Jake Harris lived his life in shades of black and white. Things were either right or they were wrong. It is how his father had lived his life and if it was good enough for his old man then it was certainly good enough for him.
Jake was a solid man, unbowed by life and, for the most part, certain of his place in the world. He was in fact much like the town in which he had lived for almost the entirety of his life…quiet, self-contained, as unchanging as it could be in the backwaters of an ever-changing world.
Jake had, to his mind, kept his part of the bargain with life. He walked tall as man who had served his country, been faithful to his wife, and provided for his family. He had married Mary, the first girl he had kissed, when he was 23 and back from his stint in the Army. He had taken a job in the same factory that his father worked in and he stayed there, moving slowly but surely up the ladder of responsibility, until he retired.
Mary had borne him two children and made the house they bought a home. He went to work each day and came home late each night. Every summer they drove to the lake…to the cabin Jake built…and every winter they went to Mary’s parents’ house for Christmas. It was, Jake knew, a good life.
Jake’s daughter, Elizabeth, grew up (so fast that Jake barely got a chance to know her like he wanted to) and married a farmer from the other side of the county.
Jake’s son, Elijah, grew up (so fast that Jake barely got a chance to teach him the way a man was supposed to be) and moved to a city farther away than Jake cared to contemplate.
Mary kept Jake good and faithful company…fed and clean and happy…for 40 peaceful years. And then she was gone…taken by a cancer-ridden body far too early for a woman as good as she.
Jake grieved in the stolid way that men were supposed to grieve. He stayed in the house that Mary made and, having retired from the factory, he lived a life he couldn’t have imagined…one without Mary…but one he had to cope with just the same. Elizabeth helped out but she had her own family to care for and Jake, neither wanting nor willing to learn housework, eventually hired a housekeeper.
Besides his wife’s death, the major disappointment in Jake’s life was his estrangement from his son. Jake had never been a hands-on father…that was not the way of men in his family…and so Mary had been the nurturer while he had been the provider. It was a balance that made perfect sense to Jake. Elizabeth had turned out to be good woman, solid and dependable.
Elijah has turned out to be somebody Jake couldn’t begin to really understand. Jake and Elijah were at odds from the boy’s adolescence on…it was only Mary’s quiet force of will that kept the two of them on speaking terms. When Mary died, the gulf between the father and the son widened until they could no longer see each other clearly.
Jake felt his losses most acutely when the holidays came around. He spent Thanksgiving with Elizabeth, her husband, and her three children (including the rambunctious Jacob, his oldest grandson named for him) and it was good…but it also made him miss Mary…and Elijah…more than he allowed himself to at any other time of the year.
On this Christmas Eve, Jake couldn’t stand rambling around his house alone. In the morning, he would drive to Elizabeth’s home and spend Christmas with her family but on this night, after his housekeeper left for her own holiday celebration, Jake went to his favorite bar so that he would be less alone.
The bar was populated by a few souls, none of whom was talking much, but Jake felt marginally better being in proximity with others. He sat off to himself, sipping a beer, smoking his pipe, and reading a book.
Eli knew the bar well. Not that he spent much time there…he wasn’t old enough to be in it while he was living in town…but he always knew that the bar was where his father and his friends unwound after long weeks in the factory.
Eli was a solid man, more like his father than he cared to acknowledge. Every time he returned to the town he was surprised at how familiar…how unchanging…it all seemed. It was a bit shabbier…and, it seemed, quite a bit smaller…than Eli remembered but, truth to be told, it was as it ever was. Eli didn’t miss it much at all and since his mother had died he had little reason to return. And yet he was here on a cold Christmas Eve.
After lingering at the door of the bar for a long minute, Eli walked in. He had been to the house he grew up in and, finding it empty, he knew exactly where the old man would be. Eli scanned the smoky bar and found the old man alone in a booth. He bought a beer and walked over to the booth.
Jake looked up from his book and raised an eyebrow.
“Hello, Jake,” Eli said his voice devoid of inflection.
“Elijah,” the old man replied.
Unbidden, Eli took off his overcoat and sat down across from his father and took a sip of beer. He smiled to himself…nobody but his parents had continued to call him Elijah after he had moved to city and remade himself into Eli.
Jake pretended that he was reading his book. “Didn’t expect to see you this year…”
Eli stifled a sigh. “Elizabeth invited us for Christmas.”
Jake winced. “She didn’t mention it.”
Eli smiled vaguely. “I don’t imagine that she did. She’s trying to do what Mom used to do.”
Jake looked up. “What’s that?”
“Make us behave like we’re really still a family.”
The old silences and resentments crushed in on them and they sat, looking but not looking at each other, and sipping beer.
Eli wanted to feel more angry than he did…he wanted to call the old man every name he could think of and storm out of the bar…but he couldn’t. His anger was trumped by nostalgia…the steely yet warm glint in the old man’s deep brown eyes, the sweet aroma of the tobacco the old man smoked in a pipe that a much younger Eli had saved up his allowance to buy him one long ago Christmas.
“Where’s your…friend…?” Jake asked hesitantly when the silence between them became too much even for him.
Eli and Patrick had been a couple for more than 15 years but Jake, not understanding why his son was “that way”, always referred to Patrick as Eli’s “friend”. It used to infuriate Eli but he had told himself that he didn’t care anymore and he tried not to let it get to him.
“At Elizabeth’s,” Eli replied. “He offered to come with me but I told him I wanted to come alone.”
“Why?” Jake, genuinely perplexed, asked. “Why did you want to come here at all?”
For a long moment, Eli didn’t have an answer. It seemed so foolish…the old man was never going to change and neither was he…but Eli pushed past that feeling and sighed softly. “Because Mom would have wanted me to,” he said in a small, wistful voice. “and because I wanted to.” He paused and took a shallow sip of beer. “Because it’s Christmas Eve, Jacob, and even though you’re an infuriating, aloof, self-righteous, homophobic son of a bitch, you’re my father and I love you and I don’t want you to feel like you were completely alone.”
Jake stared directly into his son’s eyes for the first time since he arrived. There were so many things he wanted…needed…to say but, being the man he was, he simply didn’t have the ability to give voice to what he was feeling. Jake puffed thoughtfully on his pipe and nodded. “Okay,” he said simply.
Eli shook his head and laughed, not unkindly. He finished his beer and took a deep breath. “I’m going back to Elizabeth’s,” he said, rising from the booth.
“Okay,” Jake replied.
Eli put on his overcoat and looked down at the old man. “Are you still coming in the morning even though me and my…friend…are going to be there?”
Jake looked up and nodded. “Yeah.”
Eli sighed again and turned to walk away.
“Elijah…”
Eli stopped and turned around.
Jake cleared his throat. “It’s a two hour drive back to Elizabeth’s…why don’t you just stay at the house and we can drive there in the morning…together…?”
Eli regarded his father with the complex mixture of emotions that he had carried in his heart for the old man for a long time. “Okay,” he replied.
Eli took off his overcoat and ordered two more beers from the bartender. They didn’t speak much…they still didn’t have the right words for each other…but they looked at each other when the bartender brought over the fresh drinks.
Eli raised his mug and Jake did likewise. Eli touched his mug to his father’s and smiled…wistfully, ruefully, sincerely. “Merry Christmas, Dad.”
Jake nodded solemnly. “Merry Christmas, son.”
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