Author's note: This is my entry for Postuhenin's Santa's Not-so-Little Helpers Contest. I chose The Three Kings from Latin America as my subject.
“Wait a second there, Bill,” Hector said with a pointed finger, noticing how those of his guest had gripped the ends of his rocker and that he had let the embers of his pipe die out. “I’ve got one more for ya.”
Those words were like a punch in the gut to Willy Davis, who had exhausted the last three or four hours or so going back and forth with Hector O’Neil about all sorts of stuff. It must’ve started with talks about Jules and how they had both missed her, and that’s when Willy suggested breaking out the tobacco. It was a good idea on his part. Hector always had that good, imported stuff from back home and it gave him time to shed a few, silent tears on behalf of, as he called her, “the ol’ ball and chain”. Hector knew the phrase was a term of endearment and never pried his friend any deeper regarding it, figuring, if he did, it might be like uncorking a drain and releasing the waterworks. Willy and he were a lot of things but sentimentals weren’t one of them.
Then somehow, after the smoking began, the pair got onto the topic of ghosts, likely prompted by the lingering taste left by the words that had just left their tongues in regard to Mrs. Davis.
“Oh, what’s this gotta do with anything?” Willy interrupted about halfway through his first story regarding the headless hound that accompanies the ghost of Sir Geoffrey. “It’s Christmas Eve for Christ’s sake, not Halloween.”
Hector chuckled grimly. “I suppose it is,” he said, checking the clock. It was half past eleven, then. “But you know the song. ‘Scary ghost stories and tales of the glories’ and that kind of thing. Never stopped Dickens, did it?”
“I’m a far cry from Dickens,” Willy said. “I don’t even know what the dickens I’m talking about half the time.”
“I believe you’re trying to scare the dickens out of me,” Hector chuckled, and with it huffed another lungful from the pipe in his left hand, stoking the fire with the metal poker protruding from his right. All about them was the aromatic smell of warm tobacco and the ever-fading, ever-growing glow of an eerie orange from the walls. The music that got the fire dancing, a rather crackly rendition of “What Child Is This?”, ever-faded too, until the needle flipped to the other side of the record and began on “Go Tell It on the Mountain”.
A quarter of the way into Hector’s next story—a rendition of the ol’ “Mistletoe Bride” legend—the wind began to howl about as loud as a wolf and something along the side of the house clacked like something fierce. For the first time in a long one, Hector watched as Willy jumped, and it made him laugh, real hard like he was a boy again.
“What was that?” Willy cried.
Hector waved his hand. “Prolly the fence gate,” he said. “Old thing’s been broke since last Christmas.”
“Oh,” Willy sighed, relieved. “Gave me the willies.”
Hector laughed again, real throatily. “Willy with the willies. Imagine that.”
“Don’t have to,” Willy said. He was rubbing down his neck hairs that stood on end when Hector dropped the whole “Mistletoe Bride” thing entirely.
“But yours is pretty active, I’d imagine. Your imagination.”
“I suppose,” Willy replied. “Jules kept me young.”
“That she did,” Hector agreed, and like that, they had returned to the topic of real ghosts over the imagined ones.
The next time Hector checked the clock, it was nearly one, and Willy’s eyes had followed suit. Time had escaped the both of them. The fire was slowly dying and the second record on the stack was nearly through with “Adestes Fideles”. When the song first started, to Willy it appeared that Hector had gotten the willies of his own.
“Well,” Willy said, glancing toward the clock once more, “Merry Christmas, Hector.”
“As to you, Bill. Say, how about some hot cocoa?”
Willy had already begun to rise from his rocker and that’s when Hector had stopped him with that pointing finger.
“Wait a second there, Davis. I’ve got one more for ya.”
“Can’t it wait ‘til tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’ll be Christmas.”
“And? What, you got something better to do than babysit an old widower?”
Hector laughed but not in his usual, carefree manner. His face had also sunken, and despite his usual dusky complexion and the warmth of the firelight was now painted a ghastly white. Willy could tell something was wrong. Something had spooked his host.
“What’s the matter, O’Neil?”
“Nothin’.”
Willy knew that wasn’t true but didn’t want to, as Hector had avoided, uncork the drain.
“Then, couldn’t ‘nothing’ wait until tomorrow?”
Hector nodded but kept talking. “It’s just… the song, I guess.”
Willy squinted as he listened more carefully. “Come All Ye Faithful?”
Hector resumed nodding. “Back home it was ‘Adestes Fideles’. Latin’s closer to Spanish than English was.”
“So, it reminds you of home?”
“Right.”
Willy nodded. “I understand.”
No, you don’t, Hector thought. “It, uh… reminds me of a story from back home. I wanna tell you it, Bill.”
“And I’d love to hear it, Hector. Really, I would. But I’m beat, man.”
“Well, that cocoa’s still on the table. I can toss some extra sugar into it. Might keep ya up ‘til New Year, though.”
Willy let out a long sigh. Right then and there he knew he wouldn’t see his pillow ‘til at least two. Hector was a great storyteller with a lot of great stories to tell but brevity was not his strong suit. The man could easily take what to many would’ve been a brief anecdote—say it was about your whites turning pink in the wash (which did happen with Hector from time to time considering all the red socks he’d wear)—and turn it into a paperback novel.
“This better not take ‘til then,” Willy finally said after much contemplation.
“Oh, believe me, Bill. It won’t. This one’s rather short if truth be told. And that’s all I intend to tell.”
“Mmhmm,” Willy hummed as he gazed into the fire. Hector couldn’t tell if the sound was patronizing his promise of pith or principle, or perhaps both.
“Oh, c’mon Billy, believe me. Won’t ya?” he reiterated and rose from his seat. “That’s what this whole story’s about, now.”
“And what’s that?”
“Belief.” Hector then hobbled his way into the kitchen with a heavy stride, using the fire poker as a sort of crude cane. After a few silent moments, he reemerged with it under his arm and two steaming mugs in either hand, lending one to Willy and resuming his place beside the fire with the other. Willy’s read “Feliz Navidad” and sported a small cactus with two maracas and a mustache and Hector’s said “Merry Christmas” beside a winking Santa. In Willy’s mind, the mugs were a perfect summation of his companion: one part Hispanic, one part American, two parts in poor taste, but always warm and well-inviting.
“How is it?” Hector asked mid-sip, noticing that Willy hadn’t so much as smelled his. He took a nip and clacked his lips with a faint smile.
“It’s good,” he said, looking down into the chalky brown content of the mug and swirling it around. “It’s really good, Hector. Thank you.”
His host nodded. “Don’t thank me. Thank Missus O’Neil.”
“Since when did you get hitched?”
Hector chuckled hoarsely. “My mother. You could say the recipe’s something of an heirloom. A family secret.”
“I thought there were no secrets between us,” Willy joked and took another, larger, sip.
“And that’s why I’m telling you a story you’ve never heard before. Now, when you hear it, you’ll rightfully say, ‘How could you keep this one from me, Hector?’ and to you, I’ll reply, ‘With difficulty’. Keeping things to myself, as you know, is rather difficult for me, and this tale in particular has been real close to my chest for a long, long time.”
“You’re startin’ to scare me, Hector,” Willy said, sitting up in his rocker and watching the glowing orange create that kind of shadowing on Hector’s face you might only see when kids tell ghost stories and put a flashlight under their chin.
“And we haven’t even gotten to it,” Hector replied. “But let me start out by saying that this one’s from way back home. It’s a yuletide story, one helluva mystery… and true.”
“They’re all ‘true’,” Willy croaked.
“And that’s why I started off by saying that this story is one of belief. Sure, it could’ve been started like that of the Mistletoe Bride or the headless dog… just one big game of telephone phoned in by a real sicko with an active imagination. But couldn’t Christmas itself have originated in the same way? Just one long game of cosmic telephone? Sure, there’s history to the claim but even then, there’re loads of myths surrounding the Christmas story. Y’take for instance the manger. Probably not in a barn, not even a stable, it was more likely in a cave in a house. And who’s to say how many wise men there actually were? We only know there were three gifts. What I’m saying, Willy, is that mythology is everywhere and that somewhere in between both it and skepticism is where the truth often lies. Fundamentally… tonight we celebrate the birth of a child sworn to be God incarnate. Somehow fully human and also fully divine. Born to die and of a virgin, and whose arrival was foretold for thousands of years and heralded by heavenly beings. Christmas may be a joyful season, but it’s also a damn sure morbid one.”
“Is this the Catholic school talking or the whiskey?” Willy asked. From the very first whiff, he knew their drinks were spiked.
Hector chuckled and wet his whistle. “Perhaps a bit of both. I assure ya though, Bill, I put very little in yours. Lord knows how sleepy you get when you’re drunk.”
“And when you go on your tangents. That’s the best booze of ‘em all.”
Hector nodded with a faint, if not ironic, smile and toasted his guest. They drank in unison as the fire between them crackled.
Willy finished his sip first. “He really wasn’t born in a barn?”
Hector chuckled to himself and shook his head. “Nor were there three magi, my friend. But the image’s cute. Makes for a good card.”
Willy agreed with a small nod. “Ain’t that the truth.”
“It is, actually,” Hector said. His eyes then danced about the place until they settled back onto Willy, who knew the man well enough to know that he had lost his place and was searching for a way back into the story. Luckily for Willy’s sake, it seemed that he found it. “Speaking of ‘em, y’know about the whole ‘Three Kings’ thing, dontcha?”
“The Wise Men?”
“Yeah, the tradition though.”
“Oh, y’mean ‘Three Kings Day’?”
“Yes,” Hector nodded. “The Epiphany. That’s when the wise men show up.”
“And when’s that? January?”
“January 6th. Twelve days after Christmas. That’s where the whole ’12 Days of Christmas’ thing comes from.”
“I see,” Willy nodded, finishing off his drink. “A bit late, isn’t it?”
“Well, it would be if the wise men had actually been there when Christ was born. There’s another of those little myths.”
“They came later?”
Hector nodded. “Much later. Try a year or two. Little baby Jesus was more like little… toddler Jesus.”
“And what’s next? You’re gonna tell me He wasn’t white?”
Hector laughed again and downed his drink with a wag of his head.
“Y’know, I remember hearing about this one Christmas when my old church did a live nativity outside the cathedral with all the animals and everything. Even got themselves a donkey for the Mary to ride on.”
“Shame they didn’t cast you in the role,” Willy giggled, a sign that Hector’s pour was heavier than his footing. “You’ve always been good at making an ass of yourself.”
The two of them shared a laugh, although Hector’s was short-lived. Something even weightier than the whiskey was on his mind.
“Get a load of this, Bill,” he said, drawing his guest’s attention as he continued to snicker. “The church was in Arecibo, right? Real touristy place. In fact, one of the most in Puerto Rico. Which means?”
Willy leaned back in his rocker and bit his lip, which tasted like chocolate. With the poker still gripped in his hand, his host probed at the logs being licked by the flames. They cast moody shapes onto his already darkened skin.
“Lotta whites?”
Hector snapped and pointed with a grin from across the room. Outside, the snow continued to fall, and the wind continued to whistle. “More whites than not,” he said. “And one of ‘em, an old white lady—musta been in her 70s—swore up and down at us that the little Puerto Rican boy playing the infant Jesus was a bastardization of the Christmas story.”
“Really?”
Hector nodded deeply. “Oh, sure… happened more than you’d think. You’d be surprised at how often—and how easily—the truth is exchanged for myth.”
“That’s for damn sure.”
“Mmhmm. And it’s ‘specially true when people don’t understand the truth. When they don’t understand it, they’re afraid of it. And when they’re afraid of it… they’ll comfort themselves with somethin’ else… anything else… even if it’s not entirely true.”
Willy nodded and set his mug beside his pipe on the little table next to his rocker. “Lemme guess… the next year it was a white Jesus?”
“The next year it didn’t exist,” Hector said, punctuated as if he had just delivered the punchline to a joke.
“What happened? More old white ladies join the flock?”
“Actually, yes… but the reason as to why the live nativity was stopped was quite contrary to what you’re thinkin’, Bill. See, the church was actually doing pretty well at that time. More old white ladies—sure—but also just more people in general. It got to the point where they had to move the Christmas festivities inside to accommodate e’rybody. I guess they feared the crowd going out into the street. You gotta remember this was a pretty big church in a pretty populated region.”
Willy nodded. “I see. So… it became an indoor nativity?”
“Something like that. Actually, the church went ahead and bought one of those great, big outdoor displays just to make up for the change. Y’know, the life-sized ones? The indoor thing became more of a pageant, you could say… part nativity, part choir show, part handbell performance… the whole nine yards.”
“Sounds elaborate.”
Hector nodded deeply. “And it was. Drew a big crowd, in fact. Some of ‘em even started to turn up on Sunday morning.”
“So, it was a publicity stunt.”
“Well,” Hector droned, “this was well before the whole ‘seeker sensitive’ stuff. Y’know, the rock concerts and the big tent revivals that turned church into a circus? I mean, this church in Arecibo was certainly accused of it, but I wouldn’t say the Christmas pageant had any kind of sinister underbelly. Actually, it prolly helped a lot of people at the time.”
“And when would that be?” Willy asked. Just as he did, the fire popped in a strange, blue flurry before settling once more.
“Oh… a long time ago,” Hector said, poking a log. “Most of ‘em are prolly dead now. I only know this story because it was told to me.”
“So, you weren’t even there?”
Hector hesitated. “I was… just sometime later. That’s when this story was told to me. In fact, it was relayed by one of those very people who joined the church around Christmas all those years ago.”
Before either Hector or Willy could continue, another gust of wind surged through the drafty house and the fence gate beyond the wall cracked as it did before. The fire swirled in its dance—which at that moment was to “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”—and the two men stirred in their seats.
“The story’s actually about a couple who joined right around the same time. Another one of those cases where the Christmas pageant dragged people in from off the street. And this time… maybe literally.”
“Homeless couple?”
“Maybe,” Hector said, tilting his head toward the fire. “My source wasn’t really sure. Neither was anyone for that matter. They didn’t talk to anybody, always sat in the back… real reclusive types. The only thing anybody really knew about ‘em were their names.”
“How’d they know their names if they didn’t talk?”
“Well, apparently, for the first Sunday in December the following year they got up to light the advent candle and the priest said ‘em: Gabriel and Amaia. Young couple, neither older than thirty then.”
“Any kids?”
Hector blew out a laugh and shook his head. “That, my friend, is what this whole thing’s all about. Just like Christmas itself, it, too, is about a baby.”
“Their baby?”
“That’s the question, I suppose. No one really knows.”
Willy was nearly at the edge of his rocker. “What do you mean?”
Hector, who too had slid to the end of his chair, leaned back and stoked the fire once more. “Do you remember how I was saying that the live nativity was replaced by a big outdoor one?”
“Mmhmm,” Willy said. “Life-sized, right?”
Hector nodded. “Well, that’s where they found it.”
“Found what?”
“The baby.”
Suddenly, Willy was halfway out of his seat. “They found a baby in it?”
Hector nodded. “In the manger. Not surprisingly.”
Willy let out something like a gasp and licked his lips, now clutching each arm of the rocker so tightly that his knuckles looked white as snow. Once again, Hector had hooked him with line and sinker.
“The baby was just… just left out there?”
“Mmhmm,” Hector hummed. “One of the nuns found it.”
“In the cold?”
Now, his host chuckled. “If you wanna call the mid-70s cold. This is Puerto Rico we’re talking ‘bout, remember?” Hector took a passing glance through the dim window smudged in frost. “Not Rochester.”
Willy nodded. “A-and where was the Jesus?”
“That’s what the police wanted to find out,” Hector added with a pointed finger. “You find Him—”
“—and you find out who put the baby in His place.”
Hector nodded. “Right. But finding a statue of the baby Christ—even if it was the size of a real baby—woulda been like finding a needle in a haystack in a place like Arecibo.”
“So, did they ever find it?” Willy asked.
“Eventually,” Hector nodded. “After they cut through all the red tape.”
“Oh, I’d imagine it was hell.”
“Close,” Hector agreed. “Prolly just as much screamin’.” In his next breath, Hector went from a somber, sorry gaze to a smirk. “Of all the Christmas myths,” he said, “the notion of it being a ‘Silent Night’ has gotta top the list. You’re tellin’ me a baby—even if it was the son of God—wouldn’t be screamin’ its little head off? Gimme a break. And that was just the night of. We’re not talking about what followed: the custody paperwork, the foster care crap, and, of course, trying to find parents who clearly didn’t wanna be found.”
“Like I said… hell.”
Hector nodded firmly, looking into the flames of the fireplace. On the record that continued to spin, “We Three Kings” faded in in a sort of low, faint drone that was nearly lost beneath the high-pitched hiss of the wind outside. It was a sound completely missed by Willy, but not by Hector, who found the coincidence widely funny and started to chuckle, his gut rising and falling beneath his chest.
“What’s so funny?” Willy asked, looking over his shoulder to make sure there wasn’t a mime mimicking his near-stupored posture.
“That whole city turned into a damn King Cake… only it wasn’t the baby everybody was lookin’ for… it was the parents.”
“King Cake?”
“Three Kings Cake is more like it,” Hector clarified, adjusting himself in the wooden rocker as it creaked. “Y’know how we were talking about the Epiphany earlier? January 6th?”
“Uyuh,” Willy droned.
“Well, that’s when you’d eat it. The cake itself is pretty bland mosta the time, but the real treat is the fève hidden inside. A little figurine of the Christ Child. Y’know, for good luck.”
Now it was Willy who found himself chuckling. “Good luck not choking on the blasted thing.”
Hector agreed. “Yeah, it’s screwy. The whole thing was screwy. All ‘cause of a baby.”
“But eventually the parents were found?”
“Mmhmm.”
“And I’m guessing that young couple from the church were the culprits.”
Hector said, “Don’t get ahead of me,” but in truth Willy already had. Not surprisingly. Bill was a smart guy, smart as a tack in Hector’s eyes. You just couldn’t spoon-feed a man like that. Eventually, he’ll swallow it whole, and Willy did. He could see it in Hector’s eyes.
“But was she showing at the church?”
“Who?”
“What’s-her-name, I don’t know.”
“Amaia?”
“Yeah,” Willy nodded. “Did she look pregnant before or—?”
Hector cut him off with a wag of his head. “Nope. Nothing. Skinny as a rail according to my source. And judging by the guy’s waistline, I’d say he’d be apt to know.”
“So, she wasn’t the mother?”
“I never said that. I said, ‘No one really knows’, remember?”
“Someone has to.”
Hector nodded. “I’m sure the good Lord does.”
Willy bit his bottom lip and tasted the final, lingering, remnants of the hot cocoa. “So, where’s the couple come in, then? If they weren’t the parents—”
“They might’ve been the parents. Look, to understand this thing you’ve gotta take a step back and see it from all perspectives. Starting with theirs.”
“Okay,” Willy said. “Well, what’d they say about the kid?”
“They said… that it was a gift.”
“What?” Willy laughed.
“The cops and the church had the same reaction. And this isn’t one of those ‘oh, my child’s a gift from God’ in the figurative sense. These people literally meant it.”
Willy shook his head. “Wait. How’d the police or church even come to find these people if you said they weren’t the—?”
“Maternity test.”
“So, they were the parents?”
Hector croaked and waved his hand in the air like brushing cobwebs. “The maternity test determined Amaia to be the mother based on the baby’s DNA.”
“And did they do a paternity test?”
“Ye’up,” Hector drawled.
Willy squinted. “So, I’m guessing it was inconclusive, then.”
Hector croaked again. “Now you’re startin’ to get it,” he said. “Coulda been a number of things: bad samples, contamination, mutations… no one really knows. Although, some have their guesses.”
“Such as?” Willy asked.
“Well,” Hector thought, snapping his gaze from the fire back to his friend, “surely, two people who think their baby was gifted to them aren’t playing with a full deck if you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“And so, some guessed that maybe there were mutations on account of… well, I don’t exactly. Some kind of mental illness. Schizophrenia comes to mind.”
“So, they were just plain ol’ crazy then,” Willy said, more so than asked.
Hector started to nod but then stopped. “Well… unless they were tellin’ the truth.”
“About being gifted a human baby? From whom, exactly?”
“Who do you think? The mailman?” Hector laughed.
“God?” Willy asked. “No, no,” he then stuttered with an indulgent smile, “don’t tell me it was Santa.”
“Actually, it wasn’t. This is Puerto Rico we’re talking about, remember? Ours is a culture rich in Catholicism.”
“I thought Santa was a saint.”
Hector chuckled. “I guess one too secularized for their liking. Try more… traditional gift givers.”
“I’m not sure who’s more traditional than Santa Claus, Hector.”
“Try the Three Kings,” Hector nodded. “The Wise Men. Which is a very similar tradition to Santa Claus in many places only they arrive on the Epiphany and—well obviously—there’re three of ‘em.”
“I thought you said the truth was that there were probably more of them.”
“Well, it depends on whose truth we’re talking about,” Hector grinned. “Sadly, tradition is often a better substitute.”
Willy nodded, expecting as much. “So… you’re telling me that these people said ancient magi brought them a baby?”
“On the Epiphany of that same year, yes. Well, actually… the promise of the baby happened on the 6th. I suppose its conception—however that worked—occurred sometime in March since it was a Christmas baby.”
Willy thought while clutching the arms of his chair in a sort of frozen curiosity. “How, exactly, did the wise men ‘promise’ a child?”
“According to Gabriel and Amaia, just as plainly as I’m telling you now.”
“So, they appeared in their house?”
“Well, remember now, they were homeless, Bill.”
“So, they just walked up to ‘em on the street?” Willy chuckled grimly. “Wouldn’t people’ve seen the camels?”
Hector grinned toothlessly but his eyes had lost their usual sparkle. Suddenly, he looked even more tired than Willy had been almost half an hour ago. “Apparently, it happened at a different church in a neighboring community. I guess they were having a banquet dinner for the Epiphany and invited anyone and everyone. Including these people off the streets.”
“And did they happen to have three volunteers wearing beards and crowns that night?”
Hector shrugged. “Don’t know. All I do know is that—even if there were—they probably wouldn’t’ve announced a pregnancy, which the couple claim they did. They also claimed that the kings ‘looked’ and ‘smelled’ ancient, sayin’ that they ‘felt like they’d been around for a long time’, and that’s a direct quote according to my source. He also told me that the couple was frightened by them. That the kings were beautiful… but haunting.”
Despite the heat from the fire, a sharp chill ran down Willy’s spine. He didn’t say a word.
“The couple also claimed that they had been trying for a baby for quite some time, to the point where Amaia swore she had a barren womb.”
“Did the police test that claim?”
Hector nodded. “About as much as they could’ve in those days. Amaia saw a doctor… but that was already after she had given birth. Miracle baby or not… the plumbing was clearly just fine. Plus, you’ve gotta remember that infertility was a rather taboo subject back then—”
“Still is.”
Hector agreed and thought again about Jules and how both she and Bill had tried for a baby decades ago. It made the story feel all the more personal now and explained why Willy might’ve followed up with his next question.
“Why’d they leave the child in the nativity display if it was the answer to a prayer?”
Hector nodded in understanding.
“Everyone prays for a miracle until it finally happens. Then they pray for it to go away.”
“But why?”
“Well, I’ve told ya about what the couple thought, what the cops thought… now you’ll hear the church’s side, which really has two sides of its own.”
“Which are?” Willy asked.
“Well, you’ve gotta remember this whole thing was weird—”
“You don’t say?” Willy chortled.
Hector continued with a slight smile. “Yet, weird as it was, strangeness isn’t all too strange in the Church. Remember, now, we’re talking about folks who already believe in an impossible birth to begin with. You recall a few years back when that statue of the Virgin Mary in New Mexico started cryin’ olive oil?”
Willy nodded hesitantly. Not only did he remember it, but he also remembered how he felt about it. “More like the statue of the Virgin Mary that started crying wolf. Probably nothing more than a stunt.”
“Well, the Vatican confirmed that miracle, and they’ve been investigating similar claims for centuries now.”
“And I’m guessing the case of the miracle baby was no different.”
Hector nodded. “Unfortunately, it didn’t really matter what they found out because the court of public opinion ruled more than the Vatican or La Rama Judicial de Puerto Rico combined.”
Willy leaned forward and his rocker moaned like the wind outside. No words needed to be spoken.
“Long story short—”
Willy couldn’t help but interrupt with an ironic chuckle.
“—the couple was damned either way. Either they were a couple of fruitcakes or had somehow given birth to a supernaturally conceived child.”
“Which is worse?”
“Well, would ya rather be in the funny farm or hell?”
“Where’d they end up?”
“Try both,” Hector said. “Well, maybe not hell but… hell on earth, that’s for damn sure.”
“It was that bad?” Willy asked with a raised brow.
“Mmhmm. Think about it, Bill. Not only was the act of stealing the baby Jesus statue theft, but blasphemy. Sure, in the scheme of things it wasn’t such a big deal when compared with the actual baby at hand… but you mix that with a so-called ‘miracle’ baby… and you’ve got yourself an abomination on your hands.”
“They were scared of it?”
Hector nodded and listened as the record—which had been playing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”—crackled into an abyss of white noise. Which, as he’d come to think of it, wasn’t a far cry from the sound in his very backyard.
“The naivety of some people.” Hector shook his head and went for his pipe, gesturing to Willy with the baggie of tobacco he slid from his coat pocket. Willy declined and his host stuffed the pipe to the brim, lit it with a flicked-open small silver lighter, and breathed it in heavily. After a quiet moment filled with nothing but the crackling of both the fire and the record, Hector let out a cloud of smoke from between his clenched teeth and pulled the pipe from his lips.
“Por ahora lo vemos en un espejo débilmente. For now we see in a mirror dimly.”
“But then face to face,” Willy continued, nodding in recognition of the Bible passage.
“Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. First Corinthians.”
Willy smiled about as faintly as the fire still glowed. “I remember that part.”
Hector took another drag from the pipe. “Maybe some so-called ‘miracles’ aren’t lies… just mistruths. Maybe we just see ‘em dimly.”
“Maybe,” Willy echoed.
Hector agreed. “Church didn’t think so though. Neither did anybody else. If you were in the church—like my source was—then the couple had made a pact with the devil and the baby was an abomination… and if you were outside the church, the couple was crazy and the baby was… well, just a baby.”
“A baby that needed to be taken from them, it sounds like,” Willy added.
Hector nodded but Willy could tell he didn’t fully agree.
“Whatever happened to them anyway?” Willy asked.
Hector grew silent in thought for a moment before snapping out of it, like out of a dream. “The couple? Funny farm, like I said. You didn’t think anyone who claimed to’ve spoken with ancient magi—not once, but twice—would’ve gotten away Scot-free, did ya?”
“Twice?”
Hector nodded. “Oh, yeah,” he said, blowing another puff through a toothy smile, “I forgot to mention that the kings came back.”
“When?”
“Christmas Eve. I figure they were probably at one of the nearby hospitals—there’re a few big ones in Arecibo—and Amaia was likely discharged right before the holiday. I suppose they could’ve had a midwife—and I wouldn’t rule it out ‘cause they are pretty cheap—but either way, they delivered, and shortly thereafter the Wise Men returned. Y’know… to worship. As they do.”
“They worshipped the child?”
Hector nodded. “Minus the gold, frankincense, and myrrh, of course. As much as a couple of homeless people might’ve preferred it,” he chuckled.
“How’d they even find them?” Willy asked with a half-drunken smile. “Followed the star?”
“Well, according to some people… yes, actually. Though which one, who’s to say? Probably not the Star of Bethlehem.”
“Probably not,” Willy agreed.
“Some say it was a ‘bad’ one. A bad sign.”
“What, like astrologically?”
“Mmhmm,” Hector nodded. “Though now we’re back to square one. That pesky belief.”
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
Willy rocked back and kicked one leg over the other. “Speaking of the truth—which I believe you said you’d tell me—what happened in the end?”
Hector shrugged. “The church was torn down some years later. It’s probably a condominium now. Sure, it thrived for a while being in a big city and all but… well, it always carried its reputation, you could say. If it wasn’t ‘that place where the spawn of Satan was born’, it was ‘that church that used those poor folks for a publicity stunt’. And I guess, in the end, they couldn’t escape either.”
“And what about the baby?”
Hector stopped rocking almost immediately and lowered the pipe to the chair’s arm. His eyes were filled to the brim with fear. “Probably an old man, now,” he said. “According to some, a rather famous politician. Maybe even a priest. Maybe… something more.”
“You don’t mean the—”
Hector nodded before his guest could finish. “That’s exactly what I mean. As I said… naivety.”
“But his whereabouts are a mystery?”
“If people thought that you were some kind of an abomination—some kind of freak of nature—do you really think you’d want ‘em to ever find you?”
Willy shook his head. “Suppose not.”
Hector nodded just as the fence gate, for a third time, audibly whacked against the latch outside. Both men turned to the window as the wind whistled by and then Willy raised his eyes to the clock with a yawn and the stretch of his arms against the old wood.
“Callin’ it a night, Bill?” Hector asked. “I better check on that fence.”
Willy nodded with a sly grin. “It was a night an hour ago,” he said. “Why’d you wait to tell me all this, Hector?”
Hector laughed sharply. “I knew you’d ask me somethin’ like that.”
“Then answer it.”
Hector rose from his creaking chair and popped the pipe back between his chompers. “Because it’s Christmas.”
Willy watched as his host crossed the room, unlocked the door beside the window, and pushed it open into the snow.
“Hector?” Willy said, prompting his host to turn around. “What do you think the child would've said about all of this?"
Hector stood in the doorway as the icy air blew ruffled his hair and pajamas. "That he's glad it's in the past."
Willy nodded and cleared this throat gruffly. “Don’t you want a coat before you go out there? You’re gonna freeze your chestnuts off.”
Hector laughed. “I know, I know… I’ve got ‘thin blood’ unlike you—”
“You weren’t born in the cold, after all.”
Hector nodded with a nasally sigh of some relief. “I’ll be fine. It’s just a fence.”
Willy nodded and let him go, watching as the cold wind slammed the door behind him. Through the hazy window, Hector waddled toward the fence line and a soft smile spread across Willy’s cheeks, still rosy from the fire.
Suddenly, a terrible thought seized him, and immediately he shook it away like beating dust out of an old rug. In that split second, he considered locking the door from the man outside, a man whom—both at that moment and from that point on—he saw in a mirror dimly.
Written by MakRalston
Content is available under CC BY-SA