The Counter and the Coal

Not even magical flying reindeer are immortal, and Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen were tales of Christmases mornings that had long since come to pass. Rudolph himself lived seventeen years: a respectable life span for the average captive reindeer. By no means a miracle. Unless such a reindeer was among the lucky few to be housed in the stalls of a certain, southern toy shop. These reindeer tended to be shorter-lived than most. You see, every Christmas, a few of Santa's reindeer would fall short of the requirements needed to fly around the globe.

This was not a great cumbrance to the mission itself. Santa had a mind as sharp as his belly was round, and he knew that the reindeer who could not last the journey would be dead or close to it once they reached Russia's nose, which looks like that of an elephant seal. Then it would be off to Alaska. Santa's sleigh, short two or three reindeer, would fly across the Bering Sea as slowly as the petrels. Men on industrial fishing boats would stare up, gesture, and shout. Then they'd laugh that Christmas would have to get an extension. It never did. In the interior of Alaska there lived a man of great money and very little wealth and the people who knew him had named him the Counter. The Counter lived in a decrepit shack where he slouched in his desk in front of the hearth, counting and counting the money he'd made off his reindeer the previous years.

Forty-three years, to be exact. When the fire burned low so as to make this process difficult, he would take a piece of wood, throw it into the hearth, and keep up his endless counting, till he had come to believe the money itself the source of his warmth. But until he could afford to buy such a truth, somebody still had to chop the firewood. This was a youth, a boy of the tribes, whom years before the Counter had bought with his money, or rather with the threats which sure as destruction follows fire are wont to accompany such sums.

The Counter told him nothing of his birth, save that his folk burned the money that betrayed his very life. They threw the wadded-up bills in the fire exactly twenty-five dollars. It came to the boy that his master thought them fools for doing it. He did not. He never got a dollar from his master and never expected to see it on his Christmas list. He was almost afraid of the paper. It held a cruel sort of spirit that could hold a man captive, pretending to be warmth in the grasp of bluish fingers.

Instead he paid homage to the firewood warmth that kept himself and his reindeer alive through the bitterest cold of winter. Only one thing was more precious to him than wood, and that was coal. His master spoke of it often. He screamed of it, actually. The boy had a way of pilfering wood from his master, which he'd burn in the pit that he fashioned out of bricks in the reindeer barn. This barn was poorly constructed and drafty, and despite their hardy pelts, the reindeer relied on the fires to keep them alive through the wintry nights. The boy lent his own heat as well, snuggled up amongst their bodies in the hay.

He loved his reindeer dearly. Enough to bear the abuse from his master, who chased him with a fire poke whenever he caught him stealing wood. "Coal for Christmas! " the old man would scream. "Coal for Christmas! " The boy could but hope.

This winter had been longer and colder than any he'd lived through before, and their supply of firewood was dwindling already. He tried each day to chop more, but his fingers grew numb and the trees were too frozen to hack with his axe's dull blade. He dreamed about coal from Christmases past. Coal did not need to be chopped, split or hauled. That was an added improvement, for coal had burned longer and hotter than wood. And coal was ever the grandest gift that a boy might ever dream of receiving. He was up too many times that night awaiting Santa's coming. On Christmas Eve they had reduced it to the final stick of wood, which the master hogged avidly to his breast. He needed this to count money by. Tonight would be the coldest night yet—the coldest Christmas in one-hundred-and-seventeen-years and twenty-three days, to be exact—and the Counter knew with certainty that Santa would need at least three replacements for his reindeer, maybe four! He would make thousands of dollars. Enough to count for years to come. He needed that last piece of firewood. But the boy and his reindeer needed it more.

"Please, Master!" begged the little boy. "Without fire to-night, the reindeer will die!"

"Have they enough fire to last until Santa?" asked the Counter, who was counting his money. Already his fire burned so low that he counted by candle light, and this would not do. He needed that last piece of firewood.

"They have, but—"