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The conductor of the Polar Express whistled to himself as he walked the length of the Pullman car which had been full of children only an hour before. Now it was empty, as it would be for the next year, until next Christmas Eve.
"A good run this year, overall," the conductor mused aloud as he carefully shut a partially-open window. He turned back and looked over the tidy car with satisfaction. "Most excitement I've had in a couple decades, anyhow."
He opened the front door of the car and shivered slightly as the chill wind hit his face forcefully. Just the engine to check now, then he could go back to his private compartment and nap the rest of the way back to the North Pole. He supposed that he could wait and check the engine when they arrived, but he didn't entirely trust the engineer- all right, he didn't trust either Smokey or Steamer at all to make the run safely without any supervision. Besides, now that the children had disembarked, the conductor was completely alone in the body of the PolEx. Even the two loons driving the train would be some company. . . .
Something moving at the top of the next car caught the conductor's attention. A shadow- or was it a light? Strangely enough, he couldn't tell which. Frowning, he nimbly hopped over the gap between cars and started up the ladder to the roof. It couldn't be a child up there; he had carefully marked off each of the PolEx's little passengers as they disembarked. The clockwork waiters were safely stowed away, so it had to be either Smokey or Steamer up there, fooling around when they should be worrying about getting back to the North Pole in one piece.
"I'll have their jobs if they're slacking off," the conductor muttered into the wind as he climbed. "Just wait until the boss hears about-" He trailed off when he stuck his head up over the edge of the roof, holding onto his hat with one hand. There was someone up there all right, but it wasn't Smokey or Steamer.
"Who the blazes are you?" the conductor yelled over the wind. "And what are you doing on top of my train?" As in most moments of crisis, he forgot that technically it was Mr. C's train. Whenever there was a chance that the PolEx was in danger, it immediately became his baby.
The man on top of the car had had his back to the conductor, but at the challenge, he jumped and turned around. The conductor's eyes narrowed as he took in the mismatched layers of clothing and the man's unshaven face and crooked nose. He had seen plenty of hobos back in his pre-PolEx days, when he had been a regular conductor on a regular train. He hadn't liked freeloaders then, and he didn't like them any better now- especially when a hobo was the last thing he expected to find on his Polar Express.
"You're usually asleep by now!" the hobo snapped. If a hobo was the last thing he had expected to find, that comment was about the last thing the conductor had expected to hear.
"I. . . how do you know that?" The hobo just smirked at him and turned back to the small fire he had burning on the train's roof. The conductor wondered briefly how it managed to stay lit up there in all the wind, but that was the least of his concerns.
"Come down from there this instant!" he bellowed. "Do you know how many regulations you're violating?" The hobo held up one hand over his shoulder and opened and closed it in imitation of someone talking.
"Why- you-" the conductor spluttered in helpless rage. He climbed farther up the ladder and leaned forward to clap a hand on the man's shoulder. He wasn't exactly sure what he'd do after that- drag the man down to deal with him somewhere that wasn't the roof of a moving train, he supposed. However, he didn't get a chance; his hand passed right through the hobo's arm.
The conductor opened his mouth to yell something about blazes or tarnation, but no words came out.
"Fine, hands off, I'll leave," the hobo grumbled. He stood and scooped up the crate he had been sitting on, stamping out the fire with the same motion. He actually started to walk farther down the front of the train, as if he would be breaking fewer regulations up there.
He can't stay up there, the conductor thought. He'll freeze! Not to mention all the regulations, of course. He decided not to even consider the fact that his hand had gone through the man's arm; that was just too much to worry about at the moment. "Wait!" he called aloud.
The hobo stopped and turned around to face him with the expression of the long-suffering on his grizzled face. "What now?"
"You can't. . . you have to come down." Biting back his irritation when the hobo started laughing, the conductor went on, "I'll. . . uh, we'll talk about the. . . situation, and. . . ." He trailed off when the hobo disappeared in a gust of snow. He must have walked away, the conductor thought rather desperately, even though that wasn't what he had seen. He had seen the man. . . go out, like an extinguished candle.
"Come back!" the conductor yelled into the blowing snow, although he knew there was no way he could be heard if the hobo was already out of sight. "It isn't safe! You'll get hurt-" To his amazement, he saw a human silhouette reappear, then clarify as the hobo came back towards him, without the crate this time.
"I'll get hurt?" The stranger grinned suddenly. "What about your regulations?"
Although the words pained him, the conductor forced himself to say, "That doesn't matter right now. Please, come inside."
The hobo looked down at him with a slight frown, as if he were trying to puzzle out a math equation. Then he nodded and took another step towards the ladder. "Fine. Once can't hurt."
The conductor had to wonder what that meant, but he climbed back down the ladder and jumped across to the other car without pushing the hobo farther. The other man climbed down after him and followed him into the car.
"Now," began the conductor when the hobo had taken a seat rather belligerently, "who are you, and what were you doing atop my train?"
The hobo looked him up and down with a faint smile. "You're just like I thought you'd be, face to face. Always figured you'd be the same with everyone, kids or adults. Except I imagine you're a bit more deferential to the big man, hunh?"
The conductor gave him a look of quiet desperation, then took off his cap and mopped his hairless forehead with a handkerchief from his pocket. ". . . what?"
In the warmth of the car, the hobo began removing his outerwear, first a pair of gloves with no finger tips, then his jacket. He was wearing a faded blue work shirt under it. The conductor braced himself for the unmistakable odor that most vagrants bore, but got no scent, unless maybe the faintest hint of the way the wind smelled in the snow.
"I gotta admire that, I guess," the hobo rambled on. "Least you're honest. Obsessive, but honest."
The conductor sat down across the aisle from him, facing the other man with his legs out in the aisle. The hobo looked younger than the conductor was; he probably would have proved to be younger still had he been clean shaven. The conductor's eyes were repeatedly drawn to the crooked bridge of the hobo's nose, and he wondered if it had been broken in the past.
"So you've been here all night, if you saw me with the children," the conductor mused aloud. "I thought maybe you got on at the last stop."
"Hmph. I been here a lot longer than that." The hobo leaned against the side of the car, legs extended on the bench seat and hands behind his head.
The conductor looked at the hobo's shoes and noticed that one had a hole in the bottom of it. "You've ridden with us before. . . up there?" The scruffy man nodded, smirking. "How. . . how many years?" the conductor asked.
"How many years have you ridden the PolEx?" countered the hobo.
It was something the conductor hadn't thought about in a long time. "Well, uh, I'm not sure- at least twenty, I'd say. Why?" The hobo kept silent, smirking and nodding. At first the conductor didn't understand, then his eyes widened. "You mean you've been up there, every year, for as long as I've been conductor of this train?"
"Longer, actually."
"That's. . . that's impossible!" The man couldn't have been a day over thirty, if that. "You would have been a child- as young as. . . ." A terrible thought occurred to him. "Don't tell me the last conductor lost track and left you here and all these years later-"
The hobo laughed so hard and long, the conductor thought he would asphyxiate. "No, I was never a kid on this train, trust me." The conductor's horror- more at the thought of his predecessor's imagined carelessness than at the thought of a child living on the roof of a train for twenty years- faded, even as his confusion grew.
"Then how did you-"
"You ask more questions than those kids do! Why don't you answer a few? Quid pro quo. What did you do before you were a conductor for the ol' PolEx?"
Nonplussed, the conductor rested his hands on his knees and drummed his fingers against his kneecaps. "I was a conductor on a real- that is, ah, non-magical- train."
"And how'd you end up on a magical one?"
"I. . . well, I don't rightly know. I remember that I wanted a family, children especially, but a conductor's schedule isn't exactly conducive to settling down. I was starting to get pretty discouraged, even thought about quitting the job- then one Christmas Eve. . . ." The conductor smiled faintly at the memory. "The Polar Express pulled up in my yard. It almost never does that, you know, comes to a house where there aren't any children, and it awakens very few adults indeed."
"I remember that night." The hobo cut his dark eyes at the conductor and squinted. "I remember thinking you'd never make it."
The conductor narrowed his own blue eyes right back. "I see."
"Why d'you think the last guy picked you to replace him?"
"I don't think it was the last conductor. He was ready to retire, certainly, but he could have picked anyone to take his place. I think. . . I think it was the boss, Mr. C- somehow he knew that I needed the job. Needed the children without giving up the trains." He patted the side of the car affectionately. "Maybe this old girl needed me too." He turned back to the hobo and gave him a stern look. "Why did you think I wouldn't make it?"
"You were wearing bunny slippers for one thing."
"I woke up to the sound of a train in my front yard! I was in too big of a hurry to get outside to care what I had on my feet."
The hobo snickered. "It's not that you came outside in your slippers. It's that you're a grown man who owned bunny slippers." The conductor looked away guiltily; the slippers were at that moment in his private compartment, awaiting his tired feet. The hobo went on, "And then on your first run when you fell and nearly busted your-" He broke off suddenly. Looking back at him and finding the dark eyes averted, the conductor had the feeling the hobo had stopped not out of propriety but because he had said more than he intended.
Then it hit him. "You. . . you were there when I nearly fell off the train!" He looked down at his now slightly arthritic hand, then over at the rough, dirty hand of the hobo. "It was you. . . you saved me." The conductor felt as if his heart had sunk right into his shoes. All those years of imagining what (not who) might have saved him, the conjectures of the little girl made only hours before- "An angel!" And that boy- "What did he look like? Did you see him?"
No sir. But sometimes seeing is believing. And sometimes. . . the most real things in the world are the things we can't see.
Seeing wasn't always believing. The conductor thought he could look at the hobo all night and not believe that he was what had saved his life on his first solo run with the Polar Express.
When the hobo didn't speak again, the conductor stood awkwardly. "Would you. . . like some hot chocolate?"
"Not if you're going to trot out the dancing waiters and sing while you serve it to me."
The conductor flinched. "You saw that too?"
"You got a pretty good voice, but I think you sorta scare the kids with the whole refreshment routine." The hobo chuckled and turned to sit properly in his seat. "But yeah, I'll take some, if I can get it without the dinner show."
The conductor was somewhat miffed, but he went to the dining car to prepare two cups of hot chocolate anyway. When he returned to the Pullman car, he was greeted by the strains of a hurdy-gurdy, accompanied by husky singing.
"Silent night. . . holy night. . . all is calm. . . all is bright. . . ."
The conductor hung back in the doorway of the car, watching the strange hobo playing his instrument. He had pulled off his tattered hat, revealing tousled brown hair. His voice was scratchy and decidedly unmelodious, yet he sang without self-consciousness, softly, obviously unaware that he was overheard. It was one of the most beautiful things the conductor had ever heard, and he couldn't understand why.
He waited until the hobo had finished, then came forward with the mugs of chocolate. "Here," he said, setting one down in front of the other man. The conductor sat down at the other side of the table.
"Thanks." The hobo took a big slurp of the drink, then grimaced. "Wow. All that sugar after years of black coffee." The conductor wrapped his hands around his own drink and looked down at it.
"I don't understand," he finally said. It was a hard thing for him to admit.
"Hunh? What's not to understand? You drink something bitter long enough, the sweet ends up tasting bad."
"I don't mean the coffee." The conductor rolled his eyes behind his glasses. "I mean you. If you've been riding the PolEx for more than twenty years, why do you look so young?"
"See, this is why I've avoided you until now." The hobo gulped his hot chocolate, which apparently was starting to taste better to him. "For someone who conducts a magic train, you have no imagination."
The conductor leaned forward and glared. "Just because this is a magic train, doesn't mean that logic gets thrown out the window. I age. Smokey and Steamer age. Even the elves age. The only one who doesn't age is Mr. C, and you're not suggesting that you are he, in some kind of insane disguise-"
The hobo gave a wheezing laugh. "That's a new one. No, I'm not Santa Claus. I don't age because I'm not human. Or an elf, thank God."
"Then. . . she was right. You are an angel."
"Not exactly." The man's mouth twisted in a rather humorless smile. "I'm a ghost. There's a difference, you know."
". . . A ghost." The conductor shook his head and had to make a conscious effort to drain his mug of hot chocolate before it cooled. "I don't believe in ghosts."
The hobo sighed an afflicted sigh. "Not many people do. Even those kids. . . sure, they believe in the big man, and elves, and flyin' reindeer, and magic trains, but give 'em something that makes a lot more sense, logically-" He said this with a sneer at the conductor. "-and they don't believe in it."
The conductor looked at the hobo, trying to convince himself that the very dirty, very real man before him was what he claimed to be. "But. . . but why?"
"'Why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?'" the hobo questioned in his best Ebenezer Scrooge voice, arching one eyebrow.
"Erm. . . yes. I suppose Mr. Dickens did say it best."
The hobo chuckled and shrugged. "He had it right, for the most part. If we don't go forth in life, we are doomed to do so after death, and so on."
"So because you didn't, ah, 'go forth' when you were alive, you end up bumming rides on my train?"
The hobo acted as if he hadn't heard. "There's another school of thought too, that once we set right the wrongs we committed, we'll be free to go off to the great train station in the sky. Bunch of hooey, I'll tell you now. I'm still waiting to see if I'll ever get free of this world, or if Marley was right all along and I'll be riding these rails for eternity."
"I. . . I'm sorry," the conductor finally replied for want of anything intelligent to say.
"No, you're not. You're just glad it ain't you, am I right?" The hobo grinned. "Don't worry about it. I have more fun than you any day of the week, and I'm pretty happy the way things are." He yawned and stretched. "Although a warm bed would do me wonders. Think you could put me up for a couple hours, until we get to the Pole?"
The conductor wondered why a ghost would need to sleep- not to mention how a ghost could drink a very real mug of hot chocolate- but he nodded. "I'll make down a berth for you." He stood, then looked the grimy man up and down. "Erm, perhaps you would like to clean up as well. You can use the shower in my compartment."
He showed the hobo to his compartment, then proceeded to prepare one of the rarely-used sleeping berths in the Pullman car. He was less than thrilled when the hobo emerged wearing one of the conductor's bath robes, still unshaven and yawning as he scrubbed a hand through his wet hair.
"Wake me when we get there," the hobo ordered as he clambered up into the berth. "I got a schedule to keep." He gave the conductor an unnerving grin. The conductor went off to his own compartment, grumbling.
By the time he woke up, the Polar Express had arrived at the North Pole and was already at rest in the station where it spent the months between each Christmas Eve. "First time I've overslept in years," the conductor muttered as he got up and straightened his clothes. Smokey and Steamer had already finished their duties; the conductor saw them pass by his window as they left the station.
The conductor hurried into the Pullman car, fully expecting the hobo to have disappeared. He wouldn't have even been surprised if it had all been a dream. But no, the young man was still there in the berth, snoring faintly with his mouth open.
A ghost, the conductor thought as he approached the berth. He looks more real than most of the people I see every day. He reached out to shake the hobo awake, then hesitated. The last time I touched him, my hand went right through him. . . . He brushed his fingertips against the man's cheek- and felt warm skin and rough hair. Somehow that was more disconcerting than if the ghost were insubstantial.
The conductor drew his hand away and shook the hobo's shoulder roughly. "Wake up. We're here."
"Nnuh?" The hobo sat up and scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Oh. Back home, hunh?" He clambered out of the berth and started pulling on his gloves and hat, which looked a bit odd with the conductor's bathrobe. The conductor made up the berth, then turned back to his guest.
"I'll leave you to, ah, get dressed. Put that robe back where you found it, will you?"
"So this is goodbye, eh?" The hobo pressed his hat down over his ears.
"What? Aren't you getting off the train?" When the hobo didn't reply, the conductor looked at him closely. "Where do you stay, during the year?"
The hobo shrugged. "I don't. Stay, that is. If you insist on being logical about it, you could say I sleep."
"On top of the train?"
"Nowhere." The hobo looked him straight in the eyes, which made the conductor decidedly uncomfortably. "I just quit existing for a while, until the next Christmas Eve. In fact, this is the first Christmas Day I've been around for in a long time."
"But. . . why? Do you have to. . . cease to exist?"
The hobo laughed mockingly. "You mean, is it in the ghost handbook? In the rules? Nah. It's my choice. In fact, I could never wake up if I wanted to. I could just quit." He chuckled to himself. "I just might, once you retire."
The conductor blinked. "Once I retire? Why then?"
"Because." The hobo prodded him the chest with a finger. "As long as you're working this train, somebody's going to have to keep an eye on you. This makes twice I've saved you from falling off this rattler, and this time you almost took two kids with you! There's only room for one ghost on the PolEx, and I'm not letting the likes of you get yourself killed and take my place."
The conductor didn't know whether to thank him or to be insulted. Finally, he decided not to say a thing. He turned away and walked to the end of the Pullman car. As he started out the door, he heard the hobo say huskily, "Merry Christmas."
As he left the station, the conductor firmly fixed his mind on the day ahead of him. A nice soak in the tub, then hot chocolate and the newspaper in front of the fire. Maybe do some work on his model railroad. A quiet, ordinary, logical Christmas day.
"Made it back in one piece, I see," a deep, familiar voice called from across the street. The conductor looked up and waved at his boss, who crossed over to join him.
"Same to you, Mr. C." The conductor tipped his hat. "I hope you had a good run."
"It went tolerably well." Santa Claus shook his head and chuckled. "Had to take a bit of extra time at one house- seems that a certain boy left the First Gift of Christmas on the floor of my sleigh."
The conductor groaned. "Why am I not surprised?"
Santa smiled gently. "He's a special one, though. Reminds me of another lad, long before your time." Santa's face, strangely young despite the white beard, grew thoughtful. "Same skepticism, same potential. Didn't turn out so well as this one will, I think."
"What happened to him?" the conductor asked.
"He didn't stop believing, if that's what you're thinking. At least not believing in me. He just stopped believing in everything else. In other people, and goodness, and the whole reason for Christmas itself. I'm just a symbol, you know; I'm what the children see when they need to see Christmas. But it's the things they can't see that are most important."
Goosebumps broke out on the conductor's arms. Sometimes seeing is believing. And sometimes. . . the most real things in the world are the things we can't see. He looked back at the station where the Polar Express was at rest.
"What became of him, when he stopped believing?" the conductor murmured quietly.
Santa Claus followed his gaze and smiled faintly. "Oh, he's around." He suddenly clapped the conductor on the shoulder. "Merry Christmas to you. You'll find a little something under your tree when you get home."
"Thank you, sir. Merry Christmas to you, too." As Santa walked away, the conductor turned his feet towards home, but he couldn't make them move in that direction. He finally gave in to their demands and went back to the station instead.
His footsteps echoed as he walked through the empty building, back to the Polar Express. It was still and silent. The conductor looked up at the train's roof, bare of anything except caked snow.
"Hello?" the conductor called, cupping his hands over his mouth. There was no response. "Hello!" Still nothing, and the conductor dropped his hands to his sides and turned away.
"Whaddya want now?" He stopped and turned back. The hobo was crouched on the edge of the roof of a car that had been empty a moment before. "Planning on falling off a moving vehicle again?"
"No, I. . . ." The conductor took a deep breath. "There's more to Christmas than just the yearly run, you know. More than the visit to Mr. C."
"Yeah?"
"Yes. You just haven't been around, so you've missed it."
The hobo glared down at him. "Didn't see much of it when I was around."
"Maybe because it can't be seen. But you can't even feel it if you wink out of existence for 364 days of the year." The conductor walked up to the train and laid his hand against its cold side, then looked up at the grizzled face peering down at him. "Give it a chance. For today, at least."
The hobo's face disappeared as he withdrew from the roof's edge. The conductor waited, and after a moment, the ghost descended the ladder on the end of the car.
"Fine," the hobo muttered. "Just for today."
When they reached the conductor's house, he left the hobo in charge of building a fire while he went over to the Christmas tree. As he stooped to plug in the lights, he noticed not one, but two presents under the branches. One bore his name and was the gift Santa had promised- probably a new piece for his model railroad. The other was a smallish box with an unfamiliar name on the gift tag. The conductor looked at the present thoughtfully, then glanced at the ghost fumbling with matches and cursing on his hearth.
How did the boss know he'd come with me? the conductor wondered, then immediately answered his own question: He's Santa Claus. That's how. He smiled to himself and plugged in the tree, then went to help the hobo with the fire.
The End