"Stop," Michael shouted. "Hey. Stop."
The dumpster was a foot off the ground and rising. The driver couldn't hear him over the hydraulics and the beeper. Michael ran around the front of the truck and stood in the snow where the driver could see him, waving his arms over his head like a man flagging down a train.
The forks stopped.
The cab door opened, and a young man in an orange vest leaned out. "You can't be back here, sir."
"There's a box in there," Michael said, out of breath. "I need it. Please. It's Santa's."
The young man looked at him for a long time, a fifty-five-year-old man with no coat on in the snow, saying it was Santa's.
Then he set the dumpster back down.
The driver's name was Tony. He wouldn't let Michael climb in. He climbed in himself, in his gloves and vest, and moved trash bags and broken chairs and an old exercise bike while Michael stood on the rim and pointed.
The box was near the bottom, under a rolled-up rug. It was soft at the corners and taped twice. On the side, in black marker, it said FRANK D, SANTA.
Tony handed it up to him.
"My grandma took me to see Santa every year at the mall," Tony said. "She's gone now too."
"Thank you," Michael said.
"Tell Santa I said hey," Tony said, and climbed back into his truck.
Frank was waiting in the sunroom. Somebody had brought him a cup of coffee and a plate of sugar cookies, and he'd eaten two of them.
Michael set the box on the card table and cut the tape.
Inside were twenty-three green notebooks, standing in a row like books on a shelf. Each one had a year written on the front in the same hand. 1971.
1972. 1973. All the way to 1993.
Frank's hands weren't steady anymore. He let Michael find it.
1978.
The cover was worn soft. Inside, the pages were full of Frank's careful handwriting, every line crowded, page after page of names. Jennifer, 5, pink snowsuit, wants a Baby Alive.
Robert, 8, glasses, wants a Tonka. Here and there, a small piece of paper was pasted in with yellowed tape.
Some were on store receipts. Some were on the backs of grocery lists.
Michael turned the pages slowly. December 14. December 15.
December 16.
Halfway down the page, in Frank's hand: Michael H., 7. Brown coat, red mittens.
Wants a Tonka dump truck. Note from his mother.
Under it, pasted in with two pieces of tape, was a small folded sheet of blue stationery.
Michael knew the handwriting before he'd opened it. He'd been reading it his whole life on birthday cards and grocery lists and the backs of photographs.
Dear Santa,
My son's name is Michael. His father died in May.
Joe worked Saturdays at the elevator, and every Saturday morning he'd tell Michael he was the man of the house until Joe got home. Since May, Michael has been trying to be the man of the house every single day. He checks the locks at night.
He carried in the groceries. He hasn't cried once, and he's seven.
Could Santa please tell him it's all right to be seven?
Thank you. Ruth Harper
Michael read it twice. Then he set the notebook down very carefully on the card table and put both hands over his face.
Frank waited.
After a while, he reached over and put his hand on Michael's shoulder, the way a man does when he doesn't have the right words and knows better than to look for them.
"I remember her," Frank said quietly. "I didn't, until just now. But I do. Peg came back to my chair with that note, and she was crying under her wig. And your mother, after she handed it over, she went and stood by the elevators. So you wouldn't see her."
Michael wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.
"She never told me," he said. "Forty-eight years."
"Well," Frank said. "She wasn't supposed to. That was the whole point. Santa doesn't guess. But he also doesn't tell how he knows."
Michael took the notebook to the library downtown and made a copy of the page, with Frank's permission. Then he brought the notebook back and put it in the box with the other twenty-two. He took the whole box home to Frank's daughter, who cried when she saw it and put it on the top shelf of her front closet, where it would never go near a dumpster again.
The Cedar Lane care home had its Christmas party on the following Saturday.
Frank wore a Santa hat and sat in a big armchair by the tree in the activity room. The staff had set out punch and cookies. There were grandchildren everywhere.
Michael brought his granddaughter Lucy. She was six. She stood in the short line by the tree in a purple coat, holding on to his hand and looking at Frank with enormous eyes.
While she waited, Michael stepped up beside Frank's chair like he was fixing the tinsel. He slipped a small folded note into the pocket of the red cardigan.
Frank slipped it out below the arm of the chair, read it in one glance, and put it back. Name, and one thing.
When Lucy climbed up on his knee, Frank smiled down at her, the corners of his eyes doing that thing, and said, "Well, hello there, Lucy."