I had just gotten off the overnight shift on the Christmas morning I drank cheap vodka with Ricky Henderson’s cousin, just before he blew his last chance with his family. The BART didn’t start running until 8 AM, so anybody looking to get from San Francisco to Oakland without a car or money for a cab fare had to take the all-night bus from the old Trans-Bay terminal on Mission St. The all-night bus is a solemn affair on any regular morning, but when I got to the small crowd of travelers in massive terminal on Christmas there was an especially deprived mood sticking to the drafty air. There were only about seven people there, each arriving alone for his or her reasons to this place, none of us in any position to judge one another, but all of us aware of the fact that we were not with loved ones on Christmas morning. I felt a moment of superiority because my basis for being there was work related and I had a girlfriend at home who loved me, but I was reminded of my plans for when I got home were to get drunk, stoned and watch Star Trek: Deep Space 9 alone before I crawled in bed with my girlfriend who I hardly ever saw because of my crappy job that I despised and only had because I’d squandered every single opportunity ever given to me. The only person talking in the whole terminal was a black guy of about forty who was merrily chatting to a tiny old man whose only contribution to the conversation were grunts, nods and an occasional “I hear ya” when prompted.
When the F bus arrived we all marched aboard and sat as far from each other as possible, except for the chatter, who sat right in front of me. “Merry Christmas,” he said right as he sat down.
“Morning,” I did my civil duty and acknowledged his existence and returned my gaze to my book.
“Where you going on this Christmas morning?” he asked as if people who are reading were asking for interruptions.
“Just home. Oakland.”
“Cool. Cool. Open some presents? Have a family breakfast?”
“No. Not for me. I’m just coming home for work. I don’t have any family near by and my girlfriend is sleeping. Honestly, my Christmas morning is going to be spent with a six pack and a Star Trek DVD.”
“Ah, Star Trek, the orginal series?”
“Deep Space 9. It follows the Next Generation series.”
“Sure, I know. Sisko, Dax, Odo. I love Odo, the shape changer. Hey, you want a little taste of this?” He held up his paper bag and pulled a bottle out enough to show me it was Royal Gate vodka. With that I decided this guy was alight and may as well go along because he was going to talk to me anyway.
I took a swig and passed it back. It tasted like I remembered Royal Gate tasting when I stole a jug of it from the grocery store in high school: like paint thinner. I coughed after swallowing and remembered I had a Martinelli's sparkling apple cider in my bag. “You want some chaser?” I asked him.
His name was Ricky he was going to see his kids to open presents. For the last three Christmases his ex hadn’t let him see the family, for reasons he did not give and I did not ask. This was the year he was going to really wow the kids, turn around her opinion of him, and never be left out of family events again. He had already drunk half the bottle before he started sharing it with me, and we were moving quickly through the rest. I thought about telling him that getting drunk right before his mighty comeback was going to create the exact opposite effect he was hoping for, but what good would that have done? He was already drunk, he couldn’t reschedule Christmas morning, it would have just put a rift in our new friendship, temporary as it may have been. All I could do was enjoy the moment of excited anticipation with him and depart the bus with best wishes that he pull off what was likely to be his last chance.
Once talking about family it didn’t take long for him to tell me that he was Ricky Henderson’s cousin. “Yeah, we have the same first name, but different last names,” he told me. “We’re named after our grandfather. Great man, great man. He was a little bit older so they called him Big Ricky and me Little Ricky.” Little Ricky didn’t see much of Big Ricky anymore, but the famous baseball player used to own a ranch in Arizona and would have his younger cousin out there all the time. “He had twenty or thirty horses out there. Some of them were racing horses too. Beautiful animals. I even used to ride one, if you can picture that. Me, riding a horse. They had to give me the tamest one, the one Ricky’s daughter used. But, I didn’t care, I was riding a horse!”
“I rode a horse once, on some family vacation,” I told him. “I was so little I don’t even remember where it was. I know I loved it though.”
“They would just run free out there, some of them. Like in a herd. That’s how big the ranch was, that you could have herd of horses running around, all devil may care.”
“Sounds awesome.”
“It was,” he said. “But Ricky had to sell it. You know about his troubles.”
I didn’t know. I hadn’t cared about baseball since I was ten years old, but I nodded and did my “yeah, well, what you gonna do?” smile. We sat for a moment quietly contemplating horses as we looked out the window over the Bay Bridge. The sprawling Port of Oakland was coming into view, marked with towering quadruped cranes behind the mountains of shipping containers. There was not a trace of movement down there. The sun was rising higher so I put my sunglasses on.
“Sunglasses on Christmas, huh?” Ricky said, lacking some of the previously easy buoyancy. I suspect he felt like he had to say something.
“It’s not like it’s really Christmas,” I said. I was feeling warm from the booze, but I wasn’t drunk yet. I was tired and a little bitter, and felt like lashing out against a holiday people universally enjoyed. I can never just walk passed a punch bowl everyone is taking pleasure in without wanting to add a couple drops of piss into it.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a bullshit holiday, they just made up. Or rather they stole,” I said. “Jesus, if he existed at all, wasn’t born on Christmas. From the best guesses they have he was born some time in the late summer. But when they were converting the pagans in the Roman Empire, who already celebrated the winter solstice, you know, like the shortest day of the year? Well, it was easier to keep that holiday going and tell people Jesus was born that day. That’s why we have Christmas trees. It’s all pagan. You didn’t know about this?”
“I’ve heard something about it,” Ricky said, his voice even flatter. He was looking at me with new eyes. He was seeing who I really was, rather than how he frist saw me through the eyes of optimistic and tipsy enthusiasm. “It don’t seem like any of that matters any more. It doesn’t matter why you celebrate, right? Just as long as you get together with family and have a good time, right?”
“Sure. Yeah, of course.”
“Doesn’t have to be a reason for the season.”
“So long as there’s a season?”
“There you go,” Ricky said, making another run at his pep, but sounding a bit like a claymation character who just taught me the spirit of Christmas and the issue was now settled.
We sat quietly again, looking out the window. I didn’t pull out my book, but I wanted to. He did offer me the bottle a couple more times and I dutifully swigged it. Just before my stop at San Pablo and 40th St. he took the last swig and held up and empty bottle to show me our victory. “That’s it,” I said and stood up.
“This your stop?” he asked.
“Yeah, I have to transfer to the 72. Good luck with your family, man. I really hope it works out.”
“It’ll be all good.”
I almost said, “I hope so”, but stopped myself and said, “You know it.” We shook hands.
It was bright and sunny outside, but even colder than it had been in San Francisco. The air felt raw and new like it should on Christmas morning. Before the next bus came by I went into the liquor store and got a six pack of beer, but also a small bottle of Royal Gate and some orange juice to hold me over. When I got home I got so drunk that I had to rewatch the last episode of Deep Space 9 when I came home from work the next morning.
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