Dunstan Wyatt (17:11)
The beautiful engravings. The flight charts and maps, the production figures and graphs. The Great Pact with its red wax seal. I thought about how Professor Wyatt and Ranulph must have meant for the book to fall from the sleigh as it sped up the Straight road. And the road must have touched the earth where it did because. Well, because of me. Because I believe in Christmas. Yes, I do. And now I knew why that was so important. And now so do you. We all have to decide. Are we with Rolf Eckhoff or are we with Klaus? When I woke up the next morning, stiff from sleeping all night in a desk chair, I was glad. It was a stage Saturday. That meant nobody had to rush off to do anything in particular. I checked to see that everyone was still in the house. They were. My wife was already at her desk paying bills. One boy was making French toast in the kitchen. The other was still snoring lightly in his bed. I woke. That boy, gathered the wife into the kitchen and asked the other boy to make enough French toast for everyone. I told them I had something to say and that it might take a while. And son, I said, record me, will you? Because what I'm about to tell you is important. My wife sighed. I can hear the capital I in that last word. Right, said the boy, and got the equipment he used with his band. When everyone had settled, I looked at them one by one around the kitchen table. I took a deep breath, and then I told them everything. Everything that had happened to me the day before. Every word of Klaus's biography, which, as Professor Wyatt had predicted, I remembered with ease. When I got to the part about Klaus meeting Kelzong on his first chronoleptic Christmas Eve flight, one boy mused, they must have been at Potala palace in Lhasa. Where is that? I said. Tibet. Kelson Gyatsa was the seventh Dalai Lama. 1708-1757, the other boy volunteered. Everyone knows that. Keep going. This is pretty interesting. And I did. I kept going until I had recited the entire book, finishing sometime in the afternoon. Spread the word, I concluded. That's what Professor Wyatt said we have to do. There was silence for a moment around the sofas in the family room to which we had drifted sometime during my recitation. Then, wow. A boy said. The other boy said, let me support that comment. Wow. Another moment of silence. It really is the best story you've ever told us, my wife said. Thank you, I said, gratified. Then, wait. No, this isn't a story. Haven't you been listening? This really happened. This is all true. No one said anything. You believe me, don't you? I asked. My wife got that patient look on her face. The boys exchanged glances. Wait, I said. I ran down to the study and came back with a piece of paper and gave it to my wife. There. That's the note Professor Wyatt left when he took the green book. See? She studied it, passed it wordlessly to a boy. He looked it over and said, it's in your handwriting, Dad. I snatched it back. No, it isn't, I said, though upon examination, it did look a lot like my handwriting. An uncanny parallel I hadn't noticed before. I could see how they might make a mistake. Well, then, what about my being able to recite from the Green Book without correcting myself or even pausing? I asked. It was fantastic, a boy said, checking his recording equipment. I'm glad we got it down. You really are a born storyteller, my wife said, smiling. How do you come up with it all? The Green Book. I like it. I was flabbergasted. They didn't believe me. Was Rolf Eckhoff at work? Even in my own family? Wait, wait, I said. How about how I was stuck in the snow up on the mountain? How do you explain that? I got home. My wife got a funny sort of worried look on her face. She excused herself for a moment and came back with her own piece of paper. This is the notification from the tow truck guy that he submitted his bill to our insurance company. She handed me the email for pulling you out of the snow last night. I stared at the paper. I was in shock. I'm telling you, cross my heart and hope to never celebrate Christmas again. Everything I've told you is true, I said. The boys were looking a little uncomfortable. My wife frowned. Honestly, dear, why do you have to take everything? So far we've said we like your story. But it isn't a story, I protested weakly. I'm sure you boys have lots to do on a Saturday, my wife said. Right, said one. Thanks for the great story, dad, said the other. But I told you it isn't. But they were gone. I looked at the paper again. There was no tow truck, I said. Oh, honestly, said my wife. The evidence is staring you in the face. The next couple of weeks were the most miserable I can remember. I would try to talk to my family about my experience, try to persuade them about Klaus and the True north, and at first they were patient, but before long they just didn't want to hear about it anymore. I didn't mention it to anyone else, and as the bright memory of that day in the mountains began to recede into the past, it faded and got muddled. Had I really seen an elevated spirit? Had I really heard a reindeer talk? It had all seemed so real, but maybe it wasn't. On one subject, however, I was clear. Or mostly, there had been no tow truck. How could I have forgotten a whole tow truck? After a week I started to forget the words of the Green Book. It was recorded, of course, but I found I didn't want to go back and listen to it. Usually in December I attacked Christmas tasks with a kind of manic glee. This year I found I just wasn't up to it. I asked the boys to put up the Christmas lights. I found it hard to shop for presents. The heart had gone out of the holidays, and everything around me began to look a little gray. But on Christmas Eve I tried to pull myself together. I figured I owed it to my family. It had snowed a couple of days before, and the world was fresh and white again. I bundled up and went for a late afternoon walk in the neighborhood, just to try to straighten myself out. As I trudged along, I brooded on all that had happened, and for some reason I began thinking about it in a new way. Klaus in his village, figuring out how to help his mourning neighbors and finding joy in It Anna and then Dasher, bringing hope to Klaus when he despaired of making his Christmas Eve deliveries. And then suddenly, easily, like a whisper in the December air, a great truth wafted gently into me and blew away the gray. If the True north and Castle Noel and Anna's maple sugar cookies were made up, then the hope and joy they represented were not. And if I had concocted the whole story because I wanted so fervently to believe in Christmas magic, and, well, Christmas was magic enough all on its own. It didn't need my story. Hope and joy, they were enough to live a life on. As I walked back home, the sun began to set on the houses I passed. Christmas lights started to wink on in the east. Jupiter was rising above the mountains. My spirit spirits lifted. I sang a Christmas carol softly to myself. God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay. I was happy about Christmas again. In fact, I was so happy that as I plodded up our steep driveway and admired the lights the boys had put up. We favor the big colored bulbs. I didn't really notice a sharp, spicy scent in the air. And when I saw a boy at the side of the house, scanning the horizon in high excitement, it did not at first register that he was looking for me. But he was.
