Christmas Memory

I awoke because my nose was cold. Beneath the covers, I was nicely warm, but my face and especially my nose had become cold.

That caused my eyes to snap open. If I was cold, it was because the furnace was no longer working, and if the furnace was no longer working, then it had happened, and when my eyes opened, I saw that it had indeed happened:

I had lost electricity.

It was not unexpected. A blizzard of this magnitude had not struck the region in some fifty years, well before I was even born. Being a rural area, there would be no salt trucks or snowplows to clear the roads so the electrical workers could renew the flow of electrons.

Fortunately, I was ready for this scenario. I would need to step outside and power up the generator, but for the moment, I was reluctant to do so, reluctant to leave the warmth and comfort of the bed.

The sound of the air being rapidly blown around the small home had just started to lull me back into slumber when I thought I heard something outside, the sound just barely audible above the incessant howl of the wind. With my eyes closed against the darkness, I listened, and had almost given up any semblance of consciousness when I heard a rapping at the front door.

Of all things, someone had been out and about during the blizzard. I had lived here more than long enough to know the dangers of being caught outside unprepared during a blizzard, so I threw off the covers and nearly yelped aloud when my bare feet touched the cold hardwood floor. Quickly I dressed, muttering words of concern and curses of insanity when I heard the visitor knock again. I shivered noticeably as I grabbed the flashlight and hurried to the door, seeing absolutely nothing through the peephole -- as expected, since the thick clouds obscured the moon and the lack of electricity meant that the light atop the tall post in the front yard was not functioning.

My hand nearly recoiled at the cold of the metal when I turned the deadbolt. Working the other locks was not much easier, and when I finally opened the door, I was greeted by nearly seven inches of snow and a young woman who had clearly seen better nights.

"Get in here!" I snapped. "What the hell are you doing outside in the worst blizzard in decades!?!"

She entered, stopping to brace herself as she leaned against a bookcase while I closed and relocked the door. I could hear her trying to catch her breath as I got out the lighter and a candle and provided some additional light so I could save the flashlight for later if necessary.

"Come," I offered, my voice much more calm and soothing.

Slowly, she approached the table on which I had set the candle. As she stepped more fully into the light, I could see that her hooded winter coat was old and still bore the snow which had fallen on her in what could have been no more than thirty minutes or so outside. But I was stunned that she had not worn pants -- instead, she wore a dress or a skirt. Even stranger, instead of boots, even stylish boots, she wore low heels.

"What the --" I stopped myself before I said something entirely inappropriate. As she stepped closer, it was clear that at some point, she had been crying profusely: Her makeup had run in horrid streaks down her face.

"Lost or runaway?"

"Runaway," she admitted, her voice small and ready to break. "The car finally ran out of gas and I just started walking..."

"Why?" I asked as I lit a tall jarred candle. "Why brave the blizzard?"

She remained silent, a noticeable shiver passing through her beneath her clothes, and that made me aware of the fact that I was not wearing as many layers as one would expect during a winter storm of this magnitude. I had to wonder just how she was faring with bare legs.

"The bathroom's down the hall and on the left," I said, giving her the jarred candle. "Go get out of those clothes and run a small bath. Hopefully there's enough hot water left in the pipes to get you started. I'll head outside and fire up the generator, then come back in and get you some clothes and something hot to drink. Deal?"

She only nodded, which made her badly-streaked face appear almost grotesque.

By the time I had dressed and found some clothes for her, she had turned off the water -- apparently, there had not been much hot water in the pipes. Opening the bathroom door only a crack, I handed her the clothes, knowing full well that they would not fit her, but since I had not lived with a woman in nearly a decade, there was no chance that anything in my possession would fit her -- the best I could do would be to wash what she had been wearing when she arrived.

The fifteen minutes I was outside were quite brutal. I was a veteran of more than a few blizzards, but this was easily the worst I had ever experienced. Once the generator was running, I hurried to put the fuel cans back in the shed and rushed back into the house itself, thankful to have lights again. Instantly, I lowered the temperature so the furnace would not draw so much power from the generator and hopefully extend its viability before I had to refuel it again.

That was when I realized that I had not heard the water running in the bathroom. I knocked on the bathroom door, and my mystery visitor opened it a crack to peer out at me, using the door itself to hide her nudity.

"Are you okay?" I asked, genuinely concerned. After all, it is rare indeed for someone to be stumbling around alone in a blizzard.

She nodded, but the tears in her eyes were evident.

"Okay." Uncertain what to do, I simply left her, hearing her close the door behind me as I went to the kitchen to prepare some tea for us both, since I knew that I would not be sleeping again for a while.

Some twenty minutes later, long after I had heard the water running in the bathroom, I knocked at the door again. "I have some hot tea ready for you. Take your time, though. In the meantime, I'll be building a fire."

The fireplace was nicely aglow when she finally returned to me. The sweatpants stayed on her only because of the drawstring waistband, and the sweatshirt was definitely too large for her. Between the work of the furnace and the heat from the fire and the oversized clothes she wore, she seemed somewhat comfortable, although I wished that I could do something to help the wool socks better fit her feet.

I gestured to the end of the sofa, where I had left a blanket earlier in the night before I had gone to bed. She wrapped herself, then sat where the blanket had been, sadness and distress evident in her body language and especially in her eyes.

"I'll get the tea," I offered, and a few minutes later, as I handed the tea to her, she actually gave me a slight smile: the first hint of true humanity within her since she had appeared on my doorstep.

We sat in silence for a long while: She was wrapped in the blanket as she drank, and I sat in my favorite recliner wearing just my jeans and undershirt and sweatshirt and three pairs of socks. The warmth from the fireplace and from the tea was calming, providing a nice counterpoint to the howls swirling around the small rural home. I wondered how high the drifts were on the west side of the house, and just how high they would be when this blizzard finally tired of blasting this small piece of earth and moved eastward.

She had definitely cleaned herself nicely. Her face was pristine, the lack of streaked makeup turning her from ugly to beautiful. There were quite a few freckles visible since she was no longer wearing makeup. Her black hair appeared to have been dyed, for I could just barely discern a slight change of color at the roots, but it was a style which worked well for her.

Her eyes, however, were dark -- not just dark in color, but dark in expression. There were horrors being played behind those eyes, memories she would rather not relive, yet those memories caused her small hands to grip the mug with such force that I wondered if she might inadvertently break it.

"So you've run away..." I prompted, hoping to pull her back from her negative thoughts.

She looked up at me, studying me, assessing me. After a moment, her dark eyes dropped to the floor before me as she nodded, the death grip on her mug loosening somewhat.

"What or who are you running from?"

"What," she confirmed, but said no more.

I did not push for more information. Instead, when she finished her tea, I took her empty mug and mine and took them to the kitchen, returning to find her laying across the sofa, her eyes closed, fatigue definitely setting in on her at last. I retrieved another blanket and gave her the additional coverage, gazing down into her sweet, adorable face, wondering about her, wondering just how she ended up here.

I went to the bathroom to gather her clothes and set them by the washer for when full electricity returned to the region. What I found surprised me:

Her off-white dress had been torn from the neckline downward, and her dress and her bra both showed drops of what could only be blood.

My guess was that she had killed someone for the first time in her life.

I looked at my watch: It was 4:21AM on Christmas Day. This was definitely not how a young woman should spend a special holiday. She was clearly separated from her family, and I no longer had a family, which meant that she and I had only each other for this day.

I took her clothes to the washer as initially planned, but I no longer had the intention of washing them, for they were clearly evidence. Returning to the living room, I saw that she was still asleep, which was fine with me. After gathering another blanket and turning off the lights, I fell asleep in the recliner, lulled by the crackling and popping sounds coming the fireplace and a sense of companionship which I had not known for several years.

*****

Morning brought with it a lessening of the howls from the fierce wind outside. It also brought a feeling of cold, as the fire had burned quite low and the furnace had been purposely turned off hours earlier. There was enough natural light filtering through the ice-covered windows that we no longer needed candles or the generated-provided power to see.

She was watching me. It seemed that she had not moved other than to raise her eyelids.

"You moved them."

It was not accusatory, not panicked, not sad. It was simply a statement of fact, which meant that she had been to the bathroom at some point and knew that the evidence had been moved.

"If you mean your clothes," I said, "they're by the washer. I'd planned to get them washed for you once regular electricity is restored."

"What about a phone?"

"I'm sorry?" Her question really surprised me.

"My cell's in the car, along with everything else in my purse. Are the phones working?"

"Good question. I rarely use it myself."

That caught her attention. "You rarely use a phone?"

I shrugged. "I spend my life writing, not talking. I almost wonder why I even have a phone at all."

She looked at me curiously, appraising me further as I stood and went to the bedroom, returning with the cordless phone. "I tested it and it works," I confirmed. "But I suspect that I'll need to go refuel the generator soon, so make whatever calls you need now and quickly so you don't get cut off before I need to head back outside."

After giving my mystery visitor the phone, I went to get dressed for the day, and when I emerged, she was sitting in front of the fireplace, staring into the coals. I almost left her alone, but knelt behind her instead and placed a hand on her shoulder. "For what it's worth," I said, "Merry Christmas."

As she began to cry, I enveloped her in my arms, holding her as she sobbed quietly, ignoring my own growing hunger to try to comfort this stranger in her time of need.

*****

It was a strange Christmas. Instead of writing or reading as I usually do, I found myself holding this young woman for most of the day. Very little was said, but I could sense both dread and acceptance emanating from her, as if she had accepted her fate.

As I was preparing a meager dinner of Stove Top and some frozen vegetables, I thought I heard something outside. When I peered through the peephole, I was not entirely surprised to see a police car and two officers approaching the narrow front porch -- standard procedure in the area following a blizzard or a tornado.

I opened the door even before the officers were on the porch. "Good evening," I said in welcome. "I'm just making dinner, but you're welcome to come in out of the cold for a bit. The coffee's almost ready."

"That's okay, sir," the taller, older officer replied. "We're not just here to check up on you after the snowstorm."

"Oh?"

I felt an arm nudging me aside, and there she was. My young visitor stood beside me with the evidence in her arms and a serious expression upon her sweet face. "I'm ready," she announced to the officers.

"Are you Coleen Harrison?" the younger officer asked.

"I am," she confirmed.

The officers graciously allowed Colleen to enjoy the meager dinner before they officially arrested her. Fortunately, I was not charged with harboring a fugitive because of the blizzard essentially forcing her to my doorstep. I will never forget the kiss she placed on my cheek just before she was handcuffed and led outside to the awaiting police car, for it was indeed the most heartfelt kiss I have ever received, and it was from a person I knew for less than twenty-four hours, from a person I will probably never see ever again.

Yet, in a very strange way, that is my most endearing Christmas memory.