Note:  “Wanderers” can also be found in my book “My Best Christmas and other stories of  the season” at Amazon.com.

******

Betty arched her arm up over her head toward the top of the mural.  Ruby looked.  She took a step forward.  She noticed the three lights in the sky.  They seemed to explode with energy that drew her attention.  Each one unique.  Each one leading Ruby’s eyes somewhere. Leading her somewhere in the mural to something that she needed, something she couldn’t yet grasp. 

 “What do you see?” said Betty.

 Ruby said, “I don’t know.  They all look the same.”  She stared.  “Except that one, the one in the center. It looks like a bird. An eagle. Like on Grampa’s jacket and it looks like it’s stomping out a fire.”

“And…” said Betty.

“Oh, that one.” Ruby pointed to the one on the right.  “That one looks like it has, has…” She giggled. “A coffee pot? Yes, a pot like in the diner’s sign in the window… and, in the picture of that guy over there.”

“And…” said Betty.  “What about that one, my favorite one?”  She winked at Thomas.

“That one…?” Ruby paused and studied the radiant blob. “Spots! Spots of rainbow colors poked in the light.  Blended together, but I can still see each one!”

“Yessiree, hon.  You are getting closer,” Betty said.  “What else?”

Ruby’s eyes ranged over Betty’s art work, oblivious to the handful of customers now watching as Ruby continued unwrapping the gift in front of her. Then, there it was.  Ruby squinted, then looked away, then looked again at the lights in the sky.  She stepped back. Looked. “Oh!” she said. Her lips went from circle to upward curve, a smile.  She bounced back to the mural immersed in the growing crescendo of discovery.  She reached for the stars.  Her fingers traced the radiance from each one, separate, coming from different directions, converging into one, subtle, yet definite beam of light.  Her hands followed it, journeying down the mural to something, something she had seen but really hadn’t noticed before.

Thomas and Betty watched.  They knew Ruby was almost there.  They watched as Ruby’s eyes, led by the light, gazed at the baby, wrapped in an old work jacket with the name ‘Harry’ sewn on it.

“What’s that?” Ruby said, startled by her own voice.  On the mural, with one hand, she touched the baby’s face and then traced the baseball cap covering the baby’s feet.  “A Red Sox hat,” she whispered.  With the other hand she reached up and felt the smooth red splotch on her own hat. “Just like mine,” she whispered, awe in her voice.  

 As dawn’s morning light filtered through the low gray clouds and crept through the diner’s windows one more source of light in the mural manifested itself.  Now Ruby saw it.  Light coming from the baby in the manger, mingling with the other streams of light, yet now being the dominant light, drew Ruby’s eye once again to the baby, wrapped in Harry’s coat, with a Red Sox hat just like hers and … “Just like mine!” Ruby said. “The baby has red hair just like mine!’

The morning drizzle turned into pelting raindrops crashing into the front window.  The sidewalk puddles reflected the neon glow of “Harry’s Diner” outside.  The jingle bells on the front door announced the morning’s next visitor.

”Meira!” said Thomas, grinning ear to ear.  

Meira smiled, squeezed Ruby like she would hang on to her always and forever.  Then she leaned back, looked at her daughter and said, “You’re wearing my favorite hat!”  She laughed and knew that her story had been told.

“Mom!” Ruby rushed across the room and threw herself at her mom. Meira flipped down her rain soaked hood exposing a cascade of red.  “Mom!  Red hair! That’s you in the picture!  That’s you, isn’t it?!

As they headed to the door, granddaughter, daughter and father, Thomas turned back to Betty with a look that said everything. A tear escaped from the corner of his eye as he touched his hand to his heart and silently said, “Thank you,” to his best friend.

***

 Monday, once again in science class, Ruby leaned forward, her chin resting on her hands. Since the weekend with her grandfather, Ruby’s outlook on life had taken a turn for the better.  Even her interest in astronomy increased in spite of her misgivings about her teacher.  With her vocabulary quiz behind her, she now  tried to squeeze everything she could from Mr. King’s astronomy lecture.

He droned on, “… which is what some scholars believe to be the best explanation for the ‘star’ the magi followed.” He peeked over the half-glasses perched on the end of his nose at a now-interested Ruby Jensen. “Planets,  or wanderers if you will, joining together, leading magi to the Messiah….”

“Yep,” Ruby thought. “That’s right. That’s right.” And then for perhaps the first time ever, in that class, Ruby smiled.

Note:  “Wanderers” can also be found in my book “My Best Christmas and other stories of  the season” at Amazon.com.

*****

Later, when they got together and talked they would wonder.  Not so much wonder about how the little one found its way to that lonely nativity.  That they would never know.  Not even to wonder about what kind of desperate person would abandon such a precious child on such a wicked night.  They would realize the futility of trying to answer questions that, for them, were unanswerable.  So they would set aside their speculations and judgements, never to know the whole story.

For them, the wonder and the wondering came when they considered how they, the wanderers, all desperately needing something that night, came together at that place and that time.  All helpless in their own way.  All giving to each other a glimmer of hope that dark, dark night and for the days to come.

Ruby felt a warm presence, as if a flood of warmth was being released to thaw the frozen scene in front of her, to unlock its meaning. 

“Ruby,” She heard the storyteller call her name. “Ruby, this is your story. And my story and your grandfather’s, and Harry’s… and your mother’s.” The voice, the storyteller, was Betty…

“Do you see it, Ruby?” said Betty, quietly.  She wrapped her arm around the child. “Do you get it?”  Betty walked Ruby back away from the mural.  “Look again.” The swirls of color that played around the edges of the mural and danced with each other as if one could not exist without the other.  Once again Ruby was being drawn in for another look. The coldness of the scene warmed as they took a step forward, as a glimmer of understanding dawned in the twelve year old’s mind. 

“Do you see it?” Thomas said as he walked up to the pair. He took Betty’s hand and gave it a squeeze.  He sensed that the fog of the early morning was clearing from Ruby’s brain.  They took one step closer to the mural, then another.  Ruby’s eyes raked the painting, examining every square inch again, looking for the clue to the mystery that, it seemed to her, everyone else knew. Yet, she was still in the dark.

She probed the dark corners of the stable.  She was hooked and wanted to know what Betty and Grampa already knew. She wondered about the blurred images of the shepherds, animals and the parents of the child in the manger.  What was that about?  She looked again at the light hanging from the pole standing over the nativity scene.  Its light was dispersed shining on an old wreck of a minivan hung up on a pile of snow.  

What was artist Betty trying to show? There was something being said, but something Ruby was not seeing.  And, probably for the first time she would admit that she wanted to know more.

Note:  “Wanderers” can also be found in my book “My Best Christmas and other stories of  the season” at Amazon.com.

******

Harry slowly opened his eyes.  In the dimly lit stable he glimpsed his fellow guests standing motionless, gazing at something in the middle of the small, cold room.  As he gathered his flagging courage, he gathered his feet up under him and stood.  He kept his eyes on the others, watching for any signs of trouble, any signs that they might be aware of his presence. 

His eyes focused ahead, he stopped, frozen in his tracks.  Something big was next to him.  His addled mind envisioned what couldn’t be. Or could it?  Out of the corner of his eye he saw  a four-legged creature with a curved neck, it’s back grotesquely mounded into a tall hump.  Harry inched away from the silent beast, hoping not to disturb it.  He continued forward.

As quietly as he could he made his way to the circle of strangers.  He didn’t want to disturb them and put himself in danger. Yet curiosity won out.  Who were these people?  Why so silent? What were they looking at?  

Nervously, he stood on tiptoes outside the circle trying to see what was so interesting.  Harry leaned in to look.  “Oh!  Excuse me,” he said to a short, round guy dressed in a robe, holding a long hooked stick. He readjusted the bill of his hat which had poked the solid, silent stranger.  He leaned to look around him.  He saw it, saw him.

The box was filled with straw and something else.  Now ignoring the silent crowd, Harry slinked forward and saw the baby lying motionless in the manger.  His whisper broke through the silence in the stable.  “Jesus?  Baby Jesus?”

Then the light broke through.  A different kind of light than what was seeping into the nativity structure outside of the First Presbyterian Church of Ripley. Gradually, he realized where he was.  But, why was he there?  What led him to this place?  He knew that he locked up the diner.  He knew he needed to get home, to a warm place.  He knew he was cold.  And then he heard what sounded like a distant siren piercing the sound of the wind outside.  He turned to look.  And that’s when he saw it, saw her.

The tattered box was filled with clothes, a hodge-podge of strips of this and that and something else.  It wasn’t a distant siren, but the keening of a baby, a different baby that froze his heart.  Harry inched forward and saw her crying in a cardboard box, a thin halo of red hair showing from the bonnet covering her tiny head.  Her feet had kicked away the clothes stuffed around her sock-covered feet.  Once again his whisper broke through the silence in the stable.  “Oh, my.  What am I going to do with you?”

Harry bent over, peered down at the child and scratched his head.  “What am I going to do with you?” he said again. The cold wind, blunted by the thin walls of the stable crept in.  Harry shivered.  Deliberately, he removed his hat and placed it over the baby’s uncovered feet.  Then he reached around the box hooking his icy fingers under it and lifted.  Brought face to face with the little one, he carefully made his way past the shepherds, past the magi, past Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger, to the back corner of the stable.  He set the box down.  He took off his coat, sacrificing his only means of warmth and wrapped her up.  Sitting down, arms around the box and rocking the child, he closed his eyes, perhaps for the last time.

Note:  “Wanderers” can also be found in my book “My Best Christmas and other stories of  the season” at Amazon.com.

******

Her car wasn’t great.  A minivan, actually. Not the latest model.  Actually quite old.  Dark brown originally. Mostly rust covered now. The driver’s door hardly stayed shut anymore without  anchoring it to the concrete block on the passenger side floor.  But it was all she had and home was home.  And to make it worse, Betty had just skated off the slippery street up onto a snow bank. It was after midnight. She pounded on the steering wheel and cried.

How did she get here, she wondered.  When did the downward spiral begin?  When did she go from employed artist to struggling artist to artist-without-a-job?  Was it when the city downsized to save taxpayer money and eliminated her position?  Was it when she no longer had been able to pick up enough part time jobs to keep food on the table and pay the rent?  Perhaps it was her decision to pursue an art major at Ripley College, rather than following in the family business?  How did she get here?  Alone.  All her worldly possessions packed in her junker of a van, piled into a snowbank. And why?  So close to Christmas no less.

That Friday, a week before Christmas, found Thomas in a similar world of despair.   The place was empty at that time of night.  He looked around. Then decided. Something told him to stop.  He was close to the edge. He knew it.  His despair drove him to this point.  He struggled with that voice in the back of his head, yet he felt that what he was about to do was the right thing.

It was the self-loathing that drove Thomas Start to walk from home to the neighborhood Corner Bar that night.  It pushed him to try to erase his pain in whatever way he could.  Time to end it?  He argued with the voice, back and forth, one drink after the other.

 Sure. Sure. There was nothing he could have done.  The house was fully engaged, engulfed in flames.  Nobody could go back in there.  He couldn’t go back, at least that’s what they all said.  But wasn’t it his own selfishness that held him back?  Thomas was so, so sorry that the little three year old boy had died in the fire.  He was so, so sorry he couldn’t save him.  When Thomas had heard the awful report about the child it had crushed him again. Another child lost. A child he couldn’t take in his arms and save. Like the ones he and Ruth had so desperately begged God to save for them during her pregnancies, this one too was now lost. 

The voice was winning.  Somewhere from the depths of his being, he was being pushed.  Pushed to put one foot in front of the other and go.  Pushed to go somewhere unknown.  Pushed, but led to do the right thing, whatever it was.   So,  it was time to go, before… well, just before.  Thomas stumbled to the door, opened it to the clanging of the hanging metal beer mugs wishing him a dismal ‘merry Christmas.’  He shrugged on his Ripley Fire Department coat, tugged at his Cubs hat and staggered out into the wintry blast, soon to find his way.

Note:  “Wanderers” can also be found in my book “My Best Christmas and other stories of  the season” at Amazon.com.

******

And what a story that mural told about that night a lifetime ago; a week before Christmas.  The night was bitterly cold.  The north wind howled through the canyons of downtown Ripley.  The snow rode the brisk wind like a plague of thousands of tiny frozen stinging insects looking for any bare skin, intent on biting whomever they met.  No one was out on a night like this.  No one, unless you were confused, homeless, in despair, or abandoned.  Our wanderers, Harry, Betty, Thomas and the one other were in place.  Unknown to them they had been readied to play their roles in this unfolding plan, this necessary convergence that would make all the difference.   

Harry Spaulding. His workday was completed. The last pan washed. Everything was set out and ready for the next morning’s Saturday regulars.  His end-of-the-day routine planted firmly in his brain left no doubt that all would be as it should be at the diner, his diner.  The diner he owned and had run for many years.

He grabbed his coat, adjusted his baseball cap, stepped out of the door and clicked the lock. With the click, Harry’s brain wandered off into another unknown world.  Unknown, yet becoming more and more familiar as the disease in his brain gradually, stealthily advanced.

He knew where he needed to go. Home. However, tired from the day’s work, confusion set in.  He was unsure of exactly which way to go and by what means to get there. Then he saw the rusty, snow covered old bike leaning up against the dumpster. That must be it. He recalled riding his bike from his home to, well, everywhere. So just like years ago, when he was 8, he walked past his parked Chevy Impala and hopped on the bike and headed home, ignoring the bite of the December night.

The winter wind pushed him along, down the alley towards the street. Fortunately, Hays Park was empty of traffic at that late hour, because he shot across its lanes and continued down the alley on the other side. At the next street he turned right and a block later made a left. Several blocks later he was pedaling into the teeth of the biting gale. The wind tore at him. Harry reached up to save his precious Red Sox hat which caused him to lean left, then to the right. The wobble caused the fat bike tires to lose their purchase on the icy street. Harry jerked and turned the handlebars in the direction of the skid, then hit the curb and flew biscuits over gravy landing facedown in a pile of snow shoveled next to the nativity scene in front of the First Presbyterian Church of Ripley. 

Panicked, Harry imagined icy daggers sent by some malevolent being to do him harm.  Harry desperately looked around for a safe place to ride out the storm. He pawed through the snow pile, lifted his head and saw it.  Filtered by the driving snow, the street light hanging from the pole bathed the structure.  The structure that would be his salvation.  The light led the way. Harry followed.

Breathlessly, Harry scrambled to the shed.  He scrunched himself into a straw-filled corner of the small building. Shaking with fear he wrapped his arms around himself and waited for his pursuers … waited… waited…  He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, hoping that it would make them all disappear;  for Harry was not alone. Oh, no, he was not alone.