Waking up to our first Christmas without Rhonda was even harder than I had imagined it would be. With the bitter taste of our confrontation with Cal still burning a hole in my throat, I was in no mood to greet the morning without her.

As I sat up in bed, I remembered-and instantly regretted-the damage I had done to the rest of that bottle of whiskey after we left Roni’s graveside with our heads down and our tails between our legs.

We loved Roni like crazy. Bringing her a Christmas tree every year was just the tip of our Rhonda Eastwood obsession iceberg. Rhonda had come to define Mickey and me; form the people we had become. It was hard to be around such a free spirit as hers without having just a bit of that magic rub off on you, whether you wanted it to or not.

I should have gone with my gut when Roni voiced her desire to flee this shit-town, though. My gut told me I belonged in the small, in the forgotten, in the never going anywhere. But as I drove on, with Roni’s feet in my lap and her dreams in the air around us, something overtook my reason. Her desire to be anywhere, everywhere… it suddenly spoke to me. It bit me like a bear you can’t bite back but have to chase anyway, just to prove your courage.

If I would have kept my mouth shut, she’d maybe still be hanging wishes on those God-damned wires. There’s nothing wrong with wishin’ your life away and going nowhere with it. It’s when you cross that line and try to put those wishes into real… for losers like me, that’s when the trouble starts.

What hurts the most is that Roni had every faith in Mickey and me. She really believed we would take her to the everywhere she imagined. That was where Roni was most fallible, her Achilles heel. She was unable to see the losers before her whenever she looked at us.

But we didn’t kill Rhonda Eastwood. That was one piece of business Cal would eventually have to chew on and swallow hard.

We may have allowed her to dream, and maybe even dreamed right alongside her too, but Mickey and me… we didn’t have a thing to do with Roni’s dying. Like two idiot moths at a porch light, we were just wrapped up in something bigger than us and too stupid and blinded to realize it. Only problem with that analogy is the porch light went out first and the two stupid moths are left behind wondering why it’s so God-damned dark.

It took all my energy getting out of bed. I tried as best as I could, with just my two hands, to hold my head in place as I walked to the bedroom window and looked out at the blustery day forming beyond it.

I sank a little further when I saw the dead tree hanging askew from the side of the car, looking every bit the victim of a violent altercation with a wood chipper.

I didn’t have to wonder how far we dragged the carcass the night before. A trail of branches, needles and debris ran down the middle of the street and lead up the driveway to the car. The falling snow was quickly erasing all traces of foul play, though. Anyone on the lookout for a stolen pine tree would soon be out of luck.

I continued my futile attempts to keep the pounding headache at bay while I hauled myself into the clothes I had shucked off and left in a pile at the foot of my bed only a couple of hours before.

Each footfall I took reverberated the throbbing pain in my head, but I thought I’d better remove the tree from the side of the car before anybody noticed it. It hadn’t occurred to me that other, more civilized, people were too busy celebrating the season with loved ones to notice a mangled tree hanging from the side of their crazed neighbor’s car.

Mickey sat at the bottom landing of the stairs, bent back and staring upwards in his usual one-eye-open drunken sleep posture.

“Hey,” I said. I shook his shoulder on my way past.

“Handsaw?” he asked.

“You’re dreaming, fruit-loop.”

He startled upright and his hand went to his mouth to wipe away a trail of drool.

“What time is it?”

“Time to get up and bury that God awful tree. Or what’s left of it. What the hell did we do after we left the graveyard last night?”

Mickey stood up and hugged close to the wall for support. “Oh. I don’t feel so good, Dunc.” He put his hand over his mouth. His eyes rolled in his head, unable to anchor. “I think I have to use your wash-”

“Don’t you even think of getting sick in my hallway, Mickey. I’ll swat you with your own hand. Get your ass to the toilet now before it’s too late.”

I was in no state to hear the retching that was sure to follow, so I made a beeline for the garage door. With my coat flung over my shoulder, I embarked on my search for the garden shears. It was time to free our prisoner.

Leaving the shears and rope in the snow beside the car, I dragged what was left of the tree into the backyard. I began to pluck it apart branch by branch, the whole time struggling with the heady scent of pine and the way it tried to lure me back to the past.

Mickey’s reappearance, even in his hung-over state, was the ballast I needed to keep me in the present.

“What are ya breaking it up for, Duncan?” he whined. “We don’t have a tree ourselves.”

“Well, you can’t have this one neither. We tore it all to ape-shit last night, Mickey. Weren’t you there?”

He grabbed a bough from the ground and used it to swat at the falling snow. “I don’t see why we couldn’t keep it, anyway. It wasn’t that bad. What are you gonna do with all the pieces?”

“I thought we could have a bonfire. Maybe it’s time we started a new Christmas tradition, Mickey. What do you think?”

“I think it’s snowing like a bitch, Duncan. And I think maybe Cal Eastwood’s making you a bit crazy. I wanted a tree. And you went and ripped it to pieces. That was Rhonda’s tree.”

Mickey placed the bough on the pyre I had been building and turned and walked back to the house.

As much as I might have agreed with him, I tried my best to ignore his simple logic. I finished shredding the tree apart and returned to the garage for the gas can I kept with the lawnmower.

Soon the flames and smoke were rising against the storm and I knew I had to head back to the house. Whenever Mickey gets his feelings hurt you have to ease him back into happy. Somewhere along the road I had become both his tormentor and his touchstone. I knew he’d be inside waiting for me to cheer him up. And I knew I had to do it. With Roni gone, I was all the poor bastard had left.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was back in that car, in that time. Back dreaming about the way those wires swooped up and down between the telephone poles in that dreamy way they dance in motion. Back looking at that stretch of body as she lay across our laps.

***

Instead of returning my thoughts to the road like I should have, I shot Mickey a wink and a smile. Instead of letting Rhonda sleep the sweet sleep of wire wishers and daydreamers, screw-up Duncan gave her a great big poke in the belly.

As Robert Plant melted into Freddy Mercury, Rhonda awoke with a blast of that rich and heady laughter that was such an elixir for the both of us.

“Duncan, you ass-hole,” she said. “You scared me half to death.” But her renewed laughter belied her true feelings.

“I was just thinking, Roni. What if we did happen to see the world? What would be so wrong with taking a little peek?”

“Duncan Manning, you crazy bastard. You don’t have it in you,” she replied. Her eyes narrowed though. She was trying to read my expression and determine whether or not I was pulling her chain. Or perhaps she was attempting to gauge whether she needed to wait a little longer, or give the rod that final yank that set the hook.

Roni may have gone overboard on the free-spirit thing, but seeing her shine like that-seeing her light up Mickey the way she did-I just wanted to be hauled in with them.

“What makes you think I don’t want to see the world too?” I asked, poking her again as we drove on.

Her laughter carried us through the rest of the song.

“Are you guys sure?” Mickey asked, hanging his head out the window for a quick gulp of passing air. Coming back in, he looked past Roni and made sure he had my attention. “The world’s a hell of a big place, Duncan.”

“Not if you take it one step at a time, Mick.”

“It’ll be okay, Mickey baby,” Roni cooed. “We’ll take care of you. You trust us, don’t-cha?”

***

He did trust us, too. Mickey always did. He’d follow Roni and me off the face of the Earth if we ever found the right turn to get us there. Problem is we never knew what to do with that power. Roni was too busy dreaming of another place and I was too stupid to do anything even half-ways good with it.

I stumbled enough with Roni’s help. With her gone, I felt completely lost. It didn’t help that Mickey was still looking my way for answers. I guess he just never realized how many of the previous ones had actually come from Rhonda.

Standing in a blizzard on Christmas morning, watching a bonfire sink in upon itself, I knew I was failing him yet again. A good word was all he needed. I could have saved our first Rhonda-less Christmas for him, but I couldn’t drag myself away from the smell of pine and the lost wishes that scent encompassed.