a year after the great blizzard and that corner waiting day
we had moved southward
my step father told me one late friday night, well after dark we were going to get a tree. we slipped out into the darkness with an army surplus store hatchet, a flashlight, and i'm sure some beer. we took his beat up old chevy truck, rotting wooden bed and stolen stop sign for a passenger side floorboard, out of town and turned off along the farm roads past the covered bridge. in the snow, under the darkness we found a tree and cut it down, like cavemen proud of the hunt. mom said it was hideous, short and a huge bare spot that somehow managed to girdle the entire tree not to mention the bird's nests.
my stepfather and mother were a good decade older than i am now so how can i fault them for having bad habits that i still possess, well past their age at the time? my point is, i've been broke enough now, crazy and reckless enough to slam a few beers and do a couple of huge bong rips and head out into the dark night to steal a christmas tree and save the money for presents and such. so i say, bravo. it was a sort of rite of passage and bonding i guess.
that christmas eve i was sleepless, the small fake christmas tree adorned with the ornaments of my childhood, my entire live, lit up the fernfrost on the window. i lay in bed reading an english version of Le Morte de'Arthur having discovered my new friend the public library that same year. i knew enough to read and understand the text but still young enough to believe it could be history, still young enough to check the window for Santa and mistake the wind in the powerlines as bells. i rush from the sill to bed, fall asleep reading.
it is dark as i wake, waiting impatiently as my mom stalls me, coffee brewing and dad smoking a quick bowl in the kitchen, tossing the milk and cookies her forgot last night save for one he manages to eat half of, stilldrunk and getting higher. he packs one last toke as he pours coffee and calls us to the living room. they both smoke cigarettes as i open presents, and they a few themselves. the soundtrack is his new Queen album.
i recall a special and rare troop carrier with stilted recorded voices that were the height of technology for toys and mix and match plates that one used to make etchings of monsters. so much more, everything and more.
just before the sun broke, we loaded the clunker trunk and headed north toward the city, the road snowy and few cars and no trucks passing. about twenty miles short, the truck stalls and dies, unrepaired and maintained for lack of funds due to star wars toys and books they don't understand. mom and i wrap in blankets. we always carried blankets in cold weather, a sign of the times and our social class i guess. he walks through the snow, wind, and freezing air to a gas station and phones my mother's stepdad who arrives at the truck only moments after my own stepfather returns from his brisk hike.
