ANN PETRY

HE WAS GOING down fast. He could feel the wind, the cold air, against his face. It gave him a wonderful sense of exhilaration, a feeling of power, absolute power. He looked up and the stars were further and further away, receding, receding. He looked down and the earth, a great dark mass seemed to be coming toward him, enlarging and enlarging. He went faster and faster.

And then, suddenly, he knew that something had gone wrong. He was no longer flying. He was falling. He closed his eyes thinking, How art thou fallen, O Lucifer, Son of the morning . . . how art thou fallen. He was so conscious of the words that he thought he had spoken them aloud or that someone had.

He shook his head. He was not Lucifer. He was Michael. He said a prayer, softly, under his breath, and felt the terrible force of the wind literally blow the words away, blow his breath away.

He stopped falling as suddenly as he had started. But he was not flying. He was suspended above the earth, held there. He opened his eyes. He was wrong about the earth being dark. It was a strangely luminous, light-reflecting white. He recognized the whiteness as snow. Then he landed on his feet. It was as though he had been picked up, held, and then placed on the earth very gently.

The air was damp and so cold that he shivered. His feet were numb. He began moving them to see if he could get the circulation started. They felt strangely heavy. He knew at once, from the heaviness, that he was earthbound and he was startled. When he had been selected to make this trip they had told him everything they thought he would need to know, but they had not told him, had either forgotten or deliberately omitted, or perhaps did not know themselves, that he would lose the ability to fly when he reached Earth. They had said, “Michael, you are the one to go, you have been Chosen, Michael, Michael. . . .”

He looked around because he thought someone had actually said, “Michael . . . Michael. . . .” The words seemed to linger in the air. But there was no one anywhere in sight. The moon was at the full and the snow reflected the light from the moon so that he could see as clearly as though it were daylight. He was in a cornfield, or what had been a cornfield. The frozen ground was covered with the hard stubble where the stalks had been. Snow on them. Snow on everything, even clinging to the wire fence that enclosed the field.

Far off, in the distance, he saw the lights of a village or a town. He decided to go in that direction, and lifted his wings. Nothing happened. He felt for them. They were gone. He looked down at himself, frowning now. The shining robe was gone, too. His legs were much shorter, in fact they were so short they were obviously the undeveloped legs of a child. No wonder he was cold. He was now wearing pants made of faded blue cotton, ragged pants. Did he have shoes? Leaning over, he examined his feet. Well, shoes of a sort. They seemed to be made of canvas, and they were the same faded grayblue as his pants, and there were many holes in them. But he was wearing a dark brown leather jacket, very shabby, torn here and there but quite warm.

His hands were very cold. They had grown smaller, too, and they were so dirty they were indistinguishable from the dark brown color of the jacket. He sighed, thinking, well, my back is warm. The wind does not go through this jacket.

He headed toward the village, running, trying to keep warm, pausing now and then to see if by some miracle his wings had been returned. As he hurried along he became aware that he was hungry, not just the normal before-meals hunger, but a kind of sharp pinching of his stomach that told him it had been days since he had had enough to eat. He decided that he would ask for food at the first house he came to.

When he reached the village he kept staring at the houses: big houses, painted white, their windows blazing with light from candles, and from lights shaped like stars, the doorways decorated with strings of brilliant little lights.

He had had no idea that any place, anywhere, could look like this small snowcovered village in the moonlight. The colored lights from the houses made the snow under the windows and along the paths, pink and lavender, dark green and deep yellow. This bejewelled snow seemed to lead straight up to the big front doors of the houses and then it was reflected back into the street.

As he stood there, bemused, he became aware of the mouth-watering smell of meat being roasted. It made him remember how hungry he was. So he opened the picket gate, walked up the pathway, knocked on the front door of one of the largest of the houses.

A fat little girl opened the door. She smiled at him. There were dimples in her cheeks. “Hello,” she said. “Come in.”

He hesitated just inside the door.

“Come all the way in and see our Christmas tree.”

It was warm inside the house. There was a smoky smell from wood being burned in a fireplace and the delicious spicy smell from something being baked elsewhere in the house. When he saw the tree he forgot that he was hungry. It was so tall it reached the ceiling and it was covered with lights and festooned with garlands of something that glittered. There was a small figure of an angel at the very top.

The little girl said, “What’s your name?”

“Michael.”

“Mine’s Elisabeth.” After she said this she started hopping about on one foot. He saw that she had long braids that swung back and forth as she hopped.

He heard voices from the back of the house. Someone said, quite clearly, “I thought I heard the front door.”

Then another brisker voice said, “Who is she talking to? She’s talking to someone.”

Footsteps approached and then retreated and the first voice said, “She talking to a little boy.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t say anything to him. I just caught a brief glimpse of him in the mirror.”

“I’d better find out who he is . . . you never know. . . .”

Then a tall woman entered the room. She said sharply, “You’re dripping all over my rug . . . your sneakers are dripping . . . you didn’t wipe your feet.”

Michael ignored her. There was a long mirror between the windows. The entire room was reflected in it. He could see the tree with its baubles and its glittering garlands, and at the very top of the tree the fragile wings of the tiny angel moved back and forth. He decided there was a current of air in the room just strong enough to make the gauzy wings flutter like the wings of a butterfly. He could see the fireplace and a deep dark red rug on the floor and the bluegreen walls of the room. There were prisms on a threebranched candelabra on a table near the fireplace, and the prisms caught the light from the fire, reflecting it, so that they seemed to be moving, too.

“Where did you come from?” the tall woman asked. “Do you live around here?”

Michael did not answer, could not answer, because he had seen something else reflected in that big sparkling mirror. There was a boy there, a little black boy, the skin on his face and hands dark dark brown, ashy from the cold. His hair was matted, tangled, uncared for. The child’s eyes were enormous, frightened, like the eyes of a deer, terribly liquid, soft.

He looked down at his own hands, and he caught a movement in the mirror, touched his face, and the ragged little black boy lifted one of his small dark hands up to his face, too. Then he knew. He, Michael, was the boy in the mirror. He stared and stared.

“Here, run along,” the woman said. “Run along—”

She opened the door. He went out slowly, reluctant to leave that warm fragrant room, and he turned and looked back.

The tall woman said, “Why he’s a little black boy.”

“What’s the matter with him?” the little girl asked. “What did you say was the matter with him?”

The closing of the door cut off the sound of her voice. Michael walked away and then turned and looked back at the house. There were lights in all the rooms, upstairs and downstairs, and a great spray of evergreens on the door.

He stared up at the sky. It was full of stars. He thought that if he could reach up high enough he could touch them. He wondered if he could fly again. He tried his wings, holding his breath. Nothing happened. He thought, Christmas Eve, and I, Michael, am earthbound. I have no recollection of an earthly existence. If I ever had one it must have been so many years ago that I have forgotten it. I do not know what color my skin was then, no recollection of it and it has been a matter of no importance for so many years that—

But he had to go somewhere and quickly because he would not be able to survive in this frigid air. Where would he go?

He heard someone calling, and the sound of feet running behind him. He turned. The fat little girl was coming toward him, calling, “Little boy, little boy, Michael!”

She had no hat, no coat. She was holding something out to him. “This is for you,” she said. “I brang it specially for you,” and dropped something warm, and spicy smelling, in his hand and then ran back toward the house.

He could feel the warmth from whatever it was seeping into his hands, dispelling the numbness in his fingers, and the fragrant spicy smell was wonderful. He ate it quickly, stuffing it in his mouth thinking, it’s gingerbread. That was what they had been baking in the kitchen of that warm, brilliantly lit house. Gingerbread.

Suddenly he could fly again. His wings had been returned. He did not have to touch them to know this. There was a buoyancy about his body. He had to hold his feet on the ground they had become so light.

Yet when he rose in the air, he realized that his wings were not as big and strong as they had been. He supposed they were suited to the size of a child’s body. He tired quickly, and the power, the sense of tremendous power, and the feeling of exultation had vanished.

He flew low over the town because he could no longer soar high up in the air. He heard the sound of music, of people singing. It was a song he had known somewhere but not the words; O Come all ye Faithful. The sound came from a nearby building. Then he remembered that he had known it as Adeste Fideles, and he hummed it under his breath, thinking, how beautiful the village is in the moonlight.

Almost immediately afterward he had the dreadful sensation of falling and he thought once again of the words, “How art thou fallen,” what they must have meant and how it felt to be going down, down, down, down, unable to stop.

He saw a light, a white, brilliant light through the bare branches of trees. And then he was falling through the branches, rough bark and twigs scraping his skin. He caught a quick glimpse of a building painted white, and something in his mind said, temple, Greek temple. No. A church. It was a church. It was somehow related to, suggested a temple—the columns, the rhythmic line of the steps, the utter simplicity of the structure suggested a temple. Then he saw the sidewalk, was looking straight down at it, and saw people standing below him, and for a split second knew what it would be like, falling fast and then crashing—he tried to slow his progress, to break the fall, and landed heavily on a flagstone walk.

But he was not hurt. Just his knee. He seemed to have scraped it a little.

There were people all around him. He supposed they must have been just coming out of the church. They brushed against him, and he heard exclamations of surprise, and there was a kind of withdrawing motion as people moved back, away from him.

A woman said, “Oh, dear me!”

A man said, “What is it?”

Then there was a babble of voices, all speaking at once.

“Something fell—”

“Impossible—”

“Why it’s a little black boy—”

“Where did he come from?”

“He fell out of one of the maple trees.”

“The night before Christmas and he was up in a tree?”

“Someone should call the police.”

“Yes, yes. Call the State Police.”

Then a gentle voice said, “Are you hurt?”

Michael looked up and saw that a frail old man was bending over him. He was bareheaded and his hair was white. His skin looked translucent. His face was as gentle as his voice, as he said, “But you must not lie here. I will take you into my house.”

Someone said, “But Reverend—”

The old man ignored the protesting voice. “Your hands are so cold,” he said as he helped Michael to his feet. “You are probably hungry, too. Come, I will take you home with me.”

As Michael walked beside him, holding on to his hand, he thought it was a warm, surprisingly strong hand for so old a man. To his astonishment he began to feel a kind of buoyancy rushing all through his body. He felt light as air. He was growing taller, and taller, and taller.

He murmured, “Thank you!” and then said softly, “I am going now. I must go now. I’m all right. Thank you!”

He soared straight up, aware that his wings were once again tremendous, aware that he was giving off light. For a fraction of a second he saw the minister, a tiny figure down on the sidewalk, his gentle old face turned upward, his expression one of wonder, and of expectancy, and then he could no longer see him.

Michael went up and up and up, thinking that he knew all he needed to know about Earth. He would report that on the eve of the Birthday, the celebration of it was purely pagan, largely a matter of the decoration of houses with evergreens, with candles, with shiny baubles. The air rushed past him, the stars were very close, the earth was so far that it was only a dark and shapeless void.

Then he thought, only Heaven knows when I’ll be back again. It has been five hundred years since one of us visited Earth. Certainly he owed it to the others to see as much as he could. He sighed thinking of that snowcovered village with its big houses, and the beautiful simplicity of the church, and the pure and lovely light that streamed from the lantern hung over the doorway, but only a child and an old man had been concerned about him. The others were indifferent or coldly curious or hostile but not concerned. Would a great city be like that? He decided to find out.

He changed the direction of his flight, and started descending. He went down fast. Suddenly an airplane zoomed past on his right. He looked straight into the cockpit, and he saw the pilot, saw the expression of alarm on his face, saw his lips move, form words, read his lips, “What kind of damn thing is that—look—what is it—did you see it—” and Michael was out of sight.

A city lay just beneath him, a great city, a city of brilliant light. It stretched out for miles along the length of a waterfront. He had a quick look at it and then he started going down faster, falling, falling.

He landed on his back in the middle of a group of people. He lay there gasping. His back felt as though it had been broken in two separate pieces. People glanced down at him. No one stopped to ask whether he was hurt or why he was lying there. Feet and legs kept going past him, swiftly. He heard the sound of heels on the pavement, a hard staccato sound, high heels of women’s shoes, low heels of men’s shoes, tap, tap, tap, click, click, click and the roaring sound of traffic, the starting and stopping of cars and busses, the screech of brakes. As he lay on the sidewalk he thought, I might be a log in a river, and the water simply goes around me and then meets again once it has gone past me.

He got to his feet, slowly, painfully. His back ached so that for a moment he thought he would not be able to walk. He could tell by the awful heaviness of his feet that his wings had disappeared. He was earthbound again.

It seemed to him that he had walked for miles. When he stopped to rest he found that he was on a street lined with stores. He had never seen anything like them. There were angels and Santa Clauses and jewelry and toys and clothing on display in the shop windows. He assumed that these were the most precious, the most costly, the most beautiful things that it was possible to buy—the sum of the gold and frankincense and myrrh of the entire world.

He stopped in front of the stores attracted by the fact that the entire back wall of the window was a mirror. He could see the reflection of the people who were passing by, and the people who were standing near him.

Somewhere behind him a young woman said, “Oh, look he’s a hunchback. He’s a little nigger hunchback. Rub his hump, for luck. We’re going to need all the luck we can get to-night.”

Michael glanced in the mirror, stared in the mirror. It is I, he thought. I am the one she means. It had not occurred to him to wonder what he would be like this time. He was a small black boy again, but not the same one. He had been frightfully thin before, and very dirty, ragged. He still was. But something had changed. He was hunchbacked now. He turned slightly so that he could see himself in profile. No question about it. He had a hump on his back. Yes, but—not really. He could fly if he wanted to. His feet felt light. He had wings again. The wings made him look like that, wings folded under the brown leather jacket. He wondered if they were his own big powerful wings. He decided to find out. He went up, up, up. There was light all around him as he soared. He was aware that people in the street were staring up at him. He heard an astonished murmur, and then quite clearly, a child’s voice, high, shrill, “Look, Mommy, look, it’s Superman!”

A woman said, “Nonsense, it’s one of those balloon things from Macy’s. Come along, come along now.”

Michael flew low over the city, trying to decide where he would land. He picked a dark side street, and landed lightly, on his feet.

The door of a nearby building opened and he heard loud voices, saw a lighted interior filled with men who were standing in front of a long counter drinking out of small glasses. There was a sudden gust of wind and his nostrils caught the noisome smell of fermented grain. He decided that it came from some foul earthly brew these men were drinking.

Then a man lurched out of the door. He came down the steps toward the street, a small black man, swaying back and forth. When he reached the sidewalk he stood still staring at Michael.

He put his arm in front of his eyes and then slowly removed it. “Oh, my God,” he said and recovered his eyes. “I shouldn’t have,” he muttered, “I knew,” and he took his arm away and looked at Michael again, “I knew I shouldn’t have took that last drink.”

Michael said, “I—”

“Go away,” the man pleaded. “Go away. Just go away.” He started backing up the steps, backing toward the door, opened it and shouted, “Call the law. Somebody call the law.” His voice kept rising in pitch until it sounded like a scream, “Somebody call the law!”

Men crowded into the doorway shouting, “Whatsamatter with you?” “Whyn’t you go on home and sleep it off?”

Then they saw Michael. There was silence.

As he walked back and forth, he was giving off light. The dark mean little side street was filled with a soft light that emanated from his wings, from his robe. People were coming to the windows of the houses, looking down at him, pointing.

Someone said softly, “What in hell is it?”

Michael walked slowly down the street, and a bottle smashed on the sidewalk just in front of him. A brick grazed his shoulder. The light he was emitting faded, faded, faded—was gone. By the time he turned the corner he had lost the power to fly, it had gone out of him.

He walked a long way and then suddenly he was on a long wide brilliantly lighted street. It was filled with people, all carrying bundles and packages, all walking with the same hurried gait that he had now come to recognize.

He stopped in front of one of the stores because he caught a glimpse of himself in the window. Or at least he assumed that his was the small white face quite close to the window, a kind of hunger in the eyes. He was a ragged boy again, dirty, unkempt. But this time his skin was white. He was freckled. His head looked too big for his emaciated body. His tow-colored hair was matted, obviously needed cutting, needed brushing, needed washing. He shivered from the cold and the child reflected in the window shivered, too.

A young black man inside the store saw him looking in the window and frowned at him, and then came to the door, and shouted, “Whyn’ you damn honkey kids stay over on Amsterdam where you belong? Get away from here before I call a cop—” He mumbled something else that sounded like a threat, and Michael moved away, hurrying.

On an impulse he followed the sound of music down a flight of steps. It was beginning to snow and he was so cold that he knew he had to find shelter somewhere or freeze to death. Besides he was hungry and he could smell food cooking and he decided that he was going to eat even if he had to steal the food.

Opening a door at the foot of a short flight of stairs he found himself in a long narrow room. Once inside he saw there was a long counter that ran the length of the room. There was a man in a tall chef’s cap and a white coat standing behind the counter, a man with skin so black that Michael stared at him.

He said, “Could you please give me something to eat?”

The black man said, “Sure, wait a minute.” He moved so quickly that Michael could scarcely follow all the motions he made, and then the man put two thick sandwiches down on the counter, sandwiched with big juicy looking pieces of meat inside them, and a glass of milk, and then he leaned on the counter.

Michael said, “I haven’t any money,” and one thin white hand was already reaching towards the thick sandwiches.

“It’s on the house,” the counterman said. “Night before Christmas everybody in the whole wide world oughtta have more’n they can eat.”

The sandwiches were good. Michael finished them quickly and then gulped down the milk.

The counterman had watched him eat with a kind of satisfaction. When he had finished the man said, “Your folks all right?” And without waiting for an answer said, “That’s fine. Well, Merry Christmas to you. Here you better take along somethin’ sweet for the road.” He handed Michael a candy bar.

Michael looked around the room as he slowly unwrapped the candy bar. There were signs on the wall, “No Trust,” and “Let’s Be Friends,” and close by there was a huge yellow cat sitting on a chair. He was certain the cat was purring from the way it was sitting, its feet tucked under it, its back humped over in a big fat curve. There was a wreath on the wall with Merry Christmas spelled out in red letters. It was a snug place filled with a steamy warmth and the mouth-watering smell of food. He hated to leave. He kept thinking, What if I can’t fly? Where will I go? What will I do?

The man behind the counter said, “Where you bound for?”

“I don’t know. I—”

“I got a cot in the back. You can stay here if you want to.”

Michael thought, enough to report on? Well, of course, yes. And what will I say? Simply the mixture as before: neither all good nor all evil. The good sometimes outweighs the evil and sometimes it doesn’t.

He headed towards the door because that old familiar feeling of buoyancy had returned. He was growing taller and taller and he had to hurry before he got too tall for the doorway.

He said, “I’m all right now. I’ve got a place to stay. Good-bye and thank you very kindly.”

As he left he saw that the counterman was staring at him, mouth open. Michael knew that it must be a frightening experience for a mortal to witness a transformation like this, watch it take place, watch the big powerful wings begin to expand, watch the light that was emanating from them.

“What—what—” the counterman said.

Michael thought there ought to be something he could say to the man that would explain this transformation.

Outside on the street, just before he soared straight up he shouted, “Home! I’m going home!”

Then he was gone up, up into the cold air, with the wind against his face, exulting in his own power and speed.

1989