Boughs of Folly

7/30/2019 Boughs of Folly

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Christmas Carol 2.0

by Laurence Sheehan

Grand Central Station was decked with boughs of folly, it being Christmas Eve,

but Bill Tillman, a media planner with Time, was in a bad mood. For the second year in a

row he had been passed over for an end-of-year bonus and given his pinched

circumstances the news could not have come at a worse time. And yet even that was not

the worst of it.

He entered the station from 42nd Street and made his way through an anteroom

teeming with commuters making last-minute purchases at the dozens and dozens of

glittering holiday boutiques set up in the grandiose vaulted space. He was in a hurry to

catch the 5:48, express to Stamford, and had no time to shop. Indeed he had no one to

shop for. His newly liberated wife, Becky, and their three kids were on Jupiter Island,

Florida, living large in the golf chateau of Beckys father, who disliked Bill almost as

much as Becky did in the wake of the proceedings in Superior Court.

The divorce had ended a fifteen-year roller-coaster marriage and given puppy

love a black eye. For Elizabeth, as she was known when Bill first met her in college, had

been a raven-haired beauty of milk-white complexion, and he had fallen for her on first

sight, literally stumbling on a campus sign fixture and ending up prostrate at her feet as

she was making her way to English 21 with her roommate, Rita, a.k.a. Tinkerbell.

Noting on the departures board that the 5:48 would be leaving from the lower

level, Bill Tillman headed for the sweeping marble staircase that led into the bowels of

the station, tacking left and right through a mob of travelers in mufflers and scarves, their

spirits fueled by Christmas party eggnog, armed with bags of colorfully wrapped gifts,

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many of which struck Bill on his shins. He could not help but notice the gleeful

expressions on those rushing by him, no doubt occasioned by the prospect of the four-day

weekend looming ahead for all. It was a Thursday. For Bill the days ahead promised

nothing but gloom and ennui.

A Salvation Army Santa Claus was stationed at the head of the stairs in a cheap

red suit with an unconvincing paunch. Bill saw a man with a Hammacher Schlemmer

shopping bag drop a $10 bill into Santas kettle, a bit of blithe holiday excess in Bills

humble opinion. Santa shook his cowbell to signal the selfless act and looked expectantly

at Bill. Bill averted his eyes and brushed past the impersonator. Yet another solicitation

awaited Bill at the bottom of the stairs, in the form of a man wearing a sign around his

neck that said: HOMLESS. The man was of indeterminate age with a ragged, albeit

authentic Smith Bros. beard and a filthy great coat that looked as if it had been taken off a

corpse from the Battle of Verdun in the year 1916. Set deeply in a gaunt, almost skeletal

face, the beggars dark eyes blazed with menace.

Anything for Christmas, mister? said the man, extending a hand palm upwards.

Afraid not, Bill muttered, attempting to pass.

The beggar gripped his arm.

Say! said Bill in protest.

Wheres the Christmas spirit, mister? said the petitioner, releasing his grip.

Left it at the office, Bill replied. Good luck in any case.

Tis youll be needing the luck this Christmas eve, mark my words, Bill heard

the mendicant growl behind his back.

An involuntary shiver went up Bills spine.

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He found a seat in the third car from the end of the train, joining a young black

man in a shiny blue Mets jacket whose eyes were closed in fierce concentration on

whatever was emanating from his headset. Facing him in the three seats across the way

was a woman with a young girl on either side. The woman, a coiffed and confident

suburbanite in the neighborhood of forty, wearing a camels hair coat with fur collar,

smiled at him, unexpectedly at that, Bill thought, as she adjusted her position to be sure

the requisite three inches of space existed between her knees and his. He nodded in return

and heaved his outsized attach case upon his lap in an unconscious act of social self-

defense, not unlike the womans knee maneuver. The two girls, evidently sisters, were

got up in pigtails and gauzy pink and peach dresses. The younger of the two, seated on

the aisle, was grasping in her hand a program for Lincoln Centers Nutcracker

extravaganza. She stared at him without affection, her feet, clad in patent leather,

swinging lazily to and fro. The older sister had her face buried in an American Girl

historical novel. In a slight departure from sugarplum style, she was wearing red Keds on

her feet.

Bells went off and there was a surge of late boarders in varying states of hilarity

and they advanced down the aisle in both directions in search of a place to rest their

weary intoxicated selves. Train doors closed in a whoosh and the train jerked into motion.

Relieved to be moving at last through the dark tunnel out of the city, Bill snapped open

his attach case. Admittedly bulky to carry, the case had capacity enough for his laptop

and that was why he had chosen it when he began his career in Manhattan. He removed

some papers and idly sifted through them until he found the annual performance appraisal

that lay at the heart of his current disillusion and malaise. His boss, the sanctimonious

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John Jay Burns, had called him into the office after lunch that day to go over the

appraisal. Step by tedious step, he had taken Bill through each of the goals that

management, working in tandem with Bill, had established for Bill for the present year

the previous December. He hadnt been a disaster, Burns had told him, far from that, and

yetand yet he had come up short. Certain quotas had gone unmet. Pursuit of new media

had been conducted at a snails pace. Too much time had been spent massaging network

and mass-market magazine accounts. Those media powers of old were losing their grip.

They were dinosaurs. Bill clung to their importance at his peril. It might be said, said

Burns, that Bill had one foot in the past and the other out the door. In fact, Im sorry to

say, John Jay Burns intoned, in the manner of the priest reading extreme unction, two

strikes and you are out.

Let go by the mighty Time how build a new life on that disconcerting turn of

events?

You really dont know who we are? said the woman across the way, having put

down herVanity Fairwith a suddenness that suggested she disliked something she had

just read in one of the front columns.

What! Bill exclaimed, startled and confused as he looked up from his papers.

Just then a beefy young man with a Santa cap and can of Budweiser stumbled by as the

train lurched to one side, causing a small amount of suds to spray all over the report on

Bills anno mirabilis.

Oh, dear, said the woman. She reached into her purse and produced a tissue.

Thank you, said Bill, and he mopped up his papers as best he could. He started

to hand back the wet tissue but thought better of it. Instead he stuck it in his shirt pocket

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and sat back.

He peered at the tissue lady in puzzlement. Her angular face was handsome rather

than pretty, its most compelling feature a pair of hazel eyes set wide in permanent

surprise. Her lips were full, shy crescents of unrouged flesh that he could imagine

opening in praise of God in an Episcopal church choir somewhere in Connecticut.

Next to him the black kid had not stirred from his musical reverie. For it was

music of some kind that played on a faraway tinny soundtrack, barely audible to Bill in

the cacophony of a train full of festive passengers. Was it some hiphop Xmas Xarol from

another planet?

Silent is the night

Holy is the night

All is the calm

All is the bright

But he was hopeless, he knew, in the vernacular of the street.

Where are you living now? the woman inquired.

I beg your pardon! Bill declared, his confusion deepening. The girl to the

womans right, he noted, was now regarding him with unconcealed hostility.

Surely you remember us. Barbara Drew? My girls Samantha and Nicole? Your

neighbors for seven years?

Oh my God, said Bill. You could have knocked him over with a feather. In fact

he fervently wished that someone would. It was indeed the Drew family from down the

street in another place and time which Bill clearly had misplaced. Was he going mad?

Barbara! he fairly shouted, which at least had the effect of waking up the young man at

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his side. The lad reacted gamely, however, resettling himself in his seat before closing his

eyes once more.

The Drews. Bill had always thought of the Drews as the perfect nuclear family.

They lived in a Colonial with a swimming pool and clay tennis court. Many was the time,

coming and going on endless weekend errands in his tenure as husband and father, that he

had discreetly admired Barbaras coltish legs as she chased down a drop shot or lob. And

now he had been drop-shotted by something beyond his ken. He thought back to the

homeless mans threatening taunt in Grand Central. That Bill would be needing a bit of

good luck this night. What on earth was in store for him, he wondered.

Had Becky and Barbara been friends? He couldnt remember. They had female

offspring in common, of about the same age. Becky had played tennis too.

And how is Walt? Bill inquired in an effort to normalize relations.

Milt, corrected Barbara. Milton is fine.

And now another uneasy truth crossed his mind: Milt was his dentist.

Of course,Milt, he said, thinking he was probably long overdue for work on his

gums. Bills confidence in his sanity slipped another notch. Dentists were not people one

thought about a lot, yet most could name theirs without fear of contradiction. Lifes

grains of sand seemed to be running through his fingers. He felt uncommonly frail, like a

teapot in a tempest. Its just that its been a rough year.

At this point the older daughter put down her book and announced,

I am starving to death.

Now, Sam, it wont be long before were home. Daddys meeting us at the

station. She returned her gaze to Bill. I know youve had a tough time.

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Divorce is not for the meek, he agreed. He opened his mouth to say more, then

decided to shelve his prepared remarks on the double whammy of alimony and child

custody payments, sensing his former neighbor would find his argument full of holes.

Milt will be happy to see you, she said. Bill briefly wondered if he was in

significant arrears to his D.D.S., and he heard her ask, You are in Westport for the time

being, am I right?

Yes, Im renting a place. He added quickly, It will be good to see ol Milt,

exchange seasons greetings. Actually, he didnt much like Milt as dentists go, but he

was anxious to divert the conversation from the subject of his present lodgings. Hed

found a converted garden shed on one of the estate houses along Long Island Sound,

within walking distance of the Westport train station, and of a rustic character that might

have appealed to Lady Chatterlys lover who, Bill seemed to recall, was in the gardening

business. Bill had moved into his humble digs in the spring because it suited his budget

and was convenient to his commute. He had harbored a faint hope of making friends in

the locality, but hed soon discovered that those who live on Connecticuts sacred waters

are exceedingly wary of single gents of a certain age and countenance, i.e. trending

toward middle age and dyspepsia. So it was no small comfort that a chipmunk in his yard,

after being bribed with sacks of sunflower seeds over a period of months, consented to

hang around with him on his stoop when the weather was good of a weekend afternoon.

Barbara sighed and shook her head, as if reading his thoughts.

Bill sighed back. Barbara picked up her magazine. Bill returned to his papers. It

was too warm in the train to concentrate. He closed his attach case and drummed on it

with his fingers. This caught the attention of the daughter who was not Samantha, which

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undoubtedly meant she was Nicole. Nicole narrowed her eyes, staring at Bills offending

fingers.

Did you enjoy The Nutcracker? Bill hazarded.

Nicole shot back in her seat and burst into tears.

What did you say to her? said Barbara, who had not been listening. She caught

the child up in her arms.

I just asked if she liked seeing The Nutcracker, he said in a tone so defensive

that it was likely Barbara thought he had in fact asked her daughter to perform an

unspeakable act consistent with his depraved life style. Im sorry if I startled her, he

added. His face was red as a polished apple in the organic produce section. Its so

blasted hot in here! he declared, swiping his neck with his necktie, a striped model from

Brooks Bros.. It was time to bring this tragic contretemps to a close. He leaped to his feet,

accidentally knocking one of Nicoles feet with his case. Sorry! he cried, but the

apology was lost in the girls cascading scream. Air! he fairly screamed himself, as

heads turned upon the indecipherable scene of human conflict a perfectly innocent

ballet gone wrong-footed.

Bill fled down the aisle.

He had pushed his way through several traffic jams before coming upon

temporary salvation in the bar car, filled to capacity with assorted tipplers of every age

and gender. On his way to the bar itself, he passed three men in topcoats singing Good

King Wenceslas at the top of their lungs. One of them clapped him on the back in a show

of bonhomie, sending Bill reeling into a coven of women in tailored suits who had been

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discussing the pros and cons of variable annuities. Gins and tonic went flying, but in a

sign of the blessed time of year, no one raised complaint.

Bill begged forgiveness of the female execs nonetheless, then edged his way

sideways farther along through the swaying crowd, much like the garden-variety mole in

its underground habitat, while volumes of cigarette smoke drifted overhead like clouds on

a summer day. At the bar itself he was pleased to find the venerable OGrady, standing in

his starched white tunic at a work station well supplied with heaps of green olives and

seedless lemon wedges. The moustachioed OGrady looked at Bill as if he were a

complete stranger, which was the old retainers trademark service gambit, but supplied a

club soda on ice as ordered and paid for, then ostentatiously rattled the tips jar.

Bill took his melancholy beverage in the direction of a miniscule piece of

unclaimed real estate over by the cars middle set of doors. He set down his attach case

and glanced out the window at the dark landscape rolling past him, flecked with patches

of ice and snow. There is a world of hurt out there, he thought, and a great many

Christmas lights. But no sooner had he breathed a sigh of relief at having escaped the

company of the Family Drew, the tension in his neck muscles palpably diminishing, than

a familiar voice reached out to him from the chaos of the coach interior.

My God, is that you, Billy Tillman!

A sprite of a woman rose from the shabby red plastic bench that ran the length of

the bar car, resembling the seating one might imagine to be in place in one of Hells

capacious waiting rooms.

The young woman had on a yellow parka, open to a white wool turtleneck. She

wore eyeglasses with blue frames. Her dumpy little hat looked like the one Gene Wilder

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wore in the Willy Wonka movie. She had the brightest smile in the world.

She was none other than Rita Dombrowski.

Tinkerbell! Bill exclaimed. He studied her diminutive self with pleasure, but a

disquieting element in her presence almost immediately began to nag at him. He couldnt

put his finger on it but it had to do with her youthful demeanor. He nonetheless was

determined to be affectionate and not merely courteous. I didnt know you were

commuting.

Yes, since the summer. From Stamford. I live with my parents, she added

glumly. Then her beaming smile returned. Im assistant photo editor at House

Beautiful.

Wow! he said, genuinely impressed. He imagined her tooling about posh five-

bedroom manses in Greenwich, plumping up pillows and making Airedale puppies sit

still for the camera. Cripes its hard to hear anything in here, he added. The rattle of the

train on the rails and the exuberant clamor of the passengers made it necessary for Bill

and Rita, a.k.a. Tinkerbell, to stand so close to each other that Bill was able to inhale the

perfume Rita had on, a scent redolent of the lotus blossoms of myth, or a new Beaujolais.

To mitigate their differences in altitude, Bill also stooped in such a way that after five

minutes his lower back went into spasms. Yet it was all worth it.

You look overcooked, said Tinkerbell.

Hard day at the office, explained Bill, who was indeed crimson-faced.

Lets not talk business on Christmas Eve, Billy dear. What would Jesus think?

What are your plans, you and Becky? Family coming over?

Beckys in Florida, replied Bill, taken aback by Ritas question, which seemed

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to have come out of shallow left field.

I just talked to her last week. She said nothing about Florida. Oh, Bill, shes so

happy about starting a family.

Bill had the same, sudden sense of dislocation that occurred when he began

conversing with Barbara Drew. What on earth was Tinkerbell talking about? Becky

hadnt been pregnant with their first child in years. Yet the remark could not help but take

him back briefly to the heady days of a young marriage bursting with promise, when

pregnancy was as true-blue American as home ownership and wedding vows were recited

without the asterisks.

I love Elizabeth Becky, Rita continued, oblivious to Bills confused

expression. But I so wished for her to break up with you when we were still in college.

Why on earth would you wish that?

So I could get you on the rebound, naturally.

What! He was getting tired of exhibiting his incredulity by always saying,

What!

Of course. You mean you didnt know I had a terrific crush on you? Elizabeth

never told you?

Uh, never a word, said Bill.

I probably still do, she said.

All at once Bill saw Tinkerbell in a new light. In their college days he had always

treated her as a kind of short male friend, only with a high voice. What are your own

plans? he said, to change the subject. He was deeply flattered by her revelation, but

flustered as well. I mean for Christmas.

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A bunch of us are supposed to go skiing. Its so cold theyve been making snow

in Vermont all week. Whats that youre drinking?

Oh, just some club soda.

Can Ive a sip? Its so toasty in here.

He extended his clear plastic glass of fizzy and watched her lips form into a sort

of pout as she drank.

What are you reading these days? she asked upon returning his drink.

Nothing, he replied. His heart turned into molten beeswax. No one had asked

him that question in years, and it now occurred to him that he was speaking to a earlier

model of Rita Dombrowski, one who still answered to the nickname, Tinkerbell. The

thought was disturbing in the extreme. I watch a lot of television.

Thats not good for your gray matter.

Mostly stuff on the Discovery Channel, he argued.

A voice came crackling over the public address system to announce that the train

was fast approaching Stamford station. Bill had a terrible sense of foreboding, as if the

people from hospice had just showed up on his doorstep.

Oh, lets sing a Christmas carol together before I have to go, said Rita. Adestes

fideles, she chirped lyrically, Laete triumphantes

Latin is Greek to me, Bill said in apology.

Oh, Bill, what a party pooper, said Rita, putting the brakes on her oratorio even

as the train itself slowed down. Merry Christmas, anyway, she said. She stood on

tiptoes, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him squarely, wetly, rather

passionately on the lips. It was definitely a cut above a recreational kiss, and it left Bill

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weak in the knees and crosseyed. But before he could say a word, Tinkerbell had

vanished in the crowd spilling onto the platform in Stamford.

The lead car on the train was empty, dark and near to freezing. Bill was glad to

come upon it after staggering through coach after coach full of revelers, on his way from

the bar car and his reunion with Rita Dombrowski. The coach was a relic from the old

New Haven Railroad, with hard straight-backed seats and windows that had not been

cleaned since the Korean War. He picked a seat in the middle of the car, then abruptly got

up and crossed to the other side where he could sit with his back to his destination.

He placed his attach case on his lap and rested his forearms on it. He twiddled

his thumbs. The world rushed by him going backwards. Surely there was some moral

point or life lesson to be gleaned from his unexpected meeting with the Tinkerbell of his

halcyon college days, but Bill could not see it. All the encounter seemed to have done is

reinforce his feelings of defeat, both on the job front and the home front. Which left only

the cold front presently imposing its severe Arctic air on the coach where he sat.

And it had planted the seeds of an impossible longing within him.

After a short while, he realized he was growing numb. He decided to warm his

innards with something stronger than club soda.

Bill lost count of the coaches he traversed to reach the bar car and the curative

offerings of cantankerous OGrady. Finally, coming upon a conductor, he put the

question to him:

Excuse me, where the hell is your bar car?

Bar car? said the functionary with a hollow laugh. Amtrak discontinued bar

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cars years ago.

Making his way back to Siberia, Bill pondered the shocking information he had

been imparted. If the 5:48 had no bar car, then what had he been doing in it? Where was

he, then? When was he? And where did Tinkerbell come into the picture, or for that

matter his club soda? Bill was not by nature given to flights of fancy. He was, as his ex-

wife Becky had often reminded him, more the prosaic type. Some years ago some of the

guys on his softball team plied him with marijuana in an attempt to get him to see

unusual colors and eat extravagant servings of ice cream, to no avail. Bill had remained

stubbornly sober throughout the ordeal. His friends wrote him off as a non-starter.

So he found it hard to believe that Tinkerbell was a figment, or that Barbara Drew

and her girls had been earlier figments, although come to think of it the younger

daughter, Nicole, was something of a pain in the figment. It seemed to Bill that he was

simply undergoing a nervous breakdown, for which two or three days in a downy bed

was probably the only sensible solution.

In the murky light of the lead coach on the train, he discerned a figure in the exact

seat he had occupied earlier. To add insult to injury, the figure, a man, looked as if he

were fiddling with the attach case to which Bill was much attached.

Hey, there, I say, that case belongs to me, Bill said when he drew close to the

fellow. He was an older man in a jean jacket, worn loosely over one of those black-and-

red checked wool shirts sold hand over fist every winter by L. L. Bean.

The man looked up at Bill with the oddest of smiles on his face, like the cat who

swallowed the canary along with the canarys cage mate in the bargain. Seeing the man

clearly for the first time, Bill was aghast.

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The man was his father.

Dad! Bill exclaimed, as he collapsed in the seat facing the apparition. For ghost

it must be, he decided, as the man who had sired him had kicked the bucket some time

ago. Wasnt that so? All at once Bill was racked with doubt even on this topic.

Attache case? said his father. Thats a laugh. This is more like a steamer trunk.

Who are you, the Fuller Brush Man?

Actually, Ive been working forTime magazine, Bill asserted, snatching his

case from the mans lap and setting it down on his own, so forcefully that he aggravated

an old knee injury.

Well, light my fuse and send me to the moon, said his father. Jake Tillman had

been a critic of his sons behavior since about third grade as Bill recalled.

Although I was let go by Time this very day, Bill sighed.

Let go by time, said his father, dropping his sarcasm for the moment. I know

the feeling.

Bill stared at his old man wonderingly. Jake had owned and operated Wilsons

Hardware in Westport, Connecticut, for years and years. Bill had worked in the store

growing up, learning how to mix paint, replace flashlight batteries, set mouse traps and

generally tell the nuts from the bolts. Hed hated every minute of it.

The big shot turns his back on the family trade, said Jake, returning to his main

theme, takes a cushy job in the Big Apple, and ends up falling flat on his face. Merry

Christmas, son.

Bill did feel a modicum of guilt for having taken the New York job after

graduating from college, or, rather, for not having prepared his father for taking that step.

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He knew Jake had been grooming him for an ownership position in the hardware store.

He had never mustered the courage to tell his father he had other plans.

Do you remember Rita Dombrowski? he said as a diversionary tactic. We

went to school together? Little bit of a girl. We called her Tinkerbell.

Rita, oh sure I do, said Jake, his face lighting up. Cute as a button and funny as

hell. Thats the one you shouldve married, not the Mormon.

Becky wasnt a Mormon, Bill corrected his father for the thousandth time. He

knew Jack blamed Becky for his refusal to stay on with Wilsons Hardware after

graduation. She was a Christian Scientist.

And whats the difference.? And look where joining a cult has got you. Do you

see your kids at all?

Of course. I have visitation rights. Albeit limited rights, he did not dare to add.

Nor the fact that the children didnt much like spending occasional weekends with him in

a three-hundred square foot garden shed infested by chipmunks (Bills furry friend,

Alvin, had been joined by cousins).

Visitation my foot!

I never became a Christian Scientist, he informed his father for the thousandth

time. In fact, he added somewhat inanely, science was always my weakest subject in

school.

If it werent for your diabolical Becky, youd be sitting on a gold mine in

Westport.

It wasnt Beckys fault the business failed, Dad. It was Home Depot. The

famous box store with the orange logo, once established on its ten-acre site on the Post

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Road in Westport, had drained Wilsons Hardware of revenue even as the vampire bat

reduces blood supply in the local oxen. But Jake refused to accept that excuse. Yet the

carpenters, painters and plumbers who had made up his most loyal clientele drifted away

from the store in increasing numbers. And that was what killed Jake Hillmans business,

and Jake himself, in the end, and not his sons perfidy.

Home Depot! Jake exclaimed. Take away their aprons and what have you

got?? Mortals, thats what!

Bill Tillman had spent so many years being sore at his father that he found it

surprising now to be deeplysimpatico with the spirited old reprobate.

Tired, said his father in a voice mournful as the bagpipers song, dead tired.

Jake Tillman let his head fall back and closed his eyes. Moments later he began to snore.

Bill studied his fathers deeply lined face, his hollow cheeks, the grim set of his mouth,

and all at once recognized that his fathers life, too, had been heartbreaking in its

inadequacy and recurring disappointments. Indeed he had lost his own wife early on, to

disease, not divorce, but one empty nest was as empty as any other.

Bills mind drifted back to the summers he had worked in Wilsons Hardware,

which sold air conditioners but was not itself air-conditioned. On days when customers

were few and far between, Bill would seek relief from the stultifying atmosphere by

curling up in the soil amendments aisle and taking a nap with his head on a bag of

compost. Now drowsiness overtook him on the train and before long he was snoring, too,

playing second fiddle to his father. What else was new?

The train came into and left Westport station, and Bill Tillman slept on.

In his dream Bill was painting a portrait of the paterfamilias, seated, next to a tea

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table with a bowl of fruit on it. There was a glass of Scotch next to the bowl but Bill left

that out of the picture. He had trouble with his oranges. They looked like lumps of coal.

His father was a fidgeter as models go. Bill had trouble with his subjects hands. They

looked like lumps of coal as well.

As the dream tottered on, Bill the artist improbable as that vocation seemed for

someone so steeped in the dull and the normal turned his attention away from his

technical difficulties with tempura and egg wash and all that, and focused on the

paintings background. There he had rendered some rudimentary mountains in the style

of Giotto, or maybe it was Fra Angelico. In any case he at last found the vanishing point

on his horizon, that place where parallel train tracks, as on the Amtrak line, for example,

become closer to each other, and even seem to merge, the farther away they get.

As Bill grappled with this esthetic conundrum, Jake Tillman, his chair and the tea

table all began to recede into the distance, growing smaller and smaller until upon

reaching the vanishing point on the canvas they disappeared without so much as a poof.

Bill awoke with a start. He stared at the empty seat before him. It dawned on him

that he had missed his station stop. With that sickening realization, Bill felt the figure of

his own rendered self growing smaller, without having the luxury of actually seeing the

canvas on which he was being reduced. Briefly he wondered if his likeness was in the

hands of an Old Master or some more adventurous fellow in the Post Modern School.

Before he could work out a preference, Bill Tillman reached his vanishing point, and then

he did, also without a poof.

Making his final sweep after the train had finished its run in New Haven, the

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conductor marched into the frigid lead car, which was being retired from service this very

night. The car had been used to ferry supplies back and forth between terminals, but state

inspectors had ruled it unsafe even for that humble function. The old passenger coach

would be consigned to Schiavones Scrap Yard.

The conductor was about to exit the car through its middle doors when his foot

struck something. Voila! He had discovered Bill Tillmans attach case by tripping over

it. As he bent to retrieve it, he heard a rustling sound on the platform, whether the

shuffling of feet or the beating of wings he could not say. He poked his head out the door

to investigate, but there was nothing to be seen. The last of the passengers on the 5:48

were long gone. An eerie silence hovered over the platform. Even the posters for the

shows on Broadway looked dejected.

The conductor returned to the train and picked up the atttache case. When he

found the laptop inside, he uttered a joyful whoop and immediately transferred it to his

own tote bag, a cheap black plastic affair that came with its own shoulder strap. He would

wrap the laptop in holiday foil and place it under the tree as a gift from St. Nick for his

granddaughter when the family gathered at the house for Christmas dinner. A laptop

would make a big hit with the girl, who was a budding techie.

On cold winter days homeless men stole into the New Haven terminal for warmth

whenever they were able to elude Amtrak security. One of these refugees approached the

conductor as he made his way through the tunnel leading from the train platforms. .

Merry Christmas, declared the unshaven citizen in his long, dark coat, with an

unmistakable note of madness in his gaze.

The conductor stopped in his tracks, very much on guard, ready to fish out his can

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of Mace at a moments notice. The man who was down on his luck stared covetously at

the attach case. And what have we here? he asked, tentatively reaching for the case.

The conductor pulled the case out of reach. This goes to Lost & Found, he said.

If youd let me peddle it at the flea market, Id have money to feed my family.

Nothing doing, my friend, said the conductor, and breezed past him. He was

only a few hundred feet from the safety of the waiting room.

The other man stayed on his trail, calling,

If as you say youre my friend, a small Christmas present might be in order, as a

token of our friendship.

Charity begans at home, said the conductor, at once regretting his Scrooge-like

utterance.

I saw you take that computer, the man snarled.

The conductor stopped and turned, discomfited.

Yes, the man continued, and I have made note of your badge number, my

friend, in case that would be of interest to Lost & Found on Monday morning.

The conductor took out his wallet and produced a $10 bill. The homeless man

snatched it up and said, Close but no cigar.

The conductor looked into his wallet. Reluctantly he handed over a twenty.

And a very merry Christmas to me! the man declared in parting. He

disappeared from view after turning a corner in the direction of the escalator that led to

the waiting room. But then the conductor heard the stranger break into song. It was more

of a Christmas cackle than a Christmas carol, but the words clearly reverberated within

the tiled walls of the tunnel.

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Hark the herald angels sing.glory to the newborn King

On the move again, albeit thirty dollars lighter, the conductor hummed along with

the impromptu vocals. After a brutal day on the rails, he at last felt his first real stirrings

of the Christmas spirit.

Copyright c 2012 by Laurence Sheehan

Boughs of Folly

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Transcript of Boughs of Folly