Christmas At Juvy Hall

This column began about three decades ago. I began working on it in 1985. I’m still not sure I’ve got it right, but it is my Christmas present to you, as it once was to me.

Christmas never meant that much to me.

Well, not after I quit sticking my feet under mama’s table, anyway.

Most of my Christmases were spent in some bar or greasy spoon poring over a still-damp early edition with my byline and somebody else’s bloody mistake all over it.

I had about as much goodwill in my soul as a multiple-car pileup or a family reunion shooting.

But that was before I had supper with Santa Claus.

It was called Pete’s, or maybe Joe’s, or the Deluxe Diner; someplace with enough chrome out front to grille a Cadillac and enough grease out back to lube one. About the only thing to recommend it was that it hadn’t the decency to close on Christmas Eve.

He was sitting there in a dirty red suit that looked like it came from the north pole, alright, by way of the seedier parts of New Jersey. His hat and mittens lay in a crumpled heap on the only other occupied seat in the joint.

He was nursing a cup of bad coffee and line of worse jokes. The cook ignored him so he tried a few on the waitress. She wasn’t buying, either. Humor doesn’t sit well on hot griddles and flat feet.

More out of curiosity than compassion, boredom than benevolence, I sat down and soaked up a couple of his jokes.

His name was Meyer.

He lived alone.

He sensed he had an ear beside him primed for more than corny puns, so he filled it with his life’s story.

His wife died. Car wreck. They said the guy was drunk. Who knows? To this day, he said, he still slept on the one side of the bed.

They had a son, born just in time for Khe San.

Bitter? Nah! He was an immigrant. Maybe if he hadn’t come here, his son would never have been born at all.

But he missed kids, So every year he put on the suit and went down to juvenile hall to play Santa…

Juvenile Hall?

Jeez, Meyer, juvy hall? An orphan’s home or the children’s hospital maybe. But juvy hall? That’s like delivering kittens to a hyena den! The kids they lock up out there have broken glass for souls!

Yeah. This year a kid they had in isolation (That’s the child psychology euphemism for solitary.) spit on him. Youngster about 15. You probably remember reading about him.

No. I wrote about him.

I remembered all right.

I remembered a pool of congealed blood next to a busted open candy machine.

I remembered a young woman with a couple of babies who would have to make do with a smiling cop’s fading, black-draped picture instead of a father. She had that kind of stunned agony on her face people get when they’ve been told their life is over, but they’ve got to go on living anyway.

I remembered the obituary of a naive kid just out of the academy who once told his partner he didn’t like wearing a gun, but if he did, maybe everybody else wouldn’t have to.

I remembered a rap sheet on a youngster about 15 that took up three pages.

He was a punk.

Now he was a killer.

“Lord, Meyer, what kind of kid spits on Santa Claus?”

“Exactly the kind of kid who needs to know there is a Santa Claus.

“Come on, Meyer, I been to more than three county fairs and a taffy pull. I don’t want to hear that sheep dip about how there ain’t no bad kids… “

“Oh no, there’s bad kids. Lot’s of ‘em. And bad places where they come from and most of them never get out of. Sure there’s bad kids. Why do you think I go down to juvy hall every year in this lousy suit and pretend not to die inside when I remember putting together an electric train for my little boy and talking to my Sarah about really important things like getting a new couch, or where we would send him to college or whether we should try to get a new car next year or the year after? I don’t let all that kill my soul because there’s bad kids. And because there’s not much you or me or anybody can do about it except whatever we can.”

“C’mon, Meyer, you’re not even a Christian…”

“So maybe a guy from Nazareth wasn’t a Jew? Lemme tell you something. When my boy died, they took a long time getting the body home. So long I got mad about it. It seems sort of foolish now, but at the time it was important to me. So they finally told me why.

“See, he wounded. And this corpsman, this other kid named Reilly was carrying him. And when they got hit by this mortar shell, they got all mixed up together, and they took some time straightening things out. How many Jews you know named Reilly? Tell me how a Lace Curtain Mick from New Rochelle gets mixed up in the same plastic sack with a Jew from Dallas. Maybe then we can talk more about Christians and Jews.”

We talked some more. I don’t remember about what. Christmas mostly.

I didn’t notice until he said his good-byes and reached to pay for his coffee. As his hand extended across the counter, the frayed red sleeve hiked up about halfway to reveal a tattoo on the underside of his forearm; a series of dark blue numbers.

I sat for a long time after he left, staring at my own reflection against the moonless city night, thinking. Thinking about history; humankind, whatever that is. Thoughts. Deeds. Words.

Mostly some words I hadn’t thought of in a long time, but have thought of quite a lot since:

“Fear not, for I bring you glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, for unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior…”