Don’t Let the Light Burn Out Before December

The concrete on my porch was already hot at seven. I went out for the mail in my socks and almost stepped on Santa.

He was plastic, the cheap blow mold kind with a lantern glued to one hand.

Next to him was a skinny fake pine wrapped in faded tinsel, and somebody had jammed three candy canes into the pot where my petunias cooked themselves two weeks ago. The whole setup looked like it had been stolen off a lawn in December and dumped on mine for a laugh.

One of my neighbors, Dave, lives four houses down and has two teenagers who think they’re funnier than they are. That was the first name that came into my head.

I kicked the base of the Santa with my toe. It rang against the step, hollow, and a yellowed tag swung off the lantern.

My name was on it in ballpoint. The letters leaned the way my grandfather’s did on checks, sharp and impatient, like the pen was being punished for moving too slow.

He died six years ago. We boxed his winter coats and argued over who got the good casserole dish.

Nobody in that family still writes like that. I turned the tag over anyway.

Don't let the light burn out before December.

I stood there long enough for the humidity to collect on my upper lip. Then I pulled the fake cord out of Santa’s back, gathered the tree and the canes against my chest, and carried the pile through the house to the spare room. That’s where the treadmill lives, and the Christmas wrap I never put away in January, and the boxes I keep meaning to label. I set Santa facing the wall and shut the door.

By noon the air conditioner died. I called the repair number on the side of the unit and a man with a smoker’s laugh told me I was the fourteenth person since breakfast. He said he could look at it Thursday. Today was Monday.

I put a box fan on the coffee table and tried to answer emails. Sweat ran down the side of the laptop. Around one I heard a low hum that wasn’t the fan. It was coming from the hall.

The spare room was cold enough that I pulled my arms in. Frost made a thin white line along the top of the window. Santa was facing the room now. I didn’t turn him. The lantern was on, glowing red, and the plug was lying on the carpet a good three feet from the outlet.

I picked the cord up and felt along it for a split or a hidden battery pack. Nothing. I touched the bulb and yanked my fingers back. It was the temperature of a bottle from the back of the fridge.

Outside a mower started. Someone yelled at a dog. The bank clock two streets over would have said ninety if I’d walked far enough to see it. I went to the closet, put on the heavy hoodie I wear in January, and brought my chair and laptop in. The fan in the living room kept turning, pushing hot air at an empty sofa.

At five the block lost power. The neighbor’s unit shut off with a sound like a person giving up. Cicadas took over the street. My phone said twelve percent and then eleven while I was looking at it. Heat came under the doors and filled the kitchen first, then the hall.

The spare room held. Forty degrees, if I had to guess. The lantern didn’t so much as flicker.

I stripped the mattress off my bed and dragged it across the hardwood. The corner caught on the hall runner and I said something ugly to it and kept pulling. I shut the spare room door with my foot and sat on the mattress in the hoodie and two blankets from the closet. The plastic Santa threw a cheap red shape on the wall, the same shape it threw on snow in pictures from when I was small and my grandfather plugged his set in too early every year because he said November was close enough.

I slept in pieces. Each time I woke the lantern was still on. Once I reached out and checked the cord again, as if the outlet might have crawled over in the dark.

Morning came yellow through the blinds. The power was back. I could hear somebody’s AC already laboring. The spare room had warmed up overnight, a little dusty now, and the frost gone from the window. Santa was dark. The plug was still on the floor.

The tag was on the nightstand where I must have set it. The ink looked older in daylight. I carried Santa, the tree, and the canes back to the porch and left them on the mat the way I found them, except I taped the tag to the lantern so it wouldn’t blow into the yard.

I stood there for a minute. Dave drove past my house and lifted two fingers off the wheel. I almost called out to ask him about the Santa, but he was already past.

I went inside and called the repair guy again. He said Thursday still stood. I poured coffee that had gone bitter in the pot and drank it anyway.

On the porch, in the heat that was already climbing, the lantern came on by itself again. Just the small bulb. No cord. No audience.

I watched it from the kitchen window while I rinsed the mug. I did not bring the set back in. I also did not unplug a thing that wasn’t plugged in.

December was five months away. I had mail to open and a house that would be unbearable by noon, and a light on my doormat that my grandfather’s hand had told me not to let die.

I left it burning and went to find a thermometer for the spare room, in case the power failed again and I needed to know where winter was willing to stay.