A Christmas Heckler
written by: John Christopher
“With your vote tomorrow—” The Governor raised his hands to quell thunderous applause. “With your vote, we can end this foreign invasion once and for all. America for Americans!”
This wasn’t just a slogan for Governor Bishop DeCulpat. It was a life’s crusade. In his border state, it was his family, his neighbors who’d borne the brunt of the social costs of the flow of migrants across the border. They’d been pushed to a boiling point. Now, it was time for action.
Hearing the signature catchphrase of the campaign, the audience erupted once again, the ovation magnified by the white marble column of the Statehouse rising at the Governor’s back, drowning out The Vince Guaraldi Trio’s Christmas is Coming blaring from the speakers. This time, he wouldn’t hold back their waves of approbation, and he merely smiled, savoring it all, his eyes squinty crescents beneath bushy grey brows. He stepped from the platform between the glittering Christmas trees that had been decorated early for the season, and two agents in black suits ushered him down a roped path through the masses toward a waiting limousine.
As he reached for the outstretched hands of his constituents, a woman deep in the audience shouted. “What about refugees? Where will they go?”
The Governor stiffened, twisting back toward the speaker. Looking down his long nose, he called, “Even a great nation such as ours has its limits. A line must be drawn somewhere.”
“If they’re forced to return—” the protester blurted before a scuffle erupted. Bishop turned back to his throng of admirers. That wasn’t going to be his problem.
“Thank you for coming,” the Governor clapped hands with a middle-aged farm couple before fist-bumping their teenage son. They understood what he was trying to do for them, for his country.
A stiletto-heeled aide twenty years the Governor’s junior, scurried beside him, cellphone in hand, white earbud protruding from her left ear behind which shoulder-length auburn hair had been tucked.
“I just got Iowa’s polling numbers,” she said. “If you’re reelected by the spread they’re predicting, there’s other things in store for you.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he whispered. “We’ve two years to plan for that. Just remember, people are pawns. They need to be played at the right time to be useful.”
They approached a waiting limo. As its door swung wide, a man broke from the crowd. Tall and thin, his hair was styled in the signature dreadlocks of Bob Marley. From the stage, Bishop heard the pulsing of a reggae beat.
When the Governor reached for his hand, the man pulled what looked like a water bottle from his jacket and shouted, “I’m here to warn you—you have yet a chance and hope of escaping your fate!”
One of the black-clad agents dove, but too late to prevent them from being doused.
***
Bishop lurched as the ground heaved beneath him, and he clutched a nearby shoulder to steady himself. Although he wanted to spit the acrid taste of day-old fast-food French fries and fish from his mouth, he took a deep swallow instead to avoid anything as unseemly as that from going viral on social media. Rubbing his eyes, he opened them to the glare of the sun and a cluster white-clad men encircling him. He blinked away the blur, scanning for his aide.
“Who are—”
“He speaks English, Captain,” one of the men said.
“Of course, I do,” Bishop testily replied, wringing water from his blazer. Marley’s flask couldn’t have been so large to have thoroughly soaked him. “Do you have a blanket or towel?”
“Can’t be one of them, then,” said another.
“One of who?” His head spiraled, or was that the ground swaying beneath him? “Where am I?”
“The Dallas, sir. United States Coastguard cutter. Captain—”
“I’ll take it from here, son.” The sailors parted as a grey-beard approached. “What’s your name, young man?”
“Bishop.” He furrowed his brow as if struggling to remember. “Bishop DeCulpat.”
“Well, Mr. DeCulpat, I’m Captain Gideon.” Nodding, the captain leveled two fingers toward the insignia on his hat. “Do you know it’s unlawful to enter the United States without authorization?”
Bishop’s knuckles whitened as his fists balled. The governor of one of the largest states in the union was not about to allow this geriatric to lecture him, Coastguard captain or not. “Do you know who—”
“Yet my men just scooped you out of the ocean.”
“Scooped me?” He brushed his drenched sleeves and pursed his lips. That would explain the saltwater taste. Rising from the bench, he glanced beyond the crowd of sailors, noticing for the first time he was surrounded by water.
Bishop’s stomach churned queasily, and he rubbed at his gut. “How’d I get here?”
“You’ll have to tell us. We think you went overboard to get to the States. We’re here to make sure you don’t.”
“Overboard? Mister, I’m from the States. Don’t you recognize—”
“’Fraid not, Mr. DeCulpat, Now if yer from the States, who’s the president?”
“Everyone knows him, Captain,” a red-haired sailor said, chortling. “Ask a harder one, like where’s the Alamo?”
“San Antonio,” Bishop blurted. “Now, do you mind telling me how you think I got all the way out here? Swimming to America?” he added, with a sardonic chuckle.
“Not swimming,” the captain said. “You jumped.”
“From where?”
Gideon pointed to a shadowy outline on the horizon. “The St. Louis.”
Bishop blinked, fighting his growing nausea. “The what?”
“That ship,” the Captain said.
“I have nothing to do with them. I don’t even know who they are.”
“Came from Europe, they did. Cubans turned ’em away first, then most of South America. We have our quotas, you know. A line must be drawn somewhere.”
“Of course, it must,” Bishop said, his voice nearly a shout. In the back of his mind, the captain’s words seemed vaguely familiar, angering him more. “Get rid of them if they don’t belong here. What does any of that have to do with me?”
“They are you.” Gideon handed him a long brass tube. “Take a closer look. See anything to jog yer memory?”
Bishop held the spyglass to his eye and scanned the craft. This time, the images were clearer. It had the appearance of a small cruise ship with porthole windows dotting her hull. The ship was much older than the ones he’d traveled on, with two stacks chugging white steam above her decks. The rails were lined with the shadowy grey outlines of men and women looking back toward the continent. ‘St. Louis‘ was written plainly on her prow. He recalled reading about a vessel with the same name, maybe in history class, but the context escaped him.
He traced the line strung from the stern to the two masts, adorned with tiny flags, before settling on the larger flag on the jackstaff. He’d seen that before—solid red background with a white circle at its center, and in the middle, a broken black cross.
“Swastika!”
The pit in his gut sank deeper, and his arms drifted back to his sides. “What’s the date?”
“June 6,” the redheaded seaman said.
“Not the day, the year.”
The captain leaned in close to Bishop’s face. “It’s 1939. Have you been at sea that long, mister?”
Bishop’s face paled as the context became clearer. But those couldn’t be the same people he’d read about, sent back to Europe and certain doom. There must have been something in that water Marley threw at him. If he could find him, he’d make him pay. Grabbing the Captain’s arm, he pulled past and ran toward the rail.
“Stop him!” several sailors shouted. “He’ll jump again.”
Rounding the forward gun turret, Bishop slammed into the back of a sailor mopping the deck.
“Get out of my…”
As the man turned, he snapped his cap from his head, and his dreadlocks fell to his shoulders.
“You!”
A sailor grabbed Bishop’s upper arms.
“Let me go,” Bishop shouted, struggling pointlessly against the vice-like grasp. “He put something in the water.”
As Marley laughed, Bishop heard the metal beat of steel drums, and a voice, singing, “Sound the trumpets loud and clear. That it can be heard everywhere…”
“Mon of the worldly mind,” Marley said, “is the pattern of my locks strange to you? Or would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear about your own head?”
“Who are you?” Bishop insisted.
“No, sir,” the man said. “Da question is, who are you?”
Raising his mop, he swirled it across Bishop’s face, and all went black.
***
The deck heaved again, and Bishop opened his eyes. Dust hung in the single finger of light prying through a crack against the blackness. His arms were pinned to his sides as if he’d been rolled up in a carpet or wound into a cocoon. With the repetition of a throbbing headache, a thunderous crash broke against a nearby wall, and the dark chamber lurched violently, creaking and groaning in reply.
A wet rag pattered against his face, and Bishop jerked free an arm to grab the irritant.
“What’s the game you’re playing?”
Yanking a slender wrist, the strands of her hair drifted across Bishop’s face.
“Tis no game, sir,” she said, pulling back with a resolve he did not expect. Her voice was an unexpected melody in the damp, dark chamber, yet it carried a steely undercurrent. She brushed her skirts and glared at him crossly. “We’re only a day out and already you’re seasick. I’m here to help you through.”
“A day out? From where?” His stomach churned. As he struggled into a sitting position, he realized from the curve of the canvas he was in a hammock.
“Southampton. Don’t you know where you boarded?”
He didn’t believe he’d boarded anywhere. But there’d been the Dallas and the St. Louis. This had to be more of Marley’s doing. Maybe she could explain it.
“Who—”
“I’m Elizabeth,” she said, gliding fingers over her broad belly. “As you can see, I’m with child, so they’ve put me down here to mind the children.” She pulled a shirt from a basket, wrung it, and hung it from a line strung across the chamber. “And you also, apparently. Now, are you as sick as they said, or are you just trying to avoid working up top with the other men?”
Bishop scowled, glancing at the creaky timbers overhead. He didn’t mind her feistiness, though. He’d have responded with similar cheek if anyone had been shirking. “How’d we get on this rickety-old ship?” he asked, dodging her question altogether. “What happened to—”
“She’s not all that old, mind you, and she’s quite seaworthy, not like the wretched Speedwell. In any event, I told my husband we should never have allowed the Strangers to come aboard.”
Leveling suspicious eyes on him, she added, “You’d be one of them, because I’ve never seen you before.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s it, exactly. You won’t even pretend to understand us, and you’ll turn out to be like the rest o’ them. Once you make the crossing, it’ll be you leading the next round o’ persecutions.”
He recoiled, his lips curling in disgust at the thought anyone would persecute this woman, so much like any other from his own community. “Why would I do a thing like that? Why would anybody—”
Crossing her arms, she heaved a heavy sigh. “Must there be a reason for everything? It happens, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?”
He reached for her hand, and she jerked back. In the instant they’d connected, he felt the callouses of a woman who’d worked her entire life. “What happens?” he asked, in a gentler tone.
“Could you be so removed from the news to ask a question such as that?” Even in the dim light, he noticed her face redden and her body tense. “They couldn’t just leave us alone to continue in any peaceable condition, but we were hunted and persecuted on every side. At first, our afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which later came upon us. For some were taken and clapped up in prison, others had their houses beset and watched night and day, and hardly escaped their hands; and the most were fain to flee and leave their houses and habitations, and the means of their livelihood. Yet through the assistance of the Almighty’s grace and Spirit, we were prepared to bear these things.”
A handful of the hammock canvas clenched in his fist, and he leaned nearer, as if drawn to her. Captivated by her voice, he couldn’t help but consider his constituents pleading for their own kind of freedom, one which kept others from invading their community. “Is it possible anyone could treat you so?”
Hanging another damp shirt, she gave him a stern look. “Are you saying you’ve never been guilty of such a thing?” she asked, the accusation as plain in her voice as if she’d been pointing a finger in his face.
“No,” he mouthed, his head shaking tentatively. He’d never actually encountered anyone—at least, not like this—who’d warranted such treatment. He’d bussed migrants from his state during the campaign, but that wasn’t the same. They weren’t so like him as Elizabeth and her children seemed to be, all with their greedy, lazy, hands seeking a way into the hard-earned cash in his American pocket.
Her eyes darted away to the children playing at her feet. He counted seven long breaths before asking, “Where will you go, then, to escape?”
“Now, how could you not know a thing like that since you’re coming along with us to the promised land?”
“Promised land?” He gaped before taking closer stock of her garments—a black dress and white apron, her hair mostly tucked within a bonnet. With a dry throat, he asked, “What’s the day?”
“August 15,” she said definitively. “In the year of our Lord, 1620!”
A heavy rattling in the darkness startled him from the hammock. Before he could track the sound, the planks pitched beneath him as the ship rolled across a wave, throwing him headfirst into the dark. Hands scraped across rough wood as he skidded into a windlass wrapped in iron links.
There atop the coiled anchor chain sat a man dressed in the same fashion as Elizabeth, dreadlocks dangling from his broad-brimmed hat. As he took a nip from his flask, Bishop heard the reggae beat—the same as he’d heard on the Dallas and from the bandstand at the capitol. And from another corner of the dark, a voice sang, “You never know what’s going to happen, when you hear the choir begin to sing…”
“Ponderous, is it not?” Marley said. Patting the iron links, he smiled a broad grin. “Yours was as full, as heavy, and as long as this, seven Elections ago, and you’ve labored on it since.”
Smiling broadly, he raised a hand and blew dust into Bishop’s face.
***
The sun scorched, and the sand blasted his eyes. Bishop lay flat on his back, drenched in his own salty sweat. The thumping of a damaged cartwheel jostled his head every few seconds. Unable to endure it any longer, he flailed for the wooden sidewall and pulled himself to a sitting position.
Peering through squinted eyelids as much as he could in the blazing light, the rear end of a donkey was the first thing to catch his eye. Beside it walked two people clad in linen robes, their heads wrapped in scarlet and bronze striped Keffiyeh.
Arabs! Bishop thought.
At the sound of his movement, one twisted back.
“Look who’s awakened,” she said, her language, or accent, unlike any Bishop had heard. Somehow, he comprehended her meaning. The other also glanced back, a male, by his chestnut beard. He slowed his pace to walk beside the cart, and it kept rolling as if the donkey knew the route.
“Rested, friend?” the man asked in the same strange tongue.
Stretching, Bishop slapped his groggy head. He’d been on a Coastguard cutter. Or was it some creaky wooden vessel?
“How’d I get here?” he asked.
“We found you beside the road. Can’t say how you got there. Bandits, maybe? Highwaymen? There’s been plenty of those along this route.”
Bishop rubbed his shoulders, feeling for bruises. He had plenty of aching muscles, but nothing like he’d been assaulted. “If it’s so dangerous, why are you here?” He knew the answer, and that they wouldn’t voice it – their kind would never turn on each other.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t risk to save my son,” the woman said. As she turned, he could see the swaddled baby cradled protectively in her arms. “Have you not heard the weeping and great mourning in Judea? We flee an edict of our king.”
Judea? His mind raced. Was he about to be paraded through the streets by terrorists as he’d seen on the news? Swallowing against the dryness in his throat, he forced a deep breath to steady the pounding in his chest.
“W-where is this road? Where are you headed?”
“We’re in Gaza,” the man said, and Bishop went white. Could there be any place worse on the entire planet for a defenseless American? He was about to leap from the cart and bolt when the woman’s pleading eyes caught his.
“An angel of the Lord appeared to my husband in a dream, proclaiming, ‘Arise. Take the young child and his mother. Seek refuge in—”
The man raised a hand to his wife’s lips, and he shook his head. “Our long journey has left my wife quite weary. Would it trouble you to let her ride a spell?”
Bishop’s jaw went slack, and his eyes widened. He knew what she was about to say.
Egypt.
Although Bishop hadn’t the time to read the bible as he once did, every Christian knew the tale from the Gospel of Matthew about the flight of the holy family. Two millennia ago, Egypt was to the rest of the world what America is now. That was where Mary and Joseph sought refuge with their newborn son.
They, too, were refugees!
He’d never thought of it like that, before. They were no different from Elizabeth. Or those shadowy figures onboard the St. Louis. Perhaps, even, like those he’d demonized on the campaign trail.
Lungs heaving for breath, Bishop grabbed his chest. The cart pulled aside and stopped for an approaching caravan, and he climbed down, leaning heavily against the weathered wheel. He counted twenty-seven animals chained together, the fist-sized rusted iron links impossibly heavy.
Loaded with canvas sacks, metalware clanged on the animals’ sides, banging out the same reggae tune, “…And wherever you may be, give me a listening hand.”
The last of the camel-drivers approached, braided black hair dangling from his Keffiyeh to his white tunic. His eyes tracked Bishop.
“You!” Bishop said, lurching toward him. “What’ve you given me?”
The driver grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Can this be my problem? Are we not but pawns in someone else’s game?”
Bishop hung his head to hear his own words quoted back. “What can I say that you won’t hold against me?”
“Already, you’ve said much, mon, and your chains are long.”
He drew a deep breath. Closing his eyes, he pictured the swastika billowing from the jackstaff. “Tell me, is it too late to find a solution, a compromise.”
“I tells you nothing. Your answers now must be in your deeds.” Then he glanced at the woman and her child. “This little one cannot yet speak,” he said, “but he asks through all time, do you believe in me or not?”
As the last of the camels passed, it bobbed toward Bishop and spat in his face.
***
The Governor rubbed his bleary eyes, and sparkling Christmas trees glittered into focus. He brushed sand from the damp sleeves of his blazer and scrutinized the man who’d doused them with the water bottle. Several in the crowd had grabbed him and, although he didn’t appear to resist, a few fists still pummeled his ribcage and the back of his head.
Yet, he sang, “Well, a Merry, Merry Christmas to you, yeah. That it can be heard, a Merry Christmas to you.”
“No ID,” one of the black-clad agents said after pulling a wallet from the man’s pants pocket.
The Governor’s aide watched in horror as they dragged him toward a waiting squad car. Turning to DeCulpat, she asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Yes,” Marley challenged, his feet scrapping along the blacktop. “What are you going to do?”
- A Christmas Heckler - December 20, 2024
