Jack's Christmas Eve

Even though Jack Madison was, by this time, the voice of CSYM's flagship program, he drew the Christmas Eve shift, because he was the one unmarried announcer on staff.

That afternoon, he had been in the studio to introduce and talk around the program he and his team had recorded the week before at an orphanage. It had become an annual event--they took fruit and candy and a sack of small gifts, some musicians from Jack's show came to entertain, and Jack talked to as many children as they could fit in the two hours.

It was both a happy and sad time for the children, many with drawn and grey faces. On the drive back, Jack said, "I felt we were in a room full of Tiny Tims." "Or," said Leo, the engineer, "a lot of future Scrooges."

Crunching snow underfoot, Jack thought of the Christmas day show he would play tomorrow. As usual, it would be the CSYM staff party, at which all members were required to perform. Jack had the least embarrassing job, introducing performers and getting them off, and he could count on Gavin Stone to hide drinks under plants around the mezzanine for the crew packing up.

Twenty minutes to seven. He had time to stop at a house he had come to know well. The light inside was soft and mellow, and Jane met him at the door. She wore a deep burgundy sweater and a pencil-slim grey skirt and somewhere in the background a choir was singing. He wouldn't see her again until after Christmas; the next day she and her parents would travel the city, visiting her many aunts and uncles and cousins.

"It's almost five to seven," he said. "I know," she said. "I'll be listening. But I wish you didn't have to go."

And Jack felt the same. But it would be all right. They would spend the next sixty Christmases together.