Morning’s night. To let the heated air in. Host of a bulb burning compulsion. Freshkept. And His glasses, too, their fog.
Benjamin stands, feet at the foot of the stairs, gazing from the refrigerator beyond to the steps below, intending thought though drowsy. To risk or not. To decide, it tires. Fate’s for the lazy, dessert as a meal for the toobored to choose. Then, to head the wrong way from everything, into the livingroom, the familyroom, who knows where He lies, atop the sofa of three pillows, as opposed to the two other sofas of four pillows each, then five, He spreads Himself out with the knife of a hand like a condiment, as if buttery marge, to rest His head in the spoon that is His other palm.
A mousy quiescence — and yet, He senses a stirring.
A preparation: thoughts of food digested to fear, an expectancy, and, finally, room for a real hunger — a pregnant yen.
O, to be as ravenous as a dove — craving even an olive of sunlight, a far branch of peace…
The goy up there knows from chimneys, does he ever, knows them like he knows his own throat, windpipes whether of brick or metal, he knows their flues and their fires, too, and the smoke in the eyes and lungs, had squeezed through them, all these years, too many now, immemorial, generations turned to smoke, their mouths smirching sky; how he’d shimmied through them and whatever had stuck them up: a fallen pigeon, a downed owl, summer neglect. His sleigh, a green cabriolet cutter hung with lit lanterns, he’s parked against the slope of the roof at its lowest scarp; racingstriped runners tearing up the shingling, his team of flying reindeer idling patiently, letting rest the awesome ripple of their legs: lashed trunks, ragged fundaments; giants of meat and raw, with eyes that are nothing if not oily mad, anything but jolly, more like violent in their majesty, lidded hoary and hardened; they’re scraping their hooves as if to herd forward, butt heads, to charge the chimney down which he dove; they give soft snorts from their nostrils, then quiet, to graze upon stars. On each of their antlers hangs a crown: tarnished gold for one, the others are rotted, wormtwisted wood. None have a red nose — they have snouts.
Him, he sucks it in, in his motheaten suit down he goes the dark throats of houses and into the warm of their guts.
One night only, year after year — the fullness of good little wellbehaved boys & goyls…
Most are expecting a stockinglike sack, though that’s so last season, roll the eyes, snigger: the sack molders up north, in the attic of his bungalow, yearround doneup in Millennial Terrific, though itself without chimney, only a Pole, kept topped with an ostentatious antenna, festooned with the flags of the world.
Tonight, it’s a can he carries, a metal battered can as if of paint; it’s a bucket, for the record — filled with the blood of the lamb, cut with that of goats when the Arctic slaughterhouse went short on a stray flock.
A chute through the chimney, no fire, lucky for him this fireplace is for appearances only, an arched validation of a mantel above upon which to display photographs, more of them, those of the immediate family, at home, on vacation, which was Florida, Mexico, anywhere always July, flushed at weddings, at graduations proudly awkward — and then, at the furthest gilded edge, the newest immortality, made in a gaudily mirrored frame: it’s Him — at the hospital, in the arms of His mother if no longer living then sleeping, still, upstairs-upstairs, have patience, have pity, have dreams. Benjamin’s head propped atop the pillows atop the sofa, Claus ducks in then prods aside the screen, steps soft gingerbread tread over the brickwork ledge then onto the carpet, proceeds into the kitchen and beyond, to the frontdoor trailing blobs of blood, to dearm the alarm, unlock the door from the inside; he dips his chin, a beard’s brush, a patch of stain flecked with soot and then, with tense shakes of a hackneyed head begins to mark the jamb, not even acknowledging Benjamin to spit a gift on Him.
A poor guest, we’ve known worse.
The problem with this tradition has always been once he’s gone down the chimney, how does he manage to get back up to the roof? If the devil Satan must fall, one might argue, then a saint like Santa must rise; once finished with his swathe and slather, he might lick clean the plate of warmed goodies, gargle the icy milk of mothers left behind — more time to think his way up and out, though this house would never provide. Maybe they have a fowl in the fridge, he thinks, and a little shot of schnapps, helps to hope.
And then, there’s always a ladder in garages like these.
This year, though, another task, each house its own — he doesn’t ascend, doesn’t rise to the roof, to fly off into the air, full reindeerpower ahead. Maybe later. Work to do. Not for nothing he’s the patron saint of our kinder.
To dry his hairs on the Rag, which drawer he knows.
And where the laundryroom, too.
