St Jeremy's Angels

Wood cracked by rain and sun, porcelain insulators, flocks of black birds perched on the wires. I count the telegraph poles and jump out of the mail train.

Thirty-three poles. Thirty-three like Christ’s age.

I go there because St. Jeremy is a good place to spend Christmas Eve. They say that the angels can be heard singing, and the children hold a candle alight in front of the window.

I ford the church square, howling my song. Sister Death, Sister Death, why don’t you take me back?

I shuffle my feet, the patches are not enough to protect me from chilblains. The bad boys’ snowballs slip into the patches, bad boys are everywhere.

I see myself in the Keaton’s window, drooling over the sausages hanging like festoons, together with a black bastard who has joined me. I have the usual bow tie instead of the collar and the usual wrinkled face. I leave and the bastard follows me.

Sitting on a step, I flip my hat between my knees and roll up a paper. Angels or no angels, if a dollar falls into the greasy felt before nightfall, I will pay for Reverend Gordon’s cot, may God crush him, louse that he is. Sister Rosy places a plate tied with a napkin next to my hat. “Jack, did you escape it again this year?”

“What about you, ugly bitch?”

She leaves.

The hours pass, it starts to snow. A couple of coins rain down my cap. Christmas night charity, lousy charity.

From the windows I see the women filling with chestnuts the gutted turkeys. I imagine biting into crunchy skin in the flickering light of a candle. Children cut out stars out of tinfoil, then look out the window and place a lighted candle on the windowsill.

The bells of the bellboys are ringing, they sound like the rattles of Santa Claus’s sleigh. All the doors, crowned with holly, sing hymns of joy.

All but the Mac Dowell door. It doesn’t have a red berry festoon like the others, it has a black cockade. It talks to me, its oiled voice comes out of the door. “The boy is dead,” it says, “and the old woman can’t find peace.” What if I moved two houses farther, where the light speaks of celebration and you can smell candlestick and roast? Instead I lean my back against the Mac Dowell door.

A man and a woman pass. “Did you see?” They whisper, “Mary Mac Dowell didn’t take off the black ribbon. Why is she dragging it out so long? “ They throw a greenback in my hat, no one refuses you a piece of bread on a night like this.

Now I have my greenback. Now I can go down to the mission. That tight-arse Reverend will give me some place to sleep, I have my greenback.

I linger, with my hands buried in the dog’s fur, I curl up against the Mac Dowell door. The bastard licks my feet, he is the same color as the cockade.

The steps have softened as the snow thickens. The dog’s tongue is warm on the legs that I no longer feel, down there at the bottom of my pants.

I keep company to the black door, while the snow falls, cold and sweet.

Sister Death, Sister Death, why don’t you take me back? It is my voice that sings.

Then it is no longer my voice.

The street has become dark or maybe I have closed my eyes. I hear someone singing but it’s not me, I swear.

In the midst of the flakes the angels flutter, twist in snow spirals, ride ice puppets. I watch them whirl in the crystals, touch the doors with their wings soaked in snow. All doors, but especially the Mac Dowell door.

I’m not cold, I’m not afraid. Inside the house, Mrs Mac Dowell no longer cries, I only hear the voice of the angels.

St. Jeremy’s angels singing.