[ExI] Homeless in Hell- A Christmas Story, by Orson Scott Card

[John Grigg]

I could not get a response from the server either, and so here is the
Christmas story by Orson Scott Card...


If you don't get into heaven, you go to hell, right? That's what I'd
always been taught. Heaven is Harvard, and hell a county technical
college. If you finished high school, they've got to take you.
Except that with hell, dying is the only diploma you're supposed to
need.

I read those near-death-experience books, where they talked about
how "the light" was full of warmth and love. Well, it was nice, but
it sort of sets you up for disappointment, because when you're
really dead and not just straying in there by accident, you get
past that feel-good stage and suddenly you're at the light, and
either it sucks you in or it shunts you away, like a magnet, and it
all depends on how you're polarized.

I got pushed away.

Well, what did I expect, anyway? I used to go to church and all, but
I wasn't much of a stickler on, like, telling the truth and helping
my neighbor. And office supplies from work had a way of ending up at
home. Not a lot, but I wasn't exactly perfect. Lots of looking upon
women to lust after them. Just at the Victoria's Secret level.
Quarreled with my wife a lot but I never hit her, though I did
compare her to her mother way too often. Kind of the normal sins. I
was sort of hoping they graded on the curve--I figured I was bound
to make the top half. But no, it's straight percentage, you get one
question wrong and you're out.

So what's the other choice? Hell, right? I start looking around,
wondering if Dante was just making it all up and if not, which
circle would I get into?

The answer is, Dante didn't know squat, there are no circles. You
just find yourself on a street in hell and you go up to a door (and
it's always the same door, no matter what the street is) and you see
people going in and out, dressed to the nines, and you think, Cool,
there are good clothes in hell, which stands to reason, really, and
you go up to the door and you knock and the guy looks at you like
you're a worm and he says, "Name?"

So I say my name and he makes this moue with his mouth like you sort
of passed your expiration date about a month ago and he says,
"Please, don't waste my time," and he starts to close the door in
your face.

"Wait a minute," you say, "this is hell, right?"

"Hades," he says, and you can taste the contempt.

"Well I didn't make heaven, so you've got to let me in."

"No," he says, and then with a kind of faux patience he explains,
"The place where, when you go there, they have to take you in,
that's home. Not hell. We don't have to take just anybody. We're all
about class here, nobody wants to look around and see you. There are
real celebs inside. Stalin. Hitler. Caligula, for heaven's sake--
oops, did I say that?"

"I'm not asking for the best seat in the house."

"There is no table insignificant enough for you."

I did a quick calculation--how many people ever lived on earth,
how many would likely fail the entrance exam for heaven, and how
many first-rank sinners would be ahead of me in line. "But ... what
do I do?"

"You bogey off and stop blocking the door."

"What do you think this is? Studio 54?"

He laughs. "Oh, no, it's much worse. It's like junior high. And you
... ain't ... cool."

And you get a big hand planted in your chest and when he pushes you
don't fall, you fly across the street and smash into a building only
it doesn't hurt--you're dead, remember?--and you're not injured
and it begins to dawn on you, you're stuck in hell but you can't get
in. You try a few other doors and the same guy is waiting behind
every one of them to bounce you. And it's starting to rain. A thin
cold drizzle, and even though you can't actually get injured, you
can get cold and damp, or at least you feel like you've been left
out in the cold, which in fact you have. You're not going to get
sick, you're not going to starve, but you're also not going to get
in.

Not that I was alone out there. There are a lot of streets in hell,
and lots of homeless people wandering around. And they seem just
about as crazy as the normal mix of homeless people. A few who look
like they're waiting for a drug deal to go down, only I knew it was
a fake, because what is there to buy or sell, and even if they're
carrying--because you pretty much look the way you see yourself,
so some people are armed--they aren't dangerous. If they had ever
been truly dangerous, they'd be inside watching the strippers, or
whatever they did inside Club Styx. These guys think if they look
bad enough, if they say enough rude things to passersby, maybe
someday they'll get by the bouncer. Ditto with the ones who look
like hookers. They've got nothing to sell. But let's face it. Not
everybody in hell is bright.

Then there are the crazies, shouting and preaching about Jesus and
the end of the world, only it dawned on me pretty quickly that they
aren't crazy--I mean, after you die there's no schizophrenia
because there's no brain to malfunction. They're preaching because
they're trying to tip the balance the other way, to show how
righteous they are, denouncing sin, calling out the name of Jesus--
or whoever, depending, but most of the shouters were, like, born
again, only it apparently didn't take the way they thought.

I stood there watching them, and walked around watching them, and
sat down and watched them, and no matter how hard I tried, I
couldn't bring myself to care. It began to dawn on me just how long
eternity was going to be, stuck on the streets of hell. I tried
street after street, only nothing changed except the faces. The
language didn't even change, because after you're dead all the
languages become the same. They speak, and they think they're
speaking Arabic or Tagalog, only what you hear is English, or at
least you think it is. If you speak English. Anyway, you can
understand everybody, and that's the worst, because you can't even
go to a place where you don't understand the words people are saying
so you can tune them out. You're always tuned in and it's so boring.

Daytime comes and goes, just like on earth, and gradually it began
to dawn on me that this was earth. In fact, it was Washington DC,
which is where I happened to buy the farm, hit by a car trying to
cross Wisconsin in Georgetown on New Year's Eve 1999, which meant
that whether the world ended that night the way everybody said it
might, it definitely ended for me. I knew the streets. I could walk
down the mall. Only everybody I saw was dead.

I thought for a while that the whole world must have died or
something, but then you'd think there'd be more newly dead people
like me, you know, the whole government thing, if the world ended
surely some significant percentage of them would go to hell, and
surely they couldn't all qualify to get into Studio 666, so where
were they? No, the world hadn't ended, just my little
oxygen-consuming, carbon-dioxide-expelling bag of blood and bone.

And now that I was looking for it, I began to see the signs that
life was going on. Things changed position. Garbage cans were in one
place and then they were in another. Cars were parked somewhere and
then they weren't. But you never actually saw them move. Nothing
moved. It was like when they were in motion, they disappeared. And
it occurred to me that it was like long-exposure photography. You
set the exposure time really long, the aperture very small, and the
only things you get are the things that don't move. Pedestrians,
cars, anything that moves is gone.

It's like in hell time passes so slowly that living people are
invisible to us. I had it figured out!

"You think you've got it figured out," said a fat man.

I looked at him, a little puzzled by why he was fat. I mean, surely
when you die, you don't have to be fat anymore.

"It's how you see yourself," said the fat man. "You know how people
said, 'inside every fat person there's a thin person struggling to
get out'? Not true. It's just another fat guy in there. In fact,
usually a fatter guy."

"Can you lose weight?" I asked, because at least it was a
conversation with somebody who wasn't trying to get wafted up into
heaven or deeper into hell. And also it was kind of funny.

"You can look thinner," said the fat guy, "if you start to think of
yourself as thin."

"So why can't you think of yourself as good, and get on up into
heaven?"

He shook his head. "Those street preachers, they aren't thinking of
themselves as good. They're thinking of themselves as righteous.
Saved. Chosen."

"Better than everybody else."

"Bingo. Ditto with the bad dudes and the tough girls. They're needy,
all of them, and needy doesn't get you off the street. Needy is what
gets you on the street."

"If you've got it all figured out," says I, "what are you still
doing here?"

"I'm conflicted," he said. "A common problem. Whenever I start going
one direction, I do something to send me back the other." He
grinned. "While you, you're talented."

Talented? "I'm not the one reading minds here. I mean, you've been
answering stuff I didn't say."

"Yeah, I've got good hearing. I don't have to wait for you to speak.
Because, you know, it's not like we actually have voices. We just
sort of wish our thoughts to be heard, and then people close by can
hear them. But your thoughts are actually just as loud, so to speak.
So yeah, I can hear stuff. But you, you can see things."

I looked around. "No more than anybody else."

"Nope, nope, not so. I watched you. Crossing the street. You waited
for the light."

"I did not. The lights don't change."

"And you dodged the pedestrians."

"There are no pedestrians."

"Nevertheless."

"I don't see them, so how can I dodge them?"

"Oh, you philosopher, you."

"What possible difference could it make to you?"

"I want to see how useful you are. What you can do."

"This is a job interview?"

"I've got an opening for an elf."

I looked him over, this time more carefully. No pipe clenched
between his teeth, but his stomach was rather like a bowlful of
jelly. "Am I supposed to laugh when I see you in spite of myself?"

"Clement Moore didn't actually see me," he said. "I'd long since
stopped doing personal appearances by then. But you see, it doesn't
make much difference. I've got this image in my face every Christmas
--no, every Halloween and two months after--and it's all I can do
to keep from wearing the red suit all year long. I used to be thin,
when the Dutch were in charge of the image."

"What are you doing in hell? Aren't you supposed to be Saint
Nicholas?"

"I'm not in hell. Any more than you are."

"Here's a clue, Nick. This ain't heaven."

"We're hovering, my friend. Or maybe we're volleying, like the
shuttlecock in badminton, back and forth, almost one thing, almost
another."

"Me, I'm just walking the streets."

"Dodging the pedestrians."

"I'm not a toymaker."

"Fine with me. That toymaking, that's just part of the myth. Hasn't
anybody caught on that I'm dead? They don't issue us hammers and
saws and set us to work making wooden toys. There's precious few of
us can even see the living, and those that can move things in the
material world, those are even more rare."

"So how do you come up with all those toys for good girls and boys?"

"When we need toys, which isn't as often as you think, we steal
them."

"Ah," I said. "Now I'm beginning to get why you aren't in heaven.
You aren't Santa Claus. You're Robin Hood."

"Mostly we break toys," said Santa. "Or hide them. It's not like we
can move anything very far. And nowadays it's a cash economy. Come
to think of it, it was back when I was alive, too. They used to draw
pictures of me with bags of money, because that's what I did, my
famous good deed, I paid a ransom in coin, saved some kids. Money's
what we mostly use now, too. And because it's paper, it's even
easier. Lighter. Even my less talented elves can move it."

I couldn't help it. He was so serious. I laughed. "Man, you had me
going there. Santa Claus, stealing toys, breaking them, hiding them,
dealing in cash. You got your elves out picking pockets?"

He didn't look amused. "Yes," he said. "I fail to see the humor."

"You're not putting me on?"

"I want to see if you can move things. In the material world."

"I told you, I can't even see the people, let alone pick their
pockets, and even if I could, I've never been a thief." At once my
conscience twinged. "At least, not deliberately. Not
systematically."

"You got a better job offer?"

"I want a shot at heaven," I said. "As long as I'm not completely in
hell, why not?"

"Me too," said Santa. "Some years I've been so close."

"What about getting into the devil's workshop? Been close to that,
too?"

He shrugged. "As a novelty act, they've invited me now and then. But
not to stay. Strictly in the back door, you know."

"Why should I do this? I mean, you've been at this for what, fifteen
hundred years? And you're still here."

"Got any better plans? It's not like you're running out of time."

"Santa, excuse me for saying this, but as far as I can tell, you're
as looney as a one-legged duck."

He shook his head. "My friend, nobody's crazy here. We might be
wrong about a lot of stuff, but we can't lie and we aren't crazy.
Still, like I said, no hurry. Look me up if you decide Santa's gang
of elves sounds more interesting than ... whatever it is you're
doing."

"How would I find you?"

He rolled his eyes. "Just ask. In case you didn't know it, I'm
famous. People keep track of where I am."

"I was afraid I'd have to go to the north pole or something."

He shook his head, turned his back, and walked away.

*

He was right. I could see living people. And it wasn't a matter of
slowing down or speeding up, either. It was more like you had to pay
attention to something else, sort of look away and then be aware of
what's going on at the edges of things. Only that's the strange
thing--when you're dead, there are no edges. You have the habit,
from all those years of binocular vision, of seeing only this window
in front of you, with out-of-focus glimpses to the sides, and most
dead people never get past that. But the fact is, when you're dead
you don't have those limitations. You can see ... well, you remember
how people used to say that teachers seemed to have eyes in the back
of their heads? Or it's like, you could feel someone's gaze on you,
even though they were behind you? Well, that's how it is when you're
dead, once you get the hang of it. You're aware in every direction.
It's not really vision. It's just knowledge, but your mind kind of
makes sense of it like vision. I wasn't consciously seeing those
moving cars or pedestrians, so I didn't "know" they were there. But
I was aware of them, aware of the people in the cars, aware of the
people on the street, and some old reflex made me dodge them, weave
among them without knowing it.

Thanks to the tip from Nick--I hate calling him Santa Claus
because that name's too loaded down with cultural freight, I just
have to laugh whenever I think of saying, "Hi, Santa!"--I got
pretty good at seeing mortals. Got to be a habit, really, knowing
where they were, knowing what they were doing. I found my range was
pretty good, too, because this awareness thing, it isn't blocked by
mere walls, I know who's coming around the corner before they
actually come into my field of view. And I'm not a genius, either, I
can imagine there's those that can see for miles, right through
hills and cities and whatever else is in the way. Maybe see forever,
if they've got the mind to sort through all the stuff you'd see in
between.

And it wasn't just awareness. I could move stuff.

The thing is, touching the material world, changing it, that doesn't
come the way awareness did--it isn't just automatically happening,
so you only have to notice it. Ordinarily, when you're dead you
simply don't affect the material world in any way. You don't sink
through the earth or walk through walls, but only because you still
have the respect for those surfaces you learned when you were alive.
You can go through them, just as you can sink down into the earth,
though that's extraordinarily boring, since nothing much is going on
once you get past the earthworm and gopher level.

But you can affect things, not by touching or pushing or pulling,
but by--oh, how else to say this?--by really, really wanting
things to move. Yeah, OK, by wishing. But we're not talking about
some wistful little desire. "Oh, I wish I could eat a candy bar
again." No, it takes a desire so intense it consumes you, at least
for the moment, the way a campfire consumes an empty marshmallow
bag. You feel shrunken, thin, weak. But it's funny, because you also
feel amazingly powerful. Like a superhero. Just because you got a
chair to move.

Only how much can you really care about moving a chair? That's why
poltergeists are so rare, and why they're usually so mean. They're
angry all the time, and they move things around in order to cause
fear in the living. That's the consuming desire--to make the
living afraid of them. To have power. It's a pathetic thing, and
it's definitely on the evil side of the ledger. Evil, but the
bouncer doesn't let poltergeists into the netherclub, because they
don't need somebody inside moving the furniture or spilling the
drinks, I guess.

I'm no poltergeist. I'm not mad at anybody. OK, well, so, that's a
lie. I'm pretty steamed about being stuck between heaven and hell,
and I'm ticked off about getting killed before the prime of my life
(at least I assume the prime was still ahead of me, seeing how
nonprime the years I actually lived through seemed to be). So how
was I going to move anything?

It was Nick who showed me how. Once I realized he'd been right about
my seeing the living, I looked him up and he kind of took me under
his wing, he and a few of his elves--who are not little and not
cute, they're just dead people like me--and showed me the work
they do.

It isn't just at Christmas, though Christmas is for them like tax
time is for accountants. All through the year, Nick and his gang are
watching out for children. They'll pick a kid--almost at random,
or so it seems to me, though maybe there's some system in it, some
signs they look for--and they just follow, watching. Most kids,
their life is OK. Sure, they get yelled at, spanked, ignored,
ridiculed, the normal stuff that makes life interesting, but most of
them, somebody loves them, somebody's looking out for them, somebody
thinks they're pretty good to have around. You can live through a
lot of hard times, if you've got that.

There are other kids, though. Two kinds. Bullies and victims. And
Nick's on the look out for both. The victims, they break your heart.
The ones that are getting tortured or beaten, there's not much we
can do for them. The rage in the person hurting them, that's a
powerful force, it matches any wish we can come up with, and then on
top of that they've got bodies, which pretty much makes us helpless.
What Nick's gang does in those cases is, they try their best to make
it obvious to other living people what's going on. You know, cause a
shirt to ride up so a bruise is visible, or get a neighbor to look
in a window or hear a sound, something to make them suspicious. A
lot of them call the cops or child welfare, if it's a country where
the cops care, or where there is an agency whose job is to look out
for kids. But a lot of them don't, and in the end, our hearts just
break for those kids and we sort of just wait for them to join us.
Because a lot of Nick's best recruits come from among those
children. His scouts, so to speak. They've got a nose for it.

The neglected kids, though, Nick's gang can help a lot, there. We
get food to them, sometimes. We open a door now and then--that's a
lot harder and more complicated than you might think. And when
they're alone, some of Nick's gang, they can't move things, but they
can make sounds that the living can hear, so they sing to them or
talk to them. Tell them stories. We get tagged as imaginary friends
sometimes, but it's not like we're looking for credit. We just try
to help the kids know they're not alone, that somebody cares what
they're going through. And those singers, they do a sweet lullaby, I
tell you. Songs that even the deaf can hear, cause they sing right
into the mind. Sometimes I go with them, just to hear them sing. We
can't save all their lives, but we can make what life they have a
little better, and that's good. It's not like we think of death as
all that big a deal, anyway. I mean, we are dead, and so death
doesn't hold any fear for us. That's why we're generally not in the
lifesaving business. When we can get a few crackers to a kid, sure,
we'll do it, but ... they'll just need more tomorrow, right? While a
good song can live in their memory through a lot of dark nights of
fear and loneliness.

But that's not the kind of work I do. I'm not a singer, and when I
move things, I've got to be mad. It's my sense of injustice that has
to get riled up. And so I'm on the bully patrol.

You know the kids I'm talking about. Some of them are physically
violent, but most bullies do their damage with their mouths. They've
got this instinct for the thing that makes a weaker kid hurt the
most. Sometimes it's obvious--a kid with a big nose, you don't
have to be a brain surgeon to figure out what to make fun of. But
some of these bullies, it's like they can read minds. Their victim
has a drunk mother, the bully goes straight to the mother jokes--
how does he know? The girl who's lonely and scared she's not good
enough for anybody, the bully girls taunt her clothes or play really
mean jokes where they pretend to be her friend until she commits
herself, says something that shows she really believes in their faux
kindness, and then they can mock her. Some of the things they do are
so elaborate, it takes so much thought and effort to do them, you
can hardly believe someone would go to all that trouble just to make
another person unhappy.

Well, that ticks me off. That gets me all intense, and I feel it
building up, and I can move things.

The trouble is, what do I move? It's not like the bully deserves to
die or anything, so I can't make the roof cave in on them. Death may
not be a big deal to us, but murder still is, and one of the rules
that seem to govern the universe is that while we can do a little
messing around with the material world, we're not allowed to kill.
Just can't do it. Wish all we want, but if the thing we try to move
might kill somebody, it just won't budge.

So we've got to be resourceful. I mostly try for justice. A girl
makes fun of another kid's big nose, I make sure the bully girl
bumps into a door that wasn't quite where she thought it was. Big
swollen nose, a shiner. Let her see how it feels to have other
people stare at your face for a while. Or a bully boy who shoves
little kids around--I can arrange for him to twist his ankle or
trip and fall headlong right as he's going after a kid, make him
look bad in front of everybody or distract him with a little pain.
My favorite, though, is to make it so when the bully just touches
his victim, I make the victim's nose bleed like a river, make him
bruise up around his eye or jaw. Doesn't really hurt the victim when
I do it, but it makes it look like the bully did a full-out assault,
gets him in so much trouble. A few times the bully's been so
frightened by the injury he "caused" that he gets control of his
hostility and stops picking on kids.

But here's the problem. I'm working on justice, protecting kids from
each other, trying to help change kids who've fallen in love with
cruelty, help them start being a little more decent, learn a little
compassion. But when you come right down to it, what am I actually
doing? Causing pain. Hurting people. All in a good cause, right? But
remember, the guy who judges you is the same one who said, "Turn the
other cheek."

I tell myself, I'd turn my own cheek. But he never said I have to
turn away and not notice when somebody else is getting slapped,
right? I mean, he also said that it was better to tie a millstone
around your neck and jump into the sea than to hurt one of the
little ones.

But then I also have to be honest and tell myself that I'm hurting
some of his little ones, too. The mean ones, the vicious ones, the
ones that maybe he doesn't really think of as his. But if his
capacity for forgiveness is infinite, the way some people say, then
they're all his. Didn't he get ticked off at some moneychangers,
though, and lash out with a scourge and knock over some tables?
Surely he understands how we feel, those of us who are working on
trying to stop the bullies.

You know the real problem? There are so few of us. Few who have the
ability even to see the living--can't do much unless you can see
what's going on!--and even fewer who, seeing, care. Because most
of the dead, they just disconnect from the living. So mortals are
mean to each other. Big deal. Get over it. Get on with your ...
well, your death. Whatever this is. You can't fix anything in the
mortal world. You get no credit for it. You're already judged to be
unworthy of heaven. So it's not like you've got a stake in what's
going on.

Just a few of us who care about the kids and have the ability to do
anything about it. So even if we're making a difference in the lives
of some kids, there are thousands, millions of others that we never
see. That's not a reason to stop, though. It's a reason to try
harder. It's not like we sleep. That's something, anyway. We got
twenty-four hours a day.

You do get tired, though. Not physically tired. Just tired in your
soul. Seeing how many mean people there are. Seeing how eagerly the
victims keep hoping that their parents will love them, that they'll
find friends at school. And here we are, trying to help keep those
hopes alive. It breaks your heart. It makes you want to despair
sometimes, that despite all that hope, there's always a bully to
dash it. Why do they hate happiness in other people so much?
Especially the children--where do they learn to take such pleasure
in someone else's misery?

Was I like that?

Oh, man, that's the thing that comes back again and again. Every
rude thing I ever said to another kid. There was this guy in junior
high and high school, we were friends, you know? In plays together,
in band. He was smart and talented, and I liked him. But one day,
I'm sitting there with a song going through my head, and for some
reason I come up with a new lyric for it that makes fun of this
friend. A song about Bruce, talking about how conceited he is. And,
well, he is, not so much conceited as really excited about all the
cool things he can do. I think back on it and I realize, he wasn't
vain, he was just thrilled to keep discovering new things he could
do, and he thought he could share his excitement with his friends.
Well, I cured him of that. Cause it wasn't just the one song. I sang
that to my friends and they all laughed and that was it for me, the
first talent I ever had--a talent for musical meanness. I must
have written twenty Brucie songs. Till Bruce stopped hanging around
with us and it was no fun to sing it when he wasn't there. Made me
look bad instead of clever.

I think back on that, I wonder where Nick was. Maybe Nick's gang saw
me but figured, Bruce really was talented and smart, he really
didn't need a loser like me for a friend. They didn't have to stop
me, because I just wasn't important enough in Bruce's life for him
to need rescue. I sure hope that's it. I hope I did no harm.

That's the kind of thing that goes through your mind when you're on
bully patrol. Way too much self-examination, if you ask me, but you
can't help it, you keep seeing yourself in the bullies as much as in
the victims. They're all kids, after all. Even if they're rotten and
mean, they're kids. They might still become something worthwhile.

*

Christmas, that's the tough time. I had a whole year of learning,
mostly on American streets because I knew the culture well enough to
recognize what was going on with the kids and to be able to think of
ways to help them. And just when I'm getting pretty deft and clever
at bully-stopping, Nick comes to me and says, "It's the Christmas
rush. Bully patrol is over till after the big day."

It's obvious that it's Christmas. I mean, there's no missing it--
because Nick's in a red suit. When the decorations go up, there's
all these pictures of him looking like Norman Rockwell's
Coke-drinking Santa, and he just can't hold onto his civilian image,
the red suit just pops right out of him and that's how he looks. And
it's a good thing I can't see myself in mirrors, because I've got to
tell you, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that I look really
small and I'm wearing green. Sometimes you just want to yell at
those advertising guys. Can't they leave us a little dignity?

Christmas and the elves. That's when the serious thievery begins.

Right, like you thought we actually made the toys! We're dead, and
even if we were alive, most toys that kids actually want require
serious machinery. Do you have any idea just how much equipment it
takes to make one lousy little Lego? Let alone a whole Toy Story
action figure. No, we don't make toys. We just redistribute them.

And not in the stores. Think about it--who goes to Toys R Us?
People with no money? Hardly. So going to the parking lot and taking
things out of one shopping cart and putting them in another, what
good is that going to do? We can't move things far anyway--it just
wipes us out even to jostle stuff. So none of this stuff about bags
of toys going down chimneys. It's pretty rare for something to show
up under the tree that Mom and Dad didn't know about in advance.

Besides, we have to be really intense in order to move things,
right? So here's what we do on Christmas patrol.

We watch for people with more than they need to be out around poor
people. Or for poor kids to be in a place where there's plenty of
money changing hands. I'll be teamed up with one of the singing
elves, and she'll distract the rich guy while he's handling his
money, while I liberate a five-dollar bill or sometimes even a
twenty and cause it to drift down to the floor. Then I stand watch
over it, keeping it from being noticed by anyone until the singer is
able to entice some poor kid to be close enough, and then I push the
five or the twenty--or, heck, the buck or the quarter, cause
sometimes that's all I can get--out into the open, where the kid
can see it.

You know the amazing thing? The number of kids who immediately try
to give it to the store owner, or take it straight to their parents.
Well, once we give it to them, it's theirs to dispose of. The gift
has been given. And when you think about it, maybe the best gift is
for the kid with no money to give that twenty to the store owner, to
prove that he doesn't really need that money, that it's more
important to be a decent person than to have what money can buy. Or
if he gives it to his parents, well, maybe that's food on the table.
Sure, maybe it's booze, too, and that's why they're poor, but it's
not the kid's fault, the kid did the right thing. He contributed to
the family.

About half the kids, though, they hang on to the money, and that's
fine, that's even better, because you know what? Almost every time,
they use some of it to buy themselves a treat--ice cream or a
candy bar, maybe a cooky--but then the rest of the money goes
straight into buying a gift for somebody else. A little brother or
sister. Mom or Dad. Sometimes a teacher who's been good to them. I
even saw one kid who had four dollars and twenty-eight cents in his
fist--change from the ice cream bar--and he sees a kid who looks
even more poor than him, and he just walks up and gives it to him
and says, "Merry Christmas." Right then I loved that kid so much.
Because he got it. He understood. None of that stuff goes with you
when you die. Only what you did for other people, or to them, and
what they did for you, and to you. That's all you have with you when
you're dead. That kid, when he dies, he's going to have so much cool
stuff. Because he has a good heart. He won't be walking around the
streets of hell, no place to stay. He'll fit right in with the
light, he'll pass that entrance exam, they'll greet him with songs,
you know? And I got him the fiver that he was able to mostly share.
That's something.

That's Christmas. We just use the season to get gifts into the hands
of children who don't have anything. It's about hope, just like what
we do the rest of the year. That's what Nick does--he's in the
hope business.

*

So it's the day after Christmas, and we're back on the regular
schedule, but Nick, he comes to me--and the red suit hasn't faded
yet, so he really looks like Santa Claus--he comes to me and says,
"Want to take the long hike with me?"

I don't know what he's talking about, but I say, "Sure," because he
wants me to and it's only thanks to him that I feel like I'm worth
the space I take up, even on the streets of hell. Whatever the long
hike is, it's not like I'll get tired or have to carry a pup tent on
my back. So I say sure and off we go.

Straight up to the light.

And it's not a very long hike at all, not heading there. It's like,
no matter where you are on earth, once you decide to find the light,
there it is, just a little out of reach, up and over your shoulder.
Nick, he goes like he knows the way, and I guess he does. Every year
after Christmas, he goes back to the light and tries to get in.
That's what I was along for. The other elves, I guess most of them
have gone with him, some of them more than once. And I guess they
were just as happy to have the new guy go along.

Because there goes Nick, straight into the light, and you think,
"Man, this time he's going to make it. This time he's getting out of
hell!"

He's in there so long. You have so much hope for him.

And then ... pop. He's right back out. He looks at you. Shrugs his
shoulders. "Better luck next time," he says.

Only I was new at this. And I'd been working on my sense of outrage
all year, you know? And it's not like I was getting into heaven any
time soon. I mean, if Nick can't pass the entrance exam, you think I
stand a chance?

So I stand there and yell--not speaking loud, because it's not
actually, sound, but I'm really intense, you know?--and I know I'm
not supposed to get ticked off at the light for heaven's sake, but
anyway, I yell, "Did you ever think that your stupid requirements
might be too high? What've you got in there anyway, a bunch of pious
martyrs? A bunch of goody-two-shoes never broke a rule in their
lives? Well take a look at Nick here, he's on the front line, dead
though he may be, he's trying to do something about it! I don't see
you down there on the streets trying to make life better for kids!
So what about that, huh? Ever think about how maybe some of the
people in heaven aren't doing diddly-squat and maybe some of the
people in hell are actually doing some good in the world?"

Finally I say enough that the intensity wears off and I remember who
I'm talking to and I think, Man, it's going to take, like, ten
thousand years to work off the sheer blasphemy of what I just said.

Only right then I hear something inside my mind, the way it must be
when the singers do their lullabies for the suffering children. This
voice, so soft, so kind, and all it says is, "Whatever you do for
the least of my little ones, you've done it for me."

And it about knocks me over. He sees. He knows. What we're doing.
What our work is. He knows, and he loves us for it, and yet ...

And yet Nick still can't get in.

I look at him, and he shrugs again. "Yelling doesn't solve
anything," he says.

And then he leads me on the long hike back. Yeah, that's the "long"
part of the long hike. Getting to the light is quick. Getting back,
that's hard and slow, because every step hurts, coming away from
that beauty and going back to the plain old world with all the dead
people preaching or being cool, and all the living people going
about their business as if life were really long and they had all
the time in the world. And you can't help but think, when you look
at the living, you think: It's so easy for them, they can just do
things, only they so rarely do anything that matters. So many
children, all they need is a word and a smile, all they need is an
act of kindness and generosity, something that any living person
could give them, but so often they leave it up to the dead. But the
ones who don't leave it up to us, the ones who are good to the kids,
they're my friends, you know? They're my sisters and my brothers. I
can't do anything to show them how I feel, but I'm glad they're
alive. They're the only reason hell isn't more, well, hellish.

Finally we got back, down on the streets of hell. And Nick says,
"Another year to go."

And I say, "Nick, thanks for letting me be part of it. Maybe it's
not good enough for them, but it's good enough for me."

And he grins and even though he doesn't move, it feels like he just
clapped me on the shoulder, and he says, "Then it's good enough for
me, too." And off he goes.

Only there's something wrong with this picture. I'm seeing him but
there's more to him than the red suit. There's a kind of jauntiness
in his step, and even though that's probably my own mind creating
the image that fits what I'm sensing about him, the fact is that
it's still true. Nick just failed for the fifteen hundredth time to
get into heaven, and he's almost dancing.

"Hey!" says I. "Hey, Santa!"

He turns around and there we are, face to face, and I say, "What are
you so happy about?"

"It was a good Christmas," he says, all innocentlike, and I know
he's not lying because you can't, but he's also not exactly
answering me.

"How come you didn't make it this year?" I demanded.

"I don't think you get a list," he says.

"Bull," says I. "I came out of that light knowing every little sin I
ever committed. You got the whole inventory, Nick. And I want to
know what it is that keeps you out."

He turns around slowly, indicating the street around him. All the
Christmas decorations are still up, of course, and there in every
window, there's his face, Santa Claus, grinning and selling stuff.
"It's all that," he says.

"What, the Christmas decorations?"

"The fact that it's my face and not his."

"You don't paint those pictures! You don't hang them up!"

"Yeah, but I like it that they're there. I like being famous. He
never did."

"And that's it? That's all?"

"I don't even know if that's the reason," he says. "Because they
don't give me a list of sins. But it's a story. Better than nothing,
right?"

And off he goes, this time for real, and it's time to get back on
the bully patrol, but a thought crosses my mind. Maybe the reason
they don't give him a list of sins is because there isn't one. Not
for him. Because there aren't any sins. He was in the light an
awfully long time before he bounced out. What if he didn't get
bounced at all? What if, every year, he chooses to come back even
though he doesn't have to? Because he'd rather be here, homeless in
hell, doing the work he does, than to be happy in heaven. In fact,
maybe heaven would be hell to him, knowing that he could be leading
us in helping kids, only there he is with a harp or whatever. So the
only way for him to be in heaven is not to be in heaven. He's got
work to do, and he's doing it, and that's heaven for him.

And then this really strange thought comes to me. What if that's all
heaven is for anybody? What if everybody gets bounced down to the
streets of hell, but if you find the right things to do, it becomes
heaven for you? Look what I've got: A job to do that matters in the
world. Good friends to work with. Nick leading me, a man I can look
up to. Tell me what heaven's got that's any better than that.

Hey, it can't be true. I mean, if it were true, wouldn't St. Francis
and St. Peter and all those guys be down here, working alongside us?
No, heaven's heaven, and I'm in hell. Maybe Nick's an angel in
disguise, and maybe he's just what he seems to be--another
homeless dead guy desperate to figure out a way to get off the
streets. What difference does it make?

I'm not in torment. In fact, I had a pretty merry Christmas. I saw a
lot of sad things, but I saw some good things, and a few of those
good things, I made them happen.

And then I thought, maybe I could make even more good things happen
if I could just tell the living about how it is here, about how it
works. I can't do it like an angel with a trumpet, so that everybody
would have to believe. But I can tell it like a story. Making
letters appear on a computer screen, that's a piece of cake compared
to getting a five-dollar bill out of a wallet and onto the street.
So I found a guy who leaves his computer on day and night, and I
wrote all this down, and now you're reading it, and you can take it
as fiction or you can take it as truth, it doesn't matter to me. I
don't care what you believe. I just care what you do.

Well, I've taken just about as much time off as I can spare. Like
the old joke says, "Back on your heads!" I'm up to my neck in it and
there's only a few of us to shovel. Merry Christmas. God bless us
every one. Suffer little children to come unto me. All that stuff.