I think I’m over my Christmas Malaise. 
I decided to write this short blahg on Boxing Day to say that I’m okay. I had a great Christmas with my wife and children and son-in-law and I wasn’t anxious or depressed once. I managed to even write a short new Christmas story on Christmas day which I will debut here. My wife and son both described it as “cute” and Noah even went on to say it was “sweet.” I’ll accept that. More about the story in a bit.
Here’s a wonderful photo taken today before Emily, Charlie and Noah had to head back to Toronto:
From left to right are Abbie, Emily, Charlie and Noah. You can tell it was around Christmas because the tree is partially visible on the right. In 2022 it snowed so much that Emily, Charlie and Noah couldn’t get to our home until Boxing Day. What a difference a day makes.
On Christmas Eve I lay in bed and the germ of a story was floating around in my head. I hadn’t planned on writing anything and this was my first Christmas story since “The Stolen Christmas” which I penned over the first month and half in 2021 and I debuted in my blahg, A LATE CHRISTMAS STORY…OR AN EARLY ONE. At least this one was written in time for Christmas of 2023. I fell asleep thinking of the story and awoke in the middle of the night not remembering most of it. Luckily, by mid-morning on Christmas Day it had come back to me. A little polishing and by early evening I was happy with it. The original title was “Carnival Barker” but I thought that was a giveaway and certainly didn’t suggest the story had anything to do with Christmas. I gave it the new title of “A Very Quiet Christmas Plan”. Here it is:
A Very Quiet Christmas Plan
by
Scott Henderson
Philip decided he was going to have a very quiet Christmas. That was his plan. It hadn’t been planned if you went back several months but the current plan seemed suitable.
Margo had left after Labor Day. She hadn’t been happy for a while and she told Philip she was leaving to find herself. Philip found himself…alone…after Margo left and took Carnival Barker with her. Carnival Barker was their dog. Really, Carnival Barker was Philip’s dog because it followed him home one day. It barked after him the whole way from the park and it sat in the street and barked continuously until Philip came down from his second floor apartment in an effort to make peace with the dog and his neighbours for the continuous barking.
“You should be a Carnival Barker the way you carry on,” Philip said to the dog. The name stuck and, anyhow, Carnival Barker didn’t object.
Margo objected.
“You don’t know where the dog’s been or who he might have belonged to,” she explained to Philip. “Either he goes or I go.”
In the end both of them went but not before Carnival Barker stayed and Margo stayed but she always referred to him as ‘Barker” although Philip slipped in the full ‘Carnival Barker’ whenever he and the dog were alone; which was often because Margo had been trying to find herself for quite a while and that meant she was always out trying something different which didn’t always include Philip or even Carnival Barker.
“Why did she have to take Carnival Barker if she was trying to find herself?” Philip had said this aloud numerous times since Margo left when he wondered about her which was less often than when he wondered about Carnival Barker. His little joke to himself was that maybe Carnival Barker was a guide dog and was helping her find her way. He fantasized often that the dog came back and Margo stayed wherever it was she found herself. He still held that fantasy as it got closer to Christmas and imagined that he’d wake Christmas morning to the sound of Carnival Barker extolling the virtues of his name down in the street until his neighbours pounded on his door and told him to “quiet that hound.” After all, wasn’t that the exact phrase they’d shouted when Carnival Barker had first followed him home.
Philip wondered what it had been about him that made anyone or anything want to follow him home. There had been Carnival Barker but before that there had been Margo.
Margo had followed him home from another walk in the park. He hadn’t noticed her at first until she eventually piped up and said “if you hadn’t noticed, I’m following you. I don’t usually do this but I’m in this whole seize the moment stage and I saw your face and thought I should just follow this guy home and see what develops.”
What developed was a six month relationship where Margo moved in and Philip let her. He liked Margo. She was take charge or forward ho or a number of catch phrases that challenged her to do something different like following someone home and building a relationship.
There was no courtship with Margo. Philip had been alone and then there was Margo. She saw him every day. She talked incessantly but she asked numerous questions about him and that seemed appealing. No one had ever asked him so much about himself in so short a time and no one had ever followed him home from the park just to see what developed. It was nice.
Philip did not think he loved Margo. In fact, he knew he did not love her or loved her less when she left and loved her even more less or lesser when she left and took Carnival Barker.
No one ever claimed Carnival Barker; except Margo in the end. Philip had put up posters and read the papers but there were no lost dog inquiries that matched the description of Carnival Barker. His main feature was his bark which had been incessant when he wanted Philip to invite him into his home and ceased after he’d gained entry.
This was akin to how Margo stopped her incessant talking and personal questioning of Philip after she too had moved in. No one claimed her either. He never met her family, if she had one, and her only friends seemed to be Philip and Carnival Barker or anyone involved in her finding herself activities when she went out and left man and dog alone.
Philip missed that dog. He missed the padding of his feet or how Carnival Barker would stare at him when Margo was out and Philip could just imagine the dog saying it was another evening in for the boys and Philip would stare back and then tell Carnival Barker that an evening alone with him without Margo was more than worthwhile. The dog hadn’t been large or small and not exactly somewhere in the middle. He was the size he was which was right for him and besides his bark, his other distinguishable feature was his colouring. Margo would use flowery descriptions of autumnal shadings of leaves or beach sands after receding tides when Philip clearly thought Carnival Barker reminded him of the colour of turkey gravy from a can. It was little things like that widening the gap between Margo and Philip that eventually led to her leaving. She’d left a note that was a panoramic description of the chasm developing between them as she sought to find meaning while Philip seemed to be rather happy in the status quo.
Philip liked the status quo. Margo was gone and so was Carnival Barker. It was Christmas now and he moved through it as he liked and the current plan of a quiet Christmas was enough. At least it should have been.
It started with the turkey. This had not factored into Philip’s plans. A quiet Christmas meant to Philip no fuss or bother or commitment to any holiday plans other than a quiet Christmas. The turkey changed everything. He’d won it in a holiday raffle at work. He wasn’t even sure what the proceeds of the raffle went to support. He’d been cajoled into buying a ticket and just assumed the proceeds would go to pay for the cost of the turkey that would be won by some poor sucker.
Philip was that poor sucker. And it was a fresh turkey, and not frozen, and given out two days before Christmas so he’d have to plan something for it and upset his plan for no real plan for Christmas.
Of course if you have a turkey and you have to cook it, which is a plan far better than throwing it away or trying to fawn it off on someone else who had even less plans than Philip, then you have to build on that and soon there’s potatoes and stuffing and cranberries and pie and gravy and of course that would remind Philip completely of Carnival Barker. And if you have all that and you’re suffering melancholia for a dog who followed you home from the park and not the woman who had tried that trick before the dog then you have to alter all plans and invite others in to share in your newly best laid plans that altered your regular plan in the first place. And if you’re all in on the meal and inviting others then you have to plan for decorations and a tree and lifting your spirits without artificial spirits so no one knows the melancholia was about all you could stomach without the turkey and the decorations and the whole Christmas with trimmings.
In the end, Philip was alone. No one came. No one was available and yet all the plans had been made and he had committed himself to those plans and when the plan of a quiet Christmas did materialize despite Philip’s best efforts to expand the raffle turkey into an extravaganza evening, he was a little disappointed to find himself alone on Christmas Eve with the thought that the next day was Christmas and he still had all that cooking to do with the raffle turkey and no one to share it with and slip turkey to under the festooned table.
On Christmas Eve, Philip did nothing. He stared at the tree he’d been obliged to include in his failed plans and the lights dancing on the tree lulled him to sleep. He dreamed fitfully.
In his dreams Philip was back at the park and there was Margo and Carnival Barker and they were chasing him and he was trying to avoid being caught by hiding behind various trees but secretly relishing in the notion that Carnival Barker could sniff him out but that Margo would have no such talent and might eventually give up and go on with her life. Ultimately Carnival Barker’s bark would betray him and Margo would hone in and find him as if she’d had some talent after all and not give credit to the dog she simply referred to as Barker.
Margo would pull Philip close and kiss his face and tell him he’d been found and he’d laugh and wonder how it easy it had been that she had found him, with Carnival Barker’s help, yet she had a difficult time finding herself.
Philip woke up Christmas morning and could still feel Margo’s wet dream kisses upon his cheek. It wasn’t though. It was dog slobber. It was Carnival Barker.
“Carnival Barker, how can you be here?” he said aloud to the dog.
Of course it wasn’t the dog who replied, it was Margo, standing in the doorway looking no more found than she had when he had last seen her in September.
“Barker and I thought you might be a little lost without us and I know a thing or two about lost and found and we found ourselves alone and determined that you should not be and so here we are and I’m famished.” She’d not even stopped to take a breath. Typical Margo. She was gone and then she was back. Philip recalled how she had never left her key behind after she left. Philip didn’t care. Carnival Barker was back.
There was nothing for it after that and Philip had to cook the Christmas dinner and spend it with Margo talking about her travels over the past few months and her enlightenment and not once mentioning how Carnival Barker had factored into any of it and all the while Philip grinned and slipped the dog pieces of dark meat and marveled at how much his coat really did resemble tinned turkey gravy.
Margo moved back in and then shortly after New Year moved out again after following someone else home from the park and calling up Philip and saying she’d found her soulmate, as if he’d been lost to her until then, and that she’d call for Barker but not sounding convincing at all…about retrieving the dog and not the bit about the soulmate. The soulmate was just some poor sucker who probably deserved Margo as much as Philip had deserved a fresh not frozen turkey that upset his plans for a quiet Christmas.
Philip didn’t care. Carnival Barker was back and he was determined to change his locks and that nothing planned or unplanned would take Carnival Barker from him again.
As it so often does, Philip’s plans did change, though. He eventually met someone else and he married and there were children and there was still Carnival Barker. And there were great Christmases and Philip would often think back on that one extraordinary Christmas. Not the one where he had won the turkey and Margo had come back but the following year when he cooked a turkey again and it was just him and Carnival Barker and Philip set a place for the gravy coloured dog at the table.
The End
I hope you enjoyed that and I hope the remainder of your holiday season for 2023 and into 2024 is everything you hoped for.
Tags: Christmas, False Ducks, Scott Henderson