The Cold, the Dark and the Silence

“The little stores are blackballing us because we’re too corporate, and the big ones are just angry that they didn’t think of it first.”  Nicholas gave a short, sharp huff of breath.  “It doesn’t help that I don’t really fit the image they’re expecting.  You could have named me something else, Dad.  Or come to the meetings yourself.”

The man at the bench put down his tiny paintbrush and turned to listen to his son’s complaints slowly, with much shuffling of untended joints and soft furs.  He was not old in the decrepit way of the nursing home patient, but the small, shadowed eyes beneath white eyebrows and the way he paused before he spoke gave an impression of countless stacked years.

“Did you try the Canadian charities?”

Nicholas paced the floor of the workshop, his tailored coat fluttering anxiously behind him as he strode to and fro.  His face, usually so open and intelligent, was dark in frustration, and he too paused before speaking, though for a different reason.  

“They – didn’t believe me.  Thought I was trying to scam them.”

Nicholas Sr. returned to his work, looking thoughtful.  “I knew, when we came back, that it would not be an easy task.  That we would disappoint many.  But Nicky, we have to try!  We are a part of something very special, something magical.  Had I known the effect I was to have, I might never have left this place.”

“I doubt sub-Saharan Africa is going to appreciate things being rained on them from above.  Should think it’d be received rather like an air-raid.”

The old man rubbed his temples.  When he had been younger, this task had seemed so easy.  People had been surprised, grateful even.  But the world was larger now, so much larger.  And in the spaces between people he could feel it.  The cold, the dark and the silence.

Someday, his work would no longer be enough to bridge the gap.  

He pushed back the bench as it creaked under his bulk and padded deliberately across the floor of the concrete workshop, dark now with the gathering weight of the clouds outside.  The heavy steel door was ajar and Nicholas Sr. put a knotted hand on it to push it open, struggling against the snow piled up against the outside of the frozen surface.  The air was cold, disturbed only by small puffs of breath, and in the Arctic sky, lights flickered and danced.  It was four o’ clock in the afternoon, six days before the final night of the year.

“Oh, Nicky?”  The old man turned back to his son, whose hands were folded neatly in front of him, pointed ears laying flat against his smooth hair.

“Yes, Dad?”

“See to it that the reindeer are fed, will you?