Tom Foran Clark

Without warning, at the last minute, with Christmas just a week away, Jordan Desmond changed his mind. A sophomore at the University of Montana at Missoula, the first in his family ever to attend college, Jordan decided not to drive his beat-up van to Seattle to spend the holidays with his generous, self-sacrificing parents but instead to go the other way -- east. His parents felt some bitterness, thinking their son now thought himself too good for them. He’d grown up poor; now look at him -- sniffing out money, going to visit a girl he hardly knew, this oddly named Esther who lived in a place they'd never heard of, Grange, in Vermont of all places -- their son traveling to highfalutin New England, that distant country, almost Newfoundland. Jordan told his parents it was not like that at all. It was far less complicated. He was in love.

Though brought up in poverty, undernourished in the hard times, Jordan now was in ripping good health. He'd shot to six-foot-two in height. Bear-like in handed-down genetic hairiness of face, neck, arms, and legs, he knew himself to be handsome. As for the moneyed girl, she was beautiful, six feet tall, a brunette, amber. She was or wasn’t pregnant -- this she hadn’t exactly made clear. Either way, Jordan felt he had to try and save their relationship. He had to go -- to do the right thing.

He'd bought two matching 14-karat gold Claddagh friendship rings. Now, in a raging blizzard, Jordan rolled east. Snowstorm after snowstorm had laid down heavy white blankets. The forbidding roads were ice-slicks. For added warmth, hirsute Jordan had brought only a beige woolen sweater he wore under a green corduroy coat. Worse, the van's heater didn’t work. But Jordan saw the beautiful serendipity and rightness of these lacks. He told himself the bitter chill would keep him alert on this long, hard cross-country journey.

Somewhere south of Omaha Jordan fell to daydreaming. He was feeling good, reflecting on his having endured, mainly with dignity, all his past hard times. Everything was going to turn out okay. He’d make it all right. He was zooming along. The van hit black ice, went gliding from the highway, dropped down an embankment, and landed in a ditch.

Tow trucks were busy all along that stretch, roaming up and down, hauling out cars and trucks from the roadside ravines. Huge semis cluttered the roadway, their front cabs jerked from their cargo beds like enormous broken centipedes. Jordan waited for his turn. He stood roadside, breathing into his ungloved hands, standing first on one foot, then the other -- anything to keep himself warm. Finally, the badly dented van, lifted on heavy, creaking chains, was placed back on the road. The tow truck operator said he hated to inconvenience the young man, but there was the small matter pending of the fifty dollars owed him. Jordan, carrying his student identity card in his wallet, showed it and requested a discount.

"Listen, Nanuk," the driver said menacingly, full-well knowing the leverage this situation gave him, "ante up the buckaroos or I toss the vehicle back in the ditch." Jordan took from his wallet five ten dollar bills.

"See you soon!" the trucker roared when Jordan pulled away. Jordan tooted his horn, gave the van gas, veered sideways, and nearly slid into the ditch again. Pay attention! he scolded himself, taking a great gulp of icy air, pressing on.

All in all, the car was running fine. Jordan was making good time. Every now and then he pulled off roadside to rest his eyes and think of Esther, to keep the journey purposeful, and the point of it in focus. His mind was tending to wander. He had no idea what day it was. Jordan went by a nearly immobilized Chicago, all but shut down by a week of blizzards, then passed under Cleveland, also digging out at the tail end of a series of killer storms. Snowdrifts floated softly over the roads like spirits, ethereal.

Somewhere between Ashtabula and Erie, in a vast terra incognita of snowed-over farm fields stretching far and wide, the van's motor began to sputter -- first ping! ping! ping! ping! then phetew! phetew! ping! phetew! -- the car lunging and plunging sporadically down the long, empty road. Ping! phetew! phetew! ping! phetew!

From there on out it was touch and go, with numerous stops. In Erie, Jordan stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant if he could have a look at his lurching, sputtering motor. "No can do," the man said. "It's Sunday, you know. The tool boxes are locked up tight as my wife."

Jordan had no more idea what day of the week it was than how to feel empathy for the man's home situation, but he knew he needed help with the van. "How much?" Jordan asked.

"How much what?"

"For repairs. My van. What would it take to have you fix it? Money."

The man brought his head closer to the engine, listening more carefully. "Well, you've obviously got head problems. I'd say three to seven hundred smackers for sure, from the sound of this engine's croaking."

"Can I go on with it running like this?"

"If you can stand the suspense," the man said. "Your head could blow any minute."

Jordan shrugged his shoulders and had the man fill the tank. The man tugged on some wires. Jordan paid him, said thanks, and drove on.

Ten miles out of Dunkirk, the van started spitting fire. Pfffst! ting! ting! ting! pfffst! Then came phootel! phootel! phootel! ting! pfffst! ting! ting! pfffst! thaddup thaddup.

Jordan pulled off the road in the middle of snowy nowhere, somewhere south of Buffalo. He gave the van a rest, getting out and wandering up the road a bit on foot. Ahead of him, as well as behind, the only thing he saw was snow. Jordan followed his footsteps back to the van and, with new resolve, continued on. Ting! patawww! phootel! phootel! thaddup thaddup thaddup.

An unlighted road sign popped into view: Genessee Road. Nice name for a road, Jordan thought -- Genessee. Snowdrifts drifted over the road like ghosts. Another sign came up --a bright neon Ixion gas station sign. Jordan steered toward the pumps, stopped, pulled up the emergency brake, turned off the motor, and folded over sideways on the front seat.

From out of the fuzzy, blurred, blank white winter wonderland, a man floated up, knocking hard on the window on the passenger side. “You all right?” a red-cheeked man called through the fog.

Pulling himself together, Jordan tugged on the door handle and opened the door. “You all right?” the man said again. “Come in to the store. I have some coffee brewing.”

Jordan got out of the car and followed the man, bent-over and slow-moving, wearing gray coveralls and black knee-high fly fisherman’s boots. Wearily, the two made their way toward the dull light in the place’s front windows. Jordan paused to admire the marvelous crystal patterns on the glass door of Hambleton's Ixion Gas Station and General Store. A bell tingled over them when they went in.

“Season's greetings," the round, gray-haired old man said without merriment. “Hambleton the Handyman,” he introduced himself. “Coffee or hot chocolate?”

“Chocolate, please.”

“What in tarnation you doing out in this weather?” Hambleton demanded to know, boiling up some water in a pot on a hot plate on a tool-cluttered counter.

“Heading east,” Jordan said. “Going to New England.”

“New England is it now?” Hambleton pondered, pouring a pouch of condensed chocolate powder into the pot of water, stirring with a big wooden soup spoon as he poured. “Did you run out of gas?”

“Engine’s dying.”

“Skipping?”

“Dying -- lunging -- going ting! patawww! phootel! phootel! Then pfffst! ting! thaddup thaddup,” Jordan mimicked.

“Well, we better have a look at her,” Hambleton said, pouring the chocolate concoction into a mug and handing it to Jordan, then asking for his keys. While Jordan sipped from the mug, warming his hands on it, the old man opened up the slatted doors of his old-time garage. Then he went out, got in the van, started it, and drove it in over the service pit, a wide, yawning gap in the ground.

Hambleton turned her off, got out, and went down under to have a better look. Then he came back up, opened the hood, and had a look there. He pulled on some levers, and lifted a cap. “Closed points,” the old man murmured. “Ten more feet and your car would’a died,” he said, having at it, spacing the gaps. “There, that does it.” He put everything back and closed the hood.

Jordan asked Hambleton if he could reimburse him for his services.

“Well, that’s usually how we do it in my country,” Hambleton said wryly. He drove the van out to the pumps, and put gas in. “Looks like you’re also leaking oil,” he commented, adding a can of 5-40 oil, also giving Jordan a can to take with him. He took only twenty-eight dollars for it all. “And don’t forget to check that oil occasionally,” he said when Jordan rolled out.

Just out of Buffalo Jordan got on the New York Thruway. The van was running like a charm. The thruway unraveled out ahead, beckoning like a smooth white ribbon. Jordan kept east -- straight east -- straight as a crow flies. There was not a curve, a bend, a swerve. There was just the night, the snow, and the tunneling road.

Then he was laughing. Jordan’s own laughter woke him. For just the shortest moment, he’d drifted off -- he’d fallen asleep at the wheel. He’d dreamed, and in his dream he’d told himself a joke. His own laughter woke him up. He awoke and found himself driving east in a van on the New York Thruway in the dead of winter -- for the life of him he could not remember what had been so funny.

An enormous snow-caked sign loomed into view, announcing Syracuse. A second sign announced the second Syracuse exit. The van’s oil-level warning light blinked on. First came ting! patawww! Then -- bang! -- the engine blew up.

Jordan threw her into neutral and -- knock knock knock knock knock knock -- coasted roadside. He turned the motor off, sat still, and tried not to think. Then he tried the motor again -- thaddup thaddup thaddup thaddup thaddup thaddup. He put the van into first gear. The van crawled forward, back onto the road, moving heavily and painfully toward the second Syracuse exit toll booth in the fog. Jordan came to a stop. The engine went tchrrrrrrkkkk, and that was the end of it. Jordan turned the key left, then back right again. Nothing. The old lady sitting in the box was telling Jordan what he owed her.

“My engine’s blown,” Jordan said.

“Bowling?” she said. “At the end of the ramp, turn right.”

“No, my motor blew up.”

“That’s right. Better pay up.” Cars were collecting on the exit-road, lined up behind the van. Jordan was blocking their way. In her postal-worker-like blue uniform, the money taker got out of her box and went around behind the van and waved her arms. “He wants to go bowling!” she cried out. “But he doesn’t want to pay up.” A brawny man in a red-checkered lumberjack’s shirt got out of a blue sports car two cars back, and approached. Jordan got out his money quickly, and paid the fare.

“Move that thing now!” the big man demanded, a fist raised.

“Well, I can’t exactly lift it out of the way, can I?” Jordan shot back. “Notice she didn’t tell you the engine’s dead.”

The big man suddenly volunteered to give the van a big push, to start it on down the ramp. Jordan hopped in. “Just turn right at the end and roll on in,” the lumberjack hollered after. “From the bowling alley you can call a mechanic -- and a cab.”

Parker’s Ball and Pin Café looked bleak and desolate at that hour (four in the morning) in that light (garish flourescent beams). From a phone booth in front of the place, Jordan made the calls. The tow truck, deployed from a used car dealer’s headquarters, got there first -- then the police, and then the cab. The tow truck driver told Jordan he was looking at forty dollars right now for the towing and probably eight or nine hundred dollars in repairs down the road -- or he could give Jordan five bucks and take care of the transfer of the title and all the paperwork by mail in the coming weeks or months, at Jordan’s leisure.

Jordan took a single suitcase out of the van, then watched the blinking amber light of the truck and the dead van-in-tow fade from sight. Now the cabbie yelled at him, “Hey! The meter’s running! Let’s get this show on the road! Where we going?“

“Bus station,” Jordan said, throwing his suitcase in the rear seat. He wasn’t even entirely in -- the door was still open -- when the cab’s spinning wheels sent gravel flying. From the forward momentum, the door closed itself.

It took just ten minutes. “Voila!” the taxi driver announced. “The bus station.”

Jordan paid the driver and leapt aside as the cab tore away. Entering the empty, dilapidated depot building, he sat down in the chair nearest to him, very carefully positioning his suitcase under it. He reached for a newspaper stuffed in the space between his seat and the adjoining. At the top of section C was a photo of a burning woman -- a young bride who’d been set on fire, according to the accompanying text. In India, a trend was seen to be emerging. Some grooms, feeling the parents of their brides were not providing sufficient dowries, were dousing their brides with gasoline, then igniting them.

It was almost too much. What was wrong with people, anyway? There were photographs of children with swollen bellies holding empty soup bowls; better-off children toting machine guns; soldiers holding their bandaged heads or marching in shining full regalia in parades; robots; weapons of mass destruction; space ships; melting ice caps. The paper fell from Jordan’s knees to the floor. He drifted off to sleep.

“…Worcester and Boston” -- he caught it in the nick of time. “From Gate Six,” the loudspeakers announced. The bus station was like a beehive now, humming, people heading in all directions. Jordan got his ticket and ran to Gate Six -- in the nick of time.

Once aboard the bus -- his seat secured, and the next stop New England -- Jordan nodded off again. In Albany, a woman smelling dismally of conflicting perfume scents got on the bus with a group of like perfumed, noisy, bird-beaked ladies. Jordan was startled from his deep reverie. “My, don’t you look tired!” she said, looking right at Jordan prior to sitting down next to him. He opened his eyes only slightly, then closed them again. “Ladies,” the woman crowed, “does this hooligan not look tired?” The other ladies clucked agreement. “Look at all that hair on him,” one lady whispered snidely to another. "No wonder he can't get up."

Why did people talk like this? They didn't know anything. It really got to him, but Jordan didn't react. He distracted himself with thoughts of maple trees, birch bark canoes, Katahdin, Bar Harbor, the Berkshires, Monadnock, the White Mountains, the Green Mountains, contra dancing, amber honey, and the girl of his dreams.

“A young man without any manners is a very sad thing,” one of the women said snootily, getting off the bus in Worcester. “You would think a young man could show the simple courtesy of letting two old ladies sit together on a bus. What is the world coming to?”

Jordan felt bad -- he meant well. Why hadn’t the old dame said something before they’d reached Worcester? It really wasn’t fair -- such a verdict. The accusation pierced him. Such misunderstanding. Jordan felt deeply wronged. He transferred from the bus to a special transport mini-van. He tried not to think. He knew the little shuttle bus would be in Vermont within the hour. Stay calm, Jordan told himself. You’re almost there.

“We’re here,” the shuttle driver said, shaking her lone customer’s shoulders, trying to wake him from deep sleep.

“What? Where?” Jordan asked drowsily.

“Grange?” the woman reminded. “Vermont?”

On shaky legs, Jordan got out. He gave profuse thanks, took his suitcase in hand, and walked into the valley.

As elsewhere in the winter world, Grange was under deep snow, a glittering village of rolling snowdrifts and stone houses with stone chimneys puffing smoke into the still and frosted air. The sun was low. The afternoon light was like syrup -- amber. Sprays of glittering snowflakes flew up from the rooftops on sheets of wind.

It was Christmas Eve.

Jordan had written Esther’s address on a scrap of paper crumpled in his corduroy coat pocket, wrapped around the two gold rings he’d brought. He went out of the village on the designated road and found her house with no difficulty. Going down a winding, narrow road, cutting across huge snow-covered fields, he’d seen the family mansion a mile away -- it was exactly as she'd described it.

The house was a brown-shingled, four story affair -- a Victorian hodge-podge decked out with gables, oriel and casement windows, towers, spires, and great porches -- the place looked like a castle. He and Esther could live in the carriage barn for starters, Jordan thought to himself, and work their way up from there. He’d immerse himself in life’s stream -- he’d be good to his wife and child, a sweet husband and daddy, a warm family man.

The wind blew the snow around the house like shards of glass, stinging Jordan’s eyes. Weak in the knees, he stepped onto the manse’s dark, expansive, ornate porch. By force of mind, he tried to calm his heart’s pounding. He ran his hand back through his damp, course, mane-like hair. He rested his suitcase by the door and, holding the two precious rings he'd brought delicately between two fingers and the thumb of his right hand, he rang the doorbell with the pointing finger of his left.

Bells chimed. A baby cried. Footsteps touched lightly down wooden stairs. The door was opened by an elegant young man -- maybe Jordan's own age or just a few years older. Only slightly taller than Jordan. Dressed all in white. Jordan felt the lightness of his own darkness. This guy was black as midnight: obsidian, ebony, diamond-hard charcoal -- someone who'd been burned down to the ground. It seemed to Jordan that light shone out from him.

“Esther said you’d come,” the luminous gentleman in the doorway spoke softly, smiling, gesturing Jordan in. "Do you want the bad news first, or the good news?"

"The bad news," Jordan chose, shaking the two gold rings in his closed hand like a couple dice to roll.

“You’re not the father.”