New story to celebrate 700th blog
O Christmas
Tree O Christmas Tree
By
Doc Walton
For many Americans the most important symbol of Christmas
is a decorated tree. All the other
trappings of this their most celebrated holiday are secondary to the sparkling
arbol under which brightly wrapped presents small or grand are traditionally
placed.
Barry and Lonnie Jonwills, an expat couple living in a
small Panamanian community were as sold on the necessity of presenting a well
dressed tree at Christmas as any couple anywhere. Their tree was a towering artificial version
brought with them from their home state of Indiana. When fully dressed with its hundreds of
beautiful ornaments it was a magnificent replication of an early Christian
custom co-opted from the Pagans who spruced up an evergreen during the Solstice
to scare away the devil. To the Jonwills
their tree was simply the symbol of all that Christmas meant to them and its
ornamentation a source of great pride.
They would not have moved without it.
As their first Christmas away from the States approached, they knew that
even though their new locale lacked snow and sleds and carolers and the many
symbols of the season they were accustomed to, they would have their tree and
the tree would make everything feel right, feel just like home.
***
It was Barry's job each year to assemble the faux fir and
then string the lights. This was no
small task as the Jonwills tree was a twelve footer and its girth measured six
foot at the base. Barry set about his
work grudgingly at first, but then, as each section fit snugly into the one
before it, and the tree took on its shape, he found himself enjoying the
process and beginning to sense what he considered his Christmas Spirit, a sort
of heightened anticipation of the holiday to come. He had been putting up the family tree year
after year and now in this his first year of retirement, it was a chore done
almost by rote. When all the sections
were locked in place and all the limbs perfectly unfurled and fluffed out,
Barry took but a moment to admire his work before unwinding and testing the
lights. There was a football game coming
on in a couple of hours and he wanted to be finished before kickoff. There were several different kinds of light strings
and it was in this phase of the task that Barry took the most pride. Each length of colored bulbs had been
carefully, carefully, folded or rolled to avoid tangles and then labeled
and packed away the year before. All
that was required now was to lay out each string, marked one through ten and
test for unlit bulbs. He would proudly
tell anyone who asked his method that when string number one was fully lighted,
it was strung 'round the tree and then, "so on and so forth" - a pet
phrase of his - for strings two through ten.
This year,
though, this Year of Our Lord 2012, something odd, something untoward, seemed
to be happening and Barry couldn't quite put a finger on what it was. The tree seemed to be resisting the placement
of each bulb on its branches. "I know this sounds crazy," he would
say afterwards, "but that's what it felt like." It was a struggle to put each light in its by
now "traditional" place. He
had to use small bits of plastic ties to keep the light strings from slipping
and drooping into unsightly positions, the kind where bulbs are too close
together or too much cord is exposed. When
the job was finally completed, two hours longer than usual, the sense of
accomplishment he usually experienced at any work's conclusion was completely
absent. What he felt instead as he
turned the tree over to his wife Lonnie for further decorating, was relief,
pure relief, and something else, some unrecognized emotion he couldn't quite
name. Had he been able to summon it, the
word that would have best described his feeling was foreboding.
Lonnie loved her tree and her spectacular
collection of ornaments, all one-of-a-kinds.
She had been collecting them throughout her life and as her collection
grew, so did her trees. Although the
Jonwills new living room featured a cathedral ceiling, this latest tree,
purchased at a garage sale following last year's Christmas, seemed so much
larger than their old ten footer. Or was
that, she thought, just her imagination; the imagination of an older woman
facing a daunting chore? The hippie or
gypsy or new age, whatever they were, odd duo she had bought the tree from had
looked her over for a long time before agreeing to let their pretty pine go. It was only when she happened to mention she
was moving to Panama that the couple suddenly seemed eager to make the
sale. She did, though, still have to
agree to purchase and use several of what they called "historical"
ornaments before the deal was concluded.
These ornaments were wooden, hand carved, hand painted, and featured
tiny cryptic symbols. They lacked the
glisten of modern ornaments, but were interesting enough that Lonnie knew she
could find a place for them on the tree.
That she now found herself reflecting back to that
transaction gave her a moment's pause before she placed a foot on the bottom
step of an A framed ladder - no small thing itself - drug in from the garage
for the task. There had been something
weird about that couple, something a little creepy, or was that too just her
imagination? She let the memory drift
from her mind as she focused on climbing one step at a time to the tree's apex
where she knew she would have to reach far out to hang the decorations
designated for that third of the tree.
She asked herself upon reaching the top if a woman of retirement age
should be scaling such heights, but a quick glance over at Barry, who would now
need a bomb blast to remove his attention from the football game, told her she
had little choice. No matter, she
thought, he wouldn't have done it to her satisfaction anyway.
Lonnie's preferred method of
decoration was the opposite of her husband's. She worked from the top
down. She too, though, had a much
practiced plan in which each ornament was placed almost exactly where it had
been the year before. The sheer number of ornaments was such that her part of
the job, which she did between her regular chores, often took a full day and
sometimes into the next to complete, depending on how hard she went at the
task. This year she knew it was going to
take the better part of two days because from decoration one, nothing seemed to
go "as usual."
The very first
and topmost piece, an angel, would just not sit straight. It kept leaning from one side to another as if
it had been into the eggnog and was feeling a little woozy. Lonnie could have sworn the damn thing just
didn't want to be there. She finally had
to resort to the same sort of ties Barry had used on the lights and even though
the twisty thing was only visible from a spot on the back side of her winged
lady, she felt somehow guilty about having to use it at all. I mean, who ties up angels?
And it didn't
get easier after that. Lonnie had
mentally diagrammed how she would redistribute her ornaments to account for the
tree's greater height. She first hung
the primitive wooden ornaments deep into the tree's interior and then hung several
other more modern types she had bought locally.
In retrospect she would realize that it was the bulbs placed closest to
the wooden variety that gave her the most problems, but at the time of the
decorating she was unaware this was the case.
She only knew that for unaccountable reasons many of the bulbs just
would not drape correctly on the first go and she had to forcefully bend their
metal hangers to make them “behave.”
Late afternoon on the second day of December - the
Jonwills always began their Christmas preparations on the first - the tree
decorating was finally completed and Barry took the assorted storage boxes to a
bodega on the side of the garage where they were kept throughout the year. He was followed closely as he did so by the
Jonwill's four year old Golden Retriever, Flannigan, a dog they had adopted
earlier that year from its original owners who had moved stateside to an
assisted living facility where no pets were allowed. Flannigan didn't like any changes to his
routine and he had been suspiciously watching the strange goings-on of the last
couple of days. He eventually decided he
mostly didn't mind this latest interruption because Lonnie had not skipped
their twice daily go-get-the-ball sessions.
It was for these sessions Flannigan lived. He wasn't, however, thrilled by the tree
itself. It didn't smell like a tree and,
it was clear to Flannigan in a way that only dogs understand, that the tree
didn't like him back. He had given it a
few don't-mess-with-me warning growls during the past two days, but had gotten
nothing in return from the tree. His
growls had, however, managed to inspire loud scoldings from his two legged ball
throwers forcing him to desist and put on his I'm-so-ashamed and I'm-a-baaad-dog
looks; yet another reason to dislike the tree.
His two other four legged
playmates, a snobby white cat named Cattycat and an ancient, gentle-as-a-lamb
Pit Bull named Ming, were of like mind.
Both had approached the tree early on and sensed something amiss, something
they had never been around before. They had
then chosen to avoid the tree from that moment forward, Cattycat with disdain and
Ming with regret as the tree was located close to where the two-legged petting
people hung out.
On the eve of December third, the
electricity in the Jonwill's community went out for a few hours. This was not an unusual occurrence in their
part of Panama and they were prepared with a gas powered generator to keep
their house lights lighted and their principal electronic devices
functioning. On this occasion, despite
Barry's best efforts and favorite curses, the kapple flacking flater flucking
generator did not work. The Jonwills
bedded down early in a moonless dark knowing there was nothing that could be
done until morning.
On the Fourth of December their
dishwasher died, on the Fifth their gardener quit, and on the Sixth, Cattycat
threw up something green and gooey on their recently reupholstered sofa. The resulting stain resisted all efforts at
removal.
Something was clearly amiss with the
Jonwills karma. Or, at least, Lonnie
thought, that's what I would have guessed if I believed in that sort of
thing...but of course I don't. And she
was right. Their troubles had nothing to
do with karma.
Problems small and large continued to
plague the Jonwills on a daily basis throughout the next week; clogged toilets,
unexpectedly burned dinners. interruption of telephone service, downed Internet
- a true disaster to Lonnie's way of thinking - more broken appliances, and a
horrendous day when their electronically operated driveway gate locked up and
they were unable to get out to do the Christmas shopping they had planned for
the day.
Both Lonnie and Barry were now having
difficulty maintaining cheerful Christmas fronts in the face of what they were
trying to consider just a long run of bad luck.
Barry's cursing had achieved new heights of creativity that in keeping
with the season usually started with a disgusted "Christ Almighty,"
and, in keeping with his style, usually ended with "And so on and so
forth." Had either Jonwills been
more aware or spent more time gazing at their tree, a thing that was a joy to
them in previous years, but now stood joy a wanting, they might have noticed
that their wooden ornaments were taking on a slight shine, a shine you could
almost call a glow. One piece, the
largest of the type, a piece that looked something like the theatrical muse of
tragedy, in addition to glowing also seemed to be growing; not rapidly, but not
imperceptibly either. An objective
viewer would most certainly find his eyes drawn to it, but the Jonwills were
far too busy dealing with and fretting over their subjective issues to
notice.
Flannigan, however, was not without
trepidation. He was aware that tensions
around the house were escalating. He was
a dog of habit, a dog of happy repetition and it was clear to him that things
were changing.
Between the Tenth and Fifteenth of
December friends and neighbors began to stop by to wish the Jonwills "A
Merry" and partake of Barry's always well stocked bar. Despite the Jonwills "Merry back at
you" and forced cheerfulness, none of the guests stayed very long and all
left feeling oddly discomfited. Each of
them had paused to admire and praise the Jonwill's tree, but they had also been
reluctant to near it. "There were
emanations or something from that thing” Donna Wilton said to her husband Charlie,
when driving home, "that made me feel a little weird." "I know what you mean," Charlie
said, "I felt it too." Word
spread and Jonwills’ visitations came abruptly to a stop.
It was then, on the night of the Fifteenth,
the Jonwills quit talking to each other.
Lonnie closeted herself in their office and hunkered down with the
Internet while Barry burrowed in his recliner in front of the TV. All family routines were suspended. Meals were eaten separately and their animals
cursorily attended to. Cattycat and Ming
came out from hiding only long enough to down their food. Flannigan moped and had no appetite. To both Lonnie and Barry their house was now
a designated disaster area. Nothing,
absolutely nothing was going right. Even
their friends, their pals, their buddies wouldn't stay long enough for a second
drink. Neither knew what was wrong and
there was no one to blame except each other.
On the night of the Twentieth they
went at that full bore.
They snipped and snapped and sniped at
each other, both venting nearly a month of pent up frustrations until finally
Barry, his verbal ammunition exhausted, dove into his inner John Wayne, balled
up a fist and gave forth with a threatening "Why I oughta, I
oughta." A rolling pin armed Lonnie,
however, was not backing down. She
channeled her own inner Eastwood and responded with a through the teeth hiss of
"Go ahead, make my day." The
standoff that followed, though Mexican worthy, lasted only a few seconds. It ended abruptly when across the room a
seriously upset Flannigan began to howl like a banshee.
"What the hell's the matter with
him?" the Jonwills asked in unison, their anger morphing instantly to
concern.
For Flannigan was clearly
disturbed. His head was back in full on
Yoga Wolf-Howling-At-The-Moon Pose and his dog screech was hitting Irish tenor
like heights. He was camped in front of
the towering Christmas tree and refused to be consoled. It was clear to him, if to no other creature,
that the tree was the source of all his "pack's" problems. No one had thrown him a ball for three days
and something had to be done. Maybe,
just maybe, he dog intuited, if he could get loud enough he might scare the
glittery badness away. Trouble was his
noisy ploy didn't seem to be working at all.
Oh sure, the two leggeds were upset, but the tree, the terrible tree,
remained immobile and undisturbed.
Barry, wanting to take action but not
being fluent in dog, couldn't understand what Flannigan was trying to do. All he knew was that he had to somehow stop
the ear splitting noise before it escalated to hard rock decibel levels. He was sure that to the neighbors it already
sounded like he was torturing the mutt.
Grabbing the leash that hung by the back door, he quickly hooked it to
Flannigan's collar with the intent of dragging him away from the tree. The moment the leash was affixed, however,
Flannigan's mind flashed "Go for a walk" and he was instantly up and
quietly heading for the door, no dragging necessary. Great disappointment then ensued for
Flannigan when he was led not to the outside but to the Jonwills laundry room where
he was freed from his leash and quickly shut in behind a slam closed door. For a long dog attention moment, about the
length of time it would take Barry to say WTF, Flannigan considered that door -
he had never been locked up before - and concluded rightfully, for he was a
very smart dog, that it was all the tree's fault.
And he also made a plan.
It was nearing midnight when Flannigan
began to howl anew. The Jonwills, dulled
by their long horrible day, had momentarily forgotten that Flannigan was in the
laundry room. At the sound of his first
wail they leapt from their places on the couch to open the door and let him
out. They would not have expected and
could not have guessed what would happen next.
Flannigan was a sleek, golden blur as
he flashed through the hall into the living room and onto the Christmas tree
where he mostly disappeared among its branches.
The tree quaked, teetered and was nearly felled, but remained erect,
albeit shaking as hard as a Bond martini in the making. Ornaments flew everywhere. Fierce snarling unlike anything the Jonwills
had ever heard from Flannigan emanated from the tree's interior and another
sound as well; a gravelly, angry sound they couldn't identify. Ming came running from another room and
immediately joined in the fray, plowing into the tree’s base with her chunky,
muscled body. The tree began to topple
for certain then and Barry rushed to grab it, keep it upright. His reach fell just short but he did manage
to catch Flannigan's tail. With adrenaline
fueled strength he yanked the dog free from the branches and flung him away
from the Christmas carnage. "What's
that in his mouth?" Lonnie shouted over the dog's continued snarling. "Is that what I think it is?" She thought it was the largest of the handmade
wooden ornaments, the one that once looked like the muse of tragedy and she was
right. Now, though, it was looking more
and more like a block of wood being torn to toothpicks. Flannigan stood there tearing at it until he
was satisfied it was dead. When he was
certain it was, he dropped it at his stupefied two legged parents feet and then
to their amazement and renewed shock, he dove back into the tree after the others. One by one he tore all the wooden pieces...
to pieces.
From under the sofa Cattycat had
watched everything. She was a cat after
all and as such she was above choosing sides.
On the 21st of December Barry and
Lonnie re-erected and redecorated their tree.
The oppressive feelings and bad luck they had been experiencing seemed
gone, a weight lifted, they couldn't quite say why, but it felt definitely
so. Their world had been restored.
Flannigan's world had also been
restored. Ball throwing and retrieving
had begun again and he was the loyal, happy dog he had been before the month of
December, 2012 had, for awhile, altered his life.
Back in Indiana, however, on the day
following, two people, distant descendents of ancient Mayans, sat and wondered
why they were still there, why there would be yet another Christmas. They knew that all things that had a
beginning also had to have an end and the date of this world's end was yesterday. They had done their part to see it so. They had carried out all the rituals
described in the ancient texts. The
sacred tablets had been placed between the Mayan world's two continents and no
human intervention could alter the course of the planet's impending
demise. What they didn't know, what they
didn't understand, was that the chain of events leading to the end could be
broken...just not by human hands. It
would take an instinctual act and not one of reason to alter the flow of
history. And, of course, any
interruption in that flow precludes a different outcome.
And so it
happened that when Flannigan saved his world, he saved everybody’s.
Doc
Walton December 2012
