All I Want For Christmas Is a Shield
All I Want For Christmas Is a Shield
High School Holiday
December 1, 2021
Wishes and Gunpowder
“If I wrote a letter to Santa Claus,” Mrs. Evelyn Cruikshank says to Annalee Birdcount as they walk through the park, arm in arm, the cool but sunny first day of December negotiating its way through the Universe, “I would not ask for a thing. Not one thing.”
“Nothing?” Annalee asks. “Not a million dollars or Robert Redford?”
Mrs. Cruikshank laughs behind her mask as the two of them find a spot on a park bench and sit down.
“Maybe I’d ask to be as young and pretty and funny as you, dear,” Mrs. Cruikshank says. “Besides, Robert Redford is really, really old. But no, nothing. I would ask Santa Claus to take things away. The cellphones, the computers, the guns. All the Goddamn guns.”
“You’re talking about that shooting at the high school?” Annalee asks. “Four dead kids, right?”
“Yes, that shooting. All of them. High schools, highways. Such phooey.”
“I’m with you, Mrs. Cruikshank. When you were young did you ever talk about shooters in high school?”
“Oh Jesus, no! Never heard of such a thing! You had that?”
“Yes,” Annalee says as two kids ride by on their bicycles, one of them wearing a Santa hat. “I’m the generation after Columbine.”
“Yes, well I’m the generation after Korea. Wish I was the generation after cancer, too.”
The old lady and the young woman hold hands, feeling each other’s warmth. Annalee looks at the old woman’s face and sees a roadmap for her future. The lines. The sags. The earned beauty of time.
“What are you asking Santa Claus for this year?” Mrs. Cruikshank asks Annalee.
She thinks about it while an imposing black crow struts in the tall grass and Annalee tries to imagine bullets flying through a high school hallway in the weeks before Christmas.
She squeezes Mrs. Cruikshank’s hand and watches the crow take flight.
“Mittens.” --TK
Wednesday, December 1, 2021