The Christmas Carolers (A Novel)

This is a novel, suitable for Christmas presents. It’s for sale on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DMFN2X5S/ref=sw_img_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

Chapter 1. The Prayer

The Christmas tree stood in front of the window, beautiful and serene. Its colored balls and tinsel glinted in the daylight that poured through the bay windows, and sparkled from the colored lights that shone from within. From its branches, intermingled with the colored balls, hung angels, stars, candy canes, Santas, and miscellaneous treasures from Christmases past, some of them freighted with memories, like a drumset ornament the family bought for Jonathan and a big pearly-pink ball that Tess had fixed herself when she was four. There were fewer ornaments than last year. Some had gotten broken, as usual, and this was not a time to replace them.

They'd been lucky to get this tree at all. One of the local churches had a pay-what-you-can giveaway. Jonathan had offered $10 to the old lady at the checkout. But she had read his face and said, “Only pay us what you can afford. Keep that if you need it.”

“Well, thank you, then,” Jonathan had said, and put the bill back in his pocket. “Merry Christmas!”

Lord, Jonathan said, looking deep into the Christmas tree as if he were praying to it. Its beauty felt like a refuge from a hard-hearted world. Please help us figure out how to make ends meet. Help us just stay together as a family…

The room had a bare, ill-furnished look. The fine old sofa, the best furniture piece they had, had been sold two days before. So had Tess’s favorite chair, last week, and the kitchen table. Every little bit helps.

The two biggest mistakes he had made in his life, rationally speaking, were the two things that had given him the most happiness. Running away with the band, and running away with Vanessa. Now he heard her voice in the background, teaching a piano lesson.

“That's good,” said Vanessa in the next room. “But you have to keep the rhythm. You always forget your fingering on that note and have to stop. Try it twice as slow.”

The sounds of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” came from the piano again, slower this time.

Lord, Jonathan continued praying, if it be Thy will, I'll go to Alaska again, but… Give me strength… And help my children, help Tess…

He had called Sam four days before. Sam, the grizzled fisherman, the old man of the sea, whose nets had pulled a million pounds of snow crabs out of the cold waters of the North Pacific. Sam, the eerie loner, with his own brand of common sense, who got some mystic satisfaction out of the great loneliness, out of the powerful, icy waters. Jonathan didn't. They only fed his homesickness. Yes, Sam had told him, there was work. Yes, the pay was as good as usual. They would set sail after the New Year, Sam told him with a touch of excitement that Jonathan tried to echo. But really he only felt horror. And if Jonathan would commit to six months, Sam had said that he would take him on again. Plane tickets were cheap after the holidays. Vanessa and the kids could stay with her mother. Well, with her parents, but her father was workaholic and disengaged. Her mother had made it clear that while Vanessa and the kids were welcome in their home to live at any time, Jonathan was not. And right now, they couldn't seem to afford a place of their own. So the odds were ten to one that he would have to go to Alaska, again.

Across the room, Tess, eleven years old, was trying to play Candyland with little Paul, six, and little Jack, three. They would have played on the table if it hadn't been sold, but instead they were playing on the floor. Jonathan felt guilty that his daughter was so precociously responsible. She had a tact and forethought beyond her years, and Jonathan thought it was because of the chronic stress and precariousness of their situation. She'd had to step up. He wished she could just be a child. He, not she, should be entertaining the boys during that piano lesson on Christmas Eve morning. But he was too preoccupied, racking his brain for ways to snag a thousand bucks for the January rent.

Lord, if I don't deserve it, do it for Tess’s sake, he prayed, silently but moving his lips. She loves me. I have no idea why, but she does. Don't take me away from her again. Please, Lord, there's got to be a way…

And then, for a moment, a change seemed to come over the world. Maybe there was a rustle in the needles on the Christmas tree, maybe a slight increase in the brightness of the daylight, something subtle, but it got his attention. He felt a sudden surge of gratitude for everything. And then peace filled his soul. Grasping at straws, he took it as a warrant for the idiotic plans he had been making to rescue their finances by reuniting the band for a night and going Christmas caroling. He then immediately felt sure that was wrong. He gave up trying to interpret it, and just let the gratitude and wonder linger as long as they would, a sweet escape from his mental treadmill of worry and self-reproach. His thoughts dwelt for a moment on the cold waters of Alaska, and being a fisherman, and he felt his soul asking God: Is that what you want from me? He was ready to accept the command if it came. But instead, almost as if it were an answer, a Bible verse wafted into his mind.

“Follow me,” Jesus had said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” For about two minutes, those words seemed to shine like gold in his mind, and he could think of nothing else, as if God were directing his mind to those words as an answer to his prayer. He felt as if he were in touch with God, and it was intensely pleasurable. But what did it mean? What could the words mean, applied to him, now? Even as his heart felt profound peace, his mind agonized about it, as over a riddle. It was no good, he couldn't make any sense of it, so in the end, he almost forgot about it.

He looked at Tess, and a memory wafted back into his mind. It had been Christmastime then, too. The band was playing to a packed house in a city just an hour away, so Vanessa had come to see them. Tess was little more than a baby at the time. During the show, she had dropped a piece of popcorn under the seat, and went down to get it. Vanessa had told her to be very quiet, so she went for her popcorn so quietly that Vanessa didn't even notice her doing it. The popcorn had gone under the next row, and by the time Tess found it, she didn't know her way back. So she looked up on the stage and saw someone she knew. Daddy. A minute later, she walked right onto the stage, in the middle of a song. She ran to him behind the drums, as the song stopped and the audience burst out laughing. Vanessa ran up a moment later, melting with embarrassment.

“My daughter, Tess,” he had announced, to the cheers of the audience. Still, it wasn't professional. Danny, who had always wanted to be a real rock star, had been disgruntled.

Sweet little Tess. She didn't remember that, of course, but she did claim to remember hearing the band play. Jonathan had always wondered whether she really remembered, or whether she willed it to be true because she could feel how much it meant to him. She was a good little girl, a loyal little girl, so intensely loyal that it scared him sometimes. He had a ridiculous fancy that someone might say something about him, something unflattering but perfectly true, and she would break out in a rage and bite them. He knew she wouldn't do that literally, but she might be very unfair to others on his behalf. She was the one he worried about the most.

Specifically, he didn't want her to be put in the position of defending him against his mother-in-law. That was too much of a burden to be placed on the shoulders of such a little girl. But he didn't have much hope of avoiding it, except this one fool's hope of Christmas caroling.

Lord, please help me, he prayed again. Please help my dear little Tess. Give her wisdom to meet every situation… But he stopped because what he really wanted was just to keep her with him. I'll do anything You want of me, if only You'll keep us together…

This is, of course, the story of the extravagant manner in which God answered Jonathan's simple and pathetic prayer that night. Along the way, He also rescued several other people whose needs were more subtle and desperate. Indeed, the salvific nets that God cast that night evidently caught up far more people than I can tell the tales of, but most of all, He blessed the wayward souls of those Christmas carolers, and repaid the glorious music with which they rejoiced so many lonely hearts by miraculous help that turned them aside from paths of vanity and sadness to those of salvation and joy. Before I go on, I should give fair warning that readers of a worldly and realistic cast of mind might do best to stop here. The events that will be recounted include certain incidents that are decidedly uncanny, or, well, to put it bluntly, supernatural. I know it's not to everyone's taste to admit that supernatural events occur. Indeed, the reporting of miracles has become decidedly unfashionable. But I can't omit them, for the whole point of the story would be lost. Many tales tell how God is especially bountiful in bestowing grace around Christmastime, and this tale is a case in point.

Chapter 2. Vanessa

The piano lesson was finishing. “I'm sure you'll do a great job in church tomorrow,” said Vanessa encouragingly. “Everyone will be so proud of you. Keep practicing so you feel ready and don't get nervous. Your church congregation is lucky to get to hear such nice Christmas carols from such a sweet little girl.

“By the way, Mrs. Parker,” she added, “we may be moving soon, so get in touch before next week and find out where we're at before you come. Just so you don't waste your time.” There were warm words and Christmas greetings, then the door closed. Vanessa leaned into the room, then motioned to Jonathan to follow her.

“I thought of something that could help. Do you remember that job you had at Target? There was a retirement benefit, wasn't there? I think we might have withdrawn it to buy the car two years ago, but–”

“Yes, we did,” said Jonathan.

“Rats,” she said, disappointed. “Do you have any other ideas?”

“Maybe one…” he murmured vaguely. A weak light of hope kindled in her eyes. Yet she held herself back from asking what it was, for now urgent words were burning in her heart.

“Whatever happens,” she said fervently, “my love for you will never die or dim. I don't want to go live at my mother's. I can't stand the way she talks about you. In front of me. In front of the kids. There must be some other way. Isn't there public housing for needy people? Can't we go to a homeless shelter or something?”

“If we did that, your mother would always remember it as another grievance against me,” said Jonathan. “My dream is that someday she'll accept me as part of the family. That she'll respect me. That's why it's better for me to go to Alaska. I hate it, but…”

She heard his voice falter with doubt, and interrupted him defiantly. “I will always love you. With all my heart. Nothing can ever shake that or change it. You believe that, don't you?”

“I do, I must,” he said. “But to be honest, it's hard. Your love always seemed too good to be true.” He paused in confusion, wondering if he had said something horrible. “I mean, I feel so unequal to giving what your love deserves. But I'm sorry, forget that I said it…”

“But you love me like that,” she said with assurance, not tenderly or gratefully, but to prove a point. “You love me forever, no matter what, like I love you.”

“Absolutely. Even if I had to die for you–”

“Yes, that's the worst of it,” she said, interrupting a thought she did not want to hear. “I thought about that every single day last time you were in Alaska. If you slipped and fell into those icy waters in the night, what are the odds that they could fish you out? If I were to lose you… I couldn't bear it…”

“I'll be careful,“ he reassured her, or tried. But his self-confidence, never high, was at a low ebb.

“It's dangerous work,” she said. “And you make mistakes.”

You make mistakes, his thoughts echoed. Did he ever! And then his thoughts took a slightly bitter turn: She loves me, but she doesn't believe in me. How could she? She hardly even respects me. Why should she? But he silenced the bitter thoughts by admiring her beauty, her smooth face, her tender eyes, her long brown hair.

“What's your ‘maybe one’ idea?” she asked, as casually as she could, trying to hope less than she did.

“Well…” he began slowly, “the band is all back in town again, after all these years. Danny's in rehab, or just got out of it, I guess. He's staying with his mom. You know that Amos is back from Nashville–”

“Is Danny sober?” She interrupted him, to save him from chasing a dead end idea.

“Yes, he's shaping up,” said Jonathan. “At least, he bragged on Facebook that he had been almost sober for almost a week.”

She laughed, then stopped herself in case she wasn't supposed to laugh. Jonathan laughed to give her permission, and they laughed together.

“Good for him,” she said.

“And so I thought… maybe we could have a little reunion and… go Christmas caroling.”

He saw her face change, from a little bit of desperate hope, to an expression he had often seen before. It was an expression of trying hard to conceal a lack of faith, to avoid hurting his feelings by revealing what she really thought of his words. There was affection mixed into it, too, even affection heightened by pity. If you had to put it into words, they might be, “You try so hard.”

What she said was, “You mean, for money?”

“People pay for good music,” he pleaded. “Sometimes. I'm thinking of Ruby Street Mall. We used to play there as teenagers. Not quite the same group, of course… But Mandy, wow! I remember one Christmas, Mandy and me and Jack were playing Christmas carols on the mall, with a guitar case out to collect people's coins, And we got to ‘I wonder as I wander,’ and her voice was so pure, so ethereal, so high– I thought Jack was crazy for picking that key, but his crazy always seems to work out somehow… Anyway, she rose to it gloriously. Her voice was like some spirit bird soaring on a cold high wind. It seemed to come from a million miles away, from another world, but it penetrated everything. We were all spellbound. Jack and I stopped playing. We couldn't go on. One just had to listen. We finally came back in at the end of her solo and the gave it some kind of ending, and then there was applause, and the dollar bills started just snowing into the guitar case. And I remember one man, kind of a serious, proud-looking man, with half-gray hair, very carefully took two brand new hundred dollar bills out of his wallet, and made sure we saw it as he put them in the case. ‘That was the most beautiful thing I've ever heard,’ he said. We were just seventeen, and $200 was a lot of money for us then.”

“A rare bit of luck,” she said with warmth, then added sadly, “but $200 wouldn't help us much.” For the tiniest flash of time, he hated her for being so practical, but even before he had time to correct himself, she said the perfect thing: “I've always loved you for your love of music. That was where it all began.” Yes. All their old talks came back to him, like a blessing.

“Well, it's a long shot, I know, but…”

“I'm all for it,” she said defiantly. “I think you should go see your friends, and give people joy on Christmas Eve with your beautiful music.” The note of defiance, which was not against him, was so marked the Jonathan almost looked over his shoulder to see if Vanessa's mother were in the room.

“That's a nice way of looking at it,” Jonathan said with a laugh, “but we'll see. They're a seedy group. Very talented, though.”

Vanessa would not be an eyewitness of any of the miracles that took place that night, but she believes in them, if anything, more firmly than anyone on Earth. She was one of the principal beneficiaries. And she was full of hope and love, so faith was given to her as well.

Chapter 3. Little Miss Santa Claus

A few hours later, it was all arranged, much more easily than he'd expected. Jack had been called first, as the one most likely to have a gig. He said yes at once.

“I'd have thought you'd have about ten gigs on Christmas Eve,” said Jonathan.

“I could have,” said Jack happily. “My business is booming. That's why I can afford to save Christmas Eve for my friends.”

I'm inclined to see in Jack's being free a first touch of supernatural influence on that remarkable evening. Why did the most in-demand fiddler in the city turn down so many lucrative gigs to clear his schedule, and then make no plans, so that he was available for this completely unexpected last-minute band reunion? Did he have a premonition?

Jonathan had told Jack and Amos, the rhythm guitarist, the truth, that he needed the money, though he didn't say how much. But he told Mandy that it was for Danny's sake, to cheer him up after rehab, and Danny that it was for Mandy's sake, because she was bored. Everyone agreed to meet at 6:00 on Ruby Street Mall.

“Where?” asked Amos, the last to be called.

Feeling foolish for not having pinned this down before, Jonathan said, “Just listen for Jack's fiddle.”

Mandy had one condition: she needed a babysitter. Jonathan immediately volunteered Tess, without even asking her consent, then felt like a brute. The blunder showed how desperate he was to arrange it. Tess took it well when he told her, and started preparing feverishly. Finally, it was late afternoon, and they were getting ready to go.

Tess’s real name was Anastasia. Jonathan had allowed that name out of love for Vanessa, but he secretly never liked it. So when baby Anastasia had shortened it to “Tess,” which was all that she could pronounce, and that stuck, it suited him. Tess she became. A simple, sensible name for a simple, sensible girl. There was something solid and practical and unromantic about her. Yet sometimes she could take practicality to extremes.

“You might want to bring some toys along, just in case,” Jonathan had suggested in the mid-afternoon. “They might not… well, they've been having a hard time…” He trailed off, searching for the right words.

“Oh, yes, I've already packed a suitcase! Look…”

“Wow,” said Jonathan, looking at all the toys sand games. “That should keep you busy! But do you think you could find some Christmas things, in particular? Mandy and her husband have been… I think… rather distracted and quarreling lately…”

“Like you and Mama do sometimes?”

“No,” he said emphatically. He thought with poignant gratitude of their own (his and Vanessa’s) tender little quarrels, in which, nine times out of ten, each took the other’s part, contradicting one another as they each blamed themselves for something, usually for some financial peccadillo like paying too much for butter or forgetting to cancel a subscription. Their quarrels were an expression of love. “Not like that,” said Jonathan. “More serious.”

“Oh,” she said, and her face darkened. “You mean like the Jordans at church? Or the Randolphs?”

“Yes,” he said. “Well, maybe even a little worse than that.” He saw the horror in her eyes, with mingled pride and shame, pride at his daughter's innocence, shame at the misery with which mankind filled the world. “The point is that those little boys have been through a lot lately, and that scars a kid. It can make them, er, not very resilient. There might be tantrums, upset…”

“I see,” said Tess. “Do you think they're excited for Christmas?”

“That's why I mentioned bringing Christmas things,” said Jonathan. “I don't really know, but I suspect that they've been too busy quarreling for the Christmas traditions this year.”

“Do you think they have a Christmas tree?” she asked.

“I doubt it,” he said.

She let out a cry of pity, then said bravely: “I'll bring them one. They have them free at the Salvation Army, and maybe the church where we got ours, too. Where do they live?” He told the address, and she recognized the name of the street. “Then we'll go close by the Salvation Army, let's get it there. Do you think they have stockings?”

“I'm not sure Mandy knows about stockings,” said Jonathan. “I never had them growing up myself. And she's not very… domestic.”

“Then we'll bring them stockings, too,” said Tess. “We never got rid of the old ones after we got new ones last year. I can bring those. And I'll bring some candy to put in them. I never ate all my candy from last Christmas.”

“From last Christmas?” asked Jonathan with a laugh.

“Some of the kinds Grandma gave me I don't like very much,” she explained. “But other kids might. How about presents?”

“Well, don't worry about that. That's a bit beyond the call of duty…”

“No presents either?” said Tess with horror. “Well, we can give them… oh, do you remember that old teddy bear? The one Paul didn't like when he got it two years ago? They might like it. And…”

Jonathan listened with a kind of proud amazement as Tess rapidly remembered about ten underused toys, all the rest of them her own, that she could give away.

“You don't have to be Santa Claus,” said Jonathan with a laugh.

“Oh, but I want to,” she said with great feeling. “I have you and Mama and Grandma, the most wonderful people in the world, to love me so, so much, and those poor little boys have a Christmas without love. I'll do everything I can for them... Daddy, what's the matter? Why are you crying?”

Jonathan wasn't crying, exactly, but strong emotion had brought a tear to each eye. It was her innocence, so natural and yet so strange, that did it. One gets used to this world until one's mindset no longer admits the possibility of unspoiled goodness, so that when it suddenly appears, there is a shock of surprise that almost breaks the heart. How could I have forgotten? his grateful thoughts seemed to say. That's what people ought to be like. Maybe Mandy was like that once, long ago. He wondered suddenly if there was some memory of Mandy like that, deep buried beneath the soil of his thoughts, where it could never be recovered. Was that what the gallant puppy-love for Mandy that had haunted him for so many years meant? Had it been a yearning for some lost innocence? He sank into confusion.

“Are you sad because you're going to Alaska?” Tess asked him. “I mean, probably going to Alaska?”

He knew he ought to find words to answer her and dispel her alarm. But for the moment, he couldn't. She was too far away from him, in her little island of innocence. All around him loomed this gloomy world full of fighting and quarreling, pride and greed. You read about it in the papers, and you saw it spoil the lives of people that you knew, crushing their hopes, corrupting them. And suddenly, there, in front of him, stood a holy innocence that could still be surprised and horrified by a married couple tormenting one another too much to remember Christmas. It was so beautiful and so fragile. Alas, she would learn, and get used to it. She would be thrust into the hurly-burly of this angry world, and how could a father like him, who could barely put food on the table, protect her? How long would her innocence last? And what would replace it? Would she see something soon, maybe this night, that she would wish she could forget, yet be doomed to remember, her innocent joy forever a little dimmed by that darkness? And who would she marry in the end? Things didn't seem very likely to work out for her, the way the world was going. Would she fall into some bitter trap of a marriage like Mandy had done? For a moment, he looked on his daughter's innocence the way he would look on a flower that was about to be crushed by a bulldozer.

The words of an old Christmas carol came into his mind:

And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on Earth,” I said
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on Earth, good will to men.

“What's the matter, Daddy?” her tender words broke in upon his thoughts. “Don't be sad, it's Christmastime!”

“Oh, don't worry about it,” he said. “It's not just Alaska, it's complicated. But you know, sometimes people cry when they're happy. And I'm happy to see what a sweet girl you are.”

She laughed, apparently completely satisfied with the clumsy explanation. “Oh, I know that people cry when they're happy,” she said in a slightly superior tone. “But not happy, joyful. That's what Mama says. People cry when they're surprised by joy. How about Christmas carols? Should I bring a book to carol out of?”

“I'm sure the boys have gotten plenty of Christmas carols,” said Jonathan, glad to be able to give a happier answer. “Their mother is the queen of music. She knows lots and lots of Christmas carols. She can play anything on the piano, and such beautiful melodies on the violin, and her voice… ahh…”

“Like an angel?” asked Tess.

“Well, I've never heard one of those,” he said with a laugh. “Not like the cute little angels you see on Christmas cards. But maybe like the real angels in the Bible. Not so much a sweet voice as a brave voice. A stirring voice. It suited battle songs, but she could also sing tender songs, lullabies, ballads, anything. Whatever she sang, it gave you a little tremor of excitement, and it kind of cleared your mind somehow. It's like she made you feel more wonder at things…” He trailed off, remembering.

Struck by his tone, she suddenly asked, “Were you in love with her, Daddy? I mean long, long ago?”

He laughed. “For about ten years,” he said. “But not very seriously.” He immediately reproached himself and wondered why he had said it. Maybe it was because if he was going to force so much responsibility on her, making her be Santa Claus to two little boys neglected by their warring parents, it was only right to take her into his confidence. He wondered for a moment if the words not very seriously were true.

“Why did the band break up?” she asked.

“Basically, Jack and Danny had different artistic visions,” he explained. “Jack wanted it to evolve in a more classical direction. Danny wanted us to be a rock band. They liked each other's music less and less.”

“I see,” said Tess. “That's sad.”

She looked at him as if she wanted to hear more, and was thinking of questions. But Jonathan found the conversation hard. He'd always thought kids got bored with their parents as they turned into teenagers, but Tess was the opposite. She was too interested in him and in his past. She was probing the sore places.

“Well, I'd better look for some sheet music, something for us to sing,” Jonathan said at last.

And so, while Jonathan dug up some Christmas carol sheet music from various shelves and boxes, Tess was busy looking for wreaths and ribbons and wrapping paper. Soon she had a second suitcase and a giant bag full of presents, which she called a “Santa sack.”

Tess, like her mother, saw no miracles that night, nor did she even hear about them until long afterwards. Yet in playing her dutiful part, she would crown them all.

Chapter 4. At Mandy's House

They arrived at Mandy's house at 5:30, with the biggest Christmas tree that the Salvation Army had had, strapped to the roof of the car.

There were broken toys in the yard, broken blinds in the windows, and a broken porch swing on the porch. Some fall leaves had been raked into piles, but mostly they were still strewn on the grass, wet and brown and ugly. There was a bleak and joyless atmosphere. The weather was exceptionally warm for December, and it felt wonderfully like springtime in most of the city, but here, what you noticed was the mud.

Mandy came to the door with her violin case in hand. “Good evening and merry Christmas!” she said, not very merrily. She seemed ready to drive away at once, as if to escape the place.

Mandy was startlingly beautiful and eye-catching in a bright red dress that hugged her body, supplemented by a lacy white cardigan down to her elbows, which looked like a coverlet of snow. Her golden hair hung long, straight and smooth, down to tumbling curls at the end. Her glamor contrasted painfully with the squalor of the place. She watched the impression it made on Jonathan, as a representative male, seriously and with an expert eye, and then smiled with due satisfaction at it, before she noticed the plain little girl at his side.

Then she saw the Christmas tree, and seemed annoyed.

“Just in case you didn't have time to get one,” said Jonathan, after exchanging hellos with Mandy and introducing his daughter. “The Salvation Army had extra ones for free. You might need to show Tess around the place.”

“Well, thank you for the Christmas tree,” said Mandy in an awkward tone. “We don't have one, except for a small artificial one, I think, but we haven't got it out yet, and I'm not sure we’ll have time to decorate it…”

“Oh, don't worry,” said Tess, interrupting in her eagerness. “I'll decorate it with the boys. I brought everything we'll need, but if you have special ornaments that you want on it, please show me.”

Mandy looked surprised, and possibly annoyed, and Tess became immediately embarrassed at having interrupted. “Well, they're in a closet somewhere,” Mandy answered. “Feel free to take a look, I guess. Sorry for not being better organized. The boys are in bed, asleep. They're a little under the weather.”

“If the boys wake up and find their parents gone, and a stranger here, won't they be afraid?” Jonathan asked, feeling uncomfortable. “I wonder if we ought to wake them.”

“It'll be fine,” said Mandy, in a harsh tone, as if she didn't want to be corrected on this point, or even to think about it. There was a tense silence.

Tess watched their faces, and weighed her words. Then she wore her bravest expression, and said, “Daddy, I'll manage. Besides, I'm not quite a stranger. I babysat for Miss Mandy once last summer, don't you remember?”

Mandy and Jonathan looked at each other in bewilderment, then shrugged. Some faint memory of an exchange of text messages floated through his mind. Maybe Vanessa had dropped her off.

“Don't miss your show, Daddy,” added Tess.

“She's right, let's go,” said Mandy. “Parking's going to be horrible at Ruby Street Mall tonight.”

“We'd better take your car, if it's roadworthy,” said Jonathan. “Mine has a backlog of repairs like you wouldn't believe. It's horrible to drive, and there's always a good chance you won't get where you're going.”

“And besides,” added Mandy, “it has a Christmas tree on top. Let's go, follow me. Good to meet you, Tessa.”

Jonathan wanted to help Tess get the Christmas tree inside, but Mandy seemed to be on the verge of sharp words. He gave Tess an apologetic look, as he climbed in Mandy's car. One light was on in the house, and through the windows, he saw that the kitchen was as messy as if it had been hit by a tornado. As they drove away, Jonathan shuddered as if he had walked over a grave.

Chapter 5. Ruby Street Mall

Ruby Street Mall, several blocks of brick pedestrian street, lined with shop fronts, in the heart of the city, was very busy and splendid with Christmas color. Every tree was wrapped in lights, most of them red, green, and white, with some silver, gold, and blue. There were Christmas trees in every other storefront, and outdoors every fifty yards. Every shop was open, and happy shoppers bustled in and out, some without jackets, some even in short sleeves. Every restaurant was packed indoors, and some were at the outdoor seating, too. Fountains, usually shut off during winter, were flowing. With such warm weather, why not? Many strolling shoppers and sightseers were in family groups, more than in the past, when the mall had a seedier reputation.

“This is the first time I've seen the mall as busy as before COVID,” said Mandy.

“Lucky for us,” said Jonathan

“If they can hear us over all the noise,” said Mandy. “I hope it lasts. I like the mall being busier, like the way it was when we were kids.”

“It probably won't,” said Jonathan. “People are more retreated into themselves these days. This is just Christmas Eve plus the warm weather.”

Mandy sighed. “I'm sure you're right,” she said. “But look, there he is, there's Jack! And he's already got an audience gathered round. Wow, what a showman he's become!”

They saw him first, Jack the dancing fiddler, then immediately heard his music over the noise of the crowds. Mandy's red and white might be a Christmas ensemble, and Jonathan had a bright green shirt to complement that, but for festive Christmas garb, they didn't hold a candle to Jack. His costume looked absolutely magical. His billowing shirt was a bright Christmas green, crisscrossed with gold thread, and over it he wore a leather vest that had somehow been dyed perfectly to a bright Christmas red, while still having the look of fine leather. He had a plaid beret on his head, red and white and green, a white scarf around his neck that hung long and bounced as he danced, and a twinkle in his eye. Leather pants of chestnut brown and very shiny and pointed black shoes completed an ensemble that seemed at once dapper and elvish. In every aspect, especially his face, he was a myth come to life, a personification of the gaiety of Christmas.

His face was the crown of it all, somehow filled at the same time with wild glee and solemn joy, shifting and intermingling with each other. And all the while, his bow sawed and leaped over the strings. He played the crowd masterfully, leaning into and out of it, accosting now one and now another with his bright eyes, greeting them and he did so with his fiddle, with a significant ascending scale, or an eloquent arpeggio, or by suddenly stopping on a beautiful high note where he waxed and waned with delicious vibrato, until his targets were overcome, and they smiled or laughed. Then he moved on with an answering grin. All the jolly chaos of his dancing music seemed to have some hidden meaning, some key to the riddle, hinted at again and again, but not to be revealed until someone guessed it.

Then, from deep in the crowd, Mandy took her bow and answered the riddle. A simple melody emerged, known to all, which all Jack’s elaborate ecstasy of music had been carefully improvised to harmonize with, from the beginning. “Deck the halls with boughs of holly,” she played, and a gasp of recognition rippled through the crowd, which parted to make a way for her as she came up to the stage. A moment later they were all singing. “Fa la la la la / La la la…” Jonathan took up his bodhran (a handheld traditional Irish drum) and added a vigorous, leaping beat, while the crowd sang on, and grew larger, and Mandy helped the crowd find the notes with her strong violin, while Jack’s fiddle carried on its wild and whirling adventure, now leaping up like flames, now spinning down like falling snow, now bouncing like laughter, now interrupting its madcap flurry of notes by suddenly lingering on some soaring of a note and relishing it and adorning it, and always his feet moving, his giddy glad face meeting people's eyes and inviting them into the dance, his whole body, lilting and quivering with the music, as the people sang:

‘Tis the season to be jolly
Fa la la la la la la la la
Don we now our gay apparel
Fa la la la la la la la la
Troll the ancient Yuletide carol
Fa la la la la la la la la

Jonathan joined in the singing, maybe to make sure the crowd remembered the words, or just for the joy of it.

See the ancient Yule before us
Fa la la la la la la la la
Strike the harp and join the chorus
Fa la la la la la la la la
Follow me in merry measure
Fa la la la la la la la la
While I tell of Yuletide treasure
Fa la la la la la la la la

And then Mandy and Jack, cuing one another with a glance, modulated into minor, and Mandy’s violin articulated a minor variation of the old melody, while Jack's fervent and captivating countermelody whirled off into dark legends, now grand and solemn, now fierce and desperate, so that they seemed to have nothing to do with old Christmas carols, yet they were gay, too, gay with a gaiety strange and fearful, yet somehow bound to Mandy's melody, which was still the Christmas carol in a new form, by harmonic mysteries which the mind couldn't fathom but the ear was compelled to acknowledge. She finished a verse, and then seemed to be calling him back, interpreting his wild notes into a modulation that she was preparing, and then both of them slowed, and Jonathan's drum became a suspenseful roll, and the crowd drew deep breaths, and looked to Jonathan as they prepare to sing:

Fast away the old year passes
Fa la la la la la la la la
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses
Fa la la la la la la la la
Sing we joyous all together
Fa la la la la la la la la
Heedless of the wind and weather
Fa la la la la la la la la.

By the middle of the last verse, the reinforcements had arrived. Jonathan heard Danny's strong voice carrying the melody, and Amos's guitar filling in the harmony and buttressing the rhythm with bold strums. So he put down his drum and hastily opened his pack, and he pulled out his cymbals just in time for a climactic crash! on the last “la.”

Chapter 6. The Band

By this time, Jonathan had noticed that Jack's violin case was already out, and the bottom of it was already almost invisible under the coins and bills. Amos’s guitar case had been set out to supplement it, and was beginning to reap a decent harvest, too.

As the applause faded, Jonathan sized up Danny's face. It struck him that he was a shadow of himself. He was not drunk at the moment, or not very, but he looked pale, a little bloated, and somehow joyless. Danny had always been the band's spokesman, but he was not himself tonight, and Christmas caroling wasn't his element, anyway. Jonathan decided to step into the gap. Pushing his shyness deep down into his shoes, he sprang forward and said:

“Thank you! Thank you! Merry Christmas and welcome on this joyful Christmas Eve night! I hope your halls are decked with boughs of holly, your stockings hung, a wreath upon the door, your tree aglow with beautiful colors and splendid ornaments, and your presents wrapped and ready to greet Christmas morning. For how many generations has that carol rung through glad hearts and glad halls? No doubt it has been heard by kings and adventures to the ends of the Earth, long before there were cars or electricity, and even the words, like ‘Yuletide’ and ‘apparel’ have become strange to us, but… the melody still… Rings down the generations…”

Jonathan began to stumble over his words, because Jack, deciding that Jonathan would bore the audience, or simply impatient to be playing, had stepped right in front of him and was staring gleefully into his face, with an insolent trill on his fiddle. Jonathan fell silent, and the audience laughed.

“... Um, what have you got for us, Jack?” When the further laughter that greeted this had died down, Jack began to rhythmically bend his knees to signal a beat. Jonathan interpreted his movements into the drum, making a marching tempo, light fast beats with a strong emphasis on one and three. Jack nodded with satisfaction, and then began to play:

Good Christian men, rejoice, with heart and soul and voice…

As he did so, he made his motions comically mechanical, marching a goose step with his knees high. There was laughter, and a child shouted, “He's like one of Santa's elves!” That was a good description of his clothes, but his movements were more like a toy soldier that had just been opened on Christmas morning. After the second phrase, Jonathan had the idea to make the drums more interesting with a quick half beat between the second and third beats of the rhythm, and was relieved to find he had some rhythmic creativity left, although he stumbled twice, before he mastered the flick of the wrist that was needed. The band let Jack and Jonathan finish one verse, before bursting in with harmony and song:

Good Christian men rejoice, with heart and soul and voice
Give ye heed to what we say:
News! News! Jesus Christ is born today
Ox and ass before him bow
And he is in the manger now
Christ is born today! Christ is born today!

For the moment, Danny did nothing but lead the vocals, but his fingers seem to itch for a guitar. He had one with him, sure enough, but only an acoustic. It was on electric guitar that he could really shine, but he had no amplifier, nor was there anywhere to plug one in. He looked awkward and dissatisfied. But he still had his strong voice, and on the second verse, Mandy and Jack let him carry the melody alone, along with a few audience members who knew this less famous carol, while they burst into an elaborate counterpoint accompaniment on two violins.

And then they modulated into an interlude. This was a dangerous moment for Amos, who had to provide some sort of harmonic backfill for the elaborate improvisations of Mandy and Jack. Jonathan thanked his stars that the band had recruited Amos some years ago to replace him on rhythm guitar, so it was no longer his job to guess what those two would do next. It soon emerged that the principal motif of this interlude was not “Good Christian Men, Rejoice,” but, unexpectedly, “Joy to the World.” Some in the crowd sang along, though not many, since Jack's body language, with his eyes focused on Mandy and his fiddle, didn't encourage it. Finally, as a long lingering of the suspenseful five in the bass, and a crescendo of shifting harmonies surging above it, along with Jonathan's accelerating drums, signaled the imminent end of the interlude, the crowd was in suspense, not knowing which song would burst forth in a few moments. The words came like trumpets:

Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart, and soul, and voice;
Now ye need not fear the grave:
Peace! Peace!
Jesus Christ was born to save!
Calls you one, and calls you all,
To gain His everlasting hall:
Christ was born to save! Christ was born to save!

But the crowd’s appetite to sing “Joy to the World” had been whetted but not sated, and now they didn't have time to finish applauding before a dozen voices from the audience burst out and quickly carried all before them:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come
Let Earth receive her King
Let every heart prepare him room
And heaven and nature sing…

By the second phrase all the band had joined in. Jonathan had a difficult dilemma whether to play the bodhran, which allowed for faster and more complex rhythms, or the cymbals, which were more impressive and climactic but quickly wore out their effect if not used sparingly. But the fact that the crowd had compelled them to play this one gave him an alibi for keeping it simple. He chose a pattern with an enormous cymbal crash on the “Joy” and “King” and “every,” the beginnings and ends of the long phrases, and softer crashes on the offbeats after “come” and “earth” and “receive,” etc., lending a sense of forward motion to the music, though it remained grand and climactic throughout. Danny and Mandy and Amos all let the crowd, and Jonathan, take the melody and sang parts, improvised but sometimes coming together in magnificent harmony.

Next, Jack started them on a tune meant to loosen people's pockets. After an introduction, to Jonathan's vigorous beat and the accompaniment of fiddle and guitar, they all sang in harmony:

We're one two three jolly lads all in one mind
We have come Christmas caroling and we hope you'll prove kind
And we hope you'll prove kind with your cakes and strong beer
And we'll come no more nigh you until the next year.
We'll sing of the baby in Bethlehem born
To Mary and Joseph on a cold Christmas morn
He was sent from above to be King of all kings
We rejoice in His memory and merrily sing

During the last verse, which urged the “ladies and gentlemen” to “put your hands in your pockets and give us our desire,” Jack put down his fiddle and walked through the crowd, holding out the violin case and looking into each face with that twinkle in his eye and his merry-Christmas-colored outfit. The happy crowd contributed generously.

It seemed time for a softer kind of beauty, so they followed that with “The First Noel,” full of lush harmony, not as slow as it might have been, for Mandy did all nine verses and hated stopping the story in the middle, so they had to keep it moving. The crowd was spellbound by the story of the wise men's journey, and equally by Jack's soaring, ever varying descants on the fiddle. Then someone shouted for “Jingle Bells,” and they did it, with Jonathan playing the actual jingle bells from his pack, and someone shouted for “We Wish you a Merry Christmas,” so they did that one too.

The next request was “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.” Mandy had gotten bored with the simple harmonies of the last two songs, so this time, exercising her long-standing prerogatives as the “harmony boss” of the band, she grabbed Amos's guitar. He submissively lifted the strap over his head to let her use it. Mandy was amazing. For sheer musicianship, Jonathan had never met her equal. Guitar wasn't even her instrument. She never played it on stage for a song. Yet immediately, just to show Amos what he wanted, she played rapidly through the most complex series of chords for “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful” that Jonathan had ever heard. Amos took the guitar back from her and repeated the chord sequence perfectly on the first try. Afraid again that the audience would get bored, though personally he found this feat of musicianship fascinating to watch, Jonathan proclaimed to the audience:

“On this night, two thousand years ago, God became a helpless human baby, so poor that He didn't even have a bed to sleep in. But the angels brought the news to shepherds on the hills, and they went running to the stable, and men are still running to the stable in their hearts, leaving behind worldliness and selfishness in order to see the face of God as it shines in every face that shares in today's Christmas joy. Come all ye faithful, on this Christmas day, and bring your gifts to God, and rejoice…”

By this time, the music had swelled behind him, and the crowd fit in a little applause for his speech before they began singing:

O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant
O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem
Come and behold him, born the king of angels
O come let us adore him
O come let us adore him
O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

The tricky part this time was that Jack wanted each verse to be much slower than the one before, so that he had time to adorn his descants with ever more trills, arpeggios, runs and variations, trying to do justice to the elaborate harmonies. It became increasingly difficult to hold the melody against such an adventurous background, but all the more rewarding if you could. It was all so intricate, rich, grand and joyful.

“Your improvisations are going to make it impossible to sing the melody,” complained Danny, after the song ended, with a smile and a laugh.

“I'll take that as a challenge!” declared the exhilarated Jack. And he was as good as his word. Thereafter, for song after song, he elaborated his variations more and more until just staying on the melody required all your concentration.

Mandy's violin cut in at this point with the melody that carries the words: “Just call me Angel of the morning, baby. Just touch my cheek before you leave me…”

“Wait,” said Jonathan, stopping her. “Let's stick with Christmas songs.”

“Who put you in charge?” she asked him fiercely, suddenly a little hot.

“It's Christmas Eve,” said Jonathan, though he had trouble keeping his composure. “I think people want to hear carols.”

Her face was skeptical and still a little angry. “Don't you think that's kind of a Christmas song still, though?” she asked him seriously. “It has an angel, and it's all about the breaking of morning.”

Amos blasted out a laugh of contempt. “No, Mandy, ‘Angel of the Morning’ is not Christmas song by any stretch. Come on!”

“Well,” said Mandy defensively, “how about this one then?” And she turned to the audience and to sang:

When Joseph was a-walking
He heard an angel sing
This night shall be the birth-night
Of Christ, our heavenly King
This night shall be the birth-night
Of Christ, our heavenly King

It was a beautiful old Appalachian spiritual, in pentatonic mode, full of old words and word forms like “usen” and “washen,” and she sang it with that same ethereal voice that had once sung “I wonder as I wander,” in that same place, when they were young. The band didn't know the song well, let alone the audience, and Jonathan kept a light touch, for the song didn't seem to need much rhythm. Amos strummed harmonies, and Jack lingered beautifully on high, clear, trembling notes. But it was Danny who finally found his footing and added the most interesting instrumentation, improvising in classical guitar fashion, with riffs adapted from what he would have played on an electric. It was too soft an instrument to have much effect on the boisterous songs that had preceded it, but now the audience hushed one another so that they could hear.

They added two interludes, and the second one was haunted by the motif of “Silent Night,” appropriately since the song ended on “And Mary's Son at midnight was born to be our King.” So once again, the crowd’s appetite for a favorite carol, once whetted, would not be gainsaid, and before the applause faded, the audience began to sing and made the band join in:

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin, mother and child,
Holy infant, so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

Next was Danny's turn to shine. His favorite carol was “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” and his clear, bold tenor voice, exceptionally loud, rang out over the instruments, over the audience, over the bustle and chatter of the mall.

But Jack took seriously his challenge to try and trip up the singers with the elaborateness of his harmonious countermelodies, and by the end, he was in a frenzy with it. The words Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born had to struggle through the whirlwind of notes that surrounded them like a halo of glory, and then the words ended, but Jack's improvisations did not.

For a few moments, they settled into a repetitive pattern, high and triumphant and vigorous. Then he threw in different notes and riffs, expanding the range and richness of his theme. He inserted a modulation, in a rather intentional way, preparing something, and then adventured into grand minor harmonies, and seemed to play all four strings at once. Then somehow a melody articulated itself in the midst of the storm, a strange melody, like something out of a fierce, dark elfland, but it seemed like a faraway foreign echo of something familiar. By now, the audience knew that Jack wasn't going to let them applaud, but was preparing to lead into a new song instead, only they didn't know what.

As the music began a journey back into more bright and comfortable harmonies, though no less bold and triumphant, the more musical among them tried furiously to guess the carol that was about to come. What familiar melody would fit like a glove into these brave and brilliant runs and trills and arpeggios, tame them, give them meaning? Some dimly guessed, and made as if to sing, but couldn't quite catch the right moment. Finally, it was Mandy again who answered the musical riddle, this time not with her violin but by singing:

Hark, the herald angels sing

And the whole audience joined with one voice as the song continued:

Glory to the newborn King!
Peace on earth, and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled
Joyful all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With angelic hosts proclaim
Christ is born in Bethlehem
Hark, the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King!

Jonathan didn't even play, but only sang with the rest. But Jack still wasn't done. The pent up applause from “Go Tell it on the Mountain” made this applause the loudest yet, and the crowd seemed to want to clap for a long time, but Jack didn't let them. He had an idea and was impatient to carry it out, so his fiddle sang:

We three kings of Orient are…

And the band and the audience obediently joined the song, and Mandy took up her violin, and Amos strummed grand, rhythmic chords. Danny sang a solo for each of the kings, but it was the chorus that Jack loved most, the spectacular modulation into the major in honor of the Christmas star shining in the ancient night and leading the Magi on that journey through the desert: that was what Jack wanted to express in sparkling waterfalls of music. He leaped and danced among the crowd, whose eyes were all on him, so that he was able to direct them, to make them sing or be silent, and he made them sing the last verse, “Glorious now, behold Him arise…” then made them silent so that the band can execute a sudden modulation, a dramatic modulation, stepping up by a fifth so that every note of the familiar chorus, sung out bravely by Danny's trumpet voice, became high and grand, rising above the rest of the song like the Christmas star over the lonely desert. After one chorus, the audience joined in again, straining to reach their highest notes, as they sang:

Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light

And again and again and again, for Jack's eloquent virtuoso violin, singing and soaring and weaving its spell of music, always full of surprises amidst the framework of the repeating words, would never grow dull. Many a voice was hoarse in its “Merry Christmas” greetings the following day, having spent itself calling out to the Christmas star and asking to be led westward to see the Son of God. Jonathan's part was childishly simple and ever so important, for every time the word “Star” occurred, he made a great cymbal crash, tried to make it as bright and glorious as the Christmas star, and added a dimension of climax that no violin could offer. And the dollar bills kept snowing into the violin case and the guitar case, and Jonathan was thinking exultantly, It worked! I finally did something right! I won't have to go to Alaska! Won't Vanessa be surprised! but even that wasn't the best part. It was the joy, the perfect Christmas joy on the faces of all the audience, that was the best reward.

And then disaster struck.

Chapter 7. Checked

The crowd stopped singing as a police officer approached. If the uniform was intimidating, the man in it was not. He was a short redhead, who must have been older than twenty but didn't look it, and very embarrassed to be doing what he was doing.

“Excuse me, folks,” he said shily, in the silence that followed the end of the music. All eyes were fixed on him. “I'm Officer Bob and… well, I feel like the Grinch, but… umm… the fact is that you're required to have a permit for live performances here, and… Do you have one?”

“But we're not amplified,” objected Danny. “We don't have microphones or anything. You only need permission if you're going to be amplifying sounds. Right? It used to be that way when we were kids.”

“I've never heard that rule,” said Officer Bob. “I'm new to the force. It probably used to be that way but changed. Now everyone needs a permit to perform. I'd probably have overlooked it, except that this space is about to be the venue for the St. Athanasius Church children's choir. They're not as good as you, but they're good, and their parents will be so proud. They've been practicing for weeks…”

There were groans from the crowd. Officer Bob turned to them and called out, “Folks, if you can, I hope you will stay and listen to the children's choir. They'd be delighted to have an audience like this! They'll be here in about two minutes.” But in spite of that, most of the audience, which had probably been lured by the wonderful music to stay longer then their plans for the evening could accommodate, began to dispel. Jonathan watched them despairingly. He was seeing his treasure slips through his fingers.

Jack saw Jonathan's face, read the bitter disappointment there, and knew the reason for it. He turned to Officer Bob.

“If the choir needs this spot,” Jack began, “there are a lot of the places on the mall where we might play. Could we go somewhere else?”

“Well…” Officer Bob looked unhappy and uncomfortable. There was a long pause.

“We're putting him in an uncomfortable position,” Amos interpreted. “He might have been able to overlook it, but he can't give us explicit permission to perform without a permit.”

Officer Bob gave Amos a grateful glance and muttered a confirmation. So Amos said, “Don't worry, we'll leave.”

“Let's go find a place to count the loot!” whispered Jack with a grin. Then, to the departing crowd, he shouted: “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!”

There was scattered applause and cheers of merry Christmas. “And a happy New Year!” shouted Danny.

“Peace on Earth,” shouted Jonathan, in spite of his disappointment. “And good will to men!”

The band packed up, and was just in time to start walking away as the children of the St. Athanasius choir, beautifully clad in angelic robes of white and sky blue, and trailed by hundreds of parents and relatives for an audience, began to form their rows and prepare to sing. Jonathan suppressed his unreasonable resentment.

In spite of the setback, the band was in good spirits. It seemed likely to prove to have been an exceptionally lucrative 45 minutes or so, but that wasn't the main reason. The main reason was that Ruby Street Mall was such a jolly place that night! In addition to the Christmas lights everywhere, and the Christmas trees, they passed a Santa Claus, with a child on his knee and a small row of them waiting. Something about the way the ground was disturbed by the residue of old foot traffic indicated that he'd been much busier earlier in the day, but even now, the excited wonder in the children's faces did the heart good to see.

The most splendid of the new features this year was a candy cane forest, reminiscent of the “Peppermint Forest” in Candyland, Jonathan's children's favorite game, and his own favorite game as a child. They had made a great maze of man-sized candy canes, arching over a little path of red and white stripes, all draped in great nets of red and white Christmas lights, and children were chasing each other through its corridors and squealing with glee, and laughing. There were life-sized Nativity scenes; a glowing, mechanical Frosty the Snowman who bowed and tipped his hat once a minute; and a glowing Santa Claus in his sleigh with eight reindeer. Everywhere, little knots of people were talking and laughing merrily, and sometimes they saw acquaintances and shouted. “Merry Christmas!”

The irrepressible Jack soon had his fiddle out again, looking the Christmas elf and playing Christmas carols and dancing, and accosting passersby with eyes that only just escaped insolence through the intensity of their gaiety, saying without words, Does my music please you? Then a tip would be welcome! And sometimes he tipped his hat to catch a bill that someone offered. But even that was only habitual, not calculated. It was even a pretext for sharing Christmas joy with all mankind, embodied successively in this portly middle-aged lady, that dignified old man with three grandchildren at his side, or this handsome young couple walking arm in arm. Jack liked being set apart by his gaudy garb and his brilliant fiddle, as a license to enact more Christmas gaiety than good taste would otherwise have permitted. “We wish you a merry Christmas…” sang the fiddle, and “On Christmas night, all Christians sing…” and “I saw three ships come sailing in…”

The law-abiding Amos’s guitar still hung about his neck, and he was visibly resisting the temptation to play it. Jack saw this, and began to mock him, now dancing around him, now blocking his way and staring with twinkling eyes into Amos's resolute face. “We're not supposed to…” mumbled Amos. Jack's eyes laughed at him, and so did his fiddle, in a cacophony of bouncing notes, which turned into an introduction to an extremely elaborate and boisterous version of “O Christmas Tree.” That got a laugh not only from the band but from several spectators.

No one seemed inclined to go home. Why should they? They'd presumably cleared their evenings for this, if they'd had any plans, and the reunion could go on even if the performance couldn't. Casual conversations ebbed and flowed, and Mandy learned how Amos had spent three years in Nashville, and played rhythm guitar for lots of eye candy aspiring country music stars, and watched most of them burn out, while others moved on to better supporting musicians than him. Then he had come home to teach music at a local high school, but he still did gigs sometimes. Jonathan already knew all that. Mandy and Danny were a little more reticent about their own stories. No, Mandy wasn't doing much music lately. She seemed a little ashamed of it. Yes, Danny was planning to go back to Los Angeles at some point. No specific plans when. He seemed a little ashamed of that. Jonathan didn't tell his story. He was watching Jack's efforts to stir up more music, though it seemed too much to hope for to get even a pittance of additional tips.

As they passed a display based on “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” Jack won a point. The amazing display showed all twelve of the legendary presents from that flight of fantasy of a Christmas carol: twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten “lords” (they were knights in full armor on horseback) a-leaping (and they really seem to be floating on air, for the metal rods that help them up were almost invisible), and so on down to a dazzling partridge in a life-sized, though smallish, pear tree. How could one not play the carol? So Jack began to play, bouncing as he did it, and Amos, seeming not to know what he was doing, began to strum the harmonies in accompaniment. And then they all began to sing…

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me / A partridge in a pear tree.
On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me / Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree…

Amos put down his guitar. “We should wait,” he said. That settled it. As soon as they were out of reach of the Ruby Street Mall regulations, the band reunion would turn musical again.

And so, as soon as they crossed the street from the west end of the mall right there on the corner, the instruments came out again, the cases were laid on the ground ready for tips, and are they burst into song with “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen,” and “Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming.” It was almost deliciously beautiful, but the noise of cars in the street interfered, and while there were a fair number of pedestrians, on their way to see the mall, the tips seemed to be only about one-tenth of what they had been. Those who lingered to listen seemed indecisive, for before them, to welcome visitors to Ruby Street Mall, 100 feet away, a 50-foot-high Christmas tree glittered magnificently with dancing lights of red, white, green, blue and gold, beckoning then to go on.

“Well, we should have gone the other way,” said Amos. “That's where the parking is, mostly. Here, there's some incoming pedestrian traffic from Fairview Heights, but otherwise, not a lot of people. How much have we earned so far?”

And so Jack pulled the loot out of his violin case, and sorted the ones and the fives and the tens and the twenties with swift fingers. Now and then a fifty appeared, and once, a hundred dollar bill, and Jonathan almost fancied he saw Benjamin Franklin smiling with Christmas cheer. Jack counted and did some calculations, then started making five piles of cash, as he said, “$320 apiece! Not bad for less than an hour's worth of music!”

But as the others cheered, Jack looked at Jonathan's face and saw that he was crestfallen. So he proclaimed adventurously, “I'm not done! I need to play more music! Where's our next venue?”

“I don't think we'll find one, at this late hour,” said Amos. “And there's not a venue in a hundred miles to match Ruby Street Mall.”

“Shall we walk Fairview Heights, since we're here?” suggested Mandy. Fairview Heights was the second-most affluent neighborhood in the city, and famous for its Christmas light displays.

“I'm afraid that Jack will embarrass us by dancing and fiddling in the faces of all the rich people until he gets arrested,” said Amos, but his smile showed he was joking.

“I solemnly promise not to play my fiddle,” said Jack, joking in his turn, “unless I feel like it.”

And so the five musical vagabonds began to meander the uphill streets that wound their way among the affluent domiciles of Fairview Heights, which seemed to compete with each other to dazzle the eyes of visitors. And with this magnificent backdrop, their talk became free and easy, for it turned out that, though they had long been apart and had had their differences back in the day, they were a group of loving friends after all, enjoying one another's company in this festive season, and confiding and admiring and sympathizing, their hearts almost as harmonious as their music. Even Jack's fiddle fell silent, not because of any shyness about disturbing the grand quiet of the place with merry melodies, but because, for the moment, he preferred the conversation of his friends even to Christmas carols.

Chapter 8. Reason and Myth

It's a funny thing with conversation, that sometimes the mood of a conversation is memorable, but the words are not, while at other moments, the words become suddenly monumental, echoing down the years or even the generations, infinitely decisive and important. And you never know when it might go from one to the other. Thus, it was in the most casual way that Mandy remarked:

“That carol we sang, ‘Hark, the Herald Angels Sing’... You know, I've heard it all my life, but it only occurred to me tonight how deep those lyrics really are. One thing I don't understand, though. Why is the angel named Harold?”

Everyone laughed at that, especially Amos, and then even Mandy, though she didn't know the reason and it was at her expense.

“Not Harold, the name,” explained Amos. “Herald, h-e-r-a-l-d. An official messenger, bringing important news. It's an old-fashioned word, for an old-fashioned custom. In the Middle Ages, there was a whole art to it, with all sorts of elaborate ceremony, different colors and coats of arms for different noble houses, and all that.”

“So they were messengers? What was the news?” asked Mandy.

If anyone had been watching Amos's face at that moment, they would have seen a flash of contempt at Mandy's stupidity. Fortunately, no one was, and his voice did not betray it.

“The news of Christ's birth, of course,” said Amos.

“Oh, right,” agreed Mandy. “One other question. What does ‘Veiled in flesh the Godhead see’ mean?”

“Well, answered Amos, first of all, ‘veiled’ means ‘clothed,’ but in a way that involves concealment, or hidden identity. ‘Veiled in flesh’ means that Jesus bore a fleshly human form, but for him, that wasn't who he really was, or the whole of who he was, it was a kind of veil. So that Satan wouldn't know who he was dealing with. The Godhead means the Trinity, that is, the three-persons-in-one God that Christians believe in. You've heard the expression ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit?’ That's the Trinity: one God in three persons. Now, of course, Jesus is identified with the second person of the Trinity, the Son. But when you see part of a thing, you can say that you saw the thing. If you saw the bumper of a car sticking out of the garage, you can say that you saw the car. So if we see the Son, we can say, in a sense, that we saw the Trinity, the whole Godhead–”

“How do you know all this?” asked Mandy, suddenly more interested in the sources of Amos's inexplicable expertise than in the too difficult answer to her question.

“I'm fascinated by Christian theology.”

“But you don't believe it,” objected Mandy.

“Atheist to the bone,” he agreed. “It's all just a beautiful myth.”

“If it's just a myth,” challenged Jack, who seemed a little stung by the disclaimer, “how has it outlasted the other myths so long? You couldn't assemble a crowd like that to sing praises for the birth of Zeus or Apollo.”

“Or even if you could,” clarified Amos pedantically, “it would only prove the point, because people would do it only as a historical reenactment, not out of belief. Yes, the Christian myth has outlived the other myths because it is more beautiful.”

“What about rock and roll?” Danny broke in suddenly. “Is that a myth, too?”

Although to Jonathan the question didn't seem to make much sense, Amos nodded with sympathy for a moment. Still, he asked, “What do you mean exactly?”

“Well, I mean, you can assemble a crowd to praise Jesus, in a church,” said Danny. “And at Christmastime, you can assemble a spontaneous crowd to rejoice in the birth of Jesus at the top of their lungs, just from strangers right there in the public street, as we just proved. Well, you can also assemble a crowd to cheer at a rock concert. So it seems like it might be… I don't know…”

“No, I see what you mean,” said Amos, “but I don't think you could write a song like ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing' that captures the common beliefs of rock music concertgoers. There aren't any common beliefs.”

“Don't you think,” countered Danny, “that some of the people on the mall just now didn't believe in Christmas, either? I mean, in the Christmas story and Jesus being the Son of God? You yourself were there, and not believing it. And don't you think some of the people in church on a Sunday morning don't really believe, but are just going through the motions to fit in?”

Amos gave a hearty laugh of approval. “A cogent point!” he said. “A cogent point! But now, answer me this. A churchgoer knows what he's supposed to believe, and Christmas carol singers also have some idea of what beliefs the songs they are singing express. What is the rock music listener supposed to believe? What beliefs is rock music supposed to express? Do they have any common doctrines?”

“Sure, yeah, sort of,” affirmed Danny, seeming to find the question a bit obtuse. “Peace and freedom and love and all that.”

“But everyone believes in those things,” objected Amos.

“No, they don't,” countered Danny. “Not everyone believes in free love.”

“Neither do most rock music listeners,” said Amos. “Because it doesn't work very well.”

Danny thought for a moment. “No, that's true, it doesn't,” said Danny in a sad voice that made his friends wonder what experiences lay behind that epiphany. “Well, other than for giving you a lot of emotions that you can turn into good music. Hmm.” Danny turned very serious. The band could see heavy thoughts at work in him. Finally he said: “So you don't think there's any truth in rock and roll?”

Danny asked the question with such an agony of earnestness, and with such an air of expectancy, as if all that mattered on Earth hung on Amos's answer, that for a full minute the whole group was silent, in bemused but serious suspense. Jack, seeming to think the increasingly vehement conversation was not suitable for the decorous streets of Fairview Heights on Christmas Eve, raised his fiddle and played the first line of Here we come a-wassailing among the leaves so green…

Finally, Amos said, almost in the tone of one breaking the news to a friend about a bereavement:

“I'm not sure that's ever what it was about.”

Danny struggled under the weight of that answer for a few seconds, then burst out vehemently:

“Well, it was for me! You know, it would have hurt me less if they rejected my third album by just telling me I was wrong. I could have asked what they thought I should believe instead, and I might have learned something from the answer. I probably was wrong. Sometimes I think back on lyrics I wrote, that seemed so profound at the time, and I'm like, ‘What does that even mean?’ Though it can be like that even with Dylan. I could have been Dylan, back in the day, I think I really could have, not as great as that maybe but the same kind of thing. But now, they don't even care about what's right and wrong. They only care what sells.”

“Nothing sells like Christmas,” Amos smiled placidly.

“Rock music is dead,” Danny suddenly thundered, not answering Amos, whose remark he seemed for the moment not to have heard amidst his gloomy reverie, but finishing his train of thought. “The spirit has gone out of it, and the corpse is rotting. It's as dead as those myths you were talking about, Zeus and Apollo and Christmas.”

“But Christmas isn't dead,” said Jack, smiling and resplendent in his Christmas costume, and whirled around, signaling with his arms to the whole sprawling world on every side. And indeed, Fairview Heights testified eloquently that Christmas was not dead. There were lights on fences, lights woven gracefully around the branches of trees, lights in lattices above walkways, Santa displays, some with reindeer, Nativities, two grinches and what seemed like an Ebenezer Scrooge, several outdoor Christmas trees, topped with shining stars and decked in sparkling ornaments. Everything was blazingly festive. Up the hillside above them, for Fairview Heights is built upon steep slopes, row upon row of rooftops bedecked with lights dazzled the eye.

“But Amos doesn't believe in it,” continued Danny, impatiently refuting Jack's argument. “And he just said that it's only about selling.”

But at that moment, unbeknownst to Danny, something very strange and wonderful was happening. While Danny was absorbed by the echoes of his own rant, the other four saw it. At the exact moment when Jack, having executed an exuberant pirouette as he gestured to the gorgeously festive neighborhood as proof that Christmas wasn't dead, landed on his feet, they saw something impossible, inexplicable, breathtaking and wonderful.

Chapter 9. A Glimpse of Narnia

All that evening, God had been watching them benevolently, loving them and pitying them, counting up in their favor every bit of self-forgetful gladness and pious joy that their music inspired in all who heard them, and trying to influence their words and actions for good, and now He began to act openly. If we recall from scripture that almost every miracle seems to be both a rescue and a reward, it makes sense that God would choose that night to make an audacious bid for their salvation. All four of the band members who saw the miracle were, in different ways, doing a good work that night. Amos and Jack were helping a friend in need. But mainly, they were all out there praising the birth of Jesus on Christmas Eve night, and had already given a great gift of Christmas joy to hundreds of people. They were a seedy group, as Jonathan had said, but God chose their best moment, when they were doing the best thing, perhaps, that they had ever done, to cast His hook of grace, baited with miracles, into the midst of the troubled world, and start reeling those lost souls in.

Jonathan, Mandy, Amos and Jack all swear by it to this day, and their tales match almost exactly. It shocked them to the very core of their being, but in a good way. The memory of it can still make them tremble, but they're infinitely grateful to have seen it. It was magic, simply magic. Literal and indubitable magic.

For suddenly, Jack found himself face to face with a physical mirror of himself, a second Jack!

There was a fence of iron bars next to them at that place on the street, and behind it, in a kind of cobblestone courtyard, was the second Jack, with the same leaning stance from recovering balance after a merry whirl, a fiddle on his chin, a bow in his hand, a green shirt with gold thread, a red leather vest, two long ends of a white scarf still fluttering in the air with the motion of the dancing steps that had just been completed, and possibly the same plaid beret perched on his head. We’ll return to that plaid beret. It's important. It's one of the details on which memories differ. Above all, the other Jack had the same face in all its features, the same hair color, the same whiskers, the same smile, the same dimples, the same twinkle in eyes that were looking directly, intimately, merrily, lovingly into Jack's own.

It takes the brain a moment to process what it sees, and the brain’s propensity for pattern recognition sometimes interferes with the eyes' purely visual perceptions of light. That's why optical illusions are possible. And so, while the scene before them was motionless and did not change, their perceptions of it changed over the next few moments as they took it in.

The next thing they noticed was that the other Jack was not a physical mirror of the original from the waist down.

He had the legs of a goat.

He was, in fact, a Faun. But the odd thing was that that didn't make him less like a second Jack, but more so. It was as if Jack was a Faun at heart, all music and dancing and merriment, in a human body. The physical mirror revealed him.

Then they took in the rest of the scene, or perhaps it appeared.

It was the Christmas scene from Narnia, from CS Lewis's book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Animals were having a Christmas feast, and a fox was raising a toast. A solemn old Father Christmas, not Santa Claus but a figure with a long beard and dark robes modeled on a recent film version of the famous book, stood nearby, with a sack that must be full of presents. The table was decorated with green holly and bright berries. Mandy remembers seeing real snow on the ground all around the table in spite of the warmth of the night. For a moment, it all seemed alive. There were looking into another world, a realm of wonder and magic.

In the book, the merry animals at their Christmas feast get turned to stone, and it's very sad. Likewise, for the four witnesses, there came very soon a moment when they realized that the animals might be only stone, or some kind of sculpture, and they felt sad.

A new, merely natural explanation of the scene appeared as a possibility. Perhaps it was a Christmas display, crafted by an ingenious artist and purchased by one of the affluent residents of Fairview Heights to adorn a courtyard that faced the street, based on the famous Christmas scene from Narnia. And that's why the Faun was there too, placed immediately and startlingly at the front, looking through the fence at passersby, to surprise and delight them with its extraordinary realism, serving as the gatekeeper to the wonderful Narnia display, as Mr. Tumnus was the accidental gatekeeper of Narnia for the children in the book. Mr. Tumnus, of course, hadn't been at the Christmas feast of the animals. But he was included, no doubt, since he was the most recognizable Narnian.

They didn't quite believe in the new mundane facts that were starting to assert themselves. “It's like when someone betrays a secret that it shouldn't have been possible for them to know,” Amos said later, trying to express the feeling they had, “and then immediately pretends they didn't.” Reality was trying to cheat them, to force a mask of naturalness on a miracle, but they had seen it. The second Jack, Jack the dancing Faun, had been alive. The animals had been alive. The scene, all their feelings insisted, had not been, but had subsided into, mere sculptures.

Doubtless, at some level, they surrendered that quixotic conviction rather quickly. We're all too much in the habit of bowing to the authority of the laws of nature. Belief died, but left behind a delicious residue of hopeful misgiving that maybe the miracle was true.

And Mandy says that even when the motionlessness of the figures revealed them to be statues, there was still real snow on the ground all around the Christmas banquet table, even though no snow had fallen in the city and the night was much too warm for snow.

Anyway, even if the figures were not supernatural in themselves, surely the coincidence was. It was too improbable that the Mr. Tumnus figure in a Narnia Christmas display would so exactly resemble Jack at that moment in stance, face, and clothing. And why did he have a fiddle? In the book, Mr. Tumnus plays a flute.

They later told this tale to others, and it circulated a good deal, and inspired some fact checking and a lot of speculation. None of the investigators found the Narnia Christmas display. They did find the house with the iron bar fence and the cobblestone courtyard facing the street, but the house had changed owners by that time, so that was no evidence whether or not the Narnia Christmas display had ever physically existed. But presumably it had, as that was obviously the best explanation of the band's glimpse of Narnia, as far as it went. The uncanny similarity of face and stance between the two Jacks was largely ignored by skeptics, though it had been very striking to the eyewitnesses. But the precise degree of exactitude is hard to put into words.

However, the coincidence of clothing could not be so easily dismissed. For the highly distinctive shirt, vest, and scarf that Jack wore that night to have been selected for the Christmas garb of Mr. Tumnus simply by accident was too improbable of a coincidence. It established the scene as magic or miracle unless it could be explained away somehow. And so a variety of desperate explanations were floated, of which all but one were so absurd that I'm embarrassed to repeat them. Even that one is pretty far-fetched. If the skeptics had any other options, they would take them. But since it's only fair to represent both sides, here's how that strange coincidence of clothing might have occurred.

Jack was, as I have said, the city's most successful and in-demand fiddler. He had been making the rounds at Christmastime for years, playing party after party after party, and the costume that he wore on the night of the Christmas caroling was his usual one in all aspects but one. Here's where the plaid beret becomes important. He had bought that only the previous day, thinking it a nice addition to his ensemble, and had never worn it before. But the rest of the outfit had been seen by thousands. And so, perhaps, just possibly, the proprietor of that particular house in Fairview Heights had seen Jack perform, and fancied his costume for his Mr. Tumnus. That could also explain the substitution of a fiddle for a flute. By this account, the physical mirror was not a miracle, but an artifact, an artistic representation of Jack by an admirer. And that dispels the miracle and makes the event not prohibitively improbable to the laws of nature, though still with a character of rather striking coincidence.

But what about the plaid beret? That could not possibly have been witnessed beforehand. It's too far-fetched to suppose that Jack himself and his putative affluent admirer in Fairview Heights had the idea of modifying the costume in exactly the same highly particular way.

Fortunately for skeptics, the eyewitness testimony about that plaid beret is not unanimous. Jonathan and Mandy said they saw it. Amos says he didn't. And Jack doesn't remember one way or the other. So all you need to do is suppose that Jonathan's and Mandy's brains somehow overinterpreted the pattern of resemblance between the two figures and projected a plaid beret onto the Mr. Tumnus figure, and the whole miracle can be tamed.

The four witnesses' attitude to this story is almost contemptuous, even if they're polite about it. They don't seem to be willing to accept, quite, even that the feasting Christmas animals were mere sculptures. Perhaps that's a tribute to the sculptor's skill. Admittedly, by the end of the vision, their lack of any movement would be odd for living creatures, and a sense of disillusionment had set in. But it seemed more like living creatures holding very still for a game, than like even the most lifelike sculptures.

And then there's the snow. Admittedly, only Mandy claims to have seen it. But she has been very firm and consistent that she saw real snow on the ground, or what looked like real snow. It might have been artificial snow. That would make sense for the scene. Mandy has sometimes entertained that idea, and sometimes dismissed it as impossible. After all, I've never seen artificial snow that could really be mistaken for the real thing. Have you?

It should be borne in mind that the vision was very brief, certainly less than ten seconds. Danny kept walking and didn't even notice an interruption in the conversation. While that casts doubt on the vision in one way, in another way, I think that's the strongest evidence that something supernatural did take place. After all, if it had been merely a beautiful Christmas display– Mandy has said that it was the most beautiful thing she ever saw in her life, and the others have said almost as much– then why on earth, when they had no business to attend to and were in Fairview Heights apparently for no other purpose than to admire the neighborhood’s famous decor, should they have moved along in such haste? What could have been more natural than to stop and admire, and draw their friend's attention to the beautiful display?

But a kind of holy fear had fallen upon them.

Amos again expressed it best later on. “It was as if the figures were made of stone, but were slowly flickering to life. We had seen them alive, and then as statues, but they were likelier than not to come back to life and start walking about it any moment. And one part of your soul wanted them to, but it's really rather alarming if you think about it. You know, coming face to face with dreams come true, with magic creatures walking about in the real world. It would be wonderful, but one doesn't necessarily have the nerve to face that all of a sudden.”

What was the miracle’s purpose? Why did God choose to act in that way in particular? One can only speculate, of course, and the speculations that have been offered could fill volumes. That's not true of the other two miracles that took place later that night. Their didactic significance was plain at once to those who experienced them. But the glimpse of Narnia, that obscure and whimsical apparition, is harder to interpret. Still, upon reflection, a few things do seem clear.

First, it rebutted, in different ways, both the honest blasphemy of Amos and the accidental blasphemy of Danny. Against Amos's belief in a dull, mechanistic world, it answered with a sudden splash of magic to prove him wrong. And against Danny's clumsy words about Christmas being dead, it showed a world, namely sad, oppressed Narnia, where Christmas had long been dead– “always winter, but never Christmas,” as the saying went– but where it was suddenly coming to life. In the same way, there are many in our sad, oppressed world for whom Christmas has long been dead, and for whom their whole lives are a spiritual winter. And for many of those, Christmas came to life again that night through the deeds of those brave Christmas carolers.

Second, as Mr. Tumnus, in the story, was the gatekeeper of a realm of magic, so that glimpse of Narnia marked the entry of those musicians into a rather magical evening, haunted with joy and miracles. And the glimpse of Narnia helped prepare them for it. It announced that the world's routines were revoked, their tiresome old tyranny broken, and that the incalculable might intrude at any moment. It gave them a peculiar freedom and alertness that most of us don't have the strength to live with all the time, but that made them fit for certain exhilarating and redemptive adventures.

Third, it was a godsend to Jack, who was, as we will soon hear in his own words, on a knife edge between faith and doubt. The image of himself as Mr. Tumnus revealed himself to himself at his best, and at his worst. Fauns are, above all, merry, musical, dancing creatures, as was Jack. But Mr. Tumnus was also a corrupt traitor, in the pay of the White Witch, and Jack, too, had a propensity to accept the bribes of the white witch within each of us, that white witch of selfishness and pride that buries all that's living and glad in us beneath its ice and snow. He too had that fatal propensity to look out for number one and let his neighbor go hang. Specifically, at that moment, he was nearly on the point of giving up, calling it a night, and leaving his good friend Jonathan, who he knew was in great trouble, to sink or swim. He was tired, and hungry, and his feet were sore. And there seemed to be no other sensible option anyway. What more could they do? Against that temptation, an idea had occurred to him, a mad, wonderful idea, to revive an old custom, and go Christmas caroling. But the cold voice of secular modernity and its joyless laws had begun to whisper in his heart. It would be embarrassing! Was it even legal? But that glimpse of Narnia had silenced those doubts in a moment, and he found himself joyful beyond fear and shame, festive and dauntless and invincibly jolly. And so he became the band’s leader on that night's long, merry adventure.

Fourth, the miracle was chosen as the only way to penetrate deep into the stony heart of Mandy, the most wayward and desperate of them all, for she had once loved the tales of Narnia, and nothing could have spoken to her heart so deeply as to see Narnia suddenly become real.

That said, I've always felt the glimpse of Narnia was not quite in the style of the Biblical God, and might rather be the work of some angel or saint, with divine permission. In particular, I like to think that the saved soul of CS Lewis, dwelling with God, was allowed by Him to minister to the band on their critical night in his own whimsical, inimitable way. That, of course, is the idlest guesswork.

Meanwhile, the conversation went on as if nothing had happened. But somehow the four knew that they knew. They had seen one another see, and they didn't forget. If they had been alone, they would have started babbling excitedly about it. But in the presence of Danny, a non-witness who would doubtless be a non-believer if given the chance, they felt shy. So instead, they confirmed among themselves by glances and whispers.

“You saw it, too, didn't you?” they whispered to each other when they the chance.

And, “Wasn't Narnia wonderful? It's the oddest thing. Didn't they seem alive?”

And also, “It was magic. It must have been magic.”

Chapter 10. Here We Come A-Caroling

“No, I didn't say that Christmas was only about selling,” said Amos, carefully collecting his wits, trying to act nonchalant, and continuing the conversation as if nothing had happened.

“It has a commercial aspect, of course,” Amos went on, “just as rock music always did, even in the glory days. How could it not? And as for whether I believe in it… well, I'll tell you in what sense I do. Art and myth aren't about truth. They're just the opposite. They're ways to conceal the truth, to give life more meaning and beauty than it really has. You want to know the truth? Science. Matter and energy, molecules bouncing around, entropy increasing, everything slowly dissipating. But we don't like that, so we create art and myth as a refuge. And Christmas is the best art, the best myth. That's why it outlived paganism.”

“And that's why it's outliving rock and roll, too?” asked Danny.

“If you like,” said Amos. “I would agree, I suppose, that whatever dreams rock and roll once expressed seem to have faded, while Christmas is still going strong.”

In the long silence that followed, Jack made another attempt change the subject back to music. Here we come a-wassailing among the leaves so green sang his fiddle. Danny ignored the invitation to sing along that was written all over Jack's face, but tune reminded him of the existence of Jack, and he turned to him suddenly, urgently, and almost fiercely.

“And what about you?” Danny asked. “You used to be a Christian. I never thought it would last, with you hanging out with us heathens all the time. How is your faith?”

“I'm still a Christian,” said Jack. “But as most Christians will tell you, faith waxes and wanes. We Christians are always falling down and getting up again. And before tonight, I would have told you that my faith was at rather a low point. Honestly, I think it's this new minister at my church. The old one, the one who had nourished my faith for many years, was half an Old Testament prophet, full of stern warnings, and half a Santa Claus with a twinkle in his eye. He was an odd one, but he really believed. But this new minister…”

“He's probably like Amos,” growled Danny bitterly, “who only believes in myths as a way of shielding us from the truth, and the truth is just this skull of a universe that we call science!”

Jack laughed. “Well, it might not be so bad as that. I think he believes in progress, and assumes that new ideas are better than the old ones, but he values love and mercy and all that. Sometimes I think these progressives haven't mastered the art of being merciful to the merciless, of loving even those who are consumed by hatred. The old ways hated sin more, and sometimes they could love sinners with the same zeal. Now what isn't black is gray, and gray isn't as good at forgiveness as the old black-and-white certainties, if you know what I mean. But you probably don't because I didn't express it well…” He paused to try to explain better.

“You know, this pose of superiority to our ancestors muddles everything. Even when something's true, you can't believe it in the right way if you're always feeling smug for believing it compared to past generations who didn't. And it's a mistake to think that something must be wrong because it was believed of old. If anything, it's the other way around. But these progressives, if they are still Christians, still can't help teaching the faith so that everything is pervaded by an apology for not being more scientific… I don't know how to express it, but something has been lost…”

“Authenticity,” said Danny with conviction.

“What is ‘authenticity?’” asked Amos.

For the next few moments, Danny was visibly struggling to come up with an adequate answer. The word was clearly important to him. But then he gave up and merely said, “It's Jack, when he's playing a Christmas carol!”

Everyone laughed, and Jack said, “Well, yes, that's what I was building up to. Tonight, seeing those people singing those old, old songs with such joy... Do you remember that grandmother near the front? That old, old lady with that throng around her… you know…”

“Yes, she was a problem,” said Amos. “She was surprisingly loud for one so feeble, and she was a quarter step off pitch more than half the time.”

“Exactly right,” agreed. Jack. “But what an image of rapture! She was 80 years old if she was a day. And she's been singing those same songs, I'll bet, as long as she can remember. And now her grandchildren are around her, singing them too, with almost as much gusto as she! It rekindled my faith. I don't want to look down on our ancestors who wrote these beloved carols. I want to dance and sing with them, with the dead. I'm in awe of them for writing these carols, for thinking the thoughts and feeling the feelings that made these carols possible, for cherishing and hallowing them. I want to admire them, to strive to capture their secret, and to live in a way that would make them proud. It's truer, and it's so much more fun. And a lot of people feel that way. That's what we saw tonight. A group of strangers, swept up at random, like dust into a dustbin, by the sound of a little music, and all at once their hearts are as one and they're rejoicing and praising God, just as the shepherds did long ago on the first Christmas night. I felt my faith burning inside me again. But now I'm afraid it will cool. That's why we've got to keep playing!”

Amos remembered Jonathan then, and Jack's ulterior motive for trying to work in more live performance that night. “Well, how do you propose to do that? And what have you been insinuating with that melody you keep playing?” he asked.

“Well, why don't you sing the answer?” said Jack. And he set his fiddle on his shoulder and his bow to the string, and on the first note they were all singing along. Mandy led, knowing the words best, though she said “caroling” rather than “wassailing”:

Here we come a-caroling among the leaves so green
Here we come a-wandering so fair to be seen
Love and joy come to you
And to you glad Christmas too
And god bless you and send you a happy New Year
And God send you a happy New Year.

Jack lowered his fiddle to stop them, and said, “You see what I mean?”

“I think so,” said Amos. “You want to carol door to door, like in the olden days. It's a bit crazy, but I'm game if others are.” Jonathan thought he detected reluctance in Amos, and that Amos was agreeing to it only because he knew of Jonathan's need.

“Yes,” said Jack. “I know it's not really the custom anymore. But it was a good custom, you know? It was a wonderful way of being neighborly, of giving the poor a warrant to ask a bit of help from the rich, of patronizing the arts among the people, of dispelling the grimness of winter with feelings of communal festival. Just a wonderful custom all around. Times change, of course, but we shouldn't let such things go without a fight. If we're not willing to risk a little embarrassment for a better community, how can we expect to have one? And you know, even if it's not exactly the custom today, lots of people know that it was. They know the old songs. They remember the Christmas caroler who knocked at Scrooge's door. I'll bet there are millions in this land who feel a sense of loss that there are no Christmas carolers anymore. And anyway, what do we have to lose?”

And here, I think, came the first effect of the glimpse of Narnia. It was, of course, a crazy suggestion. As Jack had admitted, people just don't do that nowadays. But then, people don't see magical creatures and talking animals having Christmas feasts, either. Perhaps the rules didn't apply that night. And Jack himself, from the fact that his double had been present in the vision, had acquired a certain authority. They had merely seen Narnia, but he had been there. His double had been among the figures on the other side of the fence. Again and again that night, they had the odd feeling that the Faun had stepped through the bars to lead their company.

And so, to everyone's surprise, the whole band agreed to the plan almost immediately, saying things like, “Wouldn't that be fun?” and “Let's do it!” Just to say something different, Danny, the last to support the idea, said:

“We might as well spread Christmas, since according to Amos here, it's the only thing that's worth even trying to believe in.”

It was a bitter joke, and not particularly funny, but Danny said it with a grin, and his friends were happy to see that he was finding his way out of the blues that he had fallen into when Amos told him, or at least Danny had heard, that there was no truth in rock-and-roll.

But then there was a long pause. For a moment, they were too shy to begin.

“Let's start here,” said Jack, and immediately put his fiddle to the string and played the first notes of “Good Christian men, rejoice,” then continued as he bounded down the steep driveway next to them, towards the double doors, each adorned with a wreath, of a fine old red-and-white house. The band followed more slowly, caught up with Jack as he reached the front door, and then started all the melody and harmony and drums at once. A few seconds later, the door opened.

“Christmas carolers!” the lady squealed with delight. “John, come and see. They're really good!”

“I hear them, I'm coming,” he shouted, and though he was an old man and did not move quickly, by the time Mandy and Danny were singing, “Now ye need not fear the grave,” the man and wife were there together, in each other's arms, with beatific smiles on their faces.

“That was wonderful,” they both said, at almost exactly the same time, when the music was done, then added a cacophony of “Splendid!” “Magnificent!” “Beautiful!” “Sublime!” Then Jack said “Merry Christmas!” And the band said “Merry Christmas!” in chorus, and the old couple shouted “Merry Christmas!” in response, and the lady, dignified and gentle with her red hair turning to gray and all her clothing tasteful and exact, stepped forward and kissed them all in Christmas greeting, except Mandy, whom she couldn't reach.

“Tips are welcome, ma'am,” said Jack, bowing low, and holding out his hat as a repository for tips.

“Of course, of course,” said the lady. “John, could you…” But he already was, and the bill dropped into Jack's hat. “Come in, if you like, but…”

“We must move on,” said Jack, “and spread word to others of the good news that Jesus Christ is born!”

“Yes, of course,” she agreed with a slight laugh. “Merry Christmas!”

Chapter 11. A Sharp Tongue

Back on the street, the band members congratulated each other.

“That went well,” said Danny.

And then Jack showed what they had earned: a crisp $50 bill. And Jonathan added, “That was the funnest way to earn $50 that I've ever heard of!”

Everyone's mood seemed markedly improved, and there were bursting smiles all around, except on Mandy. She was gloomy and angry. She exuded a kind of darkness. She was silent as they walked down the street towards the next house.

It was a long stretch to the next house, so Danny felt it was a precious time to say something that was on his heart.

“Friends, it is so wonderful to be together again, to be playing with you again, and in the spirit of Christmas, I want to ask your forgiveness for breaking up the band all those years ago. We had something good going, and it could have gone on. It was my ambition, more than anything else, that ended it. And now I see what vanity that ambition was. I wanted to be a rock star, prophet of the age, speaking truth to power, stirring up some kind of revolution, almost. But that job doesn't exist anymore. Rock music is dead. And for the sake of that vain dream, I ended our long festival of music. I wish I could undo it. Jonathan, I now think that your attitude was right all along. You were only in it for the love of music, not fame, not changing the world, except by whatever gladness good music can stir up in people's hearts. You…”

At that moment, Mandy burst out in anger. “Jonathan?!” she said incredulously. And then she snapped savagely: “Jonathan was the least talented member of the band!”

It's not clear what had gotten into Mandy. Some grievance against her life, about how her circumstances gave so little outlet for her talents, had been brought to a head. Listening to the guys talk about their gigs was salt in a wound to her. Their musical careers were not exactly thriving, except Jack's in a way perhaps, but they existed. Mandy felt more and more ashamed by comparison. She hadn't played music in public for a year. She knew she had talent, more than them all. It wasn't fair.

And she had really wanted to play “Angel of the Morning” on the mall. Her rendition of it, back in the day, had been a masterpiece, evoking so poignantly the pathetic beauty of a woman giving herself to a man and asking nothing in return, sublimely speaking to men's fantasies. Yet she could have accepted being reined in by Danny, the band's traditional leader, or even by Amos, who could be forgiven a certain tactlessness because he was an intellectual and a pedant. But to be checked by Jonathan, of all people! That scalded her. And then to suddenly hear him praised by Danny, when no one had said a word of praise for her all evening! It was too much to bear.

That magic glimpse of Narnia, too, had stung her. She remembered it later with gratitude. But that evening, her first feelings of delight soon turned to bitterness. Long ago, as a little girl, she had loved stories of Narnia more than anything. Then she had forgotten them for years and years as she became cool and jaded and worldly. To suddenly see Narnia again, to be filled with that old imaginative delight, but then to be barred from entering it, and then to have even the glimpse of it taken away, it made the real world twice as empty. So there were miracles after all, but not for her. She had to lash out at someone.

The men all looked at her in alarm. They had heard that tone before. They had charitably forgotten her propensity to be fierce and sharp-tongued. Now they remembered it all. And she saw that they remembered. Amos and Danny started talking at once, talking fast, defending Jonathan with great heartiness but perhaps less truth. Danny defended Jonathan's value as a drummer, the way his beats had given a rock edge to some music that would have been too folksy, getting technical on the musical side. Amos defended his value on the business side, as a quasi-manager for a band that had never found a good one. But soon, Jonathan silenced them with his hand.

“Mandy, I've always known that,” said Jonathan. “You're brilliant. I'm in awe of you. You're way better than me. I was glad when you replaced me on rhythm guitar, and you got Amos, who could keep up with all your harmonic ideas. I've loved hearing them. I've always been your biggest fan.

“It's been such a privilege to be able to play with you. I knew I never deserved it. I know I just got lucky. And I'm grateful. Playing music with you is the most exhilarating thing I've ever done in my life.”

She looked at him with an acknowledgment that might have been gratitude if it were not so desperate. As if his words were what she needed, but they had not reached down to her in her darkness.

“Mandy, don't be afraid. We've been friends since we were kids. I'm not going to stop now just because you said something perfectly true about me. It's good to have it out there in the open. I'm not offended… And even if I were, I'll still love you no matter what you say.”

Yet there was still written a grief on her face like that of a person saying farewell for the last time to her only friend. But she said, “Thank you.”

Chapter 12. Another Magic Mirror

We are now on the brink of the second supernatural event of that evening, so I had better include as much detail as possible so readers can assess it carefully for themselves. It must be admitted that the lighting was poor. The next house seemed to be the only house in Fairview Heights that had no Christmas lights or Christmas decorations at all. There was no Christmas tree visible through the windows. An unusually dim light was on by the front door, and there was a car in the driveway, otherwise the friends would have assumed that no one was home. They went down the driveway on principle, just to give it a try. But the place had an unwholesome feel, as if the very pavement remembered angry, intemperate quarrels, words like knives spoken fiercely and irrevocably. Even the trees seemed sickly and sullen, and they noticed a chill in the air. Even Jack didn't put bow to string until they stood at the door.

“Well, I'm glad we're here,” said Jack. “This place needs some Christmas cheer.” And he began to scratch out We wish you a merry Christmas. After a moment, the voices, guitar and drums joined in.

They were singing “Good tidings for Christmas and a happy New Year,” and beginning to conclude that no one was home, when the door opened, a cautious crack at first, then all the way.

Something about the place made them half expect an angry face to appear and order them off the property. But what happened instead was, if anything, even more unsettling. The woman who answered the door had an almost mouselike timidity about her, and she seemed to listen to another verse only because she didn't have the courage to ask them to stop. When they ended, sooner than they had planned, she said in a thin voice, “Thanks for coming. I'm all by myself this Christmas, since the children are with their father. And the truth is that they like it better that way. I– but I shouldn't bother you with my troubles–” And she shut the door, abruptly, with no goodbye at all, and then the house immediately fell so silent that it was hard to believe it was inhabited.

And the words I will make you fishers of men came into Jonathan's mind at that moment, so lucidly that Jonathan prayed inwardly, in response: Is that what You meant, Lord? Is that what we're doing, fishing with our Christmas carols for lost souls on this Christmas night? But there was no immediate answer to this prayer, which made Jonathan think he had not quite guessed right.

Then he noticed that Mandy's face was as white as a ghost, and she was trembling.

The band drifted numbly back up the driveway to the street, and along the sidewalk. Eyes darted furtively to Mandy, for all had now noticed her state of disturbance. She checked herself for a few steps, until they were just out of earshot of the house they had left, and then said:

“Was there a woman who answered the door of that house?”

The men exchanged ominous glances. “Yes, of course,” said Amos, stepping up as spokesman.

“What did she look like?”

The men muttered various answers, like “short,” “brownish gray hair,” “round nose,” “thick set,” and “sad.” Then Danny said, “She looked like an extinct volcano. I think she used to have a terrible temper, but it burned itself out.” There were murmurs of agreement and disagreement at that. It seemed like more than one could know from one look, yet there were nods of sympathy. “Tired,” said someone. “Frightened,” said someone.

By now, Mandy was waiting to speak, so they fell silent, until she said, “Was she about 5’10”, slim-hipped but busty, with long golden hair, curled at the ends, and a long, slender nose?”

The men looked at each other in puzzlement. “No,” said Amos. “She didn't look like that at all.”

“You look like that,” added Jack.

Mandy waited and looked at them all. Then she said: “She looked like that to me.”

The men exchanged more glances, this time of alarm.

“Don't you see?” she blurted out. “She was me, in the future, five years from now, or ten. When I've driven away all my friends, and my husband. Like I did just now to Jonathan. I can't seem to stop it. I'm such a–” She said an ugly word, and the tears began, and her story became broken by sobs, but was still understandable.

Chapter 13. A Confession

“Do you know where poor Arthur is tonight?” Mandy continued. “He's working. He volunteered for the night shift. Do you know why? I shamed him because we can't afford the steak dinner that my family used to eat on Christmas when I was a kid. I'm afraid he'll go to every store after his shift, and somehow move heaven and earth to find me steak. And I don't even know… I don't even know how to cook it!…” She sank into sobs for a few minutes.

“I torment him,” she sobbed. “He thinks I don't know, that I'm just unhappy and tactless, but I'm doing it on purpose. Though sometimes I do get angry, out of control, and I've said such horrible, horrible things to him. I don't know how to stop. He'll leave me, and the kids will go with him, and I'll be all alone… I hate him, it's so wicked of me but I hate him for standing in the way of my music. But he can't help doing that. I shouldn't have married him…”

Jonathan watched in pity and horror as she tortured herself. He wanted to help her, but he had no idea how, so he tried to pray. But before he had even inwardly articulated any prayer, he found himself saying:

“He waited for you so long, though you never asked him to, and you felt sorry for him.”

“Yes,” sobbed Mandy, “and I wanted a refuge.”

“Music can be a hard life,“ said Jonathan. “You thought he might make it easier for you.”

“Yes, she said. An engineer husband to pay the bills. If we had kids, he could hire a nanny. He'd be a high earner, and all that…”

“But his career hit a rough patch?” asked Jonathan.

“He never really had the aptitude for it,” said Mandy. “I should have known from how difficult it was for him in school. I think he majored in it to impress me, and he worked hard and managed to get the degree, but he could never really do the work well. And pretty soon he was working at the warehouse, and we couldn't afford to eat out, and it seemed like every meal we ate, I had to cook…”

“And you had two sons,” prompted Jonathan.

“Those poor little boys,” she sobbed. “I hardly love them at all. It's such continual drudgery, wiping noses and potty training and carrying and buckling and scolding. How did I become so unnatural and cold?...”

“I'm sure that's not true, you do love them,” said Jonathan. “But listen, do you think you saw your future self tonight? If so, who made you see that, and why? Wasn't it just a warning? Don't you think you can change?”

Mandy looked at him suddenly with new eyes. She had never imagined him as a counselor, and now suddenly he was speaking to her almost as a father. “Maybe, I don't know…”

“Of course you can,” said Jonathan. “And the same One Who gave you the warning tonight can help you. Ask Him to change your heart.”

She looked at him with a startled expression, at once sad and grateful and childlike, stripped of all the cool sophistication that she had sported ever since she picked it up as a teenager. They looked at each other for a long time, then suddenly he took a liberty that he had never permitted himself in all the years that he had admired her and she had friendzoned him: he wrapped her in a full embrace, and felt her tremble with sobs in his arms.

Now this is a good opportunity to make a point about the impact of that first magic vision, the glimpse of Narnia, that most of the band experienced. You'll notice that Jonathan was rather quick to accept Mandy's strange claim that she had seen a mirror of her own future in the face of that woman. His success as a counselor and unexpected father figure in a dire moment was possible because of that unusual credulity. If he had not first witnessed that strange vision of Narnia, I doubt that he would have been able to rise to the challenge so quickly. He would have wasted precious time doubting and worrying about madness or some such rubbish. As it was, having been primed for a reduced improbability of miracles that night, for where one sees one white crow one is always more likely to see a second, Jonathan accepted the vision and became its interpreter, to great effect.

After a minute, Jack put his bow to the string and called to Mandy with a solemn old Appalachian melody. And she stirred in Jonathan's arms and slipped free of them, and began to sing:

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus our Savior did come for to die
For poor ornery people like you and like I
I wonder as I wander out under the sky

Overhead, the stars were burning. They had been there all along, yet they seemed to appear in response to the song, if only because the words about wandering under the sky refreshed the wonder, very natural to man and yet very easily lost through habituation, that there should be stars at all, points of light strewn through the dark abysses, glittering like gems, or to use a more apposite analogy, like Christmas lights. And Jonathan was struck, and realized suddenly: Starlight. That's what her voice reminds me of, at least on a song like this. Thus the stars would sing if they had voices, cold and bright and pure, ethereal and otherworldly, distant and mysterious, yet intimately familiar, ancient yet fresh. How can her voice be so perfect?

As Mandy began the second verse, Jack led them down a driveway to some front door. The mood of the song demanded a slow, processional walk, yet they moved with some urgency, not, I think, because they were eager to earn tips on the strength of Mandy's exquisite singing, but rather, because they wanted someone other than themselves to enjoy and be witnesses to such beauty.

When Mary birthed Jesus,’ twas in a cow stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
And high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall
And the promise of angels it then did recall

By that time, they were standing at a front door, beneath an archway of Christmas lights, with a Christmas star shining above it, and an exquisite Nativity just to the right of the door. Amidst the reverent animals, the kneeling Magi with their gifts, and the honest, humble shepherds, with the hand of a solemn Joseph on her shoulder, Mary looked lovingly into the face of baby Jesus. Jack rang the doorbell.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky, or a bird on the wing
Or all of God's angels in heaven for to sing
He surely could have had it, for He was the King.

The last verse was the same as the first, in words, though the band made the instrumentation somewhat richer. Danny, on guitar, alternated between splashes of reinforcement for Amos's harmonies, in a higher register, and notes that tracked the melody itself, while Jack soared freely, like the bird mentioned in the last verse.

“No one home,” said Jack, as they finished.

“For poor ornery people, like you and like I,” Mandy repeated solemnly. “I never really understood those words until now.”

Chapter 14. Fairview Heights

For the next hour and a half, or however long it was, the band prospered mightily.

They stopped at almost every door in Fairview Heights. Their feet grew tired from going up and down the hills, but the night remained wonderfully warm, and their voices and fingers seemed inexhaustible. “Angels We Have Heard on High.” “Lord of the Dance.” “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow.”

They moved stealthily down walkways and driveways, so that they would achieve complete surprise. The first thing the homeowners heard of them was a burst of music. “The First Noel.” “The Boar's Head Carol.” “Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar.” “Wassail, Wassail, All Over the Town.” “The Christmas Traveler.”

They were improving, finding new rhythms, new patterns of how to harmonize, how to hand off melodies between voices and instruments, how to coordinate with eyes and body language. Above all, Danny and Mandy found the groove of a two-voice harmony that was the best of the band back in the day. Their two voices, Danny's melodies and Mandy's masterful improvised harmonies, fit together and melded with an exhilarating charisma, bursting again and again through the luminous cloud of Jack's fiddle notes with spellbinding beauty. They were the band again, and the last eight years seemed like a bad dream from which they had just awakened.

Only Mandy, who had a photographic memory, seemed to know every Christmas carol ever written, while the rest of them sometimes had to look something up on their phones, or listen to YouTube Music. “Good King Wenceslas.” “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly.” “Good People All, This Christmastime.” “Carol of the Bells.”

They were having a wonderful time. It seemed hardly possible to have so much fun. It was hard to say whether the best part was the music, or the people, or the decor, or the solemn stars overhead, which seemed more alive that night. So many cries of “Merry Christmas!” So many cries of "Beautiful!" and “Marvelous!” and “You guys are wonderful!” One door out of four didn't answer, and of those that did, a few seemed tactfully disengaged, and eager to get back to what they had been doing. But most were delighted to see them, grateful, welcoming and warm, happy and joyful. Sometimes there were parties going on. Three times the band was invited to play for a large gathering, and once they accepted. “The Holly and the Ivy.” “The Seven Joys of Mary.” “Feliz Navidad.” “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.” “Silver Bells.” “’Twas in the Moon of Wintertime.” Often, the random tourists strolling the Fairview Heights neighborhood to see the Christmas lights would stop and listen to the band, and clap and cheer.

A kind of grace seemed to haunt their music that night. “I could never have played so well on my own strength,” Jack said later. “God's hand was on my bow.” But his colleagues disagree. He played very well, but he was a very good musician, and there was nothing strange about that. Yet they all share a sense that there was some sort of uncanny good fortune in their music. When musicians improvise, and especially when they improvise together, it doesn't always work out well. They usually stumble into dissonance some of the time. That night, somehow all their riffs and jams harmonized, often exquisitely, better than they could have planned if they had rehearsed for months. They kept getting lucky, a little too lucky for it to be merely natural. They grew increasingly fascinated, wondering what fine effect they would accidentally accomplish next. It was a musical wonderland.

The tips were good, though not quite as good as on Ruby Street Mall. Jack had his technique down. The inviting grin when he said “Any tips are welcome,” and deftly twirled his hat off his head to turn it into an impromptu tip jar almost always got a laugh, and then the money flowed. Some people let their kids do it for them. Better yet, sometimes the homeowner dropped in $20, and then yielded to his kids’ entreaties for money that they could put in too. “Star Carol.” “Watchman, Tell Us of the Night.” “Cold is the Morning.” “A-Soalin’.”

Of course, there are a few bad apples in every barrel. Two residents were decidedly grumpy, and one woman first accused them of being religious fanatics, harassing people and proselytizing. Then, when Jack said they were merely “following old customs” which gave the poor the right to perform for the better off around Christmas, and hope to get a bit of coin in thanks, she decided that they were “robbers,” and sent them away with angry words. But never mind. They were a bit perturbed, but laughed it off a minute later.

Better than the tips or the smiles was the surprise in all the faces. “I've never seen Christmas carolers before!” exclaimed two of them. “I haven't seen Christmas carolers since I was a kid,” said another. Some looked as if they had been lonely or sad a moment before, and suddenly, in their delighted surprise, they weren't.

At one point, Jonathan overheard Danny talking to Amos. “That strum you were using… Can you show it to me?” he asked. And after Amos had showed it, he said, “When I get back to Los Angeles, I'm definitely going to use that in…” and that's how Jonathan knew that Danny was planning to go back to Los Angeles and try to be a rock star again, in spite of his apology and his bitter words about rock music being dead.

Maybe the most delicious thing about that charmed hour was the feeling that they had escaped time and walked into the olden days. A feeling kept coming over them that might be put into words as This can't be happening and People don't do this anymore. To be caroling transported them to a century ago and maybe to Merry Old England, and the carols themselves transported them to the ancient Near East, and this weakening of their ties to any particular time and place made them feel, oddly enough, like they were coming home. As if time is exile, and eternity is our native country, and Christmas is the gateway to it, and each cry of praise for the infant King is a step in the path home.

It was the best night of their lives, the Indian summer of the glory days, and it all seemed too good to be true. Indeed, when Amos, who is pedantic about such things, circled back later in his mind to reckon it all up, it didn't compute.

Years later, Amos would sometimes strain his memory and try to write down on a piece of paper all the songs that he had definite memories of having played that night before a certain interruption just before 9PM. Then he would estimate how long each song should have taken to play, and add it up. It always came to too much time for the singing alone. And they didn't only sing. At minimum, they'd have needed time to walk from one house to another, and Amos remembers a lot of that walking beneath the stars amidst the grand houses and festive decor of, and panoramic views from, Fairview Heights. And while a hasty “Merry Christmas” might have taken little time, Amos remembers prolonged Christmas greetings and praise and gratitude and embraces and kisses on the cheek and gifts of food and reminiscences and laughter and conversation with the people they caroled for. Sometimes Jack had even shown uncanny insight as a counselor. Often, Jack had somehow known the names of people who hadn't told him yet, and who didn't recognize him. Once Amos saw Jack reading the mailbox, which explained it for that house, but overall, it added to the general sense of magic as well as presumably to the tips. Nothing about their Fairview Heights caroling adventure was consistent with the evidence that it must have taken no more than an hour and a half.

If Amos tries to add up the time by recollecting all the houses that they visited, the total is even more out of line with the facts.

Long ago, Joshua fought the Amorites, and the sun stood still.

Three other details about that strange evening also suggest that there was something funny about time.

First, Jack once seemed to say that he saw the Christmas star. “One star shone far brighter than the rest that night, and I followed it from house to house.” He only said it once, and perhaps it was merely a poetic flourish. He won't let himself be questioned about that night, but you can often get him to talk about it in his own way, and the tale is always a little different. Still, if he saw the Christmas star, some kind of disruption of sequential time, so the moments far separated by ages of history could intermingle, must have been taking place. And the other members of the band do recall that he led them with the kind of confidence and conviction that he might have had if he saw the Christmas star and was following it.

Second, by the same token, Mandy has said, in a solemn ecstasy of reminiscence, that one of the Nativity scenes had come to life, and that she saw the real Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus among the animals, then added that it was different from the way we usually imagine it, and said no more. There is a legend that a real infant appeared in a manger for St. Francis, and he took it in his arms. Maybe it was something like that? More likely, it was simply a sculpted Nativity scene that was unusually lifelike. But still.

Finally, in spite of the fact that they did a great deal of walking that night, those absurd pointed elf shoes that Jack wore as part of his costume, which shouldn't have lasted for 500 yards, ended the night not at all worn out and absolutely as good as new.

Jack has kept the shoes in a place of honor on his wall ever since, and felt a kind of blessing in their presence.

Chapter 15. The Convert

As busy as the band was, there were opportunities for a bit of conversation as they walked between the houses, so, with many interruptions which I'll omit, a talk went on in which the others persistently probed Jonathan's story. Again and again, they said “You were telling how…” and “Go on…” until Jonathan had told all of the following.

“There's something different about you,” said Danny to Jonathan. “I guessed it first from those intros you gave on the mall. Let's hear the news!”

“Well, yes,” agreed Jonathan. “I'm a Christian now.”

“Congratulations!” said Danny. “Was it for your wife's sake?”

“Not exactly,” said Jonathan. “I mean, no, it's sincere, and she actually didn't have much to do with it, although, as you remember, she is a Christian. At one point, I tried to bring myself to fake it, for her sake, but I couldn't. Actually, it was more for my mother-in-law’s sake than my wife's sake that I tried to believe it. She's a very Christian lady. But my honesty got in my way. I had some angry old anti-Christian tirades still bouncing around in my mind, some from my father, some of my own. I couldn't accept it.

“It was when I was away from her, up in Alaska as a commercial fisherman, that something overwhelmed me and made me believe it. It's hard to explain. I almost think working as a fisherman out there made me feel closer to the apostles, since they were fishermen. It made it easier to imagine myself in their place. The vast expanses of those wild oceans became a symbol of the greatness of God.

“I started reading the Bible a lot, just because there wasn't much to do when my shift was done. I remember that just before my conversion, I spent a couple weeks meditating on the story of Jonah, and how God called him to love his enemies, and when he didn't, banished him to darkness and the depths of the sea, but brought him up again, still held to his task, and he spoke truth to power and they listened. I got fascinated by the story, and felt as if I had been Jonah all my life, running away from God in my mind. But I couldn't escape from Him.

“And then one day, I read the story of Jesus walking on the water, and I simply found myself believing that He had really done that, so He must be God. And I could imagine Him walking over the North Pacific in the midst of a storm. Then I thought I heard Him calling me, inwardly you understand and not with my ears, but it was exhilarating and frightening. He was telling me to come out of the boat and follow Him, like He told Peter to do in the Bible. I didn't literally step out of the boat, of course. But I kind of stepped out of the boat of my narrow little habits and beliefs, and ventured out into the unknown, onto the sea of the great mysteries, with Jesus for my guide.

“Since then, I've been learning new things and forming new habits and going to church and praying, though I'm not very good at it yet. By the way, Jack, I've been wanting for a long time to tell you something, but I was too shy. It was just after my conversion, and I owe you much for the role you played in it. Not that you ever proselytized, but you were the only serious Christian I knew then, and you were always calm and cheerful, and kind when there was occasion for it. I didn't even admire you exactly, I admired Danny, with his turbulent genius, and Mandy, with her brilliant musicianship. I appreciated you, but sort of took you for granted. But I think I always had a latent curiosity about where all your hope and your peace came from, and later, I thought of that, and about how calm and cheerful you always were, and it led me… in a certain direction... Anyway, my point is… Well, I named my second son after you. Little 3-year-old Jack! But I see why I was shy of saying it out loud. It's a little… awkward to praise someone to his face.”

“Especially to praise a Christian,” said Jack, with a tone that was almost cold.

“Yeah, I guess you're right,” agreed Jonathan. “That's it.”

“Well,” said Jack. “I'm very honored. I hope I get to meet him.”

“You will,” said Jonathan. “We definitely need to arrange that… sometime soon… Maybe after I get back…” He trailed off vaguely. “I hope he grows up to be like you.”

“I hope he doesn't,” said Amos.

“Well, Jonathan, I almost envy you for being a Christian,” said Danny. “It would be nice to think you had all the answers.”

“Oh, I don't!” said Jonathan emphatically. “I know very little. Like I say, accepting Jesus is like stepping out of a little boat of false certainties onto a sea of great, overwhelming mysteries, where you have to trust Him every step to keep from sinking. Only the joy of Christmas can bear the weight of it somehow, and turn the great story into a dance.”

“And did it please your mother-in-law?” asked Amos.

“Far from it, I'm afraid,” said Jonathan. “It made her even madder, because I still don't go to her church. Hers is kind of angry and political.”

Chapter 16. A Christmas Present

Still in the midst of their prosperity, after about forty-five minutes of caroling in Fairview Heights, shortly after Jonathan finished telling his conversion story, Jack was caught red-handed.

“Hey, Jack,” said Danny. “What's going on? I saw what you did with those bills.”

“Uhhh… what do you mean?” said Jack innocently.

“You know what I mean,” said Danny. “You're supposed to take the tips people give us and pour them into the outside pocket of Jonathan's backpack for safekeeping. But that's not what's happening.”

“Yes, it is,” said Jack. “I've been putting money into Jonathan's backpack.”

“Yes, but not the right amount,” said Danny. “I was watching carefully at the last three houses, and every time, more goes in than should, because you're pulling other money from somewhere in your clothes. What's going on?”

“Is this true, Jack?” asked Amos.

“His hands are as cunning as a pickpocket’s!” said Danny. “He does it with this swift gesture that you have to be watching closely to catch. He pulls extra money from somewhere in his clothes, hides it in his hand, and then slips it into the cap before emptying it into the backpack.”

Mandy and Amos gasped with mock horror. And for a few terrible seconds, Mandy, Amos and Danny loomed around Jack with angry eyes, as if he were a thief. In fact, the friends were just playing. They hadn't forgotten the moral difference between stealthily taking money and stealthily giving money. Perhaps they were a little offended, though, at being the beneficiaries of Jack's stealthy charity.

Still, Jonathan missed the humorous character of the accusations, and felt horribly that he had somehow brought his friend into disgrace. So he came clean to shield Jack from blame.

“It's… it's my fault,” said Jonathan. “Not that I put him up to it, but he knows my family needs the money right now. He's doing it for me.”

All eyes turns to Jonathan, and Danny whistled. “So it comes out. That's what this is all about.”

“You told me this was all about cheering Danny up after rehab,” said Mandy.

“Really?” said Danny with interest. “And you told me it was because Mandy was bored.”

“He told me his family needed money,” said Amos in Jonathan's defense. “That's why I came.”

“Why were you telling everybody different stories?” asked Danny, now really a little suspicious.

“But they're all true, aren't they? Don't you need a little cheering up after rehab?” he asked, looking at Danny. And to Mandy, he asked, “And weren't you bored?”

After a moment, Mandy and Danny both shrugged and murmured assent. Jack said, “There were several reasons to do it. He told everyone the reason most likely to motivate them. What's wrong with that?”

“Well,” said Danny, “why does your family need the money so much right now?”

“Oh, just forget it,” said Jonathan. “I don't want to spoil the evening with my sad stories. And anyway, I hardly remember. There were car repairs last fall, and the landlord raised the rent, and we didn't spend much on Christmas presents but one doesn't want to get nothing for anybody, and… No, what are you doing?!”

“Nothing, go on,” said Jack, but in fact, he had slipped Jonathan's backpack off his shoulders and set it on the ground, and was searching his pockets for any money he had, to put it in the backpack. Amos and Danny were looking uncomfortably at him, and visibly considering whether to follow suit.

“Stop it!” said Jonathan, “I won't tell the story if you keep doing that. Though there's not much to tell, really. I mean, when your take-home pay is just enough to cover the regular bills, you might get along for a while, but if something comes up, you can't recover. No, stop that! We’ll be all right. We have a plan...”

All eyes turned to Jonathan again. “What is it?” asked Jack suspiciously.

“I'm going back to Alaska, to work as a commercial fisherman again for a while,” said Jonathan. “I have an offer, and I'll call and confirm the day after Christmas. My wife and the kids will stay with her mother. Well, her parents.”

“Do you want to?” asked Jack. “That's so far from your family.”

“No, I don't want to,” said Jonathan. “I'll miss them, and I'd especially like to be there for… I mean, her mother doesn't like me, and I hate for the kids to hear…”

“Why doesn't she like you?” asked Mandy.

“Oh, my goodness,” said Jonathan. “A million reasons. Because I'm short. Because I'm poor. Because I give clumsy, repeat Christmas presents. I don't have a knack for picking them. Because I fail at everything I do. I've had two businesses fold under me in the last six years. Because one time I… well, I was trying to help out in the kitchen and I cut my finger, and said a bad word…”

The band all laughed at this. “Which one was it?”

“I won't say. I promised myself I'll never say it again. But it's how I was raised, and now she knows that, and it's kind of irrevocable. Everything about my background… But I guess the main thing is that I'm the rock star who ran away with her darling girl.”

Danny stiffened. “Um, excuse me, Jonathan, but you are by no stretch of the imagination a rock star. We weren't really even a rock band, for starters. Even I can't really lay claim to the title of rock star yet, since…”

“I mean, in her eyes,” interrupted Jonathan impatiently. “She knows nothing about it, but in her eyes, I'm just a low-down, good-for-nothing rock star.”

That was food for thought for Danny.

“What is it you want to be there for?” said Jack.

“Oh, well, never mind…” Jonathan attempted, but the pressure of all the eyes was on him, so he had to admit it. “We're expecting. Vanessa's due at the end of February. But she'll have her mother and… oh, no, you guys will think I set this whole thing up just to beg…”

By this time, Jack had taken over, and was counting the money in the backpack, to which all the members of the band had been contributing.

“One thousand, two hundred, and seventy-seven dollars,” said Jack. “Quite a haul for one evening. Is that enough for you not to have to go to Alaska?”

“You're so generous,” said Jonathan. “I can't allow it, though, you earned it with your beautiful playing. You need your share…”

“You can't turn it down,” said Jack sternly. “This is a Christmas present, and at Christmastime you have to accept what you're given.”

“Well, it will make such a difference to us,” said Jonathan. “You're so wonderfully generous. I'll never forget this as long as I live. This helps us so much!...”

“But–?” prompted Jack.

“Well, the more I think about it, since I have an offer, and there is so much uncertainty, it would be responsible to, to… but… Please, it was just a fool's hope, I wasn't really expecting…”

“How much do you need?” asked Jack.

“I don't even know,” said Jonathan. “It might take as much as $2,000, or even a little more, to pay everything that we owe…”

“That settles it,” said Jack with authority. “We have our mission. I say we dedicate all our earnings for the rest of the evening to the cause of Jonathan being at his wife's side for their new arrival. And I certainly won't be the first one to decide to go home.”

“Nor I,” said Amos.

“Nor I,” said Mandy.

“Nor I,” said Danny. “Lead on, Jack.”

Chapter 17. Disturbing the Peace

If anything, the band was even merrier after that, for it is fun to have a generous mission to pursue. A bond of increased friendship now united them, every dollar of tips had more meaning, and they had an excuse to keep going for a long time yet. But it was not long before they were checked.

A police car was driving slowly along one of the curving streets near the Fairview Heights hilltop. All around them, the lights of the city spread out into the distance. The police car pulled over and stopped. The officer stepped out.

“Officer Bob!” exclaimed Jack. “Nice to see you again.”

“Er, good evening,” said Officer Bob. “I'm afraid I have bad news. I have to be the Grinch again.”

“Did we sing some wrong notes?” asked Danny. “I was afraid someone would complain about that. These guys insist on making me sing some songs I've never heard before…”

Officer Bob looked bewildered for a moment, then chuckled at the joke. “We've had a complaint that you're disturbing the peace, waking people up, proselytizing, singing Christmas carols, and demanding money. I think she actually called you ‘robbers’.”

The band roared with laughter at this, and Officer Bob couldn't help laughing with them. “Oh, that lady,” said Amos.

“She called the police, then she called the homeowners association, then the police called the homeowners association… it's a long story. Then someone else called, not to complain exactly, but… well, they decided to send me down here to ask you to stop singing. And it is almost 9:00.”

At the words “stop singing,” Jack put his bow to the string, and, staring into Officer Bob's eyes with merry defiance, played an old melody to which the words were Since Christ is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

“What's with him?” asked Officer Bob, seeming unsettled.

“That's how he talks,” joked Amos. “He's just disappointed. We understand–”

“I have always thought of Christmas time,” Jack broke in, “when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, to the good news of the birth of the Son of God, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely to all, rejoicing as one, giving and welcoming and receiving and inviting, as if they really were comrades, fellow-passengers on life's journey, and not another race of creatures, alien and irrelevant, bound on other journeys…”

“Jack, don't be so argumentative,” Amos interrupted him sternly. “We’ll go, officer. We won't play anymore in Fairview Heights tonight.”

Officer Bob looked at the other members of the band for confirmation of this, and all except Jack, who was still giving a speech in emulation of Scrooge's nephew, grunted agreement. “Merry Christmas and God bless you!” Jack shouted to Officer Bob as he got into his car.

“Well, what's next?” said Danny. “I guess we can't play here anymore.”

“We have played for the rich,” said Jack. “But do not the poor also need Christmas cheer this night? We should be forsworn if we gave up praising God now. So let us go down to the homes of the humble, the struggling, those to whom this life affords little comfort or hope, and bring to them also the good news!”

The others looked at each other, smiled, and shrugged. And then, according to Mandy, she saw, for the briefest of moments, something strange, for Jack became again the Faun but he had been in their glimpse of Narnia, with horns and goat legs, and the authority of that magic seemed to command her to follow him. Jonathan and Danny remember nothing of the sort, and Amos has been inconsistent, for once he said, “Yes, I recall that, I saw it too” but another time he said, “ no, there were no horns. No goat legs either. But he did look like a Faun just then, all the same.” Anyway, the plan didn't seem to make much sense, other than that maybe poor neighborhoods would be less prone to complain. Yet Jack spoke with a strange authority. So they all murmured agreement, and began to follow whither Jack, like some mad, wandering Christmas spirit, would lead them.

Chapter 18. The Runaway Elf

Swiftly they passed out of the well-lit streets of the Fairview Heights hilltop, past many more fine houses aglow in Christmas jollity, than to places still finely built and well-maintained but with higher fences, then through a small, empty park, and on to a tunnel under an overpass, with traffic zooming by above. It was a place the residents of Fairview Heights never went, where there had been ten muggings and one or two worse crimes in the past year. Tonight, contrary to certain ordinances, and ready to slip away in case of police sweeps, nine or ten ragged men, and two young boys, were curled up in corners, taking advantage of the shelter of the overpass as a refuge from any precipitation that the night might bring. About half seemed to be stoned, and two were muttering angrily to themselves. Yet to these, Jack lifted his fiddle and began to play, “God rest ye, merry gentlemen…”

Those that were asleep stirred, and they looked up at Jack. Some began to ask if Jack could spare a dollar. “Money I have none, but what I have I give you,” called out Jack. “A Merry Christmas to you!” And he set his bow to the string again. The band felt fear and guilt, walking among such desperate men with more than a thousand dollars in cash on their persons. Yet Jack had probably spoken true, as far as his own pockets were concerned. So often in life, telling the truth is the most cunning stratagem of all.

On the other side of the tunnel, every trace of the affluence of Fairview Heights was erased. And the air seemed to grow colder. It was still a park here, with a bike path running through a little wood. Beyond the park, in the darkness, was a neighborhood.

And there Jack led them. But their eyes often glanced over to Amos as well. He had grown up in a rough neighborhood and could probably sense the degree of danger better than the rest of them. For the moment, he wasn't alarmed.

The trees were wholesome enough. They stood spreading and stately upon the little street, where the band first set foot in the neighborhood. Their branches reached across the road and touched each other, forming an arch. Nonetheless, there was a sense of fear in the air. There was a broken window in the second house on the left, and another in the fourth house on the right. The place was quiet, too quiet, a quiet, it seemed, not of repose, but of fear. And the darkness. The maintenance of the streetlights had been neglected, and some had gone out. Most of the windows were dark, and no front doors were lit by friendly, hospitable lights.

“I have a couple of headlamps,” said Jonathan, opening his backpack. So Danny and Amos lit their way when it was too dark to see.

Why are we here? thought all the members of a band.

“This place needs Christmas cheer more than anywhere I've seen,” said Jack, answering the unspoken question. And he lifted his fiddle and began to play Oh holy night, the stars are brightly shining…

And soon the whole band was singing and playing together, a lush, beautiful arrangement of that sublime carol. Danny sang the melody at first, but when Amos and Jonathan joined him, he sang a part instead, and there were three voices and two guitars, but it was the two violins that contributed the most to the gentle glory of the music, as they alternated between slow, splendid notes and passionate counterpoint.

The houses marched silently by, differing little outwardly except in their signs of decay, though some did have lights and TVs on inside. Here there were none of the whimsical windings of the streets of Fairview Heights, only a flat grid of paved streets with potholes. “Fall on your knees and hear the angel voices,” the band sang to a shade tree mechanic with a yard full of rusty vehicles. “In His Name all oppression shall cease,” they sang to a silent street corner, under the dirty orange light of streetlights, on which dark doorways looked out from behind littered sidewalks. No doors seemed to invite them to knock, but sometimes faces looked out of windows and watched them with curiosity as they passed.

Suddenly, a bunch of boys bolted out of a doorway, and the startled band stopped playing. It took a moment to realize they posed no danger, for they were just kids, bolting because their mother had just given them permission to go see the band. There were five, and the oldest might be eleven. They had no inhibitions, and besieged the band, looking at the musical instruments very close up with great interest.

They realized they ought to keep playing, and Jack led as usual, with a merry tune. Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane…

The band joined in nervously. Jack was the most besieged, the boys wanting to touch his fascinating fiddle, magical source of the wonderful music. He danced away from them, and after the second verse, it became a chase. He made it fun, up to a point, but when the end of the song took away his pretext for running away, he was visibly uncomfortable at the prospect of all those small, uncareful hands messing with his precious instrument.

Amos came to his rescue. He squatted down, to be on a level with the boys, and got their attention with the words:

“Do you want to know a secret?”

They all looked at him, and smiled, and nodded enthusiastically.

Amos pointed at Jack. “He used to be one of Santa's elves.”

The boys stared, mostly unbelieving. And yet Jack was so odd-looking. “That's ridiculous,” said the oldest of the boys.

“Fine,” said Amos with a shrug, not offended. “Have it your way.” A mocking smile played in his eyes. He still squatted and looked from one face to another.

“Er…” began the next oldest boy, awkwardly. “How did he… stop being one of the elves?”

“Well, you know, he was living up at the North Pole, working all year to make toys… you know about the North Pole, right, how Santa lives up there?” Amos asked.

“Yes,” said all the boys, and one added, “that's where his workshops are.”

“Exactly right,” said Amos. “But sometimes the elves come down here, to take notes on who’s behaving well and badly, and sometimes to help children behave well by whispering good things in their ears. Usually they're invisible, but every now and then you can see them, if you are a child. Grown-ups never can, of course, but sometimes children can see them. Anyway, that elf–” he pointed at Jack again– “often encouraged children to do naughty things. He thought it was so fun that he couldn't resist. He encouraged them to eat too much candy, and to play jokes on their teachers. And one time, he even suggested to a little boy that he might shoot his mother in the back with a marble and rubber band!” Amos made an expression of horror, and looked at Jack with a very reproving expression. “The little boy did it, and his mother said ‘ouch!’ Wasn't that naughty of him?!”

The boys all chuckled and nodded in agreement. “Very naughty!” they said. They were mostly just playing along with a joke, but in their eyes, at times, there was just a flicker of belief, or desire to believe. Their mother looked on with grateful fascination at this unexpected gift of Christmas fun from these queer, benevolent strangers.

“I'm very sorry for what I did,” said Jack with a penitent bow.

“Ah, he is, he is,” said Amos sorrowfully. “But when Santa heard about it, he had to punish him. So he sent him away from the North Pole, with that magic fiddle that he has there, and told him that he had to use the fiddle to make one thousand children sing a Christmas carol each, before he could come home. Don't you want to help him get back to the North Pole? He misses it so much!”

The answers to this ranged from enthusiasm to mildly annoyed laughter at Amos’s silliness, but the boys all agreed.

“Then sing, ‘Jingle bells, jingle bells…’” And Amos led the boys in song, and the band joined in, and Jack did a little elf dance as he played first the melody, and then a harmony that sounded like church bells. The boys’ faces lit up with delight and amazement when Jonathan pulled real jingle bells out of his pack and began playing them. By this time, a few other people had come out of the houses in curiosity, too, and they joined in as well. Soon there was a lively chorus there along the forlorn, dirty street.

“Thank you, children,” exclaimed Jack as the song finished, and he did a little jig of glee that looked very elvish indeed. That was probably the peak of the boys’ belief in the charming little legend that the unscrupulous entertainers were spinning for them. Then Jack called out, “Santa, I'm coming home!” with such relief and gaiety that for a tiny, wonderful moment, even the band could hardly help believing that he was about to fly like the reindeer on Christmas Eve and go back to the North Pole that moment. Of course, a moment later, the spell broke, and all belief vanished, and everyone dissolved into hilarious laughter for a full minute.

Jack still didn't quite drop the act. “With your help,” he said, “I'll soon be able to go home to the North Pole, thanks to you. But now, remember, it's Christmas Eve night, and you must get to bed early, because Santa will come soon, and no one is supposed to see him. So here's a song to help you get to sleep.”

And Jack raised his bow to the string, and softly played Silent night, holy night, All is calm, all is bright… as the grateful crowd slowly dispelled and went home. As the children went inside and the door closed, All the band shouted after them, “Merry Christmas!”

And they walked on through the streets, further from Fairview Heights and deeper into the slum, still playing, as if they really were in search of more children who could be induced to sing a carol. As “Silent Night” ended, they transitioned without a break into “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and then “Away in a Manger.” They didn't know why they were doing it, except that they were enjoying walking and filling the air with music too much to stop. Every now and then a car passed, but otherwise it was remarkably quiet in those streets, just like the carol said.

At last a car pulled up and stopped next to them. It was a police car.

“Good evening again,” said Officer Bob, with a laugh.

“And Merry Christmas again,” said Amos, laughing as well. “What's the matter this time? More complaints?”

“Well, not exactly,” said Officer Bob. “But we did get some calls. People are worried about you. This isn't the safest neighborhood, and… well, the holidays tend to be particularly troublesome. Some people come home to visit family, and there's bad blood between them and someone in the neighborhood. More valuables are left out, visible. Some people get drunk. And there are a few, unfortunately, for whom making trouble is a way of celebrating. And some of the callers seemed to have got wind of something… The chief is dispatching a couple of extra patrol cars here tonight. He's afraid some trouble might be brewing.”

“Show us the trouble,” said Jack with gusto. “We’ll teach it some Christmas spirit!”

“I think it would be better for all concerned if you cleared out of here,” said Officer Bob.

“We are not afraid,” said Jack. “And we've made a promise that…”

“Simmer down, Jack,” said Amos. “It's after 10:00 anyway. He just wants to avoid trouble for the neighborhood. Why be so difficult? We'll move on. We’ll head… home?” he asked the band.

No one confirmed this verbally, but they did start putting their instruments away. Officer Bob seemed satisfied.

“Thank you folks,” he said. “Have a good night!”

Chapter 19. A Death Bed

They walked on, the silence of the night deepened around them, and the stars burned overhead. They were trying to get back to Ruby Street Mall, where Mandy and Amos were parked (the others had come by Uber), but they didn't really know the way, and no one looked it up. Maybe a smartphone screen would have disrupted the sacred stillness of the night. Maybe its glare would dim the beautiful stars. Their feet were tired, the night was getting much colder, and they hadn't made a dime since they left Fairview Heights. But a kind of peace seemed to descend upon them from the starry heavens, as it must have descended on the Magi, journeying in the desert long ago.

They seemed to have left behind the neighborhood where Jack had played a Santa's elf, and strayed onto a gravel road that would have been more at home in the countryside than where they were, still in the midst of the city. A grassy lawn ran somewhere among the trees on the right, and sometimes touched the road. On the left, there were just woods. They were lost. But they were going north, roughly in the right direction, and that was good enough. They walked in silence and let the vast peace of that Christmas night engulf them.

A sprawling, dilapidated farmhouse appeared well ahead and to the left. As they came nearer, they became conscious of the crunching of their feet on the gravel. So did someone inside the house. There was movement. A young man came out of the door and walked towards them

“Who goes there?” he challenged them.

There was something valorous about the way he approached them. It was one against five, and he was fearful, yet defiant. Of course, a sensible person would have quickly sized up the five walkers and determined that they posed no threat. But there was something wrong with this young man, something dreamy and dissolute and unsteady. Even in the dark, they all sensed it at once. If he had had a gun, they would be afraid he would panic. But he was unarmed, and seemed more likely to hurt himself than anyone else.

“We're just Christmas carolers, who have lost our way,” said Jack, holding up his fiddle case as evidence. “If you could give us some directions, we'd be grateful.*

“This is a private road,” said the young man.

“We're very sorry,” said Jack. “We didn't know. We'll go back.” The band paused for a moment, waiting for the young man's approval first. But when he just stood there, they made to go.

“Wait,” he said suddenly and uncertainly. “Can you stay? Please, my mother is dying. Can you… play something for her? The priest won't come. No one will come. She's so lonely. It's so sad here. I don't know what to do.”

The band looked at him and tried to size up what kind of person they were dealing with, and whether he was telling the truth. They didn't really believe him. He was too awry, too addled. He didn't seem stoned at the moment, but he had probably been a drug addict. There was a kind of pathetic senselessness about him.

“It's a trap,” whispered Danny.

But in spite of that, though they half believed that it was, they went. It was a dark night, a lonely place, and a dangerous neighborhood, and they had valuable instruments and a lot of cash. As they followed him into the house, they thought it was likelier to lead into an ambush by armed robbers than to the young man's dying mother. Why did they go? Perhaps it was better to risk getting robbed than to risk leaving a dying woman in that house alone. But really they seemed to have no choice, no will. The stars and their music had cast a spell, and they were in a trance of solemn joy. They had no capacity for fear. They didn't know it, but they were in the service of God.

He led them down a long corridor, to a brightly lit room, and there she was. She was past being able to greet anyone with words. She was propped in a metal cot, almost like a hospital bed, and her body was wrinkled and wan and motionless, with a grey, deathlike pallor. But her eyes were desperately, fiercely alive, and full of suffering. They understood better the young man’s haunted state of mind at once. To be alone with this woman would have shaken anyone. For a few painful seconds, they stared helplessly at her.

“She… likes Christmas carols,” the young man said weakly.

Jack was the first to collect his wits and speak, though the only tone of voice that he could muster was a kind of decorous jollity, not very suitable to the occasion. “Good evening, ma'am! And merry Christmas! We heard, that is, your son told us, that you have a taste for music. We happened to be in the area, and we would be delighted to play for you this evening…’’ But then he faltered, unsettled by her quiet desperation.

Jonathan stepped into the breach. “It is the birthday of the King of Kings, the most joyful day of the whole year, and it is right to celebrate, whatever woes we may be suffering,” he said. “Do you like the song ‘Good Christian Men, Rejoice?’ It's one of our favorites… Remember, God was born as a baby out of love for us this night, so we must rejoice!”

Her eyes, the only living feature left in her, did not exactly answer, yet they were intensely expressive, and clearly took everything in. They might be hostile, or it might be a kind of desperate gratitude, it was hard to tell. Jack began playing, and the whole band came in, and throughout the song, they watched her eyes, which looked out at them with mingled physical pain and spiritual torment. They went on to another carol, and another, and another, choosing them at random because nothing fit the occasion, yet it seemed terribly important to keep playing. It had somehow fallen to their lot to fight this desperate duel against her despair, and if they yielded, there was no one else. The young man was not equal to the situation at all, but he did watch his mother's face with a passionate interest, suffering as much as she was.

As they finished playing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” the young man suddenly cried out, in a voice that seemed too loud to come from his dissipated frame, “Mama, forgive me!” and then fell on his knees and buried his face in the sheets of her bed, shaking with sobs so violently that it seemed he would fall to pieces.

The cry seemed somehow like proof that she was dying, imminently dying, that her last hour had come.

“The priest! Call the priest!” said Jack to the young man, and the panic in his voice sounded like anger. “You said he wouldn't come. Did you tell him that she's dying?”

“No, I don't know, I don't think so,” the young man struggled to answer. “I wasn't sure, I didn't know–”

“You told us she was dying,” objected Jack.

“Yes, I thought… by that time…”

“Call the priest again!” commanded Jack harshly, fiercely. “Tell him your mother's dying and that he must come right away!”

The young man certainly had no pride to resist or be offended at an order, but the anger in Jack's voice seemed to paralyze him. For ten seconds or so, he just stared.

Then, at the other end of the long corridor, they heard a door banging open and heavy boots of one or several men tramp into the house. There were angry mutterings as the boots came down the hall. The young man tried to flee out of the room, but got confused and for a moment, he couldn't find the door. The band remembered their first fancy of an armed ambush, and in spite of the evident truth of the young man's story about his dying mother, the ambush suddenly seemed very likely. Amos and Jonathan stepped bravely into the hall to see who was coming, with Jack close behind.

There was only one man, well dressed in clothes that, though not the stereotypical suit and tie of a businessman, yet seemed to indicate respectability, prestige and commercial success. There was an air of command about him. On seeing Amos and Jonathan, he started for a moment, then glared. “Who are–” he began, but he stopped mid-sentence and barreled towards them so that they had to make way. Inside the room, he looked around, sized up the strangers, and chuckled bitterly. By this time, the young man was gone. No one had seen where.

“Musicians,” he sneered. “He hired musicians. What next?! You'd better be glad that I showed up. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been paid a dime. My brother doesn't have any money at all. Never has. He can't hold on to it for a day.”

He was a tall and powerfully built man, muscular, with a fierce and forceful demeanor, and he seemed to take for granted that he had the upper hand. And yet he wouldn't have been a match for Amos and Danny together, let alone all five of them, and with an exchange of glances, the band resolved to stand their ground if need be.

“Good evening, sir,” said Jack, with just a hint of insolence.

“Good evening,” echoed the intruder with disgust. “For ten years, he hasn't seen her, and then he hears that she's dying, and that her estate is worth something now, so here he comes like a vulture, and tries to ingratiate himself with her by hiring musicians! To think she's spending her last hours besieged by the begging of this worthless wastrel of a son. He's utterly shameless.”

“Whereas you, I take it,” said Jack, “worked hard, made your fortune, and are a well-respected man of business, and all that?”

“Exactly, and that's why I'm late. Affairs in Hong Kong. This property is destined for gentrification. Ten acres of fields and woodlot in what ought to be houses and condos worth five million dollars. It will get sold for certain by the next owner. There will be a new assessment at market value, and no one would be able to afford the property taxes alone, besides missing the profit opportunity. Where is my brother? I got a plane ticket as soon as I heard.”

“As soon as you heard that your mother was dying?” asked Jack. “Or as soon as you heard that your brother was angling for the inheritance?”

Even now, he didn't seem to perceive an insult in Jack's words. “That's right,” he said indifferently, then added, “Look here, I'm sure you've done your jobs, but your services are no longer needed. How much do we owe you? How much do you need to be paid in order to leave?”

And for whatever reason, that vulgar profiteer turned out to have an extraordinary quantity of cash on his person. There was a table on the side of the woman's bed, and suddenly he started jerking bills out of his pockets, $50 bills, $100 bills, piling up in stacks. All the band looked at. Jonathan, for he was the one most in need of cash. And as for Jonathan, he suddenly had an intense and vivid impression that the being who had suddenly burst into their midst was not a man but Satan himself. For a few seconds, he was dizzy. Then he made a sort of resolution, recovered himself, and said:

“You misunderstand us, sir. Your brother didn't hire us at all. We are, that is, he–” Jonathan gestured to Jack– “and I are, Christians, and we thought it would be good to come and minister to this good woman, seeing how she is and all, and that it's Christmas Eve, we thought it would be good to try to give her some cheer, or at any rate, some comfort–”

“Treasure in heaven,” said the businessman contemptuously. “That's your angle, I see. Fine. We're all after something. Well, you've played your songs, haven't you? Would you mind taking your leave now?”

“Well… that is… we hope that she's comfortable, and… We did want to give her some Christmas cheer, and some piece of mind, and…” Jack cast about for an excuse for staying. He hated the thought of leaving the poor dying woman alone with this ruthless and greedy son.

“Before I call the police?” the man added with icy contempt and menace. His eyes looked around and pierced them all like drawn swords.

There was a long, long pause, as the businessman and the band stared each other down. Jonathan, and probably the others as well, thought hard, but they seemed to be checkmated. At last, Jonathan sent, “All right, we'll go.”

“Not yet,” said Mandy suddenly. “Just one more song.” Her voice was quiet and firm, with an inexorable authority. I think there are times when a woman's voice carries more authority than a man's. Men banter and jostle and defy one another, and it's all a game with rules, but when women fight, it's not a game, and they follow no rules. Their certitudes are law unanswerable, the foundation on which civilizations are built. It's true what they say, that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. So at any rate it happened here. When the men were beaten, Mandy spoke, and so it would be. Just one more song it was.

Mandy took Danny's guitar without seeming to notice what she did, then looked deep into the tortured eyes of the dying woman, and then in her clear, strong, sweet voice that pierced everything, sang:

Praise God, I feel like singing
I'm on the other side of life now.

It was an old-timey melody, flowing and soulful and slow. She played a chord progression on the guitar, and Amos followed it. Danny knew the song, and harmonized, and their voices rang together. Jack's violin played a simple, soaring part, like an angel singing in the distance.

On a bed of sorrow, with tears for my loved ones
I wish I could tell them all the joy that I feel
Though my body is weary, my soul is uplifted
My sins are forgiven, and my Jesus is real.
Praise God, I feel like singing
I'm on the other side of life now

Though my eyes are dim, I see heaven clearly
Though my voice is feeble, I sing just the same
In my heart, there's a song as I see the gates open
I'll sing forever my joyous refrain
Praise God, I feel like singing
I'm on the other side of life now

They repeated the last chorus three times, each time with less instrumentation, until the last two lines were Mandy's voice alone. And yet not alone.

For some time, there had seemed to be more reverberations, more harmonious notes soft yet sublime, than the available voices and instrumentation could explain. There was a quality of mystery about the music, haunting and blessing, something that made one's skin tingle and threw one's mind into confusion, delicious bliss mingled with holy fear. But it was easy to second guess oneself, to suppose that the harmonies one heard belonged merely to the instruments and singers in some way that was hard to follow.

But on that last verse, when all but Mandy fell silent, it became clear that they were hearing other voices, adding simple harmonies to the simple melody, though they were very soft, as if from far away, sublime, ethereal, otherworldly. Where did they come from? Their inquiring minds ran stupidly through the options and dismissed them, circled through them again and again, and even as an idea at once incredible and inescapable grew in them and overshadowed all other thoughts, and then, for a moment, became a firm conviction.

They were hearing angels singing.

The voices fell silent and the conviction began to disintegrate almost at once in all but Mandy. The memory almost immediately seemed far away, like an old legend, half forgotten and yet treasured. But for some time, their mortal flesh trembled from the touch of the immortal beings who had sung with them at the death bed.

And the dying woman's eyes changed. She was captivated, pinned, challenged, and overcome. She yielded something, she opened a door to something, and her despair softened and then melted away, leaving behind sorrow, but also the beginnings of hope that could become joy. They saw a light upon her face, as if it shone from a door beyond the world, and her eyes were looking past them now, at something they couldn't see. A new and wonderful feeling, even possibly a subtle new fragrance, filled the room. Hope had won a victory, and no one doubted it.

As the song finished, the young man burst in. “Father Allen is on his way,” he cried, suddenly excited and triumphant. “He'll be here in just five minutes.”

And then they saw that that ruthless businessman son of hers had been softened, and reduced to trembling. They watched him for a long time to see what he would do. At last he spoke, in a very different tone.

“Thank you for comforting my mother on her deathbed,” he said. “I…” And he stopped, but they had the feeling that he was on the verge of some great confession. He was trembling violently.

At last he said, calmly but with a new humility: “You've done a wonderful thing, and I'll always be grateful. But now, before the priest arrives, I would beg you to leave us, so that I may have a private conversation with my mother.”

It's possible that he was still just trying to get the band out of the way, so he could pressure his mother to give him an exclusive claim to the inheritance. He knew they couldn't be intimidated, so he made a different kind of appeal. Or perhaps he had really given up his covetous designs and wanted to end his time on earth with mother on notes of love and forgiveness. They never knew, but somehow they felt at peace with the situation as they left the room. They bade farewell and merry Christmas to the family, and went back out into the night.

After a couple of minutes of contemplative silence, Amos spoke.

“Well, somebody's got to ask. You really needed that cash. Why did you leave it on the table?”

“I couldn't take money from that devil,” said Jonathan.

“Good for you,” said Jack approvingly, and all the others followed suit.

Chapter 20. Mandy's Epiphany

Of the state of Mandy's mind at that moment, it is difficult to write.

She said nothing, and when her companions glanced at her to compliment her on her song, they were afraid to speak. A kind of brooding solemnity surrounded her like a shield, within which they could feel that she was going through an unearthly agony. Her mood was a mystery that they dared not touch.

She suffered much that night. Every step she took after that first mirror of her own future was like walking on broken glass. It was not despair that she suffered, but a terrible friction as there fought tooth and nail within her heart a despair that had long smoldered there, nursed by her envy and bitterness, and a triumphant joy that was invading her from without, bright and burning with heavenly authority.

The angel voices had pierced her soul, the best of her soul, with a wonder like sorrow. The worst of her soul fled, or rebelled, or perhaps try to deny what she had heard, as timorous people do. But for all her faults, Mandy was too brave and truthful for that. And anyway, she still felt a terrible trembling within, for mortal does not stand in the presence of immortality without paying a certain price. It seemed to her at that moment that she could never be light-hearted again. A terrible seriousness had revealed itself and made its demands. No, she knew it was no illusion. It has been real.

When people in the Bible meet angels, the first thing the angels say is usually “Fear not.” That seems odd, since angels are usually benevolent, and the people to whom they appear knew that already. But mortal flesh trembles in the presence of sinless beings of everlasting light. Its transience and corruption, so easily forgotten, adapted to the routines of nature and daily life, becomes painfully plain in the presence of something more durable and perfect.

The night around her seemed packed full of some fierce presence of which she didn't know the name. Yet she had a guess. It was the love of God. And the stars seemed brighter and much nearer. She felt ten times more alive than an hour before. The new life burned in her like a fever.

And then, inevitably, her thoughts took a turn that may or may not have taken the form of words, but that may be compared to the words of Saint Peter, after Jesus, standing in Peter's boat, work to one of the miracles of the fishes. “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Why did Peter say that? Was it humility? Or was he addicted to his sins, and didn't want the option to sin to be taken away by the presence of Jesus? Or was it, again, mortality’s embarrassment before immortality? A mix of all three, I think, and more. But Jesus did not depart.

How, she asked herself at moments during that terrible encounter, could God be so unscrupulous as to use her as the instrument of salvation for the dying woman, when she was so weak, so unready? She had never asked for that, or consented to that. Or had she? After the glimpse of Narnia, she had been bitter that miracles happen, but not to her. God had repaid her by meeting her demand, answering her grievance, and that was her punishment for her presumption, but also a gateway to God, and to such transformation as she could bear, as far as was needed to prepare her for that presence.

Something in her had wanted the angel voices, and would not give it up. Some yearning so deep that it had been buried for years under a sediment of petty ambition and sin, had been reawakened. It burst forth and might tear her apart. It burned like fire and it might consume her, but she didn't mind.

As the encounter continued, the weight of her sins would have sunk her, but for the good deed she had just done, which God now chose to reveal to her in its full import. Even as she felt how unworthy she was to stand in the presence of God and His holy angels, and her soul begged inarticulately to be allowed to run away into outer darkness, yet she was given to know that that dying woman's soul had stood upon a knife edge, and might have fallen into the abyss but that she was called back by Mandy's song. Her spirit had been too weak to hear angel voices singing alone. It had taken a voice of flesh to reach her, and only by accompanying a human voice could the angels meet her where she was and call her home. Mandy’s had been that voice in that critical hour, and the glory of that deed would rest upon her for eternity. And in that knowledge, she stood in the presence of God and did not falter or fail.

Gradually the voice that said “Depart from me, Lord” fell silent within her. She began to stand, unresisting, in the presence of God. But the fire of that still hurt her, still throbbed like an open wound.

At last there came relief, a refreshing coolness of blessing, and it took the form of physical snow. But I'm getting slightly ahead of the story.

When she came to herself, she realized she had become a new woman.

Chapter 21. White Christmas

“I guess we'd better use GPS to get home,” said Danny, and pulled out his phone. A moment later, he said, “Hmm, looks like we'll need to backtrack a little bit to find a place to cross the highway.” They walked out of the woods the way they had come.

Meanwhile, he noticed a text message. “I need to call my agent,” he said happily. “He says there's good news.”

The conversation that followed was fairly one-sided, with Danny mostly murmuring agreement, intermingled with a few mild protests and grunts of dissatisfaction, and a few personal inquiries and Christmas greetings. Afterwards, Danny said:

“Well, it looks like my third album is going to get a record label after all,” he said. “I'll have to make a few compromises. It seems they like the sound more than the message. They won't take a couple of the songs, and they want some others shorter and made less political. More like my first two albums, which sold better than expected this Christmas season. A lot better, actually. I guess they got me onto a couple of streaming services, too, though he didn't explain that very clearly. Some stat jumped tenfold in a week. I'm finally starting to make my mark. Entering the firmament. He was a little drunk… He would have been a bit more diplomatic if he were sober, I think. And it didn't seem worth arguing with him in his condition. But he was glad I called. He said he wanted to give me the news personally tonight. Like a Christmas present.”

“Congratulations, rock star,” said Amos, without much enthusiasm and perhaps with a touch of irony.

Danny didn't answer, and an awkward silence fell. Finally, Jonathan said:

“Are you, well, happy about it?”

This time, Danny collected his thoughts and spoke. “I didn't think this was what success would feel like,” he said. “And he said one thing that bothered me. Something like, ‘Don't put on that starry-eyed ideological primadonna hat.’ The whole thing is… well, I guess they want to sell music, not change the world. Like I was saying earlier.”

“Yes, very much like you were saying earlier,” said Amos, suddenly hostile. “Are you going to take it?”

Danny thought about it for a minute. “Well, I'll negotiate a bit, I'll see what I can do… but let's not kid ourselves, of course I'll take it. I've prepared my whole life for this. It's inevitable. It's over-determined.”

“But seriously, Danny,” said Amos, openly challenging him now, “weren't you just ranting to us earlier this evening that rock music is dead? You had some ugly language about its rotting corpse, if I recall. What's the point of joining that? Why go crawling back to them if they won't let you make the music you want, the music you believe in?”

Danny thought for a long time. Finally he said, “You know, moments like this make you suddenly aware of things, and here's my insight for the night: no one says no to fame. It doesn't happen. I read in a book somewhere, I can't remember which one, but it said that no one ever voluntarily relinquishes power. It's like that with fame, too. You can't give it up. It's just this fundamental drive that overrides everything. You can't resist it. And anyway, all that artistic integrity and whatnot, you know, I don't even know what I believe in anymore…” He fell silent for a moment, then added, as an afterthought, “And I still have to pay more dues before I can be myself. At some point, you're famous enough to just dictate terms.”

“You're like Achilles,” said Amos, “choosing fame over happiness.”

“Like who?” said Danny.

“Achilles, from the Iliad,” explained Amos. “He was offered the choice of having a happy, obscure life at home, or going to the war in Troy and winning immortal glory, but suffering and dying young. He chose glory.”

“Exactly right,” said Danny grimly. “That's what you have to do. It's just human nature.”

“To choose glory over happiness?” asked Amos.

“Who even knows what happiness is?” asked Danny impatiently.

The quarrel might have kept going, but Jack and Mandy suddenly cried out delightedly at the same moment, “It’s snowing!”

So it was: a few lilting flakes had begun to whirl down, turning hither and back on gently turbulent air, sometimes almost invisible, but sometimes catching the light of the headlamps or the streetlights, graceful and beautiful. All else was forgotten for a minute or two, and Jack whirled like a snowflake as he looked up into the kindly sky. Oddly enough, you could still see stars, not everywhere but in some places.

It was too warm for snow to stick, and it seemed unlikely to keep falling long, so Amos and Jack suddenly had the same urgent idea. All in a rush, they put their instrument cases on the ground, and started opening them. Amos won the race and began to play, while Jack was left to wait and look for an entrance. Amos sang:

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know.
Where the treetops glisten, and children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow

Underlying the old melody, Amos filled in rich and complex harmonies. Mandy, watched with approval, offering only one suggestion on the second beat of the second “white” in the fourth line.

“A, half diminished 7th,” she said, giving him the chord.

“Ah, yes, that does sound nice,” said Amos, and ceased singing, eclipsed by Danny's sonorous baritone. He adopted the suggestion thereafter. And soon Jack's violin was floating on a soulful descant, and Mandy’s voice joined Danny's and supplied a simple vocal harmony, and Jonathan was ready, tambourine in hand, to provide the sleigh bells when their time came, and a third vocal part for a few climactic moments. And all around them the gentle snowflakes swirled down.

The voices soon gave way to a long instrumental interlude. They were in a park of some sort, a very small park with no features except a couple of picnic tables, surrounded by privacy fences with houses behind them. At first, the neighborhood took no notice. But Jack was having a night! Soon, his melodies were soaring so beautifully, reverberating, calling, that a few lights came on in the dark houses, and the people began to come out. They came slow and bewildered, and seemed to think they were dreaming. But they gathered around and watched in silent, wonder and gratitude, and listened, and lost themselves in the music.

It was past midnight, and lullabies seemed most suitable to the hour. After “White Christmas” came “All through the Night” – Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee / all through the night – and then ‘’Silent Night,” infinitely sweet and much prolonged, and then Hush, my babe, lie still and slumber / holy angels guard thy head, and in the violin case, though the haul of tips was nowhere near what it had been earlier on the mall, people wanted to show their appreciation, and dollars and coins fell on snow, and snow fell on dollars and coins. Jack ought to have been worried about his fiddle in the cold and the snow, but he was worried about nothing, utterly lost in his music. The other musicians were in his shadow and content to be so. Musicians must learn to live amidst the coming and going of the muses, the alternation of genius with dry spells like the changes of the weather, and that night, the muses were with Jack as never before. No tickets on the globe would have purchased the right to hear such music. It would have made history if anyone had been there to record it. Such trills, such runs, such unexpected flights of enchanted notes, as if the snowflakes themselves had been transformed into music, and never robbing the Christmas carols of their importance or their meaning, but always adding to them, enriching them, expressing them more fully. But in his usual way, he wove, with Mandy helping him, the melody of “We Three Kings” into an instrumental interlude for “The First Noel,” and again, the audience, which included three or four singers with hearty voices, burst impatiently, afterwards, into a chorus of the carol that he had teased them with, and the band joined in, and again, they did that trick on the last chorus, followed by a full modulation, and the stillness of the earlier lullabies had been left behind as Jack's sparkling countermelodies drove them on to sing again and again, at the top of their lungs:

Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to thy perfect light

A police car pulled up.

This time, Officer Bob tried to sidle up unobtrusively, and he was present for two choruses before the band managed to slow the singing audience down for a sparkling climax of violin ecstasies. There had been no cymbals this time, and it had been a little quieter than on the mall, though very unsuitable for a quiet neighborhood after midnight on Christmas Eve.

Chapter 22. The Incorrigibles

“Officer Bob!” shouted Jack as he lowered his violin from his chin, and he ran to him and embraced him. Officer Bob was too surprised to resist or object. “Merry Christmas to you again! We missed you!” And the audience, rather confused, but thinking that they were witnessing a reunion of old friends, applauded.

“Well,” said Officer Bob, when the clapping had to quiet down enough for him to be heard, “I'm sorry to be the Grinch yet again, but–”

“Oh, you're not the Grinch!” cried Jack. “We've met the Grinch tonight already! We put him in his place.”

Amos smiled at Jack's colorful description, and said, “Well, that's true, we did.”

This remark was disconcerting for Officer Bob. In his previous encounters with the band, Jack had been troublesome, but Amos had been reasonable, and Officer Bob had come to rely on him as his ally. Now Amos’s support for Jack's strange statement about the Grinch shook the poor novice policeman's self-confidence.

“Far from being a Grinch,” continued Jack, “you've been the very hand of Providence directing us tonight, Officer Bob.” His voice was so merry that it seemed to make the very stars dance. “Without you, we would hardly have begun. You led us from the mansions of the rich to the hovels of the poor, and then to a deathbed, as God willed. Where will we go next? To the prisons? Are you going to take us to jail? That's just the place for us! I'll bring my fiddle and give them some Christmas cheer to remember! I'm so inspired tonight that I think you might take me down to hell and I'd charm the devils and break a few souls free from purgatory!” There was laughter and applause at this. But Jack felt a pang of conscience. “But God forgive my vainglory!” he concluded.

“He's so argumentative that he's even arguing with himself,” muttered Amos mockingly.

“Well, thank you,” said Officer Bob. “But the fact is, this park has a…”

But he faltered when Jack suddenly looked into his face very close up, with a significant expression, while putting his bow to the string and playing a brisk run of shining notes.

“You were saying?” said Jack, stopping his music.

This insolence made Amos angry. “Jack, simmer down. What's with you tonight? And to think that Jonathan was just praising you for always being calm and cheerful.”

Jonathan leaped to Jack's defense. “But that's not what I meant. He's always been excitable, in a good way.”

Officer Bob tried starting over. “This park has a curfew– there are signs posted…”

“I'm sorry, we didn't read them,” said Jonathan, accidentally interrupting. “It started snowing, so we had to play ‘White Christmas,’ and then… Sorry…”

“What can we do?” added Danny. “Our friend Jack here is so persuasive. So infectious. He's like the Pied Piper, you hear him and you have to follow.”

“Also, it's kind of a fundraiser,” put in Mandy. “We have a friend who's in trouble, and we're trying to raise money to help him.”

“We all promised to keep going until we had enough,” confirmed Amos.

“I didn't ask them to promise that,” Jonathan protested.

Officer Bob, confused, had the look of a deer in the headlights.

“Where are the signs?” asked Danny, to help poor Officer Bob focus. He pointed them out, but by this time, Jack was playing again. He wasn't doing it to be troublesome. A melody had sprung up in his mind, and the musician in him just had to explore it. He was trying different variations of it, listening, thinking, trying again, oblivious to all else.

“Jack, hey, listen,” said Officer Bob, and he succeeded in getting Jack's reluctant attention for the moment. “You're not allowed to play here. This park closes at 9:00.”

Jack stepped two feet off the grass of the park onto the public sidewalk, and looked at Officer Bob questioningly to see if that was sufficient compliance. When Officer Bob didn't immediately find the words to explain that it still wasn't appropriate to play outdoor music in a quiet residential street in the middle of the night, Jack could not resist the call of the music welling up within him. He forgot Officer Bob, lifted his bow, and rehearsed something in the air before he began to play.

“I'm sorry he's been giving you so much trouble tonight, Officer Bob,” broke in Amos commiseratingly, disrupting the police officer’s thoughts. Amos's tone of voice was weary, exasperated and sympathetic. “You see, he's a Christian, but his faith has been little weak of late, because his church got a new pastor who's progressive and modern, not faithful enough to the old ways. Then tonight, he found in the people, in their simple joy in hearing and singing the old songs, some kind of renewal of his faith. So now he has this insatiable appetite for it, for Christmas carols and hearing the people sing, to restore his faith. Sorry about that! But what can we do?”

Jack seemed to have overheard some of this, to judge by his next words. For he suddenly proclaimed loudly: “We are instruments in the hands of the Lord, and He plays us as He will!” And he raised his bow to the string, as if to illustrate the point, and to show how the Lord plays the music of life and adventure on the creatures He has made.

Forever afterwards, all present wished that they could remember exactly how that melody went. That's the trouble with melodies: once they go out of your head, there's no way to get them back. Though they'd know it again if they heard it. It was a strong melody, but peaceful, full of sweetness and comfort. At its heart was a simple theme that anyone could hum, which was often repeated, sometimes with variations, sometimes modulated into minor, sometimes swelling into a climax. It lent itself to many different harmonizations, which from the third repetition on, Danny began tentatively to explore on his guitar, which gave it moods ranging from childlike sweetness to poignant melancholy. The melody ended, and gave way to interludes, but they led back to it, and it began again, so that it always lingered in the memory like a promise that was again and again fulfilled.

“If someone had only written that melody down,” Amos said later, “and written words to it, it could have taken its place among the great Christmas carols of all time. It had everything: the lullaby sweetness for a newborn baby, the simple untroubled joy and wonder of the shepherds, the solemn majesty of the kings, the splendor of the star, and healing for the world. I've never heard a melody so beautiful.”

Of all the band, only Mandy stepped up to become a full participant, alongside Jack, in that music. She found a simple part to play alongside his melody, sometimes above, sometimes below, with flourishes of its own here and there. Sometimes she fell silent when an interlude began, but soon she would follow him, anchoring a rippling run with a steady note, and then rippling into a run when his melody paused.

For two or three minutes, neither Officer Bob know anyone else present could do anything but listen. Music appreciation was not his forte, but still he could see that to interrupt this was as impossible as smashing a stained-glass window with a club. Helplessly, he backed away, and made a phone call. Jonathan and Amos overheard one side of the conversation.

“Hey chief, I'm here with those Christmas carolers. I just can't get them to stop… No, they're not drunk, at least, not in the usual way, not with alcohol. Maybe drunk on music and Christmas spirit, or something. There's a fiddler who seems to be a little bit crazy. He can't be reasoned with. And I can't figure out whether the others are trying to rein him in, or egging him on… Yes, I could, but he already said that he wants to be taken to jail, and bring his fiddle, and give some Christmas cheer to the prisoners…” There was silence while Officer Bob laughed awkwardly, apparently in sympathy with laughter on the other end. “I know, I know. People ought to be able to get some sleep. There's a crowd here… No, it's on their side, they're here to listen… Oh, yes, they're very good. It's a delight to hear them play… The other thing is that they seem to have made some kind of a promise to raise money for someone who's in trouble. They have some target they're trying to meet, and they can't go home until they've got it.”

But Officer Bob was becoming upset. “I really don't want to arrest them, sir,” he told his chief. “I don't want my very first arrest to be Christmas carolers. I can't figure out what I should do. They didn't cover this kind of situation in the academy… All right, sir. Thank you, sir. I'll tell them. Thank you! I never got an order I liked better.”

When there was a break in the music, Officer Bob stepped forward into the midst of the listeners. “I just got off the phone with the police chief,” he said. “He's going to come down and talk to the band. But he said that they should keep playing in the meantime. But softly, so as not to wake people.”

There were smiles all around at this news.

Chapter 23. King Herod

The grizzled old police chief, who showed up ten minutes later, knew how to speak with more authority than Officer Bob.

“Well,” he said in the moments of silence after the last verse of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” “many thanks to the band for this very strange and unexpected concert. But it's time for people to be able to get some sleep. So I would ask you all to go back to your homes quietly.” Then, looking at the band, he added, “The five of you stay here for a quick chat.”

The crowd dispersed. The band was alone with the police chief and Officer Bob.

“Christmas Eve is always a hard time in the police business,” he said dolefully. “Most people are having fun, and for some people, that leads to losing some wholesome inhibitions that should have kept them out of trouble.”

He let the words hang in the air, until the silence seemed ominous.

“In particular, I have two big problems tonight. A good one and a bad one.”

He waited for someone in the band to ask the question he wanted. “Are we the good one or the bad one?” asked Amos.

The chief smiled like a sphinx for a long time. “You're the good one,” he said at last. “I can see well enough there's no real harm in you, just a little too much high spirits. Still, we can't have you keeping people awake all night yodeling through every street in town, can we, now? You can see that, right?”

All five of them nodded guiltily. “Sorry about that,” said Amos and Danny, and all of them muttered agreement with the apology, even Jack. Then a long silence ensued, and the band was at a loss to guess what might happen next.

“What's the bad problem?” asked Danny at last.

The police chief turned unexpectedly to Officer Bob. “Bob, I'm going to do something a little irregular here… it's kind of a funny situation, you know… and I don't want you to be held responsible for anything if it goes wrong. So I wonder if you could give us a little privacy. Maybe just sit in the car until I call you back. Is that all right?”

“Whatever you say,” said Officer Bob meekly, but he didn't obey at once, but stared in bewilderment for a few seconds first.

After he left, the chief kept looking after him for a moment. “Ah,” he said, “I wish I could rewind the tape and be an innocent little beat cop like that again…”

Then he slowly turned to the band and began.

“You know, I love the rule of law. We vote, we make the rules, we all get along mostly, and the few who get in trouble do their time, then come back. When I was a regular beat cop like Bob, I thought that was a fact. Now it seems like a dream. Dealing with street criminals and misfits is tough sometimes. But what I really hate are these bigwigs who just know that they're above the law. What's the world coming to?

“These last few years, I've done a few things I ought to be jailed for, in a better world. But I did them because otherwise they'd throw me out, and put someone in my place who'd do even worse things. And I think back to old chiefs who have passed on, and how they chewed out youngsters who lazed about or bent the rules. I think how they wouldn't have done the things I've done, and I'm ashamed of myself. How I miss the dear old honest tirades! Sometimes you can tell what a man loves by what he'll get angry for. And my first chief loved the rule of law. But who knows, maybe he was corrupt too, and he just played a part in front of us innocent young beat cops, like I do now. Maybe the world was always rotten that way. The rules are for suckers. The good guys lose.”

The band members exchanged a few puzzled glances at this apparently irrelevant, unfiltered monologue. But they felt the chief had some hidden purpose in saying it, though they couldn't imagine what. If they had been hardened criminals with secrets to protect, they would have thought the chief was being intimate and confidential in order to get them off their guard, and trick them into betraying themselves. And the chief had done that with great skill to a lot of crooks over his long career. He seemed to see their puzzled thoughts, and answered them with a wry smile.

“Power corrupts,” he said slowly and solemnly, and the words seemed to fall heavy upon the ground.

By the way, before I go on with this story, let me reassure you that this brave and honorable old police chief retired in good standing two years later, enjoyed his waning years in peace and contentment in the countryside with lots of grandchildren milling about, and is now far beyond the reach of any worldly enemies he might have made, hopefully with God. Otherwise, I wouldn't dare to repeat what he said that night for fear that his loose tongue would make him enemies he couldn't afford.

“You'll agree,” the chief continued, “that there can't be just no punishment for repeatedly violating the rules, and being a public nuisance, at least from the perspective of a few grumps, and then trespassing in a closed park at past midnight. I've got to penalize you somehow, just for the sake of the rule of law.”

“Are you going to put us in jail?” asked Jonathan.

“Oh, I've got something much worse than that in store for you,” smiled the chief. “I'm going to make you play for King Herod.’

Now the band members did look alarmed, for the chief’s sanity. He watched them hopefully for a while, then subsided with a sigh.

“Well, my joke didn't come off, as usual,” he said. “That's okay, I'll explain it. My big problem of the night is a party in–” He stated the name of a neighborhood even wealthier than Fairview Heights, though less respectable. “The host is a bad man, and he's in the service of worse men than he, though all unofficially. He was also the biggest donor to the mayor’s PAC. In return, he takes it for granted that he's purchased immunity from the laws, and that if a police investigation ever gives him trouble, he's only got to call the mayor and he'll order us to back off. He already had some shady business underway, and I'm pretty sure it's grown on my watch, although the exact extent of it would be hard to prove even if we were allowed to conduct a proper investigation. But the worst of it is that he acts like he's king of this town. People go to him and beg for things, and he sends messages and people obey, and he holds court and people attend on him. He's holding court tonight, with a Christmas Eve party. That's the guy I was talking about.”

“King Herod?” asked Jonathan.

“Now you're getting it,” said the chief with satisfaction.

“You want us to play for him?” asked Jack.

Ignoring this question for the moment, the chief collected his thoughts and continued. “I keep getting calls tonight about a party in”-- the wealthy, not wholly respectable neighborhood that he had mentioned earlier– “which is getting out of hand. From ordinary citizens, who just want to sleep. But they're getting woken up by loud music, the sound of loud conversation, sometimes brawls. Sometimes they seem afraid, and want us to investigate, just to know what's going on. At the same time, I get calls from the mayor's office, telling us on no account to disturb it, and by the way, could we provide a police escort for–” He mentioned the name of a prominent political businessman and the band's eyes lit up with wonder and fear. “That's right, he's there. Also–” He named a famous talk show host. “And–” The name of the most disreputable member of the White House administration didn't ring a bell for all of them, but Amos and Danny shuddered.

“Obviously, I'm taking you into my confidence by telling you all this,” he said. “Obviously, I would recommend that you don't talk to the press, for your own safety, never mind mine…”

Suddenly, they realized that all the swagger had gone out of him, and he was only sad and weary.

“I don't get it,” said Amos. “This doesn't seem to make any sense. Are you trying to punish us or get us a job? And why would they want us there?”

“To the first question,” said the chief, “yes and yes. To the second, they don't know they want you, yet. But I'm going to make the pitch if you're agreeable. You see, King Herod had the bright idea of a pool party. The weather forecast was so warm that it looked like you could swim outdoors in December very comfortably, in the giant heated swimming pool at his mansion. One of his mansions, I should say. The novelty of that would satisfy his important, dangerous, hard-to-please guests. But then suddenly, at the height of the party, it got cold, and there was even a bit of snow. And King Herod doesn't seem to have made much of a Plan B. So he calls his puppet, the mayor, and orders him to fix it somehow. And what I've done to deserve it, I don't know, but the mayor sees fit to make me one of the few that he takes into his confidence.

“The worst of it is that we can't just tell the regular citizens who call in to complain that we’re dealing with a big shot and we're not allowed to interfere. That would turn into a news story. I'm sure they've got reporters on their payroll or blackmailed or whatever but it's not a tight net. These guys would kill for a good news cycle if they thought they could get away with it. So we have to keep bluffing the public, and I have to keep bluffing guys like Officer Bob, and drunken rowdies are getting bored and spilling out into the streets. And there’s bad blood between some of the guests that might break out at any time. A bit of live music might calm people down. Isn't there some story in the Bible about how Salome danced before King Herod to distract him from getting mad and killing the newborn King and all the infants of Bethlehem? And he gave her half his kingdom, or something?”

“Umm… I think you're getting the story a bit muddled,” said Amos.

The band, now that they saw the police chief’s outrageous proposal more or less clearly, stood stunned for a moment. But not as long as you might expect. They had seen enough strange things that night to be ready for anything.

Jack was the first to speak.

“Earlier tonight,” he said in an earnest and mildly penitent tone of confession and resolve, “when I was on fire with musical inspiration, I got excited and made an utterance so vainglorious as to verge on blasphemy. I see now that God is avenging it by granting my challenge. We're being sent into hell to see if we can charm the devils and save a few souls from purgatory. So be it. As God wills. Who's with me?”

Everyone murmured their agreement, and Jack looked the chief in the eye and said, “We're in.”

“Well, I'm grateful,” said the chief, relieved and a little inspired, with a smile like a child’s after receiving an unexpected compliment. And then he was struck by a new idea. “And I'll be particularly grateful if… well, could you try to… maybe awaken someone's conscience in there? I mean, if someone in that room would start to feel a little bit of compunction, a little bit of the fear of hell… A good whistleblower can work wonders for an investigation, I assure you, and you might contribute a lot to the public safety. There's some fight in me yet, and I'm ready to be Horatio on the bridge if I had a bridge to stand on. It would be good to go down swinging for the rule of law.”

“We'll see what we can do,” said Amos.

“I can't pay you anything myself,” said the chief. “There are forms I'd have to fill out, and this operation has to be very much on the DL. But you can put a guitar case out and collect tips. You might get lucky. Not half their kingdoms, but… Well, let's just say there will be more than ten billion dollars of net worth in that room. And sometimes the wicked are the most generous. Maybe they're trying to buy your prayers, or something. It could be a lucrative evening for you.”

Then Danny spoke up. “One request,” he said. “If we're going to be playing for the great, I wonder if I might have… Well, the fact is, I am, professionally speaking, sort of… um… a rock star. This acoustic guitar doesn't really do justice to what I can play. Of course, if you're just caroling, you make do. But for a real gig, could you maybe get me… an electric guitar?”

“Sure thing,” said the chief. “We have one in contraband. It's all yours.”

“It must be an interesting story how that got there,” said Danny.

“Mildly interesting,” smiled the chief. “I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. One more thing: I'd like to let the mayor know I found a live band for his pal’s party. Can you tell me a little bit about yourselves so I can make you sound good?”

Immediately, Danny rattled off an impressive marketing pitch for the band and himself, and the chief called and relayed it to the mayor as best he could.

Chapter 24. The Mirror of Success

Of how they were brought in an unmarked police van to a gaudy hilltop mansion, set up on a little stage, and commenced to play, there is no need to tell much. I should hardly dare to do so, anyway. Unlike the police chief, I am not in that peculiar condition that places one beyond the reach of enemies, and I should fear for my own and my family's safety if I should reveal much about the conversations that took place there, or even the identities of the guests. I should, moreover, be sorry inadvertently to give helpful career advice to any readers who may be lusting to join that unholy power elite.

Musically, they did fine, though not great. They might have had a crashing failure but for Mandy, since Jack on fiddle and Danny on electric guitar, both brilliant in their own ways, didn't weave together easily into a coherent instrumental sound. The sound was a bit schizophrenic at times, now folk, now rock, but not a coherent folk rock sound. Fortunately for Jonathan, King Herod had a drum set, so it was his best time of the night, and he brought some songs to life with a sizzling rhythm. But in general, it was the same problem, violin versus electric guitar, that had made the band break up eight years before. To save the show, Mandy made herself the leader, silencing now one and now the other when their improvisations threatened to clash. Mandy was the key to their best moments, managing every now and then with harmonies and vocals to bridge the flashy rock style and the folksy fiddling into something thrilling. Danny's riffs adorned “Last Christmas” and turned “Carol of the Bells” and “Deck the Halls” into rock anthems, to the head-beating approval of the music lovers in the audience. Danny and Jack took turns jamming on “Jingle Bell Rock.” The tired singers were often grateful to have electric guitar riffs to mask their tired voices. Only on “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful,” and a few other moments, did the violin and electric guitar really gel, giving a tantalizing glimpse of the sound they later achieved when their Christmas reunions became a tradition. That one made some in the crowd sing along, to the evident alarm of others. Clearly a Christmas carol sing-along was not the organizers’ intent here. Many others, throughout the evening, looked wistfully at the band as if they wanted to sing along, and it was those for whom Jonathan felt that they were doing the most good.

At one point, Danny, wanting a change of pace, whisper to Mandy, “How about 'Angel of the Morning’?”

“No, Jonathan is right,” she said. “It's Christmas Eve. Let's stick with Christmas carols.”

The crowd were hardly music critics. They were just glad that they had minstrels competent enough to make it a real party. For them, it was the tired tail end of an evening whose best fun night had ended when the pool shut down. It was the tired tail end of an evening, so they milled about and drank till they were ready to go home. But they did even that with a certain corrupt glamor, about which, again, I'm reluctant to tell.

Nonetheless, there is one event, if that's the word for it, which took place that night on that stage, which is very important to this story, and to the eternal destiny of one of its characters in particular, and which cannot be narrated properly unless some impression of the party is provided. There was a swagger in that room, a confidence, a smugness and self-satisfaction, an imperious gaiety that is the crown of cynical greed fulfilled. In a word, the very air of the place was packed tight with success. It took the form of gold watches and gorgeous girls hanging on one’s arm, of name dropping and of menacing vaguely, of expecting to be recognized, or for a different sort, of introducing oneself by name and/or affiliation and seeing a tremor of fear in one's interlocutor. And yes, of showily dropping large wads of bills into the case for the minstrels. Noblesse oblige. When they divided the loot later and most of them insisted that every penny go to Jonathan, he suspected that squeamishness as much as generosity motivated his friends’ refusal to accept any money that was earned there.

That air affected the members of the band differently. Jonathan had no thoughts for anything except that those wonderful greenbacks might yet keep him in the bosom of his family. Amos was merely realist about it: the poor must fleece the rich when they can, and disapproval of them is a luxury to be indulged sparingly. Jack, who had a heroic temperament, had already cast himself as an infiltrator of hell, defiantly fiddling his carols of the poor king of kings born in a stable as a gauntlet hurled against the wicked grandees of this fallen world. He would, in the right circumstances, have been as happy to fight the unholy kings of earth with a sword as with a fiddle, and he would have gone into either fight with the same wild glee. Both methods are quixotic, but Christmas with its carols, penetrating the hearts of the wicked, making them need it's merriment even in their wickedness, and then sometimes revealing its secrets and betraying them to good, has been in the long run the more effective mode of resistance. The Christmas carol is mightier than the sword. Mandy, amidst that display of worldly success, had a trace of envious aspiration in her attitude, for she was still a little corrupted by rock star dreams. Her cure was not yet complete.

But it was Danny, who thought his electric guitar was changing the band's sound and making it groovy, who felt as if he had come home at last. People gave him a few drinks, and although the other band members confiscated them furtively when they got the chance, he got enough alcohol in him to start feeling bold and confident. He felt he had arrived. He saw heads nodding, the people swaying in sympathetic rhythm, ears perked up, and admiring glances from a few kept courtesans, occasionally followed by jealous glances from their patrons. He exulted in how he owned the room. Not always. Not even usually. After all, it was still the old Christmas carol band, not a real rock band. Still, there was power in that room. Influence. Popularity. It was a gateway to glory. Etc, etc. All very silly, of course, and for Danny's sake I won't dwell on it too much, but it led up to the crucial moment.

They didn't meet “King Herod” himself at first, nor for almost an hour. They watched, and Danny especially watched, to see if the movements of the crowd, the turning of deference towards some special person, would reveal him. It slowly became clear who he was, but for a long time they didn't get a glimpse of his face. They kept seeing him from behind, or at an angle, or in a bad light, so that he almost took on the character of some sort of ghost, everywhere present and yet strangely invisible. And then suddenly he came onto the stage, and the crowd fell silent, and he spoke words of praise for the music, and for the mayor for making the last-minute arrangements, and what a fine evening it had been and other pleasant nothings, but still they hadn't seen his face, for he and they both faced the crowd and his back was turned to them.

And then he turned full upon them, the sinister majesty of King Herod, and they saw his face very close up and clear, and all five of them saw the same thing.

He was Danny.

At least, his face was. Perhaps his height and build weren't, and his clothes remained what they had been, but the face that suddenly turned on them in friendly thanks for the evening's entertainment was an exact mirror image of Danny's face.

One person to whom I told this story suggested that this miraculous illusion was God's way of keeping the band safe. Knowing what they knew about “King Herod” from the police chief, they couldn't have gone out into the world knowing the identity of the city's chief malefactor and remained both innocent and safe. The miracle was a kind of divine witness protection program. That's very clever, but I don't really believe it. That doesn't strike me as being God's method.

But the other purpose of the miracle was immediately plain to them all, especially Danny, the more so because of its similarity to Mandy's encounter earlier in the evening. In that moment, Danny was shown his future. That's where he was headed if he remained on the course he was on, letting his ideals and principles fall by the wayside as he pursued fame at all costs. In seeing his own face on that wicked man, Danny saw success in all its horror and emptiness. It was the success that was once offered by Satan to Christ in the wilderness, the success of Augustus reigning over the world and ordering it to be registered and taxed for his benefit when there was no room at the inn for the infant Son of God, the success of King Herod that gave him the power and the motive to massacre the infants of Bethlehem, the success of so many rock stars whose lives, seen up close, have been appalling spectacles of depravity and disgrace, success by the standards of this wicked world, success under the ancient curse.

And that glimpse saved him. The passion that had dominated his whole life died in that moment. He saw what he was destined to become if he stayed his course, at a moment when Christmastime and good company had rekindled in him just enough innocence, just enough of his old ideals, that he could respond to that vision with proper horror, and reject that destiny utterly and forever.

He told his friends as much at the end of the night, sometime after 3AM, when the party was winding down, and they let the minstrels go, and the same unmarked police van arrived to take them back to Ruby Street Mall.

“So did you see what I saw?” asked Amos.

“I think everybody saw it,” said Danny. “King Herod looked exactly like me. I saw everyone do the same double take, and I knew you had seen it too. Right?”

The band members all murmured agreement in tones of wonder, as buildings and streetlights marched past behind the van windows.

“That's what I would have been but for this night,” said Danny. “Famous and rich and wicked. Amos, I have to apologize to you. You were trying to pull me back from the brink, and I was talking like a fool. I can see I was hurting you by being such a fool. I'm sorry.”

“So you're going to turn down the contract?” asked Amos.

“Yes,” said Danny. “Rock music is dead.”

“What are you going to do instead?” asked Amos.

“Well, Jonathan, would you recommend me for that fishing job in Alaska, which it looks like you won't have to go to after all?”

“Absolutely, if you're serious,” said Jonathan. “It's a good place to clear your head. Maybe you'll find God there, like I did. I'll text Sam right away if you want me to. He's the guy who runs the boat, and he's always looking for muscle.”

“Please do,” said Danny. “But as for finding God, I might have just done that already. Who else could have sent me that warning just in the nick of time? I can see now that I was about to walk off a cliff into an abyss. And I'm glad He made all of you witnesses to it. Otherwise, I'd have just thought I was drunk.”

“Sam doesn't allow alcohol on the boat,” said Jonathan.

“That's perfect. That's exactly what I need. Text him that I'm a recovering rock star,” he added with a laugh, “just so he knows what he'll have to deal with. I wouldn't want to let him think I'm more respectable than I am.”

“I don't think he'd get the joke,” said Jonathan.

“Okay, just tell him I'm willing and able, but I'll need training.”

“Sam deals with that all the time,” said Jonathan. “But have you got grit? Sam gets impatient if guys don't give their all when it's needed. Are you ready?”

Danny thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said with decision. “This feels right. I need to get distance from some bad habits. If he'll take me, I'm all in. I won't let you down.”

“All right then,” said Jonathan. “And you're bigger and stronger than me, Sam will like that.”

So Jonathan pulled out his phone to text Sam, and then immediately groaned. “Oh, no, what was I thinking? Fifteen missed calls from Vanessa!”

Chapter 25. The Son-in-Law

It hit him at once: What a monster he had been! He had been out of touch for nine hours. And poor Tess! He had been too busy even to think about her!

“Oh, I'm in so much trouble,” moaned Jonathan as he dialed. “I'm a terrible person… Vanessa, hello, I'm so sorry! But–”

“I have good news!” said Jonathan and Vanessa at exactly the same moment. “I–” said Jonathan, and “You–” said Vanessa, “-- don't have to go to Alaska.”

“What?!” they both said.

When they sorted out who would speak first, Jonathan said, “We made so much money, and the band won't go shares” (that was not quite true but never mind) “when they heard how we're situated, they made me take it all. It's… I think it's more than…”

“Four thousand, four hundred and thirty-four dollars,” said Jack, who had just finished counting it. Jonathan repeated the number to Vanessa.

“That's amazing,” said Vanessa. “It's like a miracle.”

“Yeah,” said Jonathan.

“Where's Tess?”

“Still at Mandy's, I assume,” said Jonathan. “I'm so sorry.“

“You didn't leave an address,” said Vanessa.

“Yes, I did,” he said. “I left a Post-It note on the counter, by the blender. That’s the usual place, isn't it?”

There was a pause. “Oh my goodness, there it is!” said Vanessa. “Where's my brain? It got covered up. I've been so worried. I'm not thinking straight.”

Jonathan began apologizing humbly, but she interrupted. “It's been horrible not knowing where you are, but I've had my own miracle tonight. Did you get my texts?”

“Probably, but I put my phone on ‘Do not disturb’ and forgot about it. Then when I saw you called–”

“Okay, I'll just tell you,” she said hurriedly. “First, I texted my dad Merry Christmas, and he asked how I was doing, and I told him about you and Alaska and how distressed I was. A few minutes later he texted that Mom would be calling. She called, and the first thing she said was that we would be welcome to stay with them, all of us, you too. And we talked for a while, and she apologized for some things, to me but especially to you. I don't remember for what exactly, but… well, you probably understand.”

“Well, I guess so,” said Jonathan. “If it comes to that, there are some things that I'd ask her forgiveness for, too. I'm very glad to hear it.” And then more fervently: “Thank God! All my dreams are coming true!”

“Well, and then, while I was still talking to her, I got a call from”-- she named the landlord. “He said he'd seen that we were selling a lot of stuff off the curb, and asked how we were doing. So I told him we couldn't figure out how to pay rent, and we were about to give notice. And he said we could skip a month or two if we needed to. He said we're good tenants, we take good care of the place. And he said Merry Christmas.”

“Wow,” murmured Jonathan.

“Did you really make $4,000?” she asked.

“It's a long story,” said Jonathan. “I'll enjoy telling you about it. Maybe tomorrow. I'm too tired tonight. But yes. It's in my backpack right now. I'll show you when I get home.”

“Are you coming straight home?”

“Not yet,” said Jonathan, and explained their route via Ruby Street Mall, then Mandy's house to pick up Tess. “Hopefully in an hour. I hope Tess is all right. That's what I feel worst about.”

“I'll be very eager to see you,” said Vanessa. “I love you…”

When he hung up, he had to tell the whole story to the band. There was joy and congratulations all around. And Jonathan summed up his feelings with the words, “I finally feel like a real son-in-law.” And everyone was so touched by that, that it triggered another round of joy and congratulations as enthusiastic as the first.

But Amos was possessed of an odd fit of curiosity. He had a sudden theory he needed to test. “Jonathan,” he asked, “what was the exact time when Vanessa sent you those text messages?”

Jonathan looked them up. “11:17.”

“That's remarkably late,” said Amos. “It's very odd that people would be phoning at that time. The landlord especially.”

Jonathan shrugged. “I guess so. I see what you mean.”

“It was at that time that we had just walked away from the deathbed,” said Amos, “and that the snow started.”

“You checked the time then?” asked Jack.

“Yes, I did. When we started playing. I was morbidly curious just how absurdly late in the night we were making fools of ourselves and disturbing the peace.”

“My friend,” said Jack with great feeling. “I'm so sorry, that must have been terrible for you. I've been tormenting you all night.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said Amos. “Bravo! We'd never have had any of these mad adventures without you, and I've had a marvelous time, and it was a great success. But the point is…” He fell silent.

“But the point is…?” echoed Jack.

But Amos was suddenly too lost in thought to answer, or even to hear. Finally, Jonathan asked him, “Amos, what are you thinking about?”

“Well,” said Amos, in a slow, puzzled voice, “to be honest, I was thinking that I should propose to my girlfriend.”

“Um, why? What inspired that?”

“She's beautiful and sweet and kind, you see,” said Amos, “but she's superstitious. That is, she's kind of Christian. She prays, and thinks it matters, and interprets things that happen as answers to prayers. And I've always felt such contempt for that, that for all there is to like about her, that's held me back. I didn't want to marry someone I couldn't respect. But now…” He paused.

“But now…?” prompted Jack.

“Well, a lot of queer things have happened tonight, haven't they? Mandy seeing her future face in that woman, and all of us seeing Danny's future face, or a warning about it, in King Herod, and that strange scene from Narnia with Jack in it as a Faun–”

“What's that?” asked Danny, startled.

“You were looking the other way at the time,” explained Amos, then continued: “And us happening on that deathbed just in the nick of time, and… Well, I remember that when that snow first started falling, contrary to the weather forecast and the warm evening and all, right after Jonathan refused to take money from that devilish Scrooge of an older brother, it seemed to me like a kind of blessing, a kind of halo of approval sent from above to honor Jonathan's courage. It was a strange feeling, but very clear and poignant. And now it turns out that Jonathan's landlord forgave him the rent, and his mother-in-law forgave him for being a rock star and saying bad words and marrying her daughter, at exactly the same moment, give or take five minutes, when Jonathan put that poor, dying woman's needs ahead of his own, in his most desperate hour. Isn't that peculiar?”

Jonathan thought about it. “Yes, I see! How strange. How wonderful. But,” he added, “I still don't see what it has to do with your girlfriend,” said Jonathan.

“Well, it makes it sort of plausible that maybe God answers prayers after all,” said Amos. “Not that I believe it. It's not enough evidence for me to believe it, quite. But it's enough for me to take people who do believe it seriously. It makes me able to respect my girlfriend's superstitions just enough to… combined with everything else…”

Jack suddenly laughed as he saw the point. “To marry her! I see it! How very odd you are!”

“I hope she says yes,” said Jonathan.

“I hope she doesn't,” said Jack with a grin of jocular revenge.

There were happy endings all around, suddenly, and Jack had one more up his sleeve, or part of one.

“Mandy, have you ever considered teaching violin?” Jack asked her.

“Well, thought about it, yes,” said Mandy, with sudden warmth. “It's hard to find the time, not just to teach, but to advertise and just sort of figure everything out. I don't know.” She was evidently intrigued by what Jack might be leading up to.

“People ask me for lessons all the time,” said Jack, “but I'm far too busy. I haven't taken any new students in two years. I'd love to know a good violin teacher I could recommend to them. You'd be doing me a big favor if you started teaching, and I could send a lot of business your way. And there are three students I've been wanting to drop, even though they're wonderful, because…”

But at that moment, they arrived at Ruby Street Mall, and the car stopped. They all got out, and since it was evidently the end of that remarkable evening, they all embraced and said “Merry Christmas!” and embraced again, and there were tears and thanks and all the warm pent-up emotions that had formed through the evening poured out. In a word, all masks came off, all the remains of standoffishness and cool, and for a few minutes, nothing in the world mattered to them except that they loved one another very much.

Mandy alone was still haunted by fear and sadness.

Chapter 26. The Christmas Wonderland

“I'll walk you to your car, if you want,” said Jack to Mandy as the friends finally began to disperse. “Oh, what a night this was! Glorious! And the best of all was that melody we played together in the park… How did it go?... You were marvelous, you were right there with me… How did it go?” He tried humming but shook his head. “Well, it will come back to me. You were wonderful! You are such a marvelous musician. And you didn't even have your best instrument with you tonight…” And so on, and so on, and maybe Mandy agreed for him to come with them, or maybe not, no one noticed, but anyway, he walked with them.

“About those three students I mentioned, it would be great if you'd agree to teach them,” Jack was soon saying. “Carl is very interested in harmony and composition, and you're better at that than me. And so is Tina, to a lesser extent. Also, she's not making as much progress as I'd like. But she has a lot of opportunities to play. Musical family. And it would kill me to drop Eliza without a good teacher to send her to. I had to work so hard to encourage her, and she's been through so much. But I have gigs galore, and I'm tired of working sixty hour weeks, and… Well, here we are.”

So they were, but Mandy was reluctant to leave. “I do want to take students,” she said, “and I'm so glad you thought of me. I want to hear all about them. Let's talk soon.”

“Well, no time like the present. I'll ride with you if you like,” suggested Jack. “I can take an Uber from your house as easily as from here. More easily. I think you live on my way, don't you?”

Mandy was torn. Jack's mood was hard for her to take. He was boisterous and expansive, while she was gloomy and worried almost to the point of panic. Jonathan, also present though quiet, was better company, since he was worrying with her about what she might face at home. And yet perhaps there was safety in numbers, and she was eager for the business that Jack was offering her. And so she invited him to come along, and he talked the whole way about teaching, and what pieces those three students had played, and their talents and interests and mistakes, and she tried to listen better than was easy for her to do.

Near her house, but not quite there, she suddenly parked.

“Is this where you live?” asked Jonathan, confused.

“I can't quite face him yet,” she said. “After that… that vision… That was my future, I know it. I just feel certain. At least, my probable future, my future if… Well, anyway, when? When? And I keep thinking, what if it's tonight? What if I walk in the door and he tells me it's over? What if that's what it meant?”

She wasn't crying. She seemed somehow brave, like a soldier driven by duty into a hopeless battle. But the air in that car was suddenly heavy with grief.

“Why show you that, if you're past all hope?” said Jack.

“He's right,” said Jonathan. “Why would God give you that warning, if it were already too late for you to act on it and set things right? That doesn't seem likely, does it? There must be a chance.”

Mandy sat a while, staring into the darkness. Then suddenly she said, “Follow me.”

She walked stealthily, and they followed in the same way, as if they were a band of burglars. They came to the house Jonathan recognized from earlier in the evening. But they did not go in. She led them very quietly and stealthily through the darkness to the left of the house, under low hanging tree branches, through bushes that could not but make little rustling noises as they pushed branches aside. And suddenly they found themselves looking through a window, out of the darkness, invisible in the darkness to the people in the lighted house, and Mandy let out a gasp of wonder.

“Look what she's done!” she said in the ghost of a whisper.

Inside the house, Tess was sitting with Mandy's two little boys beside her, snuggling into her. They were not exactly smiling. Unfortunately, their little faces seemed to have forgotten how to smile, which was very sad, and yet now they were being comforted. They felt loved. They looked grateful, contented, happy, perhaps, in a subdued and solemn way, even joyful.

And their eyes, to the extent that the the secret spectators could see them from the side, seemed to be full of wonder. Well they might be, for the room had been transformed into a Christmas wonderland.

There was a splendidly decorated Christmas tree, the one Jonathan and Tess had picked up at the Salvation Army a few hours before. Now, full of lights and covered with ornaments, it filled one wall of the room with beauty and mystery and soft colors and sparkling tinsel. There was a great heap of presents under the tree, wrapped in paper with Santas and stars and snow.

A mantle that had long been littered with unwashed dishes and unopened bills, as Jonathan had seen through the window, had been cleared and set with a beautiful Nativity scene, and with scented candles. Christmas lights shone on the walls and the ceiling. Four stockings, stuffed with wonderful treats that awaited Christmas morning, hung from the mantle.

On the table, there was a huge plate of apparently fresh-baked mouth-watering Christmas cookies, shaped like pine trees and reindeer and bells and stars, generously frosted in red, green, and white, and covered with sprinkles and gumdrops in the same colors. Soft Christmas music was playing in the background. And they could only just hear Tess reading:

“And it came to pass, while they were there, the days were fulfilled that she should be delivered…”

In the chair opposite Tess, there sat a man who seemed to be in a kind of trance. He was tall, lean, and somehow with a hollowed-out and defeated look, with traces of grey in his black hair, and a face that seemed habitually careworn. He had not taken off his coat or his boots. He sat very still, helpless, as if stunned.

“Should we be spying like this?” asked Jonathan in the quietest whisper he could manage.

“I don't care,” she said. “I've never seen him this happy. I can't tell you how much my heart needs this.”

“He doesn't look happy,” said Jonathan.

“That's my fault,” said Mandy. “But he is. For the first time in years, he is. This is what he wanted, all he ever wanted. A happy home.”

They were silent for a long time. Tess went on reading, the boys went on listening and snuggling, the man remained in his trance, and the candles kept burning, but got a little shorter.

“Are you ready to face him?” Jonathan said at last.

“Yes, but wait two minutes,” she said. “I want to remember this. If he leaves me tonight, if I never see him again, this is how I want to remember him.”

After about two minutes had passed, she took a deep breath and said, “Okay. Pray for me.”

“Shall we wait outside?”

“No, come with me,” she said. “I want witnesses for this.”

And so the three of them rustled through the bushes, ducked under a tree branch, and stepped onto the front porch, where Mandy burst into the house, and Jonathan and Jack followed her down the hall.

Jonathan and Jack now saw as well as Mandy how happy the man had indeed been, by contrast with the peculiar unhappiness, the fear and trouble and shock, that entered his face as soon as his wife entered his field of vision. He said nothing. He seemed to be trying to prepare himself to do so, but was so tired and confused that he couldn't bridge the gap from the happy trance to the new situation.

Mandy, meanwhile, was a whirlwind of decisiveness.

First, she turned to the boys. “Boys,” she said, “look how tired your father is. Do you know why? Partly it's because he begged his boss to let him work back-to-back shifts on Christmas Eve so that he could get us the kind of special Christmas dinner that I remember from my childhood. I hope you'll be like that someday, boys: good, hard working husbands and fathers who always put their families first.

“And all this,” she added, gesturing to the stockings and the Christmas tree and everything in the room, “is Christmas. Christmas! Isn't it wonderful? I'm sorry that I never gave you a real Christmas before.”

“And you –” She then looked at Tess with an expression that might be mistaken for anger for its sheer intensity, though it was really gratitude. “You are simply wonderful. Thank you for all you've done for us. Thank you for giving my boys a Christmas.” And Christmas lights sparkled in tears that had appeared on Mandy’s cheeks.

“Yes, you are,” Jonathan agreed vigorously.

“Most of the stuff is yours,” said Tess, springing to her feet and defending herself as if the praise had been an accusation. “You said, I think, that I could look in closets and whatnot. I just cleaned the place up a little, and… Do you want a cookie?”

Jonathan silenced his wonderful Tess by taking her in his arms and kissing her.

Mandy, meanwhile, turned to her husband, who waited fearfully for the words that had so often hurt and emasculated him. “Arthur,” she said, “my Christmas present to you this year is me. Me. To be a real wife. It's not much, and please don't thank me, because it should have been yours long ago. Also, I don't expect you to believe me. I hardly believe myself. I'm such a–” She didn't say the ugly word in front of the children, but all the grown-ups heard it anyway. “I've been cheating you all these years, not cheating on you of course but cheating you of the love and care and sympathy and cherishing and… and respect… that I owed you, cheating you of, well, of this–” She gestured vaguely to the transformed room. So far she had spoken confidently, but now her voice began to tremble. “Of a happy home. I was wickeder than you knew, because I knew what I was doing, I knew it, I knew it…” And angry sobs, broke out with the word knew. “Or I sort of knew, I mean, at some level, and… My pride… I don't know… but I'm going to change. At this moment, every fiber of my being is determined to be different… to be different…”

Though she ended in sobs, her apology sounded so angry and defiant that it was difficult at first for her amazed husband to recognize it as an apology. But she was angry and defiant against herself. A few moments passed after she ran out of words, and he did nothing, and a fear entered her face that maybe her nightmare had come true, and it was too late, and this was the end. When he saw that, he finally understood, and sprang to his feet.

“Mandy,” he said with great feeling, and he took her in his arms, and then her tears flowed, and she sobbed violently, so that the words she kept repeating could hardly be understood. But they were:

“I love you… I love you… I love you…”

All this time, Jack and Jonathan had not even been introduced, and their presence was rather awkward. Jack's violin, however, served somehow as an excuse for Jack's being there, while Jonathan was the father of the wonderful Tess. Still, as it didn't seem possible to leave the house without even an introduction, and as there was no sign that Mandy would compose herself anytime soon, and as it seemed urgent to let the reconciled couple be alone together as soon as possible, Jonathan finally spoke over Mandy's tears and pathetic words and said:

“Jonathan.” He put out a hand to be shaken, and Arthur reached over his sobbing wife to shake it.

“Jack,” said Jack, following suit. Another handshake.

“So you are the famous band?” said Arthur.

“Part of it,” said Jonathan. “We made a lot of money tonight.” He had not been strictly accurate that he told Vanessa that the band refused to go shares. Mandy had kept some of hers, and was then forced by Jonathan's solicitude to take back some of what she had relinquished to him earlier.

“Yes, we did,” said Mandy, partly recovering herself, and from her pockets, she pulled out, and laid haphazardly on the table, what evidently amounted to more than a thousand dollars’ worth of cash. “Merry Christmas!”

Arthur kissed her then, for the first time that night. (Not because he valued the money more than her promise to be a real wife, of course, but because only now did she look him in the face long enough to give him the chance.) “Wow,” he said, looking at the pile of money.

“Well earned,” said Jack. “She was always the musical mastermind of the band. She sang and played very beautifully tonight. But we shouldn't keep you…”

Mandy gave Jack a look of gratitude for the praise through her tears.

“I’ll be in touch,” Jack said to her, in a confidential tone.

Then Jack, Jonathan, and Tess began making as if to go. But Mandy stopped Tess and said, “Please, come back and see my boys again sometimes, will you? You'll be very, very welcome.”

“Yes, certainly, if…” She looked at Jonathan and his eyes reassured her. “I certainly will.”

And then, as they kept packing up, Arthur stopped them shily.

“Excuse me… May I… hear you play?”

And so the instruments came out again, Jack with his violin, Mandy at the piano this time, and she and Jack singing together. All evening, though Jack had sung often, he had usually felt a little ashamed, for a while his singing voice was plenty good enough for ordinary purposes, it was so much inferior to Mandy's and Danny's that he was reluctant to use it in their company, and did so mainly as an excuse to be present when their Christmas carols evidently didn't need any accompanying percussion. But now his voice and Mandy's seemed to make a beautiful harmony together, as they sang softly:

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin, mother and child
Holy infant, so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace.

As they sang, there returned to Arthur's face that expression of happy trance with which they had first seen him that evening.

And Tess, hero of the hour, whose innocence had conquered all, stood next to the piano, awestruck by the way Mandy's fingers rippled whisper-soft arpeggiated harmonies high above the melody, Her eyes were brimming with happy tears. No, not happy tears, joyful tears.

Jonathan told himself it was late, and resolved to go, but in spite of that, he heard himself singing:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on Earth, good will to men…

Tess knew the first words of this one and joined in the singing as the fiddle and piano swelled, and when she ran out of words she knew in the second verse, she borrowed Jonathan's smartphone and looked up all the lyrics. There were some Jonathan hadn't known before:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor does He sleep,
For Christ is here; His Spirit near
Brings peace on earth, good will to men.”

When men repent and turn from sin
The Prince of Peace then enters in,
And grace imparts within their hearts
His peace on earth, good will to men.

O souls amid earth’s busy strife,
The Word of God is light and life;
Oh, hear His voice, make Him your choice,
Hail peace on earth, good will to men.

Amen.

Chapter 27. The Turning Point

For two thousand years, again and again and again and again, the joyful season of Christmas has come, and men and women and children have raised glad voices in songs and stories and poems and plays and sermons, to celebrate the Child who was the father of all things, and the mother who was the daughter of her Child, and the enclosure of infinity in a young girl's womb, and the way God’s hands which had crafted the stars were too small to reach the heads of the cattle around Him. It makes no sense. It's too good to be true, except that it is true. And kings and nations and languages and philosophies and sciences and legal systems and musical genres arise and mature and decline and pass away and are forgotten, but Christmas remains, and it always will remain, and each generation shall sing new songs for it, and also sing the old songs with new voices, until the Christmas Child comes again and makes all things new. So much is easily said, the more so as it has been said a thousand times before, but it is no less worth saying for that.

I don't know what impact they had on most of the others they blessed that night with their music. I don't know whether that wicked businessman repented of his greed and asked his mother's forgiveness at the end. I don't know whether the dying woman found that her life proved an acceptable offering before the throne of God. I assume that the happy tourists who heard them on Ruby Street Mall and the prosperous residents of Fairview Heights were glad to have their Christmases adorned with such beautiful music, and I hope it helped bring the Christmas message home to them, and made them better able to rejoice and love. And I can't help but believe that they did even more good in that other neighborhood, the one with broken windows and an aura of fear, where respectable people rarely went and Christmas carols were rarely heard. I hope whatever violence was brewing there that night was prevented by a little Christmas cheer and a few extra patrol cars. I don't know whether any of the gangsters and courtesans in King Herod’s court were touched and moved to repentance by Christmas music that night, or whether the police chief got his whistleblower.

What we do know is that Jonathan and Vanessa, Tess and Paul and little Jack woke up on Christmas morning to a surprise far better than any Christmas presents: that Daddy wasn't going away after all, and they weren't moving, and they would be together for a while longer and maybe forever. But I had better draw a curtain of privacy over that, for such joy is a family affair. How could I communicate, in any case, how putting on slippers and making coffee and reading a story in the big chair by the tree with the boys on his lap became the symbols of an infinite happiness about to be unlocked, the ordinary beatified into the sublime by a curse averted. How much of the joy of heaven will consist in little more than the joys of earth purified of their taint of mortality? Jonathan's family got a glimpse of that on that Christmas morning. That's enough to make all the band's labor worthwhile, apart from anything else.

But this story raises two abstract difficulties, and a few words about them may as well serve to close my tale. They are, first, the propriety of miracles, and second, the propriety of Christmas caroling.

Concerning the propriety of miracles, there is a strong general objection to them on the grounds that some people like to live in an orderly world reliably governed by certain laws of physics and probability, and any exceptions to or disruptions of this pattern make these people decidedly uncomfortable. God apparently panders to this preference to a great extent, by keeping miracles pretty subtle, most of the time, and so rare that most people witness no more than a handful in their entire lives. In view of these general divine scruples about the overuse of miracles, why did God bestow three unmistakable miracles, and several more suggestions of miracles, amounting to maybe eight or ten altogether, on a single night? What was accomplished by them commensurate with the cost of so many miracles to the integrity of the laws of nature?

The answer to that can only be in the subsequent lives of the members of the band, above all Mandy and Danny, whose lives after that night bore little resemblance to their lives before.

For Jonathan, that night represented the seal of his conversion. The moment when he refused to be bribed to leave that sad deathbed, claiming the service of Christ as a warrant for his presence there, was the moment when he became a mature Christian. He became more confident thereafter, without being less humble. And the family’s situation stabilized and never again became so precarious as it was then and had often been before. Much of the credit for this goes to Jonathan's formidable mother-in-law, with whom he thereafter became the best of friends. She gave him several books about decision-making and personal finance, which he read diligently, and duly improved himself.

Amos was the one that got away. Or was he? It's complicated. He married his girlfriend a year later, and in the ardor of love, he became a churchgoer to please his wife, but he skips sometimes in order to assert his independence. But he retains his academic interest in Christian theology. It's been nine years, as far as can be discovered, since he last referred to himself as an atheist or said he disbelieved in God. Three years ago, he was arguing about cosmology with a new acquaintance, and his interlocutor, after hearing his worldview, called him an “agnostic,” to which he made no objection. That's a step in the right direction, at least. His children, who are all devout churchgoers, taking after their mother, regard their father's irreligion as an eccentricity or even an affectation. “His heart believes,” says one of them, “but his mind gets in the way.” There's hope! His children pray for him a lot and feel confident that it's just a matter of time.

Amos, by the way, still believes firmly in the miracles that took place in their Christmas caroling night, though it's blatantly inconsistent with his general worldview. Some of his friends think he's only doing that to humor his good friends Mandy and Danny, who treasure that night as the beginning of their salvation, and give the miracles tremendous importance. But that would be out of character for him.

Jack may or may not have helped to precipitate a change of heart on the part of his minister, whose progressive cast of mind had shaken his own faith. He debated him a little, prayed for him a lot, and spoke for Christian orthodoxy among his fellow worshippers. And beginning a month after that Christmas, the pastor began, first to tolerate, then to admire, and within a year, to preach and live by the old-time religion. Long afterwards, that pastor once said that the basic trouble with him had been that in his liberal seminary, he had learned to disbelieve in miracles, and that he came to believe in them one time when he overheard Jack telling some children in the church about how Jesus walked on water. The pastor saw then that Jack believed completely in the miracle that he was retelling, and as one candle lights another, he immediately realized that he believed in it too, for the first time. Jack's faith waxed and waned over the years, as faith will, but it waxed more than it waned, and the light of his faith gave light to many, and he could always restore his faith in miracles, in particular, by remembering that night of Christmas caroling long ago, and the glimpse of Narnia, and the visions that were vouchsafed to his two wayward friends and rescued them from ruin and unbelief. Jack was the last of the band to marry, loving the rambling minstrel’s life, but he did it at last, and his children are mostly musical, and all Christian.

And then there was Mandy.

As she looked out of the dark Christmas Eve night into her own house that Tess had transformed into a happy home, Mandy had inwardly prayed to God to let her keep her family, and vowed to God that if for her family's sake it were necessary for her never to play or sing another note, she would pay that price. It was the bitterest and the most joyful moment of her life.

But it soon became clear that that sacrifice would not be required of her. On the contrary, reconnecting with Jack proved to be the gateway to opportunity, starting with teaching violin students, then playing for weddings, then directing a church choir. While she was determined, now, to put her family first, paying gigs met certain needs, and one thing led to another until, when her husband lost a job, she was once able to encourage him to take seasonal work as a house painter and be Mr. Mom for a few months around Christmastime, her busiest season. More often, though, she hired Tess, who earned half of her living expenses in college by babysitting Mandy's boys. It was nothing like the musical career she had wanted in her youth, but she was glad that God, Whom she thought about more and more, was putting her talents to good use. Meanwhile, she learned to cook steak, decorate Christmas trees, hang stockings, read stories, and enjoy her growing boys, of whom she had four in the end, all around.

As for Danny, a few very hard months in Alaska cleared his head, and when he came back, just about every job seemed relaxing and easy by comparison. But he found he missed music, so he soon got a guitar job at a church, and then stayed for the sake of a girl he met there. It followed that he picked up churchgoing habits and churchgoing friends, but he remained full of hectic, heterodox opinions, and even the idiosyncratic statements of faith that he sometimes produced, like “Jesus is the real rock star,” tended to be theologically unsound.

And yet he became accepted and, over the years, even came to be regarded as a kind of patriarch in his congregation, for a multitude of intellectual sins were covered by his big heart. If someone needed help moving, or if a crew was to volunteer at a soup kitchen, Danny had to be there. His wife didn't always like always being second priority to any opportunity for hands-on charity, but she got used to it. He was so zealous that he got upset when he was left out. Once someone in the congregation had needed help moving, and no one had told Danny, so he missed it, and when he heard about it too late, he was upset and reproachful. Then he went out into the church parking lot and rear-ended the organizer’s car. He said it was an accident, as it surely was. Still, the joke circulated that if you didn't invite Danny when you were helping someone out, he would smash your car up. People didn't want to risk that, so they made very certain after that always to invite him, unless he was too sick or injured. Some were careful not to invite him in that case, since he would still come if it wasn't good for him.

Also, the new Danny believed in God, and talked about Him all the time, as if they were best buddies. That, too, might not have been quite theologically sound, but people came to love it about him, though perhaps in a somewhat patronizing way.

My point is that they all settled down, which doesn't mean they stopped having adventures but that their lives took on form and meaning and rooted purpose, and they became sources of inspiration and strength to others, who loved and relied on them. And I think that in the solid, useful, happy lives of these former ramblers, there is ample fruit to show for whatever cost to the integrity of the laws of nature might have been incurred by a handful of petty miracles on that long ago Christmas night. Maybe most of that could have been accomplished naturally, but Mandy and Danny were so stubbornly set on the wrong roads that it's hard to what could have awakened them to their danger short of what did, those fateful glimpses of what lay at the end of those roads. They would be saved by miracles or not at all, so God did what was needed.

Concerning the propriety of Christmas caroling, the police chief, of course, had a point that people should be allowed to sleep in their beds even on Christmas Eve, and reasonable bounds must be set even to the finest singing in the street.

But I'm inclined to think that in general we err far in the other direction. We have too much privacy. Indeed, I trust that few will fail to regret the loss of the world described in Christmas songs like Here We Come A-wassailing and Wassail, Wassail All Over the Town, where caroling door to door was normal and served as a kind of festive poor relief. May God grant us the wisdom to reform our Christmas customs so that they will banish greed from our midst and make us all love our enemies on that holy night!

The moral difficulty, though, arises because nowadays there will always be misanthropic spoilsports like the nasty woman in Fairview Heights. With such people about, itching to make trouble with spiteful calls to the police, it's not clear that Christmas caroling makes a net contribution to the public welfare. When such pests inconvenience the police with grouchy, out-of-touch complaints, our sad, secular age is too stupid to distinguish, for purposes of law, public administration and police protocol, between praising God and disturbing the peace.

Officer Bob felt ashamed after that evening that he had nearly defied an order to arrest the Christmas carolers, and after a few weeks of brooding on that, he quit the force. So for all the good they did, they cost the city thousands of taxpayer dollars in police recruitment costs.

Still, none of the band has any regrets about that night. They feel like they did some good.

And anyway, the miracles, the magic mirror visions and the enchanted snow and the providential coincidences, seem to be, whatever else they signified, a divine stamp of approval on the strange enterprise of those musical Christmas vagabonds. As I said, most miracles in scripture seem to be at once a rescue and a reward. When Jesus fed the five thousand, for example, they had been so eager to hear Him that they followed Him into the desert without having time to get food, lest He give them the slip. Jesus taught His disciples to “be the children of your Father who is in Heaven” by loving all alike, even enemies, “for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” That's what the Christmas carolers did that night, shining Christmas mirth and raining Christmas music on the rich and the poor, the evil and the good, the willing and the unwilling alike. So God showed them His favor.

But while they're glad they did it then, they're too respectable to do it now.

As they were embracing and merry-Christmasing on Ruby Street Mall that night, before they all went home, they all, or almost all, kept saying heartily: “We must get the band back together!” It seemed like a settled plan. But later, they realized that one of them hadn't said so. Jack, the busy, thriving professional musician, had remained silent about it, knowing he had better things to do. In any case, Danny's departure for Alaska made it impossible for a while. When he got back, a few suggestions were floated. It was principally Jonathan who scotched them. He was the father of four, with a day job and a baby son, and could scarcely spare time for rehearsals. But also, secretly, he didn't much believe that he could make a musical contribution to justify his membership. And without him, they weren't sure they could get along with each other well enough to be a band. So they never played together again, except at Christmastime. Mandy and Jack did start, from that night on, to perform together as a duo regularly.

But I'm happy to say that they have caroled at Ruby Street Mall every year thereafter, getting permits and sometimes rehearsing a little in advance, and we've all heard them and enjoyed them greatly. Over time, forgetting their other history, people have come to call them simply “the Ruby Street Mall Christmas Band.” People come not only to hear many fine old carols beautifully arranged, and to sing along, but also to hear, every year, at least one or two new compositions by Jack or especially Mandy. Over the years, while many strangers come to listen, more and more of the audience also belong to the band members themselves. First there were Jonathan's wife and children, and later Amos's wife and children, and later Jack's wife and children, and later Tess's husband and children. People show up who are connected with Danny through the church where he has become, as I mentioned, a kind of patriarch. And dozens if not hundreds of people treasure the Christmas caroling of the band as their only opportunity to honor Mandy, to whose labor and love so many became indebted over the years. She has become the most patient of teachers, the most resourceful and giving of mothers, and the musical backbone of a church, filling its services with beauty for fifty years. But she is humble and doesn't like to be praised. Only at the Christmas Eve performances of the band, do her children and grandchildren and friends and current and former students feel they have the right to applaud her as much as they desire.

But since that strange Christmas Eve night long ago, they've tamely confined their caroling to the time and place stated on the permit.

They miss it still. Every year, as they respectably limit the reach of their Christmas music to the permitted venue of Ruby Street Mall, they remember with yearning that rambling journey beneath the stars on one Christmas Eve night long ago, when they brought the message of Jesus's birth to rich and poor, good and evil alike, regardless of all rules and all prudence, regardless of the lateness of the hour and the orders of the law. They long for the cup to overflow once more, and let Christmas joy direct them where it will, bringing the message to slums and gangsters and prisons, and Hell itself.

So I'll cast aside all prudence, speak from the heart, and let the chips fall where they may. If you have the good fortune of being poor enough to justify being a bit of a beggar, and if you can carry a tune, please, please, please go Christmas caroling this year. Knock on every door and spread the news that the angels sang long ago in the skies above the hills near Bethlehem. And don't be ashamed to ask for tips, for the workman is worthy of his wages. And if Christmas carolers knock on your door, and your net worth exceeds the requirements of your subsistence, give generously, like the Magi. And if you're reading this story at Christmastime, make sure you sing some fine old carols this year, or better yet, right this minute.

Merry Christmas! Peace on Earth and good will to men! Christ is born!