Armand gripped his can of Budweiser a little tighter with each minute that the baby cried and cried a little louder. Though he heard her crooning softly, Corrine tonight just couldn’t seem to settle her down. His face, a palette splotched with green, then blue, then red as the disk beneath the little tree they’d set up on the table spun slowly round. As tree tips caught the changing lights they flashed for seconds, lit up with color, dulled back to plastic green. He found himself mesmerized by the effect, or maybe just the beer. His right hand twitched beside him on the sofa, as if it still felt the sense of holding something cramped for a long time within its grasp. He finally stilled it, brought it up to wrap around the other on the cold beer it held.
He sat up straight, unmoving, despite the dots of color dancing on the canvas of his chest; despite the flashing lights inside his mind. He was thinking of last Christmas Eve…
…the snow falling heavily and yet not quick enough to transform the garbage piles into anything but what they were. The plows that dared go through flew by, spraying sand that clung more to the dirty buildings than landing on the street. First floor windows looked like stuccoed blocks above a layered white sill pebbled by the sand as if by gunshot. There was no magic to Christmas, he thought. He’d have to do it all himself if he could make it at least a little happy for one-year-old Jason, Corrine and whoever slept within her belly, lately anxious to come out; he looked up and down the street and wondered why. He shivered from the cold wind and stepped down from his front stoop. His footprints in the dirty snow marked a path he never thought he’d ever take again, were soon covered by the clean full flakes of snow as if he’d never need to find his way back home.
Just like he always had, the years before Corrine, he walked on panther paws, his ears tuned to the night and what was normal, what was not. What signaled danger, and where he could creep in and corner prey.
Blocks away he stopped outside a Dairymart, and stood beyond the wash of lights and watched. Waited. Breathing in the frigid air in slow, deep, deliberate calming lungfuls. He saw a few customers come out, an old man with a pack of cigarettes, his shabby coat his ticket to peace this Christmas Eve. A car pulled up–a sleek white Lincoln. Best not to go in now, Armand decided, heard the golden chains clinking with the man’s strutting walk, despite the muffling fur around his wrists and collar. Fifteen minutes later when he had seen just what he wanted, he fingered steel that felt like an icicle in his pocket, pulled his cap down over his face and went inside.
The cashier was a young slack-faced man who, used to this, calmly held his hands up in immediate surrender. He knew enough to keep his foot away from the alarm button on the floor, and at a nod from Armand, opened the register drawer. It clanged loudly in the silence of the store, as a single shrill note from a lone Christmas bell. He scooped out all the paper money, handed it over the counter, stuck his hands up in the air again and took one step back. The four customers quickly emptied out their pockets and their purses, resigned yet frightened, Armand could tell. Their eyes were as big as coal nuggets and bedded on his gun. He turned his attention to the middle-aged black-coated woman and eyed her for a moment while the others seemed to shrink into the counters and the racks like wisps of smoke curling away from flame.
"Your rings," he said, a snarl that held contempt he didn’t feel. But envy and his hunger, and the years of past scenarios brought the tone into the right degree of threat. He still felt the chill of waiting in the cold night within his bones and in his heart.
She’d come for just a quart of milk, a bag of cookies for her grandson. Her eyes were sad with knowing that as of now, she couldn’t pay. She looked down at her fingers, pulled a diamond and a band from her left hand and held it out. Dropped it into his outstretched hand and stared him in the eye.
"The other one too," he said, pocketing her rings and pointing to another wide gold plain one on the ring finger of her right hand. He was thinking of Corrine and how bad she wanted to get married, how proud and happy she would be.
She hesitated just a moment, looked down and back again at him without a thought. Clasped her hands together and said simply, "No."
It seemed as if he drew a breath in long-drawn out slow motion, although he felt he couldn’t breathe at all. And for a moment, they crossed their swords in eyes that shone as vividly as any pure steel polished blade could gleam. He felt himself emerging back from somewhere into the now, stood up taller, faced her unrelenting stare.
"C’mon, lady, give it up," he hissed. His nerves began to blink in spastic motion like the string of lights that hung around the counter, framing the cashier who now began to chew his lower lip in earnest, as if it were a fresh stick of gum.
"No," she repeated to him. Her mind and heart locked in her decision, flooded her with a resolve her stomach didn’t feel. But her voice was steady, though quiet, and she went on. "I won’t give you this, it was my mother’s. It’s worth more to me than my own life. But I will sell you this ring tonight and at a bargain. You’ll have to pay the price of knowing that it cost a human life."
—
Armand’s grip upon the beer can eased a bit; in sync, it seemed with the cooing of his daughter’s cries. And soon Corrine came in and sat beside him, sighed contentedly and brushed her fingers through his hair. Then he felt her rest her head against his shoulder, and both sat silently just watching the lights play their colors on the tree.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology