The Ghost of Christmas Past

Jonathan Farlow

Welcome Christmas bring your cheer. Cheer to all who’s far and near. Christmas day is in our grasp, So long as we have hands to clasp. Christmas day will always be, Just as long as we have we.

It was last year the day after the big snow. Big snow in these parts meaning two inches, but Yankees be damned we were going to enjoy this one because it was a week before Christmas and the weather geeks were forecasting more snow. We hadn’t had a white Christmas in this part of North Carolina since time out of mind and as I crossed the library parking lot, which was a solid sheet of white and quiet as a church on Monday, I could feel the sentiment that the Christmas snow brought with it. It was a sweet feeling innocent. It gave everything sort of a simple, old fashioned, childlike feel to it. For me it brought back the taste of hot chocolate, the smell of oranges and real pine needles and that excitement that you could feel in the pit of your stomach that Christmas was only a week away. For me that feeling had long been dormant. Driven to the farthest, darkest corner of my mind by noise, flashing lights and false electronic happiness. It had gone there when the Christmas shopping season had started in July and the birth of Christ had taken a back seat to selling toys.

The bad thing about good feelings like that is that they don’t last long. That day the feeling ended as soon as Bill unlocked the front doors and the same patrons who are waiting every morning walked in out of the snow and stomped up the stairs. Over the next hour the same man, locked up the same computer three times chatting with Mrs. Claus in her boudoir. Then some home school mom clogged up the copier with red construction paper and a teenager wanted a book on Nostradamus because she had heard that he had made a prediction that Fidel Castro would defect to America to become a department store Santa Claus. I had just gotten her a book off the shelf when the fight started.

Dr. Marion Welch is a retired urologist. He’s about two years older than baseball and usually he’s in the library everyday to monopolize the Wall Street Journal. For awhile there though, he had taken a shine to the JC Penny Wish book that one of the staff had brought in and put on the rack Rufus is a street preacher/cursing derelict who accompanies Purdie Mae Pierce to the library with the same regularity. While Purdie Mae is cussing out the staff and photo copying her fake jewelry Rufus reads every page of every magazine on the rack.

They’re both are in the library on a daily basis, but they had never had any contact with each other until that day when Rufus took the doctor’s beloved catalog right from under his nose while he took his 10:30 nap. In trying to get it back, Walsh snatched the book along with Rufus’ hat, the one that says Women Want Me Fish Fear Me and the fight was on. Rufus is hard of hearing and talks with the volume of a jet taking off. The Doctor has a speech impediment and almost constant often resonant flatulence, so round one, in sheer entertainment value made the Thrilla in Manilla seem like an afternoon of watching paint dry. It was loud if not funny, especially to a gaggle of teenage girls pretending to study at a table nearby.

The head of reference, Frank Miner, broke up the fight. It took a good fifteen minutes and he got slapped in the face with Rufus’ hat on top of that. The ruckus ended with Dr. Walsh stomping out and Frank was ticked by the time he got back to the reference desk. He said something about jerking a knot in somebody’s pucker string and stormed on by toward his office.

I was watching Frank, you could hear him swearing all the way back to his cubicle and didn’t notice Ronnie Moffitt walk around the reference desk and come up behind me. Ronnie to put it quite bluntly is a pain the butt. He’s one of those patrons that most of the staff would murder each other to keep from waiting on and when Julie Bray saw him pass the circulation desk and head my way, she heard nature call and vanished as well.

I turned to face Ronnie, stone faced as usual and again decked out in camouflage and black which was, again, his custom. Ronnie’s always very secretive about what he talks with the librarians about so he comes around the desk rather than leaning over it like everybody else and stands real close so you’re always sure to get a nose full of Redman and Old Spice. I took a step back and put on my best glad-to-see-you face.

“Hey, Ronnie. Can I help you?” He took a step forward and we were together again. What made it worse was that I was backed up against a stool and I couldn’t get away again without making it obvious.

“You look on the internet for that fella’s name that I give you? Do a back ground check like you said you could on there?” I thought for awhile, trying to decide what he was talking about, which wasn’t always easy, and then it finally clicked.

“No, I looked all afternoon one day last week and I couldn’t find anything. Most of those sites that do background checks charge a…..”

“I didn’t think you was. You want to know who that is?”

“Uh.”

“He’s a Fed. You know, government. He’s been following me a bout a year now.”

“Okay I……”

“I don’t know who he is or who he’s with. Justice Department, C.I.A., N.S.A. don’t know and it don’t matter. All I know is that he’s after me.” It was then that I dug myself in even deeper and I’ve kicked myself ever since.

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t do nothing. I don’t know why they’re following me, but they’ve bugged my house, my car, they intercept my e-mails, steal my paper. They’ve even put these little cameras in all the light fixtures in the house. They got’m behind the bathroom mirror too.”

“Why…..”

“You know who he looks like?” I didn’t, but Ronnie told me anyway. “He’s a big fellow with a bushy beard. Look’s a lot like that fella that writes them S.E.A.L. team books. What his name? Maraschino?”

“Marchinko.”

“That’s him, and who knows he was really a S.E.A.L. wasn’t he?”

“That’s…..”

“Again, it don’t matter. I’m on to him. I didn’t think that you would find anything on him or whoever’s after me, but I thought that I’d try. I’m sorry that I asked you, you know they might come after you too now that they’ve seen you talking to me.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“You see that van parked across the road?” I looked through the reading room, and I could see through the window that there was a gray van parked across the street in front of Bender Real Estate. It looked like it had been primered and it had a white pattern on it that made it looked tye-dyed.

“Yeah.”

“That’s them. They’re listening to everything we say with this high tech surveillance equipment and they’re tied in to these reconesence satellites that can zoom in and watch people. They’ve got infrared, ultraviolet, they can see right through the roof of this place. I know they’re watching us now.” I did a really stupid thing then, but it was a reflex and I paid for it. I looked up. “Don’t do that, fool! You want them to know who you are? What you look like? I’ve got to get out of here. I parked about two miles away at the Harris Teeter. I’m gonna wait and leave the building with a big crowd of people and then I’ll sneak through people’s back yards till I get back to the truck, and take the long way home. If they do catch me, I’m gonna make em work for it.” Ronnie started out then walking like a man on a mission. Just before he left through the double doors and headed for the stairs, we made eye contact and he gave me this real slow solemn nod like we shared a secret.

“Give em Hell, Ronnie.” I said. I’m so glad he didn’t hear me.

Early that afternoon while I was in the lounge taking the batteries out of this singing Christmas tree that somebody had set up back there Julie waited on these two guys who showed up at the desk. They had cement all over their blue jeans and dirty tee-shirts over long underwear tops. They were wearing Santa hats and one was holding a Styrofoam coffee cup with a lid on it.

“Where are your bug books?” She said that one started to ask, but his buddy finished the question before he could.

“What specifically are you looking for?”

“Well, we found this bug on the job site this morning. It was in the house we’re working on and seeing as it’s as cold as it is and it’s still alive we thought that it was a little weird and none of us had seen one like it before. We thought that maybe yall’d have a book or something that would have it in it.” Before she could say anything more the other man held up the cup.

“You wanna see it?” Now Julie doesn’t like bugs so I’m sure she didn’t but she’s a trooper and agreed so that they could identify the bug more easily. She said that it was a strange looking bug. It was about three inches long including the antennae that waved slowly back and forth giving the only evidence that the thing was still alive. It was a color of brown that would have blended in against wood or in trees.

“I think that we’ve got something that can help you right out here,” She said going into reference for Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia, the insect volume two, I believe it is. They all three gathered around and she began to flip through the pages. Some of them have full color plates showing various kinds of insects, but nothing jumped out at them right off. They looked for several minutes and Julie actually thumbed through the volume twice and was just about to try something else when she looked beside her and saw that one of the men had taken the bug out and let it sit in his hand.

“Thought we could give you better look,” he said and held it down just inches between her face and the pages of the book. She straightened up and kind of slid away.

“I think that we’ve got another book that we can check out in the circulating collection if you’ll let me…..”

“Hey there it is.” Said the other man who put a dirty finger down between the pages and pointed to a picture that did look like the insect that was now crawling up the other man’s arm.

“Oh.” She said and read the information out to them. “It says here that it’s an Assassin Bug, Rhinocoris Iracundis.” She read on about habitat, size, behavior, mating habits, blah, blah, blah….until she turned the page and considered shutting the book right there.

“It say anything else?” Asked the bug man.

“Well, it says that the assassin bug produces a protozoa that can enter the body through the bite, other wounds, or through the mucus membranes in the eyes and produce a syndrome known as Chaga’s disease in which the heart, thyroid gland and nervous system can be damaged, although usually in children, and can be fatal.”

“Whoa.” said the other man.

“Damn!” shouted bug man and flipped the bug off his hand where it soared over Julie’s shoulder and landed on the floor. “Oh, Man, sorry. We’ll get it.” Both men pushed by her and began chasing the bug which darted into the corner next to where the bound magazines are kept.

I had gotten back from break while they were looking through the book and was helping a patron find a copy of Skipping Christmas. I could hear shouting along with the sound of feet stomping and bound volumes of magazines being slapped against the floor. As we made our way down the aisle I heard a particularly vicious flurry, followed a few seconds later by one final hard slap and a voice that said:

“Got em! You got a kleenex?” My patron wrinkled up her nose as I handed her the book.

“Do we really want to know?”

She thought for a second and then shook her head. She smiled and thanked me as I followed her down the aisle. I had followed her about half a dozen steps when I looked at the shelf on my left and saw someone looking through between the books at me. I guess it was because I had helped someone find one of the Marchinko books before break, but for a second I thought of what Ronnie had told me that morning. Whoever it was he was tall, he had a beard and eyes like those that I had seen from the spine of one of the Seal Force books or whatever he calls them. For one brief second I thought that Ronnie was right: That this man had not only come after Ronnie, but me as well. Neither of us had done anything, but he was here and for one moment I just knew that he had drawn a gun, one with a silencer. At any minute I would hear that weird sound like those type guns make in spy movies and, as I walked down the aisle, a bullet would come through the shelves. It would hurl past Kinky Friedman, Grisham and Hemingway and strike me down in the E through K’s. I hurried to the end of the aisle, maybe to see who it was, maybe to get away and as I hurried past the end of the next aisle I heard somebody call: “’Scuse me. Could I get some help here?”

I looked in that direction and saw this very short man standing on a stool to get to one of the higher shelves. He had a beard but it was a great deal shorter and neater looking that I had imagined and the eyes I had seen glaring down at me looked out from behind a pair of bottle bottomed glasses. As he got down and walked over to me a bell that he wore around his neck jingled. He looked even more timid and grandfatherly and I had to smile as he asked me for a biography of Sam Ervin. I got him his book, flashed him my best friendly neighborhood librarian smile and even shook his hand. I could have kissed him.

As we closed up and left that evening I was ready to go home, but I was sort of sad that I didn’t get that old Christmas feeling back as we headed back through the snow to where our cars were parked. I was walking with my head down and when I looked up to step over the curb I spotted Ronnie Moffitt sitting in his pickup truck which was parked over by the staff vehicles. He was in disguise, or I guess that was what he was trying to do. He was wearing a really bad, obviously cheap Santa Claus suit. The hat was way too small and it sat on his head like a dunce cap. The beard was small as well and real ratty looking like Ronnie had just stuck some cotton balls to his face and that was it The mustache was crooked and while the left side drooped down to cover the corner of his mouth the other pointed up his nose. To top off the ensemble he was wearing some Richard Petty wrap around sunglasses. Our gazes met and he gave me another slow, knowing Clint Eastwood nod which I returned, all the while biting my lip trying hard not to laugh.

While I was getting into my car Ronnie pulled out and passed me so that I followed him out of the parking lot. He turned right up Main Street and while I was pulling out and starting left I saw the van in my rear view mirror, the gray one with the tye-dyed paint job, pull out of the apartment complex next door and follow him up the street.

Late Christmas Eve I sat up with my daughter who was too excited to sleep. All the lights in the house were off and the only illumination that we had were the lights on the tree and the television as How The Grinch Stole Christmas played itself out for the twelfth time in less than a week. As she finally dozed off and the credits started to roll I looked out the window. The snow was all gone and the temperatures that day had been in the sixties so no more came to take its place. My neighbor’s house was decked out in, multicolored, flickering lights from eve to foundation and I could still hear the boom boom boom of someone’s car stereo as it faded into the distance. It was there on the couch with my daughter’s head on my chest surrounded by all the tacky trappings of a twenty-first century Christmas that the feeling came back. The taste of hot chocolate, the smell of pine and oranges and that excitement that you can feel in the pit of your stomach that Christmas is here.