The Ghost of Christmas Present by Scott Abbott

Author:Scott Abbott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books

Chapter 14

A TRUE LABORER

Patrick sat by Braden’s hospital bed, but he looked out the night window instead of fixing his gaze on the boy as he’d always done. The day had shaken him.

It had started out with such a glow of hope, with recalling Rebecca’s observation of pain being obligatory and suffering being optional. It was a strange refrain, but somehow her words offered Patrick the sense that life itself was dropping a whispered promise into his cup that his life as Braden’s father wouldn’t be interrupted after all.

After Linda’s sudden death, being a father had been the most painful thing Patrick had ever experienced. But he had done everything he could think of to keep the suffering outside in the hospital hallway and not in his son’s room. He had never broken down into sobs just to hear himself cry. He had never cursed the night clouds just so he could hear his own voice shout, “You’ve stolen my wife, and now you come for my son?”

Those would have been the outbursts of suffering. And it became clear to him through Rebecca’s words that when he had decided to beg in disguise, it was another way he had turned away from any self-­manufactured misery and instead embraced the pain that living brings.

But the day that had started out with Rebecca’s promising words in his mind had ended with a criminal Kris Kringle. Perhaps Patrick should just go to another corner, find another part of town.

But that was his corner. Those people were his regulars. And he didn’t steal their money with a forged badge. He earned it. He was providing a service. A good fifteen or so folks whom he now knew by name came up to him every day with requests.

There was Mindy, who worked in the café across the street. She had a son serving on an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. Patrick had offered up T. S. Eliot for her one day on her way home from work. “At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives homeward, and brings sailors home from the sea.”

She’d wiped a tear from her eye, dropped a five in his cup, and every day after that asked him to quote the same line until she didn’t need even to ask. It was simply their daily farewell to each other.

Then there was Kent, who worked in public relations. Patrick had overheard him tell a colleague on the street corner that he was planning to ask his girlfriend to marry him at a hockey game that night on the public video monitor. Patrick had not been able to help himself. “O, what men dare do! What men may do! What men daily do! Not know what they do!”

“Excuse me?” Kent was annoyed with the green-robed panhandler who had intruded on their curbside conversation and stood uncomfortably close.

“As all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.”

The young man’s face grew even more confused. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Patrick shook his head with exasperation.

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