Other Novels by Richard Keith Taylor
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Wake of the Vampire
A Tale of the Third Species of Man
Red Mist
JFK. Marilyn Monroe. Murder. One Witness
Stones Skipping on Water
A Reincarnation Thriller
The Haunting of Cambria
Critics Have Called Richard Keith Taylor’s novels:
...catnip for Stephen King fans...
— Jay Bonansinga
author of The Black Mariah,
The Sinking of the Eastland,
and The Killer’s Game
... damn good...
— Justine Warwick
Rue Morgue Magazine
... a treat...
— Marilis Hornidge
Main Coast NOW Magazine
...will scare your pants off...
— Heather Eileen
Romancejunkies.com
Fantastic! *****
— Detra Fitch
Huntress Reviews
Evergreen
a Christmas Tale
by Richard Taylor
Published by Ransom Greene Press
Smashwords Edition
Evergreen is excerpted from Dark Reflection and Other Tales,
which is available in print from Amazon.com.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be sold or altered.
For more about the author, visit: www.richardtaylorwriter.com
Evergreen Copyright © 2007 & 2010
by Richard Taylor
ISBN: 978-1-4524-9803-4
Evergreen
A Christmas Tale
by Richard Taylor
In the winter before my grandfather died, he came to Lomita, California, where my family lived, to spend his last Christmas with us. We didn’t know he was dying, but now that I recall, he didn’t act quite the same as he had in previous years. He moved slower, and with a careful premeditation, looking before stepping, reaching out for support.
I was eight that year, the fourth of four sons, and our family seemed as if it were coming apart. Both of my parents were breadwinners -- this was before such circumstances were common -- and my mother had just lost her job, so money, and good will were scarce. I didn’t know it then, but maybe sensed it in the way my parents acted -- they were scared.
We didn’t have room for my grandfather to stay with us. We lived in a two-bedroom stucco house built over a concrete slab sometime after the Germans and Japanese surrendered at the end of World War Two. It wasn’t much, that rented house, and grandfather preferred to stay with friends who lived up the street and who shared a spare bedroom with him whenever he came to town. That Christmas my grandfather had been a widower twelve years.
Everything in the house was in commotion. My mother and father were fighting in the kitchen, and we four boys were fighting in the living room. We’d almost knocked the Christmas tree down several times scuffling with one another, and it was not playful scuffling, either, but serious, the kind that can leave skinned knees and elbows and sometimes a fat lip.
Grandfather just let himself in. The door was open, and the screen door unlatched. He found us mid-war, my next-oldest brother and I standing our ground against my two oldest brothers, hands grasping T-shirts or wrists, fists just short of impact. "Stop," he said gently, and we did.
My mother broke off snapping at my father in the kitchen to lean out the door. "Oh," she said, "Dad. Could you keep an eye on the boys while I prepare dinner?" This was the first she’d seen of grandfather in almost a year, and yet the tension in the house was so thick she immediately asked for his help without so much as a "Welcome" or "Love you, Dad." None of us were feeling in the Christmas mood. Grandfather had found a house without the Christmas spirit.
"Sure," Grandfather said. "You go ahead. I’ll keep them occupied."
And he did. First, he got our attention. He ordered us to neutral corners. "Jack, you sit there. Bob, Chuck, here. Rick, sit over here on the other side of me." We reluctantly took our places, hissing at one another as we went.
He noticed that our cheap little Christmas tree was tipped. He stood, crossed the small room and righted the tree, freeing some of the ornaments that had become tangled in the branches. There were few presents beneath it.
When he sat down, his attention remained on the tree for some moments. I was too occupied making a face at my oldest brother to pay any attention to my grandfather, but now that I think of it, he might have been thinking that this would be his last Christmas tree. A lifetime of Christmases, a lifetime of Christmas trees, had led to this one.
"Boys," he said softly, so we listened to hear him better. "Boys, have you ever wondered about the Christmas tree?"
Not one of us had.
"Do you think there was a tree in the manger with the baby Jesus?" he asked.
"No!" we all said, almost together. Everyone knew Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus had lived in a desert.
"How do you think Christmas became associated with a tree?"
No one had an answer.
"Well," Grandfather said, "let me tell you a story. It’s the story that was told to me years and years ago, and maybe someday you can tell the story and pass it along. Here it is."
Long ago humankind wandered the frozen earth in meager clans of twenty or thirty adults and children, following game. It was a time when natural forces ruled every living thing on the planet, when vast sheets of ice pushed down from the north crushing everything before them. People were lucky to outrun the cold as they journeyed south with the coming winter.
Somewhere between the frozen north and an equator much cooler then than today, in a valley surrounded by snowbound mountains, bands of lonely travelers met twice a year, moving with the seasons. Here, the clans stopped and spent a few days together.
Because there was no other time for young men and women to meet one another, the chance rendezvous in the valley was cause for celebration. Young men proved their physical prowess in games and challenges, while women displayed their crafts -- creating beauty where none existed before with embroidery, painting on animal skins and other surfaces, and decorating themselves. The one skill women could not display visibly, but which was vital to their clans, was healing. Wisewomen were midwives and sawbones, brewers of healing broths and keepers of ancient knowledge.
In one band was a boy. I will give him a name to make it easier to speak of him, but really, the boy’s name is lost to time. Tom. I will call the boy Tom.
Tom distinguished himself in the games, a fast runner and strong spear-thrower, with accurate and deadly hunting skills. Most of the young girls were taken with him. Tom thought they were beautiful, or skilled, or hearty and strong enough to withstand the struggle of a wandering life, but not one girl looked back at him with eyes that understood the special light that burned within his soul. Tom was prepared to spend another winter alone, to follow his family south and hope to find a wife the following year.
And then, late in the season with the weather already beginning to turn cold, a final clan entered the valley. Among the group was a girl. Again, to make speaking of her easier I will call her Abby.
Abby had deep, intelligent eyes, a lovely face, and a smile that made Tom’s spine tingle. She was slight, small enough to be thought fragile by some, and possessed hair that was thick and straight and fell like a shawl to her shoulders. Tom picked her out from a gaggle of her sisters, distinct as a flower among reeds, and asked her to walk with him.
Tom quickly learned Abby knew things he didn’t, about herbs for seasoning foods or healing cuts and abrasions, about plants that could be smashed into paste and used to soften leather and thus render sewing clothing easier and more resistant to the cold, about the natural world his hunting-specialized clan strode through but knew little about.
For his part, Tom told her how to track an animal through the forest, what signs to look for, what to be wary of, and when to strike. Even though women were not expected to be hunters every day -- their tasks were different, and in many ways more important to the survival of the clan -- in a world where death was as common as rain or snow, everyone needed to know how to do everything.
Over the hours and days that followed, Tom and Abby fell in love. Their hands embraced. Thy looked longingly into one another’s eyes. Each saw something in the other no one else could.
Tom asked Abby to be his bride. She accepted.
Abby’s father agreed also, glad to have found a husband, and protection, for one of his daughters.
Tom’s father hesitated, though. He thought Abby seemed healthy enough, but she was slight compared to the women of his family. It would be better if his son picked a bigger, stronger girl, he said. Tom argued that Abby knew things she would teach their clan. Faced with his son’s fervent determination to marry Abby, Tom’s father gave in. The ceremony was quick as the wind had started to blow and snow threatened from the mountain corridors behind them.
The clans separated and left the valley moving south through half a dozen passages. Tom and Abby followed his parents’ group, as was the custom. The winter was particularly hard this year, and swift. It overtook them as they hiked, made walking difficult, their hands and backs burdened with belongings. Tom, being the youngest adult of his family and the heartiest, trailed behind to help stragglers. Abby stayed at his side.
Then a blizzard came and blinded them.
Tom and Abby struggled against the fierce wind and the ice stones it threw. Abby lost her footing and slipped from the trail. Tom dropped his packs and followed her down the hillside. The thought of losing his beautiful bride, this girl no older than he, was unbearable. He found Abby at the base of the hill, her leg twisted in a sickening, unnatural way. She cried with the pain of her injury, but more, her own mortality. The cold was upon them. If they delayed even a few minutes they would become lost, their family left with no choice but to continue without them.
"Go!" Abby sobbed, shouting above the gusting wind.
Tom knew what her twisted leg meant. He would not leave Abby behind. If she died, then he would die too. "I won’t leave you!" he told her.
"You have to leave me!" Abby replied. "You have to! Go! Now!"
Instead of going, Tom took Abby into his arms and carried her up the hillside to where he’d dropped their packs. Abby cried as he carried her, from the pain of the wound, yes, but also because he wouldn’t leave her, which meant they would both die. Tom hoped his clan would help them, but on reaching their packs they discovered they were alone. The clan was gone, forced to move ahead as the storm beat down on them.
Tom discovered a cave later in the day and took Abby there. He tried to make a fire, but all the wood he found was wet. Tom took a branch of it and straightened Abby’s leg, setting the bone as he’d seen done before, wrapping the leg with leather strips from their packs. Abby fainted as he worked. When Abby awoke they were cuddled together, providing warmth to one another, as outside the wind continued to blow. "We’re going to die," she told him. "You should have left me."
"No," was all Tom could say. "Never."
In the days that followed, after the storm blew itself away, Tom set out to find food in the snowbound wastes. Although he was a skilled hunter, the game was gone, moved south to a warmer climate. Their meager dried foods were soon consumed. Each day when Tom returned empty-handed from the hunt, Abby begged him to leave her. There might still be time to clear one of the passes and enter the warm valleys below, she suggested. Instead of replying, Tom took her into his arms and held her, taking her warmth, and giving his own.
Abby discovered an infection had taken hold in her wounded leg. She instructed Tom to retrieve a pouch from their bags. Inside the pouch was a carved-out antler horn, and inside it a salve made from moss that grew on the north side of trees. She applied the salve to the wound, and then fainted.
Weakened by lack of food, and the infection, Abby began to drift into and out of a coma, sweat sheeting from her brow. Tom found dry wood, finally, and made a fire, but Abby was delirious and couldn’t enjoy its warmth. Tom feared Abby would die. He set out to find food or die trying.
Tom chanced upon rabbit tracks in the snow and followed his prey for an hour, losing its trail and finding it again several times. The paw-prints led to a clearing. Tom stopped and followed the tracks with his eyes. They led to the most glorious tree he had ever seen, a mighty evergreen, tall and impervious to the cold. Icicles hung from it and twinkled in the sunlight. The wind whistled and wrenched its stiff branches causing the hanging ice to make a tinkling sound. For moments Tom could not move, so touched was he by the beauty of this perfect tree.
And then the rabbit he’d hunted scampered out from beneath the tree and Tom’s hunting skills proved true.
When Tom returned to the cave, he found Abby worse yet, sweaty and clammy to the touch. He feared she would die. Tom prepared the rabbit and tried to feed her, but she would take none of it. Then he held Abby in his arms and talked to her, as had become their custom over the few weeks they’d spent together.
Later Abby lay still as death. Tom placed his ear to her chest and heard the weak, erratic beating of her heart. Abby was dying! He had to do something, but what?
Tom staggered to the cave’s mouth and stared out on the frozen hills and peaks. It seemed as if the entire world were against them. Why did everything have to be so hard and cruel? Then Tom’s gaze drifted to the forest below, to one tree in particular, near the center of the wood. Its pointy top seemed to rise higher than the other trees, the icicles clinging to it catching light from an overcast sky in a way that seemed to glitter.
The tree! He had to show Abby the tree before...
Fighting tears, Tom wrapped Abby in all of their animal skins and picked her up. Abby was so very light, he thought, having lost so much weight over the preceding days.
Tom carried Abby to the valley floor below, to the perfect evergreen.
Standing before the tree with Abby in his arms, Tom realized the truth. This was no ordinary tree. He was standing in the presence of God’s work. Surely, God would not make this beautiful tree and abandon it?
Tom called out to God who kept this tree green even on the coldest day of the year, begged God to save Abby, this wisp of a human being who lay dying in his arms. He sensed the power God had imbued in this great timber, felt its hope wash across him.
Abby woke then and saw the tree, its beautiful limbs decorated with icicles, the breeze a music amid its branches. "The tree," Tom said to her, not allowing himself to sob. "Isn’t it beautiful?"
Abby was too sick to speak, but her eyes took in the exquisite tree that stood impervious to the cold. She felt Tom’s arms around her, felt the love he held for her that had made him stay and care for her during the bleakest winter she’d ever seen. Abby’s smile warmed him. "You’re going to be okay," he told her. "Just like this tree. You’re going to be fine. You’ll see."
And she was. Abby’s fever broke in front of the tree moments later. When they returned to the cave, he fed her some of the rabbit, and was successful finding other game over the days and weeks to come. Abby’s health improved. She welcomed Tom home every day with a smile, or a joke, and joy, always joy, for love is the greatest salve for healing wounds. In time, Abby’s leg was strong enough to stand on. In time, the snow began to melt, and life returned to the valley.
Before they set out to find his parents’ band, Tom took Abby to the tree again. Now the icicles were gone, the great tree merely one of many in the forest. There was something special about it, even so. They felt in its presence something far greater than themselves, a miracle, God’s promise of hope on the coldest day and longest night of the year -- the evergreen.
The first Christmas tree.
By the time Grandfather finished the story, Mom was setting the dinner table. She had shed tears, but they were behind her now, and she smiled at my father as he leaned through the kitchen doorway. Had they just heard my grandfather’s story, I wondered? Or did they remember it from long ago?
My three brothers and I had settled on a temporary peace. Maybe it was the world Grandfather had created in our minds that occupied us -- the vicious cold, the desperate fragility of life, the mighty tree laden with ice ornaments.
Our Christmas dinner was filled with warmth and laughter, and talk of family, and memories. As for my brothers and I, armistice held, at least through dinner.
Grandfather died that spring. I am now older than he was the day he passed. My family of that time is gone now. I’ve told Grandfather’s story to my kids, and they told it to their children. I have no idea if the story reaches back, teller to listener, to the boy and girl who first experienced it. No one can possibly know.
My grandfather’s version of the story has at least one fabrication, though. I didn’t make the connection until many years later, but Tom was my grandfather’s name, and Abby my grandmother’s.
But then, love has many names.
The End