Emerald Smiles

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. No characters are based on real people, whether living or dead. Any resemblance to a real person is pure coincidence.

I hurried towards the bus stop, fighting against the wind. Trying to see through the swirling snow. Work still lingered in my mind. Charts and due dates. My failures reflected in the frozen puddles of sewage and mud. Wishing Christmas would pass with its manufactured cheer and consumer cacophony.

Suddenly a poorly dressed man of no more than 50 years of age stepped into my path and smiled at me with emerald green eyes. 'God is a jealous God,' he spoke haltingly. 'He sees that you have lost your faith. He is coming.'

I immediately bowed my head and continued on the sidewalk, ignoring the crazy man. But he had successfully taken my mind from work and plunged it into dark thoughts about God and religion. 'Faith, a tool of the ignorant,' I thought to myself.

The bitter wind touched an old scar on my cheek, a wound suffered from a glancing hockey puck. A result of hesitation. 'He who hesitates is lost,' I heard my father say, his voice succumbing to the Doppler Effect as he skated back towards center ice. I shook my head, trying to distance myself from that voice.

A block away, I saw the faint yellow lights of the 156. Just pulling up. In my loafers, I broke into a light jog, slipping as I went. But I caught the bus driver's eye just in time. I sat two rows from the front. Hoping against all hope that I'd be left alone with my dark thoughts. That I could rail against God's neglect and faith and this ridiculous season of good will and road rage.

But a talkative young man sat next to me, interested in carrying on about some gift he was anticipating. A video game. Or another electronic waste of time in which I had little interest. The young man turned to me and smiled with his emerald green eyes. I wished to snarl at him but hesitated at the unmitigated happiness I saw. The same happiness I had once felt long ago at the sight of the toy train my grandparents had given me.

I exited the bus and walked - again through the swirling snow - to my apartment. I made myself a sandwich and sat in my recliner watching the tail end of the 6 p.m. half hour news cycle. The 6:30 cycle began with a breaking story. A young man had been shot and killed on the 156 just minutes before.

I turned off the television and sat in the recliner for a long time. My thoughts, jagged and melancholy. Faithless. Tempestuous. And then, a nostalgic break. I heard - whether somewhere outside my apartment or inside my head - my grandmother humming Silent Night. I rose from the recliner and began a minor excavation in my storage closet. I unpacked the box. And I connected the pieces. There on my dining room table, I watched as the small locomotive raced around the track.