The two had officially been together for five Christmases, but this one would have been their first out on their own in California. In that sense, it was to be more than a mere celebration of some Jew carpenter’s birth long ago. It would have been a celebration of them, their longevity, and their forging a new life with no precedent to guide them.

The driver has no way of knowing this, but Paula died coming home from answering a ‘for sale’ ad in the paper. She put away enough of her paycheck –she worked as a laundress- every week for a year so she could buy him a new motorcycle for this Christmas. He found her with three cents left in her purse.

Atop the podium in the square stands an officious-looking speaker, no doubt making grand proclamations about the blessedness of this town and hopes for good fortune in the upcomming year. All the driver can make out is the boom of amplified but unclear words, and the overwrought gestures of a man basking in the esteem -dare he thinks admiration?- in which he believes himself to be held.

An unconscious recognition automatically brings up a very palatable hate in the driver, to the point where it usurps the buffet of fear, sadness, and loneliness on which he had previously been snacking. The remains of these hearty appetizers leave a faint afterglow in his mouth. A hateful mouthful, like wine, comes to wash them out. He knows this man, in a guttural kind of recognition. This recognition causes him to smile, all the while gritting his teeth. Of course, he doesn’t know him by name or by face. He knows, or has known, others of the same pompous caricature: starting with early childhood and leading all the way up to the present day.

His first memories of Michigan began with such a man: his father’s boss, who also happened to be their landlord. He was a red-faced, incomprehensible man whose only mode of communication was the dying end of a hoarse shout. The man drank, yelled, and soon forgot what he was worked up about, so that he would have to start from the beginning, except more belligerent and out of breath.