the room. One was a snake, which I turned over to the nature preserve, and the other was this."

  She pulled the sheet away from the cage. Casey dropped to the floor for a closer look.

  "It's a ferret," Miss Emry said. "I need someone to take care of it over the holidays."

  "Cool!" said Casey. He tried not to stare at the little animal's bright red claws.

  "What will you do with it after the holidays?" asked Mrs. Bolen, a little nervously.

  Miss Emry shrugged. "Ferrets make marvelous pets, you know. I hope to find a permanent home for it."

  "I know a place!" Casey said. He didn't add that he also knew just the right person to keep an eye on it.

  ~End~

  "Study from new books but from old teachers." ~Turkish proverb

  Malachi watched the girl weaving between the benches and tables in the park. The usual music from the coffee shop across the street had been replaced with holiday fare, songs which often featured the kind of weather so many had come south to avoid.

  The irony seemed lost on the girl as she wandered among the retirees. Occasionally she stopped to speak with one of the old men playing chess, or checkers, or resting in the shade. In one hand she carried an audio recorder, in the other a piece of note paper which she referred to from time to time.

  Malachi never felt a moment of concern about her, merely curiosity.

  He marked the girl's progress past the tall palms, the hibiscus, and the bushes with the dark green leaves whose name he either never learned, or couldn’t remember. After so many years, it was difficult to keep track of such things, though the park, and its simple pleasures, had become the focal point of his life.

  Fortunately, the girl chose to wear normal clothing--shorts and a sensible top--instead of something to make her look like one of the ridiculous elves the merchants seemed to put everywhere in December. Where did people get such crazy ideas?

  Eventually, the girl reached his bench. She stopped beside the chess board just as Abe Cohen, his Tuesday morning opponent, struggled into his walker and teetered off across the grass. Cohen’s game had gone downhill lately. Malachi made a mental note to do something about it.

  "Do you play?" he asked. The question seemed to startle the girl. "If not, perhaps I could teach--"

  "No," she said, with a snap of her chewing gum. "I’m working on a class project for school. I can't believe they expect us to do homework over the Christmas holidays. How fair is that?"

  Malachi considered the issue, but had not yet formulated an opinion when the girl spoke again. "Can I ask you some questions?"

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even been close to a young person, and now here was a child barely old enough to drive, who wanted to speak with him. "Please do," he said, smiling as he waved her to a seat on the bench just beyond the chessboard.

  She held out the little recording device. "I don’t take very good notes, so I use this. Is that okay?" She flipped it on without waiting for an answer and began speaking into it.

  "This is Amy Farbingale in the park next to Oceanside Retirement Center. I’m talking to--" She paused the recorder. "Would you tell me your name, please? Oh, and if it’s a hard one, would you spell it, too?" She turned the recorder back on.

  Malachi obliged her, speaking as clearly as he could, though he feared she might have trouble with his accent.

  "You don’t work any more, right?"

  "I stay busy even though I’m retired," Malachi said. "But for some people, life itself is work." There were several such on nearby benches. He did what he could for them, but never presumed too much.

  "My work is here." He gestured at his companions: the ever‑smiling Rosa Joslyn, who spent her lottery winnings on a hip replacement; the formerly irascible Hamish McGhee whose children never had the time to visit, until recently; and even bulky old Boris Metlikoff, whose constant ill-temper had no effect on the pigeons which always seemed to find a perch in the trees above him. Malachi nodded his approval. Boris needed to spend more time in the sunshine anyway.

  He smiled as he looked at them, and all the others, but realized he’d have a hard time explaining to the girl exactly what he did. He sighed and patted the bench. "Yes, this is where I work now."

  "Uh, right." The girl stared at her notes and chewed furiously on her gum. Malachi wondered if her jaws hurt from so much effort.

  "What’d you do before?" she asked.

  "Before what?"

  A pained look shaded her smooth features and dimpled cheeks. "Before you retired and came here."

  "Ah." Maybe he could tell her after all! "I had a shop, a very special shop. I made the finest lamps in all of--"

  Amy switched off the recorder.

  "What’s the matter?"

  "You don’t qualify," she said.

  "For what?"

  "My class project. We’re supposed to talk to old people-- I mean, senior citizens, to see if we can find any with vanishing skills."

  "That would require remarkable timing, wouldn't it?"

  She looked puzzled.

  Across the street, someone honked their car horn at a man wearing a red suit with white trim. In return, the costumed man rang a brass bell at the driver and called out a cheery greeting. After all these years, some of the local customs still puzzled him.

  "I don't understand," the girl said.

  "Hm? Oh! Sorry. It's about the timing. You’d have to find the person before their skill had completely disappeared. Once it’s gone..." He held his hands out, palms up.

  Amy appeared frustrated. "My teacher said we should look for people who used to do craft stuff--you know, like make buggy whips, or churn butter."

  Malachi lifted his hat from his frizzy white mane, knowing it would leave the bald, liver‑spotted crown of his head exposed, but it was hot, and he had nothing else he could use for a fan. "Lamp-making is more than a craft. It’s an art. I used to be the Head of my Guild. Now, I’m the only one left, and I’ve been retired for a long, long time."

  "Then you’re probably old enough," she said, "but unless you were like, you know, a pioneer or something, I’ll have to keep looking."

  "A pioneer?" Malachi laughed. "No, though I spent most of my life in a village near the desert. I came to the New World after I made my last lamp and retired." He pointed to the beach down the road. "That‘s the only sand I care to see these days."

  "So you never made wagon wheels, or harnesses, or stuff like that?"

  "Lamps," Malachi said. "I made lamps. Brass and silver mostly, some engraved, some not. The engraved ones were easier, because there were so many places to hide the spells. With the smooth ones...."

  "Thanks fo
r your time," said the girl, "but I’ve got to keep looking. I have to turn in my notes the day I go back to class." She shook her head. "It's so stupid. I still can't believe they're making us do this. What a waste of time."

  Malachi almost mentioned that time wasn’t terribly important, if one knew how to deal with it, but the girl seemed intent on leaving. "Amy, I’m certain I’m the one you’re looking for," he said. "Are you familiar with damascene lamps?"

  She squinted at him. "Dama-what?"

  "It's a type of decorative oil lamp, and quite rare. I--"

  "Oh, sure! We’ve got a bunch of ‘em around our deck at home. Mom says they help keep the bugs away."

  Malachi smiled. That was a use he hadn’t heard of before. Americans were so resourceful! "That must keep you busy, hiding the lamps when they aren’t in use."

  "Why would we do that?"

  "You shouldn’t tease an old man." He winked at her. "Thieves are everywhere. What if they’re stolen?"

  "Who’d bother?"

  "Who wouldn’t? Aren’t they--" he paused to look around "--special?"

  "Are you kidding?"

  Malachi scratched his head, then reached inside his hat and retrieved a miniature lamp from its hiding place. He held it in his palm. "I take it they’re not like this one?"

  The girl stared briefly at the lamp, and then began to laugh. "Nah. That’s like the one in the Aladdin story, only smaller!"

  "And better."

  "Oh, sure," said the girl. "You’re telling me that’s a magic lamp?"

  "Yes."

  She chuckled again. "And I suppose you can call up a genie just by rubbing it?"

  "Of course," Malachi said. "Raising the spirit from a lamp isn't hard, but finding one, and binding it to the lamp..." He rubbed his hands together. "That is much more difficult."

  The girl slipped the note paper into one pocket of her shorts and tucked the recorder in the other. "Okay, let me guess. When the genie appears, you get three wishes. Right?"

  Malachi shook his head. "Not exactly."

  She continued to laugh as she walked away. "Too bad that's all make believe," she said over her shoulder. "Otherwise, I’d have the coolest report in the whole class."

  Malachi watched her exit the park before he rubbed the lamp to summon the spirit. A tiny imp in silken vest, harem pants, and turban, materialized between a white pawn and the black king on his chessboard. It bowed before speaking. "Yes, Master?"

  "I wish to go home for lunch," Malachi said.

  As the genie prepared to whisk him away, Malachi thought back to the early days at his shop, before he’d perfected his process. Few people ever knew the lamp that came to be known as Aladdin’s was defective--a "factory second" by modern standards. Malachi had sold it cheap when he realized its genie was only good for three wishes.

  "One thing before we go," he said.

  The spirit crossed its arms on its chest and waited patiently.

  Malachi swept the chess pieces into his hat and picked up the board. "It's Cohen's memory. I doubt he can think ahead more than two or three moves any more. His game is his pride. I don't want him to lose it."

  "That is your wish, Master?"

  Malachi nodded.

  Trailing a thin line of pastel smoke from his thumb, the tiny djinn traced a symbol in the air above his head. When finished, he let it dissipate in the breeze. "The dawn will find his game restored."

  "Good," Malachi said. "Now, let's go. I'm hungry."

  ~End~

  "It's kind of fun to do the impossible." ~Walt Disney

  Some idiot had pushed Aunt Althea's clunky old art table in front of her. The monstrosity took up so much space I couldn't see past it. What if she had a relapse, and we had to drag her out of bed and back to the hospital? The stupid table would just get in the way.

  "'Scuze me," said Meg Something-or-other, a frumpy matron sent by the nursing service, as she squeezed past me and into Althea's room. Despite the holiday season, her red and green striped socks did nothing to make her appear elfin.

  "Who dragged that in here?" I asked, nodding at the ungainly table. Built by my great uncle, the wheeled, wooden eyesore straddled Althea's bed. I'd given instructions to the staff that my aunt was too ill to bother with such nonsense.

  "I had it brought in," Meg said, pulling a dead leaf from a poinsettia on the dresser. "Miz Althea said she wanted to paint." The nurse opened the heavy drapes, but the sun had already set.

  "Well then, you can just haul it right back out," I said. "I seriously doubt she'll be doing any such thing."

  Meg ignored me, slipped the blood pressure cuff around Althea's thin upper arm, pumped the rubber bulb, and then watched the dial as she let the air back out. All the while she moved her lips in a silent litany. She put the device back in its bag, recorded the reading on the small chart kept on the dresser and fluffed Althea's pillow.

  "Well, what is it?" I asked.

  "What's what?"

  "Her blood pressure! What is it?" I needed to call the service; they had to do something about this woman.

  "It's fine," Meg said. "Normal -- for her." She arranged the paraphernalia on Althea's art table, then backed out of the room.

  Althea stared at me -- iguana eyes peering out from a thin dinosaur hide. So old, so horribly old. Ready for extinction.

  "Do you really feel up to painting?" I asked.

  She nodded.

  It didn't make sense, but then little about Althea ever had. I remembered the woman who finger-painted with me when I was a child, who laughed with me when we smeared the colors on the floor as well as the paper. But I'd grown up, out of that life. Why couldn't she? Althea hooked a finger at me, and I stepped closer, distinctly conscious of her shallow breathing.

  "It's Christmas, and I need my table," she said in a voice decades too young.

  I surveyed the pitiful tools of her art: two tiny brushes, an odd assortment of water colors, and an open bottle of liquid bubble soap. No paper. No canvas.

  I tried to disguise my impatience. "What are you painting?"

  She smiled at me. "You'll never guess."

  "You're right." She'd edged closer to the end than I'd thought.

  "Don't you want to guess?"

  I shook my head. It was a kindness; someone so close to death didn't have time to play Twenty Questions.

  "Soap bubbles."

  I blinked in consternation. "What?"

  "I'm painting on soap bubbles." She reached a tentative hand toward the diminutive brushes. Though her swollen knuckles and liver-spotted fingers trembled with the effort, she voiced no complaints.

  "Can I help?" I asked, reaching for a paint tube.

  "You?" She laughed.

  Of course, me! I'm the healthy one -- the young one. I withdrew my hand. "It can't be done."

  She gave me a patronizing smile.

  In the silence I had to say something. "It's the craziest thing I've ever heard."

  She dipped the end of her brush into a drop of reddish paste from one of the paint tubes, then paused. "You're in my light, dear."

  I moved back a step and leaned on the squat mahogany dresser that anchored her room. The matching wooden posts had been removed from her bed to accommodate the art table and crowded a corner of the room. I could retreat no farther.

  She reached for the bubble stuff with her free hand, the movement torturously slow. Surely the soap would dry before she got the bubble wand close to her mouth.

  "Are you sure I can't help?"

  She shook her head. "It's very difficult, dear. I'm afraid you'd only rush. One must be patient with bubbles."

  "Even if you could paint one," I said, "what would you do with it? Sooner or later the bubble will pop."

  "Doesn't everything?"

  I frowned.

  "Everything pops, or dries up, or falls apart sooner or later," she said. "Why should I mind that my soap bubbles won't last very long?" She chuckled. "I won't either."

  "Yes, but--"


  "I really must concentrate," she said. "I tire so easily. I don't want to waste what little energy I have arguing."

  I walked toward the door, my footsteps muffled by thick sculpted carpet.

  "I know I can do it," she said in her little girl voice.

  I shrugged. What could it hurt?

  She nodded toward a glass jar on a nightstand. "I'll put it in there. My Christmas gift to you."

  "Right," I said. "I'll check on you tomorrow."

  Althea didn't respond. She screwed up her mouth as she examined a doorknob-sized soap bubble and mixed a bit of ocher in with the red. She looked briefly out the window then back at the bubble, the brush poised near the surface.

  "You can go now," she said at last.

  "I thought--"

  "I haven't much time, dear. I've waited for this night for a very long time."

  I glanced out the window at the fat cherry moon hanging low on the horizon.

  "It's a Christmas moon, glowing red," she purred, her voice lyrical. "They're quite rare, y'know."

  ~*~

  I returned the following evening, but later than usual. A doe-eyed Meg met me at the front door. "I tried to call you about an hour ago," she said.

  My neck went stiff, and I licked my suddenly dry lips. I rushed past her.

  "She's gone," Meg said, following me. "It happened quickly. She didn't suffer."

  I bounded up the wide stairs to her room. It smelled of Althea -- lilacs, powder, and dust. I don't know why that seemed so surprising.

  The art table no longer stood in the way, and Althea lay back against her pillows as if sleeping. I half expected her to open her eyes and smile at me. Her head was turned slightly toward the window, and I wondered if she had been looking at her Christmas moon when she died. She seemed at peace.

  "What are you going to do with it?" Meg asked from the doorway.

  I turned to face her. "Do with what?"

  She smiled and retrieved Althea's glass jar and carefully handed it to me. "She made me promise to give it to you."

  I took the jar and peered at a miracle inside.

  A soap bubble shimmered in the room's weak light -- capturing on a film finer than spider silk the scene from Althea's last night. Floating above a tree-lined horizon in a dark gray sky rose a warm red moon -- impossibly huge, impossibly real.