If A Body Catch A Body

I spill them out on the tabletop, a few years of left-over cards and envelopes.

There, I say. Plenty.

I hand my brother a pen.

You go first, I say.

It's Christmas Eve. I had shown him somewhere I like to visit every once in a while, and he had stopped at this card. Let's do it, I suggested.

So we start writing to no-one in particular, and soon the whole pile of cards is used.

It's dark out and our coats and gloves and hats are dark too, so we fancy ourselves as Christmas assassins. My brother steals through gardens and fairylit trees, picking out a string of cut-out stars he likes, or an undecorated house.

By the streetlamp light I read some of the messages he has written:

I like salads. But this Christmas, I'm all about the turkey. Fill up on your favourite food this holiday!

Hug someone new today. You never know, they might need it as much as you.

Dear stranger, I don't know you, and you don't know me. But does it matter? Merry Christmas.

Go for a walk on the beach this Christmas. Yes it's cold out, but the view is breathtaking.

For one, he had wanted to put in an excerpt from a book. I had just re-read Catcher in the Rye, so I took it down from my room and together we found the passage where Holden talks about what he'd really like to be in life. I read it aloud and my brother copied it down carefully.

We're on the third or fourth housing estate when I notice these two people. They have red flashing lights on their heads, that's all I can see of them. They ring the bell of the house next to the one I've chosen for a card, and as the door opens I hear them start to sing carols.

I stop to listen.

It sounds like carols would sound if someone had taught you them once, very quickly, just a few lines from each. The tune is all wrong. It would be funny, except it's not.

I stay there, listening, until the person who opened the door does something - closes it, gives them some money, I can't see - and the two fall silent. They leave to go to the next house, a father and a daughter.

I find my brother a few streets down, selecting more targets. I tell him what I've seen.

I don't know which part makes me sad, I say. I think it could be that the other person said nothing. I think it could be the way they kept going even though they didn't know the tune.

It's the father for me, my brother says.

We keep walking until all the cards are gone. I don't tell my brother, but I keep the one with the quote. I like the way it's written in his hand. Bits of it keep going round and round in my head, mixed up with pieces of the Christmas carols that weren't, and I think it was only right then that I understood it. About being the one to stop them falling off.

I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this
big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's
around - nobody big I mean - except me. And I'm standing
on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to
catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if
they're running and they don't look where they're going I
have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's
all I'd like to do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and
all. I know it's crazy, but it's the only thing I'd really like to be.

What a lonely night to be falling.