Ten

“It’s going to be a real wing-ding. Are you sure you don’t want to join us?” Mr Nice Guy asked. “You got to break your routine, James! We’ll both go nuts in here if you don’t.”

“Jerry, you know I can’t participate when they’ll have that music. And there’s going to be a Christmas tree, what can I say? It’s impossible.”

James did not believe in celebrating Christmas. In fact Keepers of the Word were supposed to discourage anyone from observing this misguided rite. It distracted from a truly faithful allegiance to Yahweh’s will.

On this matter, however, Mr Nice Guy would not budge an inch. He adored Christmas! He wanted to hum or sing along with those carols he listened to on his headphones. For Mr Nice Guy, Christmas contained the savor of all the happiest things on the outside, the color and fun of everything denied him in prison. How wonderful, those festivities! Religion was only a part of it—there were so many other sensations and emotions, too. How could James deny himself such joys?

“Chestnuts roastin’ on an open fire—” he sang softly.

“Stop!” cried James, pointing at him, “stop!”

“But James, chestnuts aren’t religious. You can roast them any old winter day. Can’t I sing that?”

“You know very well it’s mighty Christmasy. Don’t fool with me, Jerry,” he warned.

And Mr Nice Guy had to admit to himself that he would never want to sing about chestnuts, it was true, unless Christmas were attached. His foot began to tap (Jack Frost nippin’ at your nose …). He clapped his hands on his knee to still the motion. It was hard to control himself.

And Barbara. Beautiful, beautiful Barbara. She and Christmas were indissociable. One seasonal memory repeated itself in his mind, of a time before there were any obstacles, before the troubles of the present were even conceivable. Lying in his prison bunk after brushing his teeth, smiling and rubbing a front tooth with his fingertip, feeling himself grow excited down low, he turned the memory over and over, like a gift so touching and precious that you can’t bring yourself to put it down. A wintry afternoon before they were married. Their first stay at the Billy Hare Lodge, which was a series of train cabooses converted into cabins, parked round a frozen lake of polished black ice. Originally a rich man’s folly, it had been intended as a fun hide away where his children and grandchildren could come visit him. They never came. Since then a pair of Dutch brothers had farmed the outlying lands and rented the occasional caboose to anyone who could find the place. Mr Nice Guy had found it, a perfect romantic spot complete with frozen waterwall. He saved it entirely for himself, undivulged even to the most love-adventuring Home-Made Services clients. That afternoon he and Barbara planned to go on cross-country skis to see the waterfall. He’d described how it was frozen, hanging crystalline in the air with a ferocious hush, each vein refracting the winter sun. They paused on the steps of their caboose to lace up their boots. They removed mittens, each of their breaths a vaporous toot, looking out on the snowy hills whose curves were interrupted by dark bursts of huddled pines. Barbara’s hair was longer then, over her shoulders, her cheeks and forehead pink from the frosty air; she breathed with her mouth partly open, showing her teeth.

Sure, he reassured her, his cracked bones had healed enough to go skiing. As they talked, occasionally in the middle of a phrase she would flip her hair out of her face to look at him, and he told himself, seeing anew and more intensely her cheeks and the soft mound of her lips: My, how beautiful she is.

Lying on his prison bunk years later, he couldn’t recollect what else they’d said—inconsequentialities, in any case—but he basked in the sensation of that distant wintry moment, for then, precisely then in his life, something had shifted. New territory had opened. Sitting on the edge of the caboose he did not want the conversation to end, did not want to lose this glorious anticipation; he wished his life could stick in that moment—Right There—in a sort of timelessness. He desired nothing finer than being with her like this. The snow’s white bled a bluish tint, recent rabbit tracks went round the corner of the caboose. Yes, to stop: like the waterfall. And suddenly, with the vast winter emptiness his only witness, it occurred to him that she, too, was purposely prolonging this moment. She made no move to get up. With an amazing and stunning certainty he realized that she felt the same way. This was too much, his throat ached with happiness and overwhelming gratitude that he didn’t know where to put.

Tears came to Mr Nice Guy’s eyes at this memory. He pictured again how they’d leaned into each other on the steps, holding one another, their skis propped beside them, unused. Unnecessary.

“She’s going to call me on Christmas Eve!” he told James, for maybe the twentieth time, then he caught himself (he’d used the C-word): “I mean the 24th of December, she’s going to call me the 24th of December. I’ve put through a contact authorization for then.”

“Good for you,” James replied wearily.

For the Christmas Eve dinner he sat in the section reserved for his block. He shared a table with Sambo and Phillip Covay and Doc, the translucently pale Scot who always seemed ready to make conversation with Mr Nice Guy—because he was white, according to James, though Mr Nice Guy didn’t believe that was the reason.

Doc was a real physician, in jail on malpractice charges related to a weight loss method he’d marketed. He was the closest thing to a celebrity on the cellblock. His product had enjoyed a brief craze for it required no exercise or change in diet. Rather, it depended on cutting a person’s sleep to four hours a night and wearing few clothes in a regulated chilly environment to maximize the body’s calorie burn-off.

“It really worked, the results are documented,” Doc insisted, his hands becoming excited when Mr Nice Guy had asked him about it. “The only reason I’m here is the money drain, I couldn’t properly defend myself because people kept suing me for side-effects. There are so many whiners in this country! It’s a quarter of a million dollars for one case of bronchitis, half a million for pneumonia! And throw in the mental anguish of sore throats—I couldn’t begin to pay it all off!”

At the Christmas Eve dinner, Doc offered Mr Nice Guy part of his turkey loaf and gave his cranberry ring to Phillip Covay after Sambo refused. As could be expected the holiday offended Sambo, but for other reasons, of course, than it troubled James; tactically, too, Sambo differed, and would not settle for a mere boycott. He saw it as his political duty in consciousness-raising to attend the scheduled festivities and, if possible, to keep anyone from enjoying himself. Tonight his mission encountered an unexpected difficulty in Phillip Covay’s presence at the table—not because of anything Phillip said or did but because Phillip, a weightlifter with a pony tail, was also a full-blooded Chickasaw. This fact intimidated Sambo, unstrung him more than he could admit. (He was susceptible to genocide-envy.) For his part Phillip ignored Sambo. His interest in politics did not include Christmas. He worried mainly about his own criminal conviction and its seemingly endless process of appeals; he was another of the inmates who claimed his presence in prison was an accident. “All I did was buy a used refrigerator. How was I supposed to know there was a kid inside?”

At dessert, Doc offered his cellophane-wrapped popcorn ball to the table, and Mr Nice Guy took it gladly.

“You don’t eat much, do you?” he told Doc. “I like these. My Grandpa used to hand them out on Christmas.” Mr Nice Guy’s eyes glistened at the memory. “He grew the stuff. So did his father before him. Popcorn farming is what my people took up when they came to the New World.”

“Enjoy it then,” said Doc, twisting sugar into his coffee. “Jesus.”

“Why don’t you stick that goddamn motherfucking popcorn ball up your shitbrained idiot ass?” suggested Sambo.

Mr Nice Guy looked at him, blinking. Slowly shook his head.

Then a guard blew a whistle for their attention.

It was show time! Entertainment was provided by the Good News Songstrels, a church group with acoustic guitars. On their portable stage stood a tree with blinking lights and foiled icicles and overhead a green garland festooned the concrete firmament—it was a good thing, Mr Nice Guy told himself, James wasn’t here to see this! There was a flurry among prisoners when a box containing pine sprigs was passed around, which they laughed at, pretending it was stupid, but the lucky few who got a sprig held it to their nose and sniffed greedily.

Mr Nice Guy did not push hard enough to get one, so he went back and helped himself to a glass of non-alcoholic punch and sat on a folding chair near Phillip and Doc. The songs were beginning! The church group invited everyone to join in, so Mr Nice Guy sang along heartily, enjoying the chance to vent his pent-up cheer. After the second carol, Doc turned to compliment him on his tenor. Many of the prisoners, however, refused to sing and during this time looked around awkwardly, except for a man in the second row who squeezed his face in his hands and wept.

“Have a holly jolly Christmas

It’s the best time of the year!”

“All together now!” called Melissa. Her hands left her guitar and she clapped above her head. She was the boss Songstrel. Mr Nice Guy clapped along, and like most of the inmates, whether singing, clapping, or crying, he gazed at Melissa’s attractive plump blue-hosed legs.

Guards stood on the ready, scowls on their faces—it was no fun working Christmas Eve, Mr Nice Guy sympathized, noticing several with whom he’d struck up an acquaintance, which was possible when no one else, prisoner or guard, was listening. They wouldn’t acknowledge him now but there was Pitcher, a farm boy with wire-rimmed glasses who bred prize-winning rabbits, and Luke, who’d been a college composition teacher before getting into the correctional system because that’s where all the work was now. Mr Nice Guy would’ve liked to tell them, too, “Merry Christmas, guys!” But this wasn’t possible in public. They hovered by the stage, guaranteeing the mandated 18 feet between the singer and the prisoners. Melissa had as much protection as a pop star.

“That was great, fellas!” She smiled at her audience. “Let’s try another one!” A companion Songstrel, a young man in a white shirt and blue tie (“Hi, I’m Bruce! Bruce Gibbons!”) started shaking maracas:

“Feliz Navidad!

Feliz Navidad!”

Mr Nice Guy’s gaze returned to Melissa’s blue legs, and he tapped on his breast pocket, feeling the phone authorization slip there. He looked at his watch. Soon he would gather up his popcorn balls and go talk to Barbara! He could hardly wait.

One hour and twenty minutes later Mr Nice Guy hurtled into his cell, propelled by the shove and curses of the guard behind him who whisked his hands for several seconds, muttering, then shut the door with a bang.

“Oh sure!” Mr Nice Guy yelled as he struggled to his feet. Keys rattled, then footsteps continued down the corridor. “Merry Christmas to you, too!”

James sat on the edge of his bunk, alarmed. “I can’t believe my eyes. What in the world? What happened?”

Mr Nice Guy didn’t answer but limped around the cell, his kneecaps throbbing. He wondered if he’d cracked them. He hadn’t been able to break his fall because in each hand he grasped a popcorn ball, and his first reflex had been to protect them.

He tossed one to James. “Here, friend. I brought this for you.”

The red cellophane crackled when James turned it over in his palms. “What’s going on, Jerry?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. That’s what’s going on. Let’s drop it. Tell me about your December the 24th.”

James’ face, till now registering only surprise, suddenly shifted violently—his face was like a plate breaking—and his eyes began to run. “Well, to tell the truth it’s been tough, Jerry. I just can’t pretend: I miss Christmas Eve. I’m struggling with it. I think of my son Walter and how he and his mom are surely celebrating tonight—she refuses to hear about the Word—I think of Walter there without me beside him. And … I might as well admit it.” James slumped on the edge of his bunk, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I want to give him a present. I can’t help myself.”

Mr Nice Guy, touched by his cellmate’s pain, forgot his own for a moment.

“Oh, I’m sorry, James,” he said. “I really am.”

James shook his head, sniffling, and brought the reflecting red popcorn ball up between his knees. With a weary flip he tossed it back.

“Here. I can’t eat this. It would be like eating one of your chestnuts. Or a candy cane. Oh Lord.”

He lay back in his bunk, knuckles to his forehead, his chest heaving. Mr Nice Guy had never seen him in such a state. He hobbled over and pulled himself jerkily onto the top bunk, where he massaged his knees, then reached up and pressed the ceiling above him, feeling the grit of cement with the heels of his palms. Oh Lord indeed. What a night. What a pair we are.

Eventually James’ voice, calmer now, drifted up, “You have a fight with your woman on the telephone?”

“She didn’t call!” Mr Nice Guy blurted, rubbing his knees faster, “she didn’t call! I don’t believe it, James. I got my authorization, waited by the Incoming Line, and she didn’t call. On Christmas Eve! And they hardly let me stay five minutes beyond my allotted time, those … bastards! On Christmas Eve!” A sob escaped him, then his tone became panicky. “What’s happened to her? Maybe she’s in trouble! On Christmas Eve! What’s happened to her, James?”

He rolled on his side, grunting and groping under his pillow while James said slowly, “Maybe this is a lesson for us both. Think a second, Jerry. How would we be if we didn’t pretend there was something special about today? Why, neither of us would be hurting. That’s the source of our problem: treating this day as special. Lord Yahweh knows what’s best for us.”

But Mr Nice Guy didn’t want to hear it. Already he’d broken into the rest of his supply of De Jong gum, which until today he had been rationing preciously: now he was unwrapping the remaining pieces and sticking them one after another in his mouth. His jaws worked mightily as the wad grew and grew, a quantity no casual consumer could have dared or tolerated. He chewed and chewed while James witnessed to him in the name of Keeping the Word, chewed till his jaw no longer obeyed and an entire side of his face quivered and the rest of his body seemed entirely detached; he lay back helplessly in the bunk with his mouth open, his hands and feet spasming, a numbness spreading in the lower back of his scalp. His eyelids fluttered, spittle trickled out of one corner of his mouth. Never had he chewed so much De Jong gum before! His awareness faded for a time.

Existence no longer pressed on him.

Eventually, images of Barbara began to flit before his eyes again, and he moaned when they faded to make way for the sound of James’ voice droning on about the Rapture. He became aware that he could move his limbs and operate his fingers, so he reached up to his mouth, where he extracted the fist-sized gob of putty. He surveyed it for a moment with a hallucinatory sense of having somehow removed one of his organs. This was all that existed inside him. Oh, he couldn’t throw it away! In this waking nightmare he unwrapped the cellophane of a popcorn ball and safely enclosed the gum-gob inside. Now the liberated popcorn ball loomed snowily before his eyes. The only thing to do, it seemed, was to eat it. He broke off pieces with his shaking thumbs. While James spoke of the New Tabernacle, he unwrapped and ate the second popcorn ball, too. Then he gripped his mattress, panting. He couldn’t breathe. Sliding down his bunk, he staggered to the sink and stuck his mouth under the faucet, gulping water. Then he climbed back up on his bed and closed his eyes. As the popcorn began to swell in his stomach, Mr Nice Guy clutched his gut with an appalling sensation that he was going to give birth. He cried out in pain.

“Call Doc,” he gasped, but James would do nothing of the kind. Instead, he stretched out his hands over Mr Nice Guy’s belly, lifted his gaze heavenward, and began to pray.

The following day, Christmas (though neither of them uttered the word), his digestion was better. Now, however, as though their crises came in shifts, James’ depression about his son Walter crashed to new depths. He bit his finger till a bubble of red appeared and stained his chin. He was eerily silent and refused to leave his bunk at lunchtime. Mr Nice Guy didn’t think James should be abandoned in such a state so he cajoled permission for their lunches to be brought back to the cell.

Later, to his dismay, he discovered that sharing lunch with James meant they’d have to stay in all afternoon and miss the activities arranged by the warden for the holiday, including the all-inmate magic show. Myler had promised to perform Down’s Eureka Pass and the one-handed Coin Star. Marvels he’d only read about! He banged on the door but no guard came to answer.

So he swung himself up on his bunk and tried to pass Christmas Day without thinking of Barbara. It wasn’t easy. He unwrapped and threw the gumwad, hard as a stone now, into the trash pail where, from such a height, it landed with a resounding jonk. James jerked up on his mattress, “What? Who?” Then he groaned, let himself fall back down. Mr Nice Guy took the remaining red cellophane wrapper, then the green one, and for the next nine hours attempted to amuse himself by holding them up to the electric light.