Noel Street Read online

Word about the stone being thrown through our window had already spread around the diner and Loretta was eager to talk to me about it.

  “I’m sure it’s that vile Katherine woman,” she said. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Who’s Katherine?” I asked.

  “Aka Ketchup Lady. You know I gave Andy her address. He and Peter went out to interrogate her.”

  “I don’t know if it was her or not,” I said. “I just don’t ever want to see her again.”

  “You know you won’t see her here. She steps one foot in here and she gets the boot. She can slurp her ketchup somewhere else.”

  “Thanks for the support.”

  “That’s what I’m here for, baby girl.”

  William came in around seven. He sat himself in my section and got up and kissed me when I came out to him.

  “Did you get your window fixed?” he asked.

  “Yes. And the strangest thing, my house was clean. Sparkling, even.”

  “Christmas elves,” he said.

  “Apparently,” I said. “I wonder why they came only after you moved into town.”

  “Coincidence, maybe.”

  “I think not.” I grinned. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “Working. Renato got backed up. I told him I’d work him out of his mess.”

  “All day?”

  “All day, all night. Sorry, you know I’d rather be with you. I’m open Sunday, though. Do you have anything Sunday?”

  “Church. But that’s just until one.” A thought crossed my mind. “Why don’t you come to church with us?”

  “I don’t do church,” he said.

  “You might like it.” I grabbed his hand. “I’ll be there. Then I’ll cook you a nice meal after.”

  “We could have Thanksgiving leftovers,” he said.

  “That sounds like a yes.”

  “Yes. What time?”

  “Church starts at eleven, so if you’re picking us up, ten thirty would be good.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “I have two more events to put on your calendar.”

  “I don’t have a calendar,” he said.

  “That makes it easy, then. The first is Saturday night, December sixth. It’s the Noel Street Christmas Festival. The second is Friday, December twelfth, Dylan’s Christmas concert at school.”

  “You’re planning things two weeks out?”

  “Of course. You have to plan these things out,” I said. “Don’t you?”

  “No, I just go with the wind,” he said. “I’m a drifter.”

  “Well, would this drifter like to join us at the annual Christmas concert?”

  “Absolutely. Sounds exciting.”

  “Don’t get too excited,” I said. “It’s just the usual elementary-school production. One of the teachers plays the piano while the kids sing the classics, ‘Frosty the Snowman,’ ‘Rudolph,’ ‘Jingle Bells.’ But Dylan’s pretty excited about it. This year he got chosen to be one of the bell ringers for ‘Jingle Bells.’ ” I grinned. “It’s a big honor.”

  “Sounds like it,” he said.

  “It’s during the day. Can you miss an hour of work?”

  “Renato doesn’t care when I work, just that I get things done. I can go in a little early.”

  I smiled. “I’ll let Dylan know. He’ll be excited.”

  “That makes two of us,” he said. “And I thought this was going to be a boring Christmas.”

  CHAPTER twenty-four

  William taught me more about my own religious beliefs today than a flock of pastors and a stack of Bibles ever could.

  —Elle Sheen’s Diary

  As I wrote before, my Sunday routine rarely varied, which, outside of my time with Dylan, is probably the biggest reason why I loved the day. It was truly a day of rest. First, unless I was filling in for someone, I never worked on Sunday. Second, I slept in almost an hour later than usual—a cherished extravagance—then, while Dylan slept, I enjoyed some quiet time with some coffee and a book. Around nine, I made Dylan his traditional Sunday waffles for breakfast.

  After doing the dishes, I laid out Dylan’s Sunday clothes—usually jeans, a button-down shirt, and a clip-on bow tie—then got myself ready for church. The only difference this Sunday was that William was coming, so I spent more time on my makeup and hair and worried about what to wear. I wore a long V-necked sage-green dress with an accenting fabric rose made of the same material. I had bought the dress three years earlier for one of Jamie’s weddings.

  I hoped William would think I looked pretty. Dylan did.

  “Wow, Mama. You look beautiful.”

  I smiled. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t even look like yourself.”

  I shook my head. “Thank you.”

  William showed up at my apartment at ten thirty sharp. Maybe it was still the soldier in him or maybe he was just that way, but he was always punctual. He was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt beneath a navy-blue cardigan.

  “Is this okay?” he asked, looking down at himself. “I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to dress. I’m not really a churchgoing guy.”

  “You look nice.”

  “Thank you. Not as nice as you.”

  Dylan just stood there looking at William. “I don’t want to wear a tie,” he said.

  “Nothing in the Bible about wearing ties,” I said. “But you do look nice in it.”

  “Your mother’s right,” William said. “You look pretty debonair with the tie.”

  “What’s that mean?” he asked.

  “It’s an old word for handsome,” William said.

  Dylan thought for a moment, then said, “I’ll wear it.”

  The church Dylan and I had been attending was a nondenominational Christian church that met in what had been an old funeral parlor out in the countryside almost halfway between Mistletoe and the equally small town of Wilden, falling on the latter’s side of the city line.

  My first Sunday in Mistletoe, Loretta told me about the church and took me but she stopped going shortly after. I continued going without her. Fran attended the church as well.

  We walked into the chapel just a few minutes before the service began. The three of us sat together in the middle of a pew next to Fran, who had come early to save us seats.

  The church was small and poor. Our pastor, Pastor Henderson, did yard care and blade sharpening on the side to make ends meet.

  We had a pianist, Mrs. Glad, who played an old upright piano that, I was told, had come from a bar. The church had a small choral group made up mostly of elderly parishioners who used to be able to sing, but still joyfully (and by joyfully I mostly mean loudly) offered what they had left. As it was the Christmas season, they sang Christmas songs, two of which the congregation joined in on: “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

  After Pastor Henderson made a few announcements, there was another song followed by prayer, and then a Communion of grape juice and a Ritz cracker—always Dylan’s favorite part of the service. This was followed by a sermon.

  I loved my church and I had come to love celebrating the holiday season there. The message of hope filled my heart with peace and gratitude, both powerful forces to get me through the daily challenges of my little life. The sermon that day was on forgiveness, and Pastor Henderson was in good form.

  About ten minutes into the sermon William handed me the keys to his truck and whispered in my ear, “I’ll meet you at your apartment.” He stood up and made his way down the pew past the other worshippers on his way out.

  I turned to Fran. “Would you take Dylan home?”

  “Got it,” she said, watching William leave.

  I stood up and walked out after him. When I got outside the church, William was already a surprisingly long way from the chapel, walking briskly through the snow-clad barren landscape toward the main road. I couldn’t believe he was walking home. It was at least seven miles to Mistletoe, and he wasn’t even wearing a coat.
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  “William!” I shouted.

  He kept walking, bent against the cold.

  I shouted again as I ran toward him. “William!”

  He stopped and turned around. When I caught up to him I paused to catch my breath, then said, “Where are you going?”

  “I just had to get out of there,” he said.

  “How come?”

  “I don’t belong.”

  “Everyone belongs,” I said.

  “I don’t,” he said. “All that talk about grace and forgiveness.” He looked at me. “I just couldn’t handle it.”

  “Why?”

  He hesitated. “Because God will never forgive me for what I’ve done.”

  His words moved me. “That’s why God came. That’s what Christmas is about. Forgiveness and hope.”

  “There is no hope for me. Not after what I’ve done.”

  I pondered his words, then said, “Have you ever really shared what happened with anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe it’s time.” I took his hand. “I want you to tell me about it.”

  He looked at me like I’d just asked him to jump off a cliff. Maybe I had. “I can’t.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  He raked his hand back through his hair and looked at me. “That you won’t like me anymore.”

  I looked him in the eyes. “My husband wrote me about the war. I know he hid a lot from me, but I could still feel both the horror and shame he felt. You were put in a situation that wasn’t your fault. Would you have done those things if you hadn’t been taken from your home and ordered to kill?”

  He shook his head. “No, of course not.”

  “The fact that you’re suffering shows who you really are. You need to let it go. You don’t need to worry about me not loving you. You can trust me.”

  “Not with this.” He looked up. “I don’t want to take that chance.”

  “You have to,” I said softly.

  “Why?”

  “Because if you believe that I couldn’t love you if I knew the real you, then you will never believe in my love.”

  He just looked at me for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Let’s go someplace.”

  “Let’s go to your place,” I said.

  “My apartment?”

  “No, the frozen waterfall.”

  “That would be appropriate,” he said.

  We held hands as we walked back to the church and got in his truck. We drove up along the canyon to the waterfall. No one was there, but the wind was blowing hard, so we didn’t get out of the truck. We just sat inside, the heater on high.

  I knew this would be difficult for him so I started. “Where do you want to begin?”

  He took a deep breath. “Christmas Day.” He went quiet. I reached over and took his hand.

  “Tell me.”

  He took a deep breath. “The day started with a Christmas service put on by our chaplain. It was nostalgic, you know. Everyone was melancholy or homesick. A few guys cried. Everyone but me. I had no one back home.

  “Then they opened their care packages while we listened to a broadcast Christmas message from President Johnson. After the service, the chaplain gave everyone a Bible. It was the only present I got.”

  He looked over at me. “Two days later we were called up to search a small village in Quang Tri.

  “It was half an hour before dawn. We were moving in through a rice paddy when a dog started barking. An old man walked out of his hut. He looked around for a moment, then he saw one of our men. I was just ten yards away and I could see it all. The old man and the soldier just stood there staring at each other. Then the old man started shouting.

  “That’s when all hell broke loose. A dozen machine guns shredded everything in sight. Flame throwers belched out hell. People were screaming and crying.” He looked at me. “People were dying.

  “Afterward I was counting casualties when I came across a Vietnamese woman huddled near the edge of the jungle. She was holding her son.” William’s voice suddenly choked with emotion. “He was no older than Dylan. He had been shot and his life was bleeding out on his mother. For a moment we just looked at each other. There was such fear in her eyes. Then she lifted her hand. I thought she had a grenade, so I shot her.” His eyes welled up. “When I went to check her for weapons, I found that she was only trying to show me a prayer book.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He slowly shook his head. “Everything about that war was a mess. The brass couldn’t figure out how to decide who was winning, so someone decided to measure success by body count. We were being pushed by a general they called the ‘Butcher of the Delta.’ His ambition was indiscriminate. He ordered the killing of innocent men, women, and children and counted skulls as trophies. He had a saying: ‘If it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’s VC.’

  “Four days after leveling that village, on New Year’s Eve, we walked into an ambush. Half our platoon was killed. Friends of mine were killed.” He looked into my eyes. “That’s when I was taken captive.” He looked at me, his eyes revealing his pain.

  “You’ve told me nothing that makes me respect you less,” I said. I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Tell me what it was like being a prisoner of war.”

  “Horror.”

  “Tell me.”

  He rubbed his face. “It was day-to-day survival. There was constant physical and mental torture. Worst of all was the unknowing. They wanted us to believe that we might never go home—that no one knew where we were or that they thought we were dead.

  “The first year I was tied up in a bamboo cage in the jungle with eleven other men. Six of them died of disease or starvation. After a year or so, those of us who had survived were moved to Hanoi.

  “I spent the next few years lying on a bamboo mat on a concrete floor with my legs bound. There were meat hooks hanging from the ceiling above us.” His voice softened with the recollection. “That’s where I got those scars on my back.”

  I rubbed his hand.

  “We suffered from constant hunger on the edge of starvation. When they did feed us, it was usually old bread and watery soup filled with rat droppings.

  “I woke every day in horror. They forced us to speak betrayal, while we struggled to defend something no one fully understood. They told us about the atrocities and corruption going on in South Vietnam. They didn’t have to make up lies; they just read to us from the US newspapers.

  “The South Vietnamese leaders were gorging themselves off their own people and country. They turned their own people against them. And we were there fighting to hold up one corrupt regime after another in the name of freedom.

  “When our government officials lodged complaints over their treatment of their own people, they were told it wasn’t any of their business. They’d take our blood and weapons, but not our counsel. We were so afraid of the world turning communist… The choice was between one devil or the other.”

  “You were a pawn in an evil game,” I said. “Just like my husband. You paid for their sins. The sin will be on their heads.” I looked into his eyes. “Come here.”

  He leaned forward. I cupped the back of his head and pulled it against my breast and held him while he cried. “I love you,” I said.

  He pressed himself into me. “I love you too,” he said softly.

  * * *

  William and I arrived back at my duplex after dark. There were more snowmen in the yard. Nearly a dozen. Maybe more.

  When we went inside Fran was sitting at the table studying. Dylan was already asleep in bed.

  “Did you have a good night?” I asked.

  Fran nodded. “We watched Disney.”

  “And made snowmen,” I added.

  “Yes, we did,” Fran said. “Hundreds.”

  I laughed. “Looks like it.”

  “Do you need anything else?”

  I shook my head. “No. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She looked at William and smi
led. “Have a good night.”

  “You too,” William said. “Thanks for watching Dylan.”

  “Always my pleasure.”

  After she left I invited William to stay. I felt the need to stay close to him. He was vulnerable and I didn’t want him going home alone. I had him lie down on the couch. I put a warm washcloth on his face, then gently massaged his feet.

  He fell asleep in our front room around midnight. I didn’t try to wake him.

  * * *

  The first week of December passed slowly. Scientists say that time is relative. I believe this. In fact, I created my own formula: V = D2+W. Time’s Velocity = Current Drudgery2 + the next Worthwhile Event in our life.

  Restaurants always pick up around the holidays, so we all worked as much as we could. William was busy as well but we saw each other when we could. He’d either come by for dinner or, if he worked too late, coffee.

  I was excited to spend some real time alone with him again. The next thing on our calendar was the Noel Street Christmas Festival.

  CHAPTER twenty-five

  Something happened tonight at the Christmas Festival that I can’t explain.

  —Elle Sheen’s Diary

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6

  For some streets, decorating for Christmas is like putting lipstick on a pig. But Noel Street didn’t just share a holiday name, it was made for it. Dickens-era streetlamps with deep green patinas lined the cobblestone street, hung with great pine wreaths. Silver tinsel wires were strung across the width of the road and wrapped with red-and-green ribbon and blinking white and gold lights. In the center of each strand were three-foot-tall silver bells.

  The old brick buildings that lined Noel Street still had their original wood-framed glass picture windows, which the local proprietors dressed inside and out, reminiscent of the days when a child could stand on the sidewalk gazing at a magical, sparkling display filled with Christmas dreams.

  The street’s decorations were the largest line item on the town budget, which was something the locals were proud of. The cynical of heart might write it all off to commercialization, but it was far more than that. It was magic and enchantment. Noel was a street made to be dressed.