Bridges
Bridges
Aboard
December 17, 2020
The Wait
He waited on the bridge all day. It was cold but not a biting cold, just your normal December cold in Chicago, with the sporadic spit of snow from the gray/blue sky.
The traffic passed beneath the bridge and so did the train, back forth, head lights outbound, red lights inbound, the train coming from downtown, another train going back into the city. Hours and hours he waited, but still no Santa Claus.
Maybe Santa was dead. Or perhaps he had just been cancelled like so many other things this year of the masks, this era of the uncertainty. Cars zoomed by on the bridge, people walked on, the sky grew darker. He checked the app on his phone over and over to make sure he had the right day, the right time, the right place.
He could have been home playing video games or watching a movie. There was that book his mother had been bothering him to read, and probably other stuff he could have been doing as well. Things he should have been trying.
Maybe Santa got kidnapped by terrorists or space invaders. Maybe the ghosts of Christmas past had gripped Saint Nick’s heart and kept him from his appointed rounds or he’d been murdered by a bugbear.
Hundreds of cars motored on the highway beneath the bridge, dozens of cars passed over it, a lady came by pushing a baby in a stroller, the dogs in the dog park barked and there was a siren somewhere near the candy factory. It snowed a little more.
When he was younger, much younger, Santa only came once a year. It was the parade through the small town that he and his mom and dad and sister used to live in and Santa would lead the parade, standing on a fire truck throwing candy canes and there were other Santas, Santa’s helpers, in convertibles and motorcycles even though it was cold but the cold didn’t bother any of them or the kids because it was Christmas cold and that’s always fine.
That was then. Now, Santa showed up everywhere all the time. He was on TV starting in October, on street corners ringing bells asking for change. Santa was in parks and hospitals and police stations. On spaceships, airplanes and always at the pizza place.
But the Santa on the train. That was different. That was moving light. A spectacle of gallant wonder and….there he is! There he is!
The horns of the highway cars honked and the people on the train platform waved while a man and his dog came up next to him as they both rushed to take out their cellphones, trying to get a good photo through the holes of the chain link fence as the Santa Train, a regular commuter train completely wrapped in Christmas lights, came roaring into the station below them that divided the highway taking people into and out of Chicago a week before the day before Christmas.
The train had one open car which carried Santa on his sleigh, out in the open air, with his helpers, Christmas trees, and fake snow. The man with his dog yelled and he yelled too as others honked and waved and Santa let out “Ho-ho-ho! Merry Christmas!”
The train was there. Santa was alive. And then he was gone as the train disappeared under the bridge, reappeared briefly on the other side, then was swallowed by the darkness of the tunnel, the lights fading quickly, Santa’s laugh evaporating into the noise of the train engine and the chill of the descending snowflakes.
The man with the dog walked away laughing.
He walked to the other side of the bridge, facing the lightless tunnel, and wondered how long it would take for Santa’s train to turn around. --TK
Thursday, December 17, 2020