Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2007-12-18 11:19 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2007-12-18 11:19 pm
Fake News: A Colbert Carol, Stanza II
Title: A Colbert Carol, Stanza II: The First of the Three Spirits
Series: TCR
Rating: G
Genre: Uplifting Christmas tale!
Summary: Years after Jon's death, Stephen is still celebrating Christmas with extravagant and overblown decorations, but he doesn't truly understand the spirit of the season until a succession of ghosts arrives to show him.
I wrote this story in '06, and rewrote it in '07. In between, TCR got Eliza, who is so quintessentially Dickensian that I would have rewritten it just to include her.
❄ A COLBERT CAROL ❄
Stanza II: The First of the Three Spirits
Colbert woke to hear the solemn tones of a clock tower striking the hour. Midway through the tune he realized that there was no bell tower nearby—and then he was wide awake and alert, recalling in full his conversation with the Ghost.
A single toll marked the hour, and he sat halfway up, catching up his glasses from the nightstand and looking nervously about the bedchamber. And then he saw her!
She was sitting in a beam of mingled moonlight and electric illumination that fell through the window, but she glowed too silver to be lit by that alone. She had the form of a young woman, with a mass of thick and curly light brown hair, an outfit composed of articles of clothing too large for her and all much patched, and a rough old hat at a jaunty angle. There was a silver spoon on a fine chain around her neck, and the light that surrounded her appeared to emanate from this spoon.
"Jolly good evening to you, sir!" she said, by way of greeting.
Her voice, light and with a thick British accent, was young, though it held authority that Colbert rarely encountered, or, more precisely, rarely noticed, in anyone besides himself.
"Are you the spirit Jon told me about?" he inquired.
"That's me."
"Who and what are you, exactly?"
"To the who, guv'nor, my name is Eliza. And to the wot, more importantly, I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
"Past? You mean, like, History?"
"No. Your past."
"Oh." Colbert considered this. At least his own past was likely to be a subject of interest to himself. "Why are you wearing a spoon? It looks silly."
"Don't scoff!" chided the spirit. "You're the one 'oo put it there."
Colbert hastily disavowed any knowledge of having spooned the Ghost. He then made so bold as to inquire what business had brought her there.
"Your welfare!" said the Spirit.
Colbert was of the opinion that welfare was little more than legalized communism. The Spirit must have perceived this, for she quickly amended:
"Your reclamation, then. Now look sharp!"
She put out her hand, which was stronger than its girlish appearance would have suggested, and clasped him by the arm.
"Get up, and walk with me."
It was late, and Colbert was tired, and the thermometers outside were doubtlessly reading below freezing, and Colbert clad only in pyjamas and a pair of slippers in the form of his favorite hockey mascot. But the Spirit's grasp, though gentle, was not to be denied. He rose; but upon finding that he was being led towards the window, grasped the hem of her shawl in supplication.
"We can't go out that way," he protested. "It's three stories up! I'll fall!"
"'Old my 'and," the Spirit directed. "But," she added, raising a warning figure, "take no further liberties!" Colbert nodded and hurriedly raised his eyes from the buttoned front of her shirt. He had no wish to be dropped out of the sky by an offended Ghost.
They stepped forward, passed through the window as though it were mist, and stood upon an open country road, with fields at either side.
It was too warm yet for snow, being so far south that such weather nearly never transpired before the New Year. But the sky was grey and bright, and the air pleasantly chilled. It was morning, clear and crisp, so early that the peach trees were still dusted with frost.
"Good heavens," said Colbert, staring about him in amazement. "It's Charleston! I grew up here!"
A trace of an accent long ago shed had appeared in his voice as he spoke these words, and the Spirit regarded him with some amusement.
"Your lip's trembling, guv'nor," she observed. "And wot's that on your cheek?"
Colbert brushed at it, declared dismissively that it had been a snowflake, and asked the Spirit politely to lead him where she would.
"You remember the way?"
"Remember it!" cried Colbert, with a fervour that in him was usually reserved for all things patriotic. "I could walk it blindfolded."
"Funny 'ow you forgot it for so many years," observed the Ghost. "Come on."
They walked along the road, Colbert recognizing every gate, and post, and bridge, and then as they came into the suburbs every path to every house.
At last they came to a home that made Colbert pause, not because it was unfamiliar, but because he knew its every shingle. The Spirit, taking hold of his hand again, pulled him forward to a large window and directed him to look through.
The room within was the picture of a cozy holiday tableau: crowded with family, strewn with wrapping paper and boxes hastily torn open, the walls modestly decorated with homemade wreaths and ribbons from dime-store spools. The tree glittered with old-fashioned lights and a hodgepodge of ornaments made from cardboard and string and macaroni; but Colbert spared it not a glance. His eyes darted about from face to face, fully absorbed therein.
"Jimmy, Eddie," he murmured, half to himself, "Mary, Billy, Margo, Tommy, Jay, Lulu . . . Paul . . . Peter." He swallowed, then finished the list. "And Stephen. Where's Stephen?"
As he spoke the youngest girl—who at seventeen was only a young girl by comparison with her host of older siblings—looked about curiously, perhaps asking herself the same question. Then, without raising alarm, she stood, set aside the puzzle over which she had been contemplating, and left the room.
The Ghost pulled at Colbert's sleeve, and with a step they had passed through the walls again to stand at the bedside of a little boy, who lay despondently upon his sheets and toyed with a stuffed octopus.
"Stephen?" came the girl's voice at the door. "Stephen, are you in there?"
"Go 'way, Lulu," said the boy in a small voice.
The girl turned the knob regardless, came over to the bed and wrapped her arms around the dejected little boy's shoulders. "Come down and be with us, Stephen," she enjoined plaintively. "I'm working on the puzzle that you gave me. Won't you come help me out?"
"Don't wanna," replied the young Stephen. "'Sides, I didn't get you it; Mom got it, an' wrote my name on the tag. I didn't get anything."
"Oh, now, that's not true. You made the cards, didn't you?"
"They're stupid cards!" cried the little boy in a childish fury. "They're sloppy an' some of 'em were backwards an' I spelled Christmas wrong. They're bad."
"Stephen . . ." The girl pressed her brother close to her heart, and he buried his face in her neck, dropping the plush octopus to the floor. "Stephen, it doesn't matter how you spell things, and we don't care what the cards look like. What we care about is that they're from you. You put your time and effort into them, and that's what matters. If you'd only come down, you'd see how much we're enjoying them."
"I wish," murmured Colbert to himself, pulling off his glasses to clean them and surreptitiously passing one cuff over his eyes as he did so; "but it's too late now."
"Wot's that?" asked the Spirit.
"I didn't make my own cards this year," said Colbert, replacing his glasses. "I had my graphics people make them and send them out, to everyone, including my family. I don't even know what they ended up looking like. I wish I'd made my own, that's all."
The Ghost smiled, as if she were privy to some secret joke; then waved her hand, saying, as she did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
Colbert's former self grew larger at the words, and the furniture and arrangement of the room shifted around; what had been two beds and an assortment of such things as all young boys amuse themselves with became a single bed and a more distinctly individual set of items. The young man was evidently searching for one item in particular, as he moved aside a guitar and began digging frantically through a pile of disheveled clothing.
"Stephen!" called a man's voice from below, and Colbert began to hear other signs of activity from the house below: the rumble of moving furniture, the clink of dishes, the murmurs of a crowd.
"Coming, Ed!" returned the adolescent, throwing aside large quantities of tube socks in an even greater hurry. At last he triumphantly lifted a tie, patterned with holly and scarlet berries, from the floor; whipping this about his neck, he fastened it securely in a few deft motions.
"His clothes are all hand-me-downs," remarked Colbert as he watched himself exit, "including the tie. And the suit isn't even designer."
"I think 'e looks jolly 'andsome," declared the Spirit at his side. "But come down!"
Colbert's former self took the stairs two at a time, leaving his intangible followers running to keep pace. Then they all three burst in upon the parlor.
"About time, Stephen!" cried the man who had called to him. "Come help your brother get this couch out of here."
"Sure, Ed," replied the youth gamely; and together they cleared away the couch, while other members of the expansive family moved chairs, desks, lamps, and, in short, anything that could be got out of the way, to be packed off as though they were to be removed from public life for evermore. The result was a vast expanse of hardwood floor, fully cleared in a minute; and then a second round of the clan descended with buckets and sponges, and the floor was cleaned; and as this was done Colbert spotted his own mother at the fireplace, coaxing a very real roaring blaze behind the grate.
In came an uncle with a fiddle and a music-book, and went to stand on a small table which had been shoved into a corner, and struck up a tune as good as an orchestra. As though on a cue, the family poured into the room, and oh, the chaos that followed! Husbands took the hands of their wives, and bold youths the hands of the objects of their affections, and aunts and uncles the hands of their shy young nieces and nephews, and one gentlemanly young man offered a hand to his grandmother, who was Colbert's mother—and out they all went to the floor! Some went gracefully, some clumsily, some pushing, some pulling, any way and every way.
And they danced! Twenty couples at once, spinning on the floor with no apparent order to them, and some with no rhythm to speak of either; and there were more than a few inadvertent collisions. But all was conducted in the best of humors, and not one mood was bruised, though a few shins were.
And there in the middle of it Colbert (who was by this point unconsciously tapping his toes along with the beat) spotted his younger self. He had no partner at the moment; rather, he had somehow become part of a trio of young men, all three rotating their hips in a manner that was guaranteed to attract attention.
The other dancers began to turn so that they could keep an eye on these youths; the fiddler took note of the room's new focus and jovially switched to playing a rather Latin tune to better accompany them. The dancing young men responded in kind, adding movements of the shoulders and deft footwork to their swaying; then the young Colbert's companions caught him and slid him before them to do a solo.
When all three had had their solo moments and were showing signs of exhaustion, the fiddle-player commenced a few bars of outro and drew the piece to a close. The room burst into hearty applause, and then, sensing that their musician was as overwrought by the exhaustion as the three central dancers, retreated to the kitchen to partake of peach cobbler and a hearty roast and a formidable amount of eggnog.
During the whole of this time Colbert had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and his own old hips had begun to cycle in sympathy with his former self. At the end of it he clapped no less fervently than those who had been in the scene, and only when they began to depart was he again conscious of the Ghost, who was looking full upon him.
"No big deal," said the Ghost, "to make these silly people so 'appy."
"No big—!" echoed Colbert.
The Spirit gestured to him to listen to the three young men, who were pouring their hearts out in praise alternately of each other and of the fiddle-player. As they too left the room, she said:
"Well, no! The room is 'ardly decorated, and the feast for this 'ole group can't 'ave cost more than a couple 'undred bucks, and the fiddle came cheap from a secondhand store. Is it really worth all that gushing over?"
"It isn't that," snapped Colbert, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former self rather than his latter. "It isn't that, Spirit. They did it all together; it's the company that counts, the friendship, the family ties. They had fun planning it, and organizing it, and carrying it out, because it was all together, you see?"
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
"Wot's wrong?" asked the Ghost.
"Nothing particular."
"Oh, it's something," observed the Spirit decidedly.
"No," said Colbert, "no. It's just that I'd like to be able to say a word or two to my stage manager, and director, just now. That's all."
His former self switched off the lights in the room as he gave utterance to the wish, leaving it illuminated only by the modest lights draped about the front window. Colbert's eyes were forced to make a rapid adjustment to the change in luminance, and when they had accustomed themselves to the dim light he discovered that they were in the open air again.
"We're getting low on time," announced the Spirit. "Quick!"
This was not addressed to Colbert, or to any person whom he could see; but it produced an immediate effect. For again he saw himself, no more than a year or two older but wearing a far crisper suit and tie beneath his jacket, now standing outside in the dim light and the snow.
He was not alone, but stood by the side of a fair young woman in whose clear blue eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
"Don't, Stephen," she said softly. "This has gone much too far."
"It's only a dance," said the young Colbert. "The whole family's here, and everyone's dancing with everyone. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't matter."
"You say that now!" she cried. "But it won't be only a dance—not to you!—and then you'll want more, and I can't go there, and people are starting to talk, and it's got to stop. Now!"
"Don't be stupid!" said he, grabbing her wrist. "You worry too much. No one will think anything of it. I'm the best dancer in there, and everyone knows it, and everyone wants to dance with me, only I'm choosing you, Charlene! They'll be jealous—well, let them!"
He began to pull her towards the house. The older Colbert was watching the woman's face with something between confusion and deep anxiety.
"She doesn't look happy," he said, only half addressing his companion. "Why not? She's getting to dance with me! Why should that make her unhappy?"
"Perhaps you ought to have put the question to her at the time," suggested the Ghost.
"I didn't notice," cried Colbert, turning his eyes to the determined expression upon the face of his younger self. "I had no idea. And would still have none, if you had not brought me here tonight. Spirit! why do you torture me so?"
"One last stop!" exclaimed the Ghost.
"No more!" ordered Colbert. "I don't want to see it!"
"You shall," the Ghost returned. "Wot's more, you 'aven't got a choice."
The light returned. Some of it was emitted from the last rays of a sunset, but for the most part it came from all the lights that one finds in a city block, for that is where they stood.
"Why, it's New York," realized Colbert, looking about him. "I do believe we can't be more than a block away from Times Square. How long ago is this?" He scanned the skyline as though hoping to find some manner of judging the year, perhaps by the presence or absence of two noted towers in the skyline; but they, or their former site, rested too far away to be of aid.
"You'll see," promised the Spirit. "Come."
This time, rather than drawing Colbert towards a lighted and busy enterprise, the Ghost led the pundit away from the hustle and bustle of the city's heart, towards parts of town with fewer massive signs and less resplendent building faces. Colbert was frightened for a time that he might be led into the least welcoming parts of town, those with graffiti upon their walls and bars across their windows; but the architecture remained professional, and when they at last approached one of the edifices it was merely an office building, with unbarred if somewhat dingy windows.
"I never worked in a place like this," protested Colbert as they passed through the door. "Why are we here?"
"Not to see you, guv'nor," retorted the Spirit dryly, indicating the directory beside the front desk, at which a faded young receptionist was having a conversation on her cell phone. "Look over that and find the resident Oxfam chapter."
Colbert dutifully read the list of officeholders. "OXFAM," he repeated to himself. "They sound familiar. Are they affiliated with NAMBLA?"
"No." The Spirit sighed, as though she had heard this before and were rather tired of it. "They work mostly with livestock—"
"Oh, ew," said Colbert, making a face.
"Get yer mind outta the gutter, guv'nor! They give livestock an' other supplies to families and villages that would otherwise have nothing."
Cowed, the pundit pointed humbly to the organization's entry on the list. "Room 214."
Within this room was an atmosphere far more subdued than that of the house which they had visited previously, though it almost bore more physical evidence of the season: garlands about the walls, wreaths on the doors, and a large potted poinsettia on one of the desks.
Aside from the neatly arranged decorations, the office was rather disheveled; filing cabinets stood open, and envelopes were strewn across a pair of desks pushed together at the room's center. Two men sat opposite each other at these, opening envelopes and extracting small bills, which they arranged into carefully measured stacks, and all manner of coinage, which they corralled into neatly labeled cylinders of paper.
"Man," sighed one of these gentlemen, "why we gotta deal with all this? Can't people just give nice round numbers of cash?"
"We emphasize how far a little money can go," replied his companion, depressing the end of a roll of nickels. "It's, what, forty cents a flu shot? And sometimes forty cents is all people can give. Look at this." He held up an envelope addressed in purple crayon. "This kid probably gave her whole allowance."
"I know that man," exclaimed Colbert, circling round to see the second speaker's face. "It's Alan! My former black friend!"
"That's adorable," admitted Alan's companion of the colorful, childish handwriting. "What a good kid. Now, why can't the millionaires in this city be as generous as that kid?"
"Maybe they are," proposed Alan, "and they just don't send their money to Oxfam."
"Oh," cried the companion derisively, "and where do they send it, then? Your boss's farce of a charity, the, what's it called . . ."
Alan ducked his head with some embarrassment, but dutifully supplied the name of that worthy establishment. "The Stephen and Melinda Gates Foundation."
"That's the one. What is up with that, man? It's big and flashy and never did nobody a whit of good. Some starving kid in China, never seen a TV or anything that needed batteries in her life, this little envelope—" here he jabbed with his finger at the one addressed in lavender— "is gonna mean more to her than that blowhard Colbert's whole fortune."
Observing this exchange, the blowhard so named took a step forward, though neither man could perceive him. "Come on, Alan, stick up for me," he cried encouragingly. "I was your white friend, remember? Well," he amended, recalling that day on which he had seen his former black friend in the audience of his studio, accompanied by a man whose complexion was as fair as Colbert's own, "one of your white friends."
Almost as though in response to these unheard injunctions, the gentleman spoke. "Perhaps," he mused, "when you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you don't understand poverty well enough to feel the need to alleviate it."
"So he's an ignorant blowhard. No excuse. He could learn."
"That's right," echoed Colbert plaintively, clearly much affected by the willingness of this common person to speak so badly of him with no clear ulterior motive. "I could learn. I can learn."
And now Alan at last gave voice to his own doubts. "I don't think so," he confessed. "Or at least, he doesn't want to."
"Can't you talk to him? You're, what does he call it, his 'black friend'?" This was said with not a little derision.
"Not any more," corrected Alan. "He found out about the rally I went to in September, and I got . . . well, demoted."
"He really is a blowhard," observed his companion, with some incredulity at the shallowness which was revealed by this new information about Colbert's character. "I feel sorry for the poor sap he picks to replace you."
"Don't be," pleaded Colbert. "I haven't been much better to poor old P. K.—but I'll start! I promise! So don't you sit there and talk about my ego and my Foundation and my silver spoons!" He turned to the Spirit, who had regarded him calmly all this while, and his eyes fell to the spoon about her neck. "Is that what that stands for? Well, I don't want it. Take it off and give it to them!"
"It isn't that easy—" began the Ghost, but the determined Colbert lunged at her and grasped for the miniature utensil. His fingers closed round it; he pulled in one direction, and she the other; the chain strained, and broke.
The light from the spoon poured in that instant in an unbroken flood across the floor, nearly blinding Colbert in spite of the haste with which he screwed shut his eyelids. When he opened them again all was dark, and his fingers clutched air. Then he was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He had barely time to stumble to his bed and fall upon the sheets before he sank into a heavy sleep.
Series: TCR
Rating: G
Genre: Uplifting Christmas tale!
Summary: Years after Jon's death, Stephen is still celebrating Christmas with extravagant and overblown decorations, but he doesn't truly understand the spirit of the season until a succession of ghosts arrives to show him.
I wrote this story in '06, and rewrote it in '07. In between, TCR got Eliza, who is so quintessentially Dickensian that I would have rewritten it just to include her.
❄ A COLBERT CAROL ❄
Stanza II: The First of the Three Spirits
Colbert woke to hear the solemn tones of a clock tower striking the hour. Midway through the tune he realized that there was no bell tower nearby—and then he was wide awake and alert, recalling in full his conversation with the Ghost.
A single toll marked the hour, and he sat halfway up, catching up his glasses from the nightstand and looking nervously about the bedchamber. And then he saw her!
She was sitting in a beam of mingled moonlight and electric illumination that fell through the window, but she glowed too silver to be lit by that alone. She had the form of a young woman, with a mass of thick and curly light brown hair, an outfit composed of articles of clothing too large for her and all much patched, and a rough old hat at a jaunty angle. There was a silver spoon on a fine chain around her neck, and the light that surrounded her appeared to emanate from this spoon.
"Jolly good evening to you, sir!" she said, by way of greeting.
Her voice, light and with a thick British accent, was young, though it held authority that Colbert rarely encountered, or, more precisely, rarely noticed, in anyone besides himself.
"Are you the spirit Jon told me about?" he inquired.
"That's me."
"Who and what are you, exactly?"
"To the who, guv'nor, my name is Eliza. And to the wot, more importantly, I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
"Past? You mean, like, History?"
"No. Your past."
"Oh." Colbert considered this. At least his own past was likely to be a subject of interest to himself. "Why are you wearing a spoon? It looks silly."
"Don't scoff!" chided the spirit. "You're the one 'oo put it there."
Colbert hastily disavowed any knowledge of having spooned the Ghost. He then made so bold as to inquire what business had brought her there.
"Your welfare!" said the Spirit.
Colbert was of the opinion that welfare was little more than legalized communism. The Spirit must have perceived this, for she quickly amended:
"Your reclamation, then. Now look sharp!"
She put out her hand, which was stronger than its girlish appearance would have suggested, and clasped him by the arm.
"Get up, and walk with me."
It was late, and Colbert was tired, and the thermometers outside were doubtlessly reading below freezing, and Colbert clad only in pyjamas and a pair of slippers in the form of his favorite hockey mascot. But the Spirit's grasp, though gentle, was not to be denied. He rose; but upon finding that he was being led towards the window, grasped the hem of her shawl in supplication.
"We can't go out that way," he protested. "It's three stories up! I'll fall!"
"'Old my 'and," the Spirit directed. "But," she added, raising a warning figure, "take no further liberties!" Colbert nodded and hurriedly raised his eyes from the buttoned front of her shirt. He had no wish to be dropped out of the sky by an offended Ghost.
They stepped forward, passed through the window as though it were mist, and stood upon an open country road, with fields at either side.
❄
It was too warm yet for snow, being so far south that such weather nearly never transpired before the New Year. But the sky was grey and bright, and the air pleasantly chilled. It was morning, clear and crisp, so early that the peach trees were still dusted with frost.
"Good heavens," said Colbert, staring about him in amazement. "It's Charleston! I grew up here!"
A trace of an accent long ago shed had appeared in his voice as he spoke these words, and the Spirit regarded him with some amusement.
"Your lip's trembling, guv'nor," she observed. "And wot's that on your cheek?"
Colbert brushed at it, declared dismissively that it had been a snowflake, and asked the Spirit politely to lead him where she would.
"You remember the way?"
"Remember it!" cried Colbert, with a fervour that in him was usually reserved for all things patriotic. "I could walk it blindfolded."
"Funny 'ow you forgot it for so many years," observed the Ghost. "Come on."
They walked along the road, Colbert recognizing every gate, and post, and bridge, and then as they came into the suburbs every path to every house.
At last they came to a home that made Colbert pause, not because it was unfamiliar, but because he knew its every shingle. The Spirit, taking hold of his hand again, pulled him forward to a large window and directed him to look through.
The room within was the picture of a cozy holiday tableau: crowded with family, strewn with wrapping paper and boxes hastily torn open, the walls modestly decorated with homemade wreaths and ribbons from dime-store spools. The tree glittered with old-fashioned lights and a hodgepodge of ornaments made from cardboard and string and macaroni; but Colbert spared it not a glance. His eyes darted about from face to face, fully absorbed therein.
"Jimmy, Eddie," he murmured, half to himself, "Mary, Billy, Margo, Tommy, Jay, Lulu . . . Paul . . . Peter." He swallowed, then finished the list. "And Stephen. Where's Stephen?"
As he spoke the youngest girl—who at seventeen was only a young girl by comparison with her host of older siblings—looked about curiously, perhaps asking herself the same question. Then, without raising alarm, she stood, set aside the puzzle over which she had been contemplating, and left the room.
The Ghost pulled at Colbert's sleeve, and with a step they had passed through the walls again to stand at the bedside of a little boy, who lay despondently upon his sheets and toyed with a stuffed octopus.
"Stephen?" came the girl's voice at the door. "Stephen, are you in there?"
"Go 'way, Lulu," said the boy in a small voice.
The girl turned the knob regardless, came over to the bed and wrapped her arms around the dejected little boy's shoulders. "Come down and be with us, Stephen," she enjoined plaintively. "I'm working on the puzzle that you gave me. Won't you come help me out?"
"Don't wanna," replied the young Stephen. "'Sides, I didn't get you it; Mom got it, an' wrote my name on the tag. I didn't get anything."
"Oh, now, that's not true. You made the cards, didn't you?"
"They're stupid cards!" cried the little boy in a childish fury. "They're sloppy an' some of 'em were backwards an' I spelled Christmas wrong. They're bad."
"Stephen . . ." The girl pressed her brother close to her heart, and he buried his face in her neck, dropping the plush octopus to the floor. "Stephen, it doesn't matter how you spell things, and we don't care what the cards look like. What we care about is that they're from you. You put your time and effort into them, and that's what matters. If you'd only come down, you'd see how much we're enjoying them."
"I wish," murmured Colbert to himself, pulling off his glasses to clean them and surreptitiously passing one cuff over his eyes as he did so; "but it's too late now."
"Wot's that?" asked the Spirit.
"I didn't make my own cards this year," said Colbert, replacing his glasses. "I had my graphics people make them and send them out, to everyone, including my family. I don't even know what they ended up looking like. I wish I'd made my own, that's all."
The Ghost smiled, as if she were privy to some secret joke; then waved her hand, saying, as she did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
❄
Colbert's former self grew larger at the words, and the furniture and arrangement of the room shifted around; what had been two beds and an assortment of such things as all young boys amuse themselves with became a single bed and a more distinctly individual set of items. The young man was evidently searching for one item in particular, as he moved aside a guitar and began digging frantically through a pile of disheveled clothing.
"Stephen!" called a man's voice from below, and Colbert began to hear other signs of activity from the house below: the rumble of moving furniture, the clink of dishes, the murmurs of a crowd.
"Coming, Ed!" returned the adolescent, throwing aside large quantities of tube socks in an even greater hurry. At last he triumphantly lifted a tie, patterned with holly and scarlet berries, from the floor; whipping this about his neck, he fastened it securely in a few deft motions.
"His clothes are all hand-me-downs," remarked Colbert as he watched himself exit, "including the tie. And the suit isn't even designer."
"I think 'e looks jolly 'andsome," declared the Spirit at his side. "But come down!"
Colbert's former self took the stairs two at a time, leaving his intangible followers running to keep pace. Then they all three burst in upon the parlor.
"About time, Stephen!" cried the man who had called to him. "Come help your brother get this couch out of here."
"Sure, Ed," replied the youth gamely; and together they cleared away the couch, while other members of the expansive family moved chairs, desks, lamps, and, in short, anything that could be got out of the way, to be packed off as though they were to be removed from public life for evermore. The result was a vast expanse of hardwood floor, fully cleared in a minute; and then a second round of the clan descended with buckets and sponges, and the floor was cleaned; and as this was done Colbert spotted his own mother at the fireplace, coaxing a very real roaring blaze behind the grate.
In came an uncle with a fiddle and a music-book, and went to stand on a small table which had been shoved into a corner, and struck up a tune as good as an orchestra. As though on a cue, the family poured into the room, and oh, the chaos that followed! Husbands took the hands of their wives, and bold youths the hands of the objects of their affections, and aunts and uncles the hands of their shy young nieces and nephews, and one gentlemanly young man offered a hand to his grandmother, who was Colbert's mother—and out they all went to the floor! Some went gracefully, some clumsily, some pushing, some pulling, any way and every way.
And they danced! Twenty couples at once, spinning on the floor with no apparent order to them, and some with no rhythm to speak of either; and there were more than a few inadvertent collisions. But all was conducted in the best of humors, and not one mood was bruised, though a few shins were.
And there in the middle of it Colbert (who was by this point unconsciously tapping his toes along with the beat) spotted his younger self. He had no partner at the moment; rather, he had somehow become part of a trio of young men, all three rotating their hips in a manner that was guaranteed to attract attention.
The other dancers began to turn so that they could keep an eye on these youths; the fiddler took note of the room's new focus and jovially switched to playing a rather Latin tune to better accompany them. The dancing young men responded in kind, adding movements of the shoulders and deft footwork to their swaying; then the young Colbert's companions caught him and slid him before them to do a solo.
When all three had had their solo moments and were showing signs of exhaustion, the fiddle-player commenced a few bars of outro and drew the piece to a close. The room burst into hearty applause, and then, sensing that their musician was as overwrought by the exhaustion as the three central dancers, retreated to the kitchen to partake of peach cobbler and a hearty roast and a formidable amount of eggnog.
During the whole of this time Colbert had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and his own old hips had begun to cycle in sympathy with his former self. At the end of it he clapped no less fervently than those who had been in the scene, and only when they began to depart was he again conscious of the Ghost, who was looking full upon him.
"No big deal," said the Ghost, "to make these silly people so 'appy."
"No big—!" echoed Colbert.
The Spirit gestured to him to listen to the three young men, who were pouring their hearts out in praise alternately of each other and of the fiddle-player. As they too left the room, she said:
"Well, no! The room is 'ardly decorated, and the feast for this 'ole group can't 'ave cost more than a couple 'undred bucks, and the fiddle came cheap from a secondhand store. Is it really worth all that gushing over?"
"It isn't that," snapped Colbert, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former self rather than his latter. "It isn't that, Spirit. They did it all together; it's the company that counts, the friendship, the family ties. They had fun planning it, and organizing it, and carrying it out, because it was all together, you see?"
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
"Wot's wrong?" asked the Ghost.
"Nothing particular."
"Oh, it's something," observed the Spirit decidedly.
"No," said Colbert, "no. It's just that I'd like to be able to say a word or two to my stage manager, and director, just now. That's all."
His former self switched off the lights in the room as he gave utterance to the wish, leaving it illuminated only by the modest lights draped about the front window. Colbert's eyes were forced to make a rapid adjustment to the change in luminance, and when they had accustomed themselves to the dim light he discovered that they were in the open air again.
"We're getting low on time," announced the Spirit. "Quick!"
❄
This was not addressed to Colbert, or to any person whom he could see; but it produced an immediate effect. For again he saw himself, no more than a year or two older but wearing a far crisper suit and tie beneath his jacket, now standing outside in the dim light and the snow.
He was not alone, but stood by the side of a fair young woman in whose clear blue eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
"Don't, Stephen," she said softly. "This has gone much too far."
"It's only a dance," said the young Colbert. "The whole family's here, and everyone's dancing with everyone. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't matter."
"You say that now!" she cried. "But it won't be only a dance—not to you!—and then you'll want more, and I can't go there, and people are starting to talk, and it's got to stop. Now!"
"Don't be stupid!" said he, grabbing her wrist. "You worry too much. No one will think anything of it. I'm the best dancer in there, and everyone knows it, and everyone wants to dance with me, only I'm choosing you, Charlene! They'll be jealous—well, let them!"
He began to pull her towards the house. The older Colbert was watching the woman's face with something between confusion and deep anxiety.
"She doesn't look happy," he said, only half addressing his companion. "Why not? She's getting to dance with me! Why should that make her unhappy?"
"Perhaps you ought to have put the question to her at the time," suggested the Ghost.
"I didn't notice," cried Colbert, turning his eyes to the determined expression upon the face of his younger self. "I had no idea. And would still have none, if you had not brought me here tonight. Spirit! why do you torture me so?"
"One last stop!" exclaimed the Ghost.
"No more!" ordered Colbert. "I don't want to see it!"
"You shall," the Ghost returned. "Wot's more, you 'aven't got a choice."
❄
The light returned. Some of it was emitted from the last rays of a sunset, but for the most part it came from all the lights that one finds in a city block, for that is where they stood.
"Why, it's New York," realized Colbert, looking about him. "I do believe we can't be more than a block away from Times Square. How long ago is this?" He scanned the skyline as though hoping to find some manner of judging the year, perhaps by the presence or absence of two noted towers in the skyline; but they, or their former site, rested too far away to be of aid.
"You'll see," promised the Spirit. "Come."
This time, rather than drawing Colbert towards a lighted and busy enterprise, the Ghost led the pundit away from the hustle and bustle of the city's heart, towards parts of town with fewer massive signs and less resplendent building faces. Colbert was frightened for a time that he might be led into the least welcoming parts of town, those with graffiti upon their walls and bars across their windows; but the architecture remained professional, and when they at last approached one of the edifices it was merely an office building, with unbarred if somewhat dingy windows.
"I never worked in a place like this," protested Colbert as they passed through the door. "Why are we here?"
"Not to see you, guv'nor," retorted the Spirit dryly, indicating the directory beside the front desk, at which a faded young receptionist was having a conversation on her cell phone. "Look over that and find the resident Oxfam chapter."
Colbert dutifully read the list of officeholders. "OXFAM," he repeated to himself. "They sound familiar. Are they affiliated with NAMBLA?"
"No." The Spirit sighed, as though she had heard this before and were rather tired of it. "They work mostly with livestock—"
"Oh, ew," said Colbert, making a face.
"Get yer mind outta the gutter, guv'nor! They give livestock an' other supplies to families and villages that would otherwise have nothing."
Cowed, the pundit pointed humbly to the organization's entry on the list. "Room 214."
Within this room was an atmosphere far more subdued than that of the house which they had visited previously, though it almost bore more physical evidence of the season: garlands about the walls, wreaths on the doors, and a large potted poinsettia on one of the desks.
Aside from the neatly arranged decorations, the office was rather disheveled; filing cabinets stood open, and envelopes were strewn across a pair of desks pushed together at the room's center. Two men sat opposite each other at these, opening envelopes and extracting small bills, which they arranged into carefully measured stacks, and all manner of coinage, which they corralled into neatly labeled cylinders of paper.
"Man," sighed one of these gentlemen, "why we gotta deal with all this? Can't people just give nice round numbers of cash?"
"We emphasize how far a little money can go," replied his companion, depressing the end of a roll of nickels. "It's, what, forty cents a flu shot? And sometimes forty cents is all people can give. Look at this." He held up an envelope addressed in purple crayon. "This kid probably gave her whole allowance."
"I know that man," exclaimed Colbert, circling round to see the second speaker's face. "It's Alan! My former black friend!"
"That's adorable," admitted Alan's companion of the colorful, childish handwriting. "What a good kid. Now, why can't the millionaires in this city be as generous as that kid?"
"Maybe they are," proposed Alan, "and they just don't send their money to Oxfam."
"Oh," cried the companion derisively, "and where do they send it, then? Your boss's farce of a charity, the, what's it called . . ."
Alan ducked his head with some embarrassment, but dutifully supplied the name of that worthy establishment. "The Stephen and Melinda Gates Foundation."
"That's the one. What is up with that, man? It's big and flashy and never did nobody a whit of good. Some starving kid in China, never seen a TV or anything that needed batteries in her life, this little envelope—" here he jabbed with his finger at the one addressed in lavender— "is gonna mean more to her than that blowhard Colbert's whole fortune."
Observing this exchange, the blowhard so named took a step forward, though neither man could perceive him. "Come on, Alan, stick up for me," he cried encouragingly. "I was your white friend, remember? Well," he amended, recalling that day on which he had seen his former black friend in the audience of his studio, accompanied by a man whose complexion was as fair as Colbert's own, "one of your white friends."
Almost as though in response to these unheard injunctions, the gentleman spoke. "Perhaps," he mused, "when you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you don't understand poverty well enough to feel the need to alleviate it."
"So he's an ignorant blowhard. No excuse. He could learn."
"That's right," echoed Colbert plaintively, clearly much affected by the willingness of this common person to speak so badly of him with no clear ulterior motive. "I could learn. I can learn."
And now Alan at last gave voice to his own doubts. "I don't think so," he confessed. "Or at least, he doesn't want to."
"Can't you talk to him? You're, what does he call it, his 'black friend'?" This was said with not a little derision.
"Not any more," corrected Alan. "He found out about the rally I went to in September, and I got . . . well, demoted."
"He really is a blowhard," observed his companion, with some incredulity at the shallowness which was revealed by this new information about Colbert's character. "I feel sorry for the poor sap he picks to replace you."
"Don't be," pleaded Colbert. "I haven't been much better to poor old P. K.—but I'll start! I promise! So don't you sit there and talk about my ego and my Foundation and my silver spoons!" He turned to the Spirit, who had regarded him calmly all this while, and his eyes fell to the spoon about her neck. "Is that what that stands for? Well, I don't want it. Take it off and give it to them!"
"It isn't that easy—" began the Ghost, but the determined Colbert lunged at her and grasped for the miniature utensil. His fingers closed round it; he pulled in one direction, and she the other; the chain strained, and broke.
The light from the spoon poured in that instant in an unbroken flood across the floor, nearly blinding Colbert in spite of the haste with which he screwed shut his eyelids. When he opened them again all was dark, and his fingers clutched air. Then he was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He had barely time to stumble to his bed and fall upon the sheets before he sank into a heavy sleep.
❄