I’m trying to remember when, exactly, I wrote this story. Either 1999 or 2000. In any case, I wrote it for a creative writing class I took in college. It was one of those workshops where everyone trades their stories and comments on each others. People seemed to like this one. I did too, in fact, although I later put it aside and used some of the elements in other stories, most notably borrowing the character of Ellen St. Christopher for a cameo appearance in The Beginner. The story was published in Nicholls State University’s Mosaic magazine in 2001, after I graduated. For this presentation, I’ve made a few edits to make the world of this Timberston Parish mesh more neatly with the world you’ll see next year when The Beginner is published. The story is the same, though. Hope you enjoy it.

When I walked into the office of The Timberton Charger that November morning, my mailbox was overflowing with clippings. I didn’t even have to glance to know what was waiting for me: notes, articles, reference materials, all about Santa Claus. I pulled the wad of pages from the box and headed to my editor’s office.

“Terry, what is this crap?”

“We’re getting started with this year’s Christmas magazine, Ellen,” he said. “That’s your assignment, I want a piece on the history of jolly old Saint Nick.”

“I hate this stuff, Terry. Have you ever met anybody more agnostic than me?”

“No. Have you ever had an editor who cared less than me?”

I had to concede the point. Terry headed out of his office and I charged after him. “It’s only November 13th! You’re handing out Christmas assignments?”

“I know. You’re already two weeks late. Get moving.”

“Listen, Terry, I can’t write a story on Santa Claus. I’m hard news. I’m bank robberies and congressional scandals and--”

“Fire on Plante Avenue!” Jacob, the city editor called out. “Who wants it?”

“I’m on it!” I said. “You see, Terry, this is what I write.”

As I headed for the door, Jacob said, “You don’t even know the address!”

“It’s the house that’s on fire,” I said, “I’ll find it!”

It only took me fifteen minutes to reach Plante, part of a small subdivision near the edge of Timberton Parish. By the time I arrived, the two-story house had become a pulsating wall of orange, yellow and red. I got out of my car and went straight to Scott Barstowe, the fire chief.

“Ellen St. Christopher, Timberton Charger!”

“I know who you are, Ellen,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

“Are there any people left in the house?”

“We’re trying to determine that now. The owners of the house were found, unconscious, in the master bedroom. They seem to have suffered some smoke inhalation. We know they have a six-year old daughter, but we didn’t find her in her bedroom. We’re searching--”

“Help! Help!”

Somehow the horrified voice managed to still the mob of firefighters, cops, reporters and bystanders. The little girl was standing at a second-floor window, cradling in her arms a milk-white kitten with black patches. The window was right above a blazing ten-foot overhang. The girl wouldn’t be able to jump... the ladders, too, would be useless.

“Christ!” Barstowe grabbed his radio. “Somebody get me an apple-picker! We’ve got to--”

“Who the hell is that?” I caught myself shouting.

One of the firemen had somehow made it onto the overhang and was walking to the girl’s window. The flames swirled around him like an egg yolk trying to avoid a beater. As my glimpses of him became clearer and more frequent, I saw he wore no helmet or coat -- just blue jeans and a black polo shirt.

“Why isn’t he burning up?” I asked.

“Hell if I know,” Barstowe said. “Who is that guy?’

“He’s not one of yours?”

“Never seen him.”

The man on the overhang reached into the window and picked the girl up then glanced around, trying to determine, it seemed, the best route of escape.

There was a horrible creaking sound as the burning wooden supports of the overhang began to give way. The creak turned into a groan, then a scream as wood snapped, metal bent and fiberglass crumbled. The entire overhang fell in on itself, sending up an explosion of black smoke and gray dust. The instant it hit the ground a trio of firemen jumped through the haze, waving smoke from their eyes, trying to find the girl and her would-be rescuer.

It wasn’t until the smoke and the dust from the crash dissipated that the firemen could see there were no bodies in the wreckage. Instead, one of them glanced up into the gyrating flames.

“Sweet God,” he said. The other firemen followed his gaze and the rest of us followed suit. Standing exactly where he had been before the crash was the rescuer. If the fact that there was nothing between him and the ground but ten feet of air bothered him, he didn’t show it in the least.

The three of them -- him holding the girl, the girl holding the cat -- glided out over the wreckage and away from the blaze, finally sinking to the ground, where he handed the girl to a stunned paramedic.

“Wha... Why didn’t you fall?” the medic asked.

He smiled. “A fall from up there? The girl might have been hurt. I couldn’t let that happen.” His voice was deep but sweet... he had a strange accent, maybe European, but I couldn’t be certain.

I shoved past Barstowe and ran to the stranger as fast as I could. “Ellen St. Christopher, Timberton Charger!”

The stranger turned and looked at me. Up close I could make out his brown, close-cropped hair, his thin smile, his square jaw and cleft chin. “Yes, Miss St. Christopher?”

His icy blue eyes seemed to open a tap in my brain, letting all the logic seep out. I couldn’t think of a single question to ask him until I finally just blurted out, “Who are you?”

He smiled again. “I’m nobody special.”

With that, he gave me a nod and, glancing to the sky, took flight. Barstowe reached my side, his mouth hanging open.

“Well Ellen,” he said, “there’s your story.”

“‘Nobody Special’ saves girl from house fire,” Terry read aloud. “You do realize that there’s no way I can run this story.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “That’s what happened. There are dozens of witnesses that can corroborate the story.”

“And not a single one got a photograph,” Terry said. “Ellen, I don’t think you’re crazy, but if I run this story as is, I’ll be throwing two decades of respectability out the window. A flying man? Where did he come from, a phone booth?”

“It happened, Terry.”

“Ellen, stick with what you can prove. There was a fire on Plante. Six-year-old Chastity Miles was trapped upstairs. An unidentified individual rescued her. The family is requesting he come forward so they can thank him. Give me something that doesn’t make you sound like Lois Lane.”

“In other words, you’re telling me to suppress the truth.”

“This is the Charger, not the Inquirer. Rewrite the story. Work on your Christmas piece. And for God’s sake, get more sleep.”

“You can’t keep me on some holiday fluff piece while there’s a guy flying around Timberton!”

“You can’t hallucinate a flying man if you’re working on a holiday fluff piece. Consider it therapy.”

I was driving back to my apartment when I saw a fleet of red and blue flashing sirens racing down the street. The reporter’s instinct kicked in and I followed them, twisting through the streets and canyons of the small city.

I eventually followed the police cruisers to a roadblock set up outside town, along a forested road. Four cars were spread out, making the road completely impassable. In the distance I could see a spiked chain laid out across the asphalt, waiting for the tires of some speeding menace to zip by. To the side of the road, on the shoulder, were several other police cars, one containing a red-faced, scowling woman, her brow furrowed and her teeth clenched.

“Ellen Sa--”

“St. Christopher, Timberton Charger, I know,” said the police captain -- Lowell, by his nametag. Lowell broke away from the line of cops with their guns perched on the top of their cars. “What are you doing here?”

“When I saw this many police cars, I knew there would be a story. What’s going on?”

“High-speed pursuit. Some father got denied visitation, kidnapped his daughter, he’s headed this way and it’s liable to break into gunfire, so will you please get out of here?”

“He’s coming, Captain!”

“Crap!” Lowell turned away from me and rejoined the roadblock. I held my ground on the side of the road. I could make out a red Corolla zipping towards us like the Roadrunner in a Chuck Jones cartoon. Guns cocked around me and I began to wonder if following the cops hadn’t been a mistake after all.

The car hit the chain and there were four audible bangs as the tires exploded. It slowed down, but kept its forward momentum even coasting on the rims. I could see the driver’s panicked face and I figured he probably had the same realization as me: there was no way he’d stop before he hit the roadblock.

Then a small portion of the asphalt in front of the car buckled upwards, splitting open. A hand came up through the ground, between the front two tires. As the car passed over the arm, it was lifted two feet into the air and jerked to a halt.

The car rose a bit more and I saw what I should have known in the first place -- it was him again. The same man who had entered an inferno with no protection and flown a little girl to safety was now holding a car up with one arm, waiting for the ruined wheels to finish spinning uselessly in the air.

Coming up from the ground, he finally placed the car gently on the road. Once it was steady he opened the back door. There sitting in a child safety seat, was the happily cooing girl, all of two years old.

The relief of her safety quickly passed when the father scrambled from the driver’s seat and grabbed the stranger by the shirt. “Please!” he gasped, his voice an octave or two higher than I would have normally guessed, cracking between sobs. “Please, it was my wife and her damned lawyers! They were going to take Lacie away from me!”

“Calm down, friend. We all want what’s best for Lacie.”

“The hell he does!” howled an anguished feminine voice. Lowell came forward with the red-faced woman, the child’s mother, I learned, who had been waiting in one of the extra cars away from the road.

“Give her to me, Steven. You have no right--”

“No!” The wailing father pulled Lacie from the stranger’s arms, but with the car behind him, the stranger to his left and Lowell approaching from the right, there was nowhere for him to go.

“Give her your daughter, Mr. Herras,” Lowell said. “Don’t make us force you.”

The girl’s mother didn’t even wait for a response. Instead she just grabbed Lacie and wrenched her from her father’s arms. The child immediately began to cry.

“No! No, Mommy, want Daddy! Want Daddy!”

As the child’s wails mingled with her father’s, the stranger stared at Lowell. “It seems, officer, that perhaps someone should reevaluate this child’s custody status.”

“Who are you?” Lowell asked.

“I’m someone who wants to help.” He was about to fly off again, but somehow my instincts managed to override my astonishment.

“Wait! Don’t go!” I shouted.

“Miss St. Christopher,” he said in that calm, polite tone that was somehow endearing and annoying at the same time. “What can I do for you?”

“Let me tell your story. Who are you? How do you do things like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like what? Like coming up through the ground and walking through fire!”

“Why couldn’t I?”

“Because it’s impossible! People can’t fly or pick up cars! Bullets don’t bounce off of you and if you’re struck by lightning, it’s going to hurt.”

“Well, I don’t know about bullets or lightning, miss, but I think it’s quite obvious I can fly and pick up cars.”

“Then you damn well better fly your butt to the station,” Lowell said. “You’ve got a ton of questions to answer.”

“Most certainly,” the stranger said, “but I doubt my answers would satisfy.”

I saw him glance to the sky, so I pulled one of my cards and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. “At least answer my questions.”

He glanced down at the card, then at me. A small, secretive smile broke his lips and he nodded. Then, with a glance at the sky, he was gone.

“Dammit! Ellen, I ought to run you in!”

“For what, Captain?”

“For... for abetting a fugitive.”

“I didn’t know that saving little girl’s lives was against the law now. I’m sure Terry Bastion will be ecstatic to get that story.”

“Ah--” Lowell sputtered for a second then just growled. “Oh, get out of here. Write your damn story.”

I gave Lowell a smug grin and hopped back into the car. Terry would have to take this story.

“What do you mean you won’t take the story?” It was the next morning and I was pacing Terry’s office, waving the hard copy of my story in the air, hotter than a marathon runner in July.

“The same thing I meant last time, Ellen. If I printed this sort of thing I’d be run out of town. And you’d be run out for writing it.”

“Half the Timberton PD was there to watch it this time, Terry.”

“Then go get me some quotes from them saying that some flying nutcase is going around catching cars and saving babies. Then I’ll run the story. Oh, and speaking of which--”

“I haven’t gotten to the Christmas story yet. I’ve been busy.” I turned and walked out of Terry’s office, trying not to look as angry as I was.

When I got to my desk, there was a plain, unmarked white envelope sitting in front of my computer monitor. I glanced around, hoping the look on somebody’s face would give away the culprit, but there were no obvious suspects. A little cautious, I opened the envelope.

Inside was a small scrap of paper with six words scrawled on it in a charcoal pencil: “On the roof. Eleven. Come alone.”

I slid the envelope into my pocket and tried not to smile too widely. “All right, Terry,” I whispered. “Let’s see you turn the story down now.”

In the movies, you always see people standing on a roof at night as a matter of course. They never seem to get cold or bored or tired. That night, standing on the roof of the Charger building, I was all three.

I’d taken my black hair back and tied it in a bun to keep the wind from tossing it in my face. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought more than a light windbreaker with me that morning, not expecting to wind up on the roof of a seven-story building. The November wind was whipping around, starting to bite, and I was ready to give up when I finally saw him in the sky against the lights of the airport.

“Took you long enough,” I said.

“I apologize,” he said. “There was a cat stuck in a tree.”

“Typical boy scout routine. What is it with you?”

“I just like to help people.”

He landed on the roof and stood a few feet away from me. I could feel my limbs start to melt at the look in his eyes. Shaking off the feeling, I forced myself to start the interview.

“Who are you?”

“I’m... myself.”

“I mean, what’s your name?”

“My name if unimportant. If you must use one, John will suffice.”

“Fine. John, then. Out to protect your anonymity, huh?”

“Not really, I just don’t want any personal fame overriding my deeds.”

“Yeah. About those deeds... how do you do it, John? How can you fly or pick up cars?”

He smiled again. “The real question, Miss St. Christopher, is why can’t you?” He stepped forward and took my arm, placing my exposed hand next to his own. There was a bandage on his thumb, I noticed.

“Why is your skin darker than mine?” he asked.

“I... I was born that way. My mother is Hawaiian.”

“I assumed something of the sort. I was simply born the way I am. My parents were good, nurturing people. Salt of the Earth, you would call them. They always encouraged me and they told me anything is possible. And it always was. They never told me I couldn’t fly or sing or swim. I really don’t know where you got the notion it’s so unusual.”

My eyes were wide and my mouth hung open. “Are you telling me that the reason you can do that stuff is as stupidly simple as ‘No one told me I couldn’t’?”

“Maybe the difference, Miss St. Christopher, is that nobody told you that you could.”

“Then what’s this?” I asked, picking up his hand. “Why does somebody who can do anything need to wear a bandage?”

“Oh, that.” He flushed and turned away and I realized I had embarrassed him. I felt bad, but I took a certain guilty pleasure in it all the same. “I was chopping some carrots this morning. Somebody saw me with the knife and said, ‘Careful, you’ll cut yourself.’ Damned if I didn’t just a few seconds later.”

“Why could the knife cut you if a two-story blaze doesn’t even singe your coat?”

“I don’t know. I’d never been cut by a knife before... I guess I didn’t realize it would hurt until she told me it would.” He laughed a little. “It’s silly when you think about it.”

“Yeah. Silly.”

“As I told you, Miss St. Christopher, there’s really not that much to me. I just help people because I can. I only hope that people will begin to learn by my example. We’ve got to believe in each other if we’re ever going to get anywhere.”

“Admirable,” I said. “But maybe you should tell some of this to the police. Lowell was getting pretty mad yesterday.”

“Perhaps I will. Well, then, if there’s nothing further, I’ll be going.”

“No, wait!”

“Yes? What else is there?”

“I...” The words were on the edge of my lips, but I couldn’t seem to get them out. For all my vaunted reporter’s instincts, I had no idea what to say to him. He smiled at me one last time and flew away. The next time I saw him, he was dying.

When I showed Terry my quotes from the police and from the hero himself, he quickly gave in on the story. The next day the Charger ran a front-page story of my interview with John, still “Nobody Special” in the headline. Underneath the bold print was a photograph of the shattered asphalt he’d come up through to catch Steven Herras’ car. “Nobody Special saves girl from high speed chase” was plastered all over Timberton by seven o’clock in the morning.

“Good job, Ellen. You see, this is why I keep you on staff. You’re a pain in the butt, but when you want to, you come through.”

“Thanks, Terry. I love you too.”

“Ellen!” Jacob came into Terry’s office white-faced. “I just got off the phone... your friend, the... the flying guy. He’s at St. Anne’s.”

“What?”

“There was a hostage situation at First National this morning. He went in, saved seven people and caught the robbers, but he took three slugs to the chest.”

“How is that possible?” Terry asked. “I thought nothing could hurt this guy.”

I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t talk and fight back the tears at the same time. I knew what had happened. After all, I was the one who told him that bullets don’t bounce.

I’m still not sure why the doctors let me in to see him. I wasn’t family. Maybe because I was the one who wrote the story on him. Maybe because I was the only one he knew.

He was on a respirator, bandaged up in intensive care. He looked awful, and all I could think about was how I had closed his eyes, how I had shattered his smile.

“Hey, John.”

“Miss... St. Christopher.”

“Call me Ellen.”

“Ellen, then.”

I couldn’t take any more and I felt the tears begin to flow down my cheeks, lightly staining his blanket. “Oh God, I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I’m the one--”

“Don’t be sorry. I knew... there would be danger. I did just what... I wanted... I helped people.”

“How are you going to help anybody now?”

He opened his eyes and somehow managed to give me that same smile, even with a tube in his nose. “Did you... even read your own... paper this morning? Steven Herras got temporary custody... of his daughter... I was at the courthouse. He asked me... how he could... repay me. I told him... to make his life... and Lacie’s... count for something. He said they would. All they needed... was something... to believe in.”

“That’s good,” I said. My voice was warbling and I didn’t think I would ever see straight again, but I kept on my happy face for the dying man in front of me. “But how do you get to help anyone?”

“They’ll do it... for me. They’ll remember. They’ll keep... up the fight.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But not like you did. Never like you.”

He smiled one more time, closed his eyes, and went to sleep. Three hours later, the doctors came out of his room and told me he would never wake up again.

The funeral was surprisingly well attended for someone who had no name, no family. He had a lot of friends, though. The Miles family from the fire was there, along with some of the hostages from the bank, Steven Herras and Lacie. Captain Lowell was there, and Barstowe from the fire department, each with several of their men. Terry went for some reason, probably to keep me from falling apart, and of course, I was there with a wreath of flowers I laid on the coffin in tears.

The eulogy was short, mercifully. After the minister was finished, he smiled to the assembly. “Would anyone like to speak about the deceased?”

Everyone wanted to. Herras was first, then Lowell and Barstowe, then many others. I sat, watching them go up, one at a time, offering him their thanks and covering their eyes from the sun. Finally, everyone who wanted to say something was finished and the minister took the podium again.

“Anyone else?” he asked. I could feel his eyes boring straight into me. I was expected to speak. I swallowed and took the podium.

I looked out over the crowd, looking to me for comfort, for inspiration, but none of that was my job. That was what John was for. I felt the tears begin to well up again, but I forced them down.

“I’m sorry. I just have nothing to say.”

Two days later, I went to Terry’s office with several pages, fresh from the office laser printer. “Here you go,” I said. “Sorry I took so long.”

“What’s this?” he asked.

“My assignment.”

He took the papers and read the lead out loud. “‘This is the time of year when all good little boys and girls wait patiently for the arrival of a visitor from the north, a kind-hearted old man who gives not only toys, but love as well.’ Where did this come from, Ellen? I thought you didn’t believe in Santa Claus.”

I gave him a thin smile. “Everybody’s got to believe in something.”