The Night After Christmas
by
John Hulme
Copyright 2011 John Hulme
It was the night after Christmas when the snow and the temperature finally stopped falling. High on the hillside, a stiff walk beyond the narrow road that turned off the side road that twisted away from the rural road that came indirectly from the nearest township, Ellen picked up her three-legged dog, Fergus, and looked out of the window of her tiny farmhouse. Idly scratching the appreciative animal behind a slightly chewed ear, she watched the full moon finally reappear through the last flurry of snowflakes and cast its silver light once more upon her small corner of this very wide world.
Not that there was much to see at the moment. Everything was white and smooth. Even the wood and tall trees at the end of her property blended seamlessly into the pasture land before it and the huge drifts of snow, blown up the hill by the vicious wind banked against the scrub oak and native pines forming one continuous, undulating and indistinguishable mass of deep, deep frozen nothingness.
Ellen sighed. It would be several days before she could dig herself out of this mess and probably even longer before the township authorities came along and plowed the winding road that led to the bottom of her property and over the small, now frozen stream that separated her from the rest of Ohio. She was totally cut off from the rest of the world and felt pleased that she had heeded all the prior warnings and stocked up with food in anticipation of a white Christmas.
She had just finished congratulating herself, and was wondering what she should do first, phone the office or warm up the coffee pot, when the lights went out. Cursing softly under her breath, she put down the dog and waited until her eyes adjusted to the moon-glow reflected off the snow outside, then felt her way into the kitchen and the fuse box on the wall by the pantry. Her curses doubled in volume and sincerity as match-light quickly revealed that all the fuses were intact and the electric meter was not turning. Not only was she cut off from the outside world the outside world had just cut her off.
Almost at once she started to feel cold. The old farmhouse in which she had lived for these last 10 years was not insulated and suffered mightily from heat in the summer and cold in the winter. It had been an annually postponed project to add extra layers of fiberglass to all the internal and external surfaces; a lack of insulation she was now suddenly starting to regret. At least she had installed extra fires and heaters in every room, but these were electric heaters and now useless.
Putting on her green, insulated coat, which had been idly passing the time over the back of a kitchen chair, Ellen rescued the three-legged Fergus from the cold tile floor and considered calling for help. At least her cell phone still worked, didn’t it? Or did it? The battery indicator icon was red; one call and the phone would need charging again! The curses were now of a deeper and of a more earthy nature. The dog tensed in her arms as it sensed the seriousness of the crisis they were both now facing.
“Sorry Fungus,” she said to the anxious dog, unconsciously using the pet name her father had given this little Beagle when she had rescued it from certain death the previous summer. “It looks like we should start digging.” Fergus whimpered as its three remaining paws touched the rapidly cooling tiles and Ellen pulled on her thick boots. A wisp of condensation hung in the air every time she breathed out.
Wrapping a scarf around her head, she was just about to open the back door, when a loud knock fell upon it. Both occupants of the kitchen jumped. Steadying her nerves, she pushed hard against the back door and forced it open against the pile of snow that had accumulated up the stone steps. There, to her amazement stood a man and a large deer, which, on second glance turned out to be a reindeer of particularly impressive size.
“’Scuse me miss,” the man said in a strange accent that clearly wasn’t local to that part of Ohio, “but we needs some help.” He waved his arm vaguely in the direction of the reindeer who was panting hard and blowing out clouds of intense condensation from it mouth and nostrils. Clearly the animal had just run a great distance, but, strangely, there were no hoof prints in the snow behind it.
Ellen switched her gaze back to the man. He was above average height but as thin as the rake standing beside the barn. No coat covered his frame, only a jacket cut from some very insubstantial green cloth, which was rubbed even thinner in a few places and had clearly seen better days. His legs at first looked naked, but a second glance showed that they were, in fact, housed in a tight fitting panty-hose-like material that accented his knobbley knees; an anatomical detail that would have provoked mirth in different circumstances.
“Had a bit of an accident, like,” the strange figure continued, puffing out his cheeks, which Ellen noticed immediately were bright red. A stocking cap, also green, covered a pointed head that had not been covered by natural hair for many years. But it was the eyes that now caught her attention. In the moonlight they could have been any color but blue, and they sparkled with a dancing twinkle that reminded her of fireflies swirling above the grass on a mid-summer evening.
“We wuz doin’ quite well,” the stranger continued, scratching the side of his pointed nose with an ungloved finger, then flicking away a small bead of moisture that had accumulated at the tip. “The boss and me had just made our last delivery in this area, the large house at the end of Burghley Beck, and we wuz aheading ‘ome, like, when ole 237 here hit one of those power lines, snapped it completely in twain he did, and cut up his front leg summat fierce.”
Ellen looked more closely at the reindeer and saw that the skin on the front right leg was badly torn and hanging off the bone in a thick, grisly red strip.
“The boss remembered that you wuz the only veterinary for miles and miles around here and tol’ me to cum and sees you at once an’ see if you cun help us, like.” He looked at Ellen and lifted his bushy eyebrows.
Ellen, now that she understood the situation, which was not uncommon in her line of work, promptly went into professional mode. Down went the protesting dog and she turned to get her bag of implements and medicines, which she conveniently kept right by the door. She was used to strangers turning up at strange times with sick or damaged animals that required her immediate attention. This was one of the penalties and blessings of being a vet in a rural practice; animals get sick or injured at the most inconvenient times.
Although she had never treated a sick reindeer before, there not being much call for this kind of expertise outside a zoo, the wound was all too familiar in a part of the country where everyone owned a horse and many of the owners thought that their animals were a born show jumpers. Sewing up leg damage often paid a few bills at the end of a lean month.
“Help me get the animal into the barn,” she said briskly, turning to see the strange man bending down and tickling Fergus under his chin, to the obvious satisfaction of the latter. “I’ll need to sew up that wound and give him some antibiotics, but it’s too cold to do that out here.”
“Of course, miss,” replied the green-jacketed stranger, patting the dog one last time and pushing it back inside the house. “S’here, s’here,” he called to the reindeer who promptly raised his head from the snow and gave a low, snuffling whinny. Together the three of them staggered over to the door of the barn, which was never locked. Ellen, who her father swore weighed only 100 lbs soaking wet, had a hard time pushing her thighs against the heavy drifts, but the stranger and the reindeer seemed to glide rather than walk, and made it to the barn well before her.
Inside the barn Ellen switched on a large battery powered flashlight and took a close look at the damaged front leg. It was a very bad gash that started just below the knee and had torn a thick strip of skin and underl
ying tissue from the shinbone all the way down to the hoof. Blood was oozing everywhere and the clean, white bone was clearly visible.
“I’m going to give your animal a sedative,” she said to the owner, “and I want you to pick up the other front leg and hold it firmly off the ground.” She did not need to explain that this maneuver would prevent the reindeer from moving, or kicking her, or taking any kind of sudden evasive action as the stitching and repair work began.
The stranger smiled, “’Ole 237 is a good beast, 'ee is, 'ee won’t give yer any trouble.” But Ellen had heard this tale too many times before from owners who thought they understood their pets, and she carried the scars to prove it. “Just hold the leg off the ground,” she replied grimly and went to