Then Gerald opened his reddening eyes and it was gone.
He was here, in the headachy light of the station lobby. And the fire—how long had it been since he checked on the fire?
He grunted as he rose and headed down the studio hallway without turning back to regard the mangled heap of presents.
In Studio C the fire had dimmed to a champagne glow. The cord of wood, only slightly diminished, remained vigilant as a palace guard.
Gerald hefted a fresh log onto the fire with no real precision. He added a second. Then Gerald paused and looked again at the pile of wood. Individually each log was manageable, but stacked there, one atop the other, like one year following the next, they formed some unbearable burden.
He tossed on another log and another until the jammed-up kindling spilled out of the hearth’s hot mouth.
Now the fire was really going. Flames crept out across the logs he’d sat along the sides of the hearth, and even on the floor. Smoke billowed around the chimney and clouded the studio with a gray haze.
Back in the lobby, the phone chimed. Gerald was vaguely aware that it had been ringing for some time now.
Satisfied with his work, Gerald sat down heavily on hearth’s hard rim, as far as he could get from the fire, which was really blazing now. It sent rivulets of sweat racing down his back. The whole studio glowed the color of honey. Earthy woodsmoke became accented with the sharper smell of melting plastic. Probably the fake wreath burning.
Gerald remembered the camera standing there, waiting. He stared into its curious black eye, looking through a dark tunnel out onto all those Rapid City Christmases.
Out in the lobby, the phone’s unrelenting pleas were joined by a heavy thudding, the jingle of breaking glass. Through the open studio doorway, Gerald could see the faint red-and-blue of the fire trucks’ flashers pulsing through the lobby and tinting the shadowed corridor. The colors flared across the wall like twinkling Christmas lights.
He gazed into the camera, the fire hot all around him. He would need to leave soon. Very soon. But first he had to do something.
Over the shouts of the fireman in the hallway he began to sing, slurring, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”
I love that story.