Joseph and Mary hitchhiked toward Memphis, riding shotgun in a semi-truck.

The truck driver kept looking at Joseph with a distrusting look. Probably because Joseph dressed like a thug. Joseph’s Snoop Dogg T-shirt and tats weren’t helping, either.

The driver let them off at Walmart. The teenage boy helped his girlfriend out of the cab. She was lovely and quiet. Tatted up. And pregnant as could be.

The driver offered Joseph cash. Joseph refused, but the driver insisted.

“Take it,” the driver said. “Your girl needs a coat, it’s below freezing tonight.”

He took the cash, namely because he had no choice. The teenage couple had left home in a hurry. Mary’s dad kicked her out. They were living with Joseph's parents, but his mother despised Mary. “That girl is just using you,” his mother would say.

So here they were in Walmart.

They walked inside the Supercenter. The women’s section didn’t have maternity jackets, so they bought a men’s work coat, double-X, brown, with all the charm of livestock excrement.

“Aren’t you going to buy yourself a coat?” Mary asked.

“I’m okay,” Joseph said.

“But all you’re wearing is a T-shirt.”

Joseph’s scrawny bare arms poked from beneath the sleeves of his Snoop-Dogg shirt. He had no body fat on his tiny frame.

Joseph’s clothes hung off him like a revival tent. He had been working as a commercial framer ever since quitting school during eighth grade. Construction work makes you lean. So does a steady diet of Marlboros and Monster Energy drinks.

They left Walmart, walking a vacant highway shoulder, looking for a place to crash. A Super 8, a Red Roof Inn, maybe a Motel 6. But they found nothing.

Then.

Mary stopped walking. She clutched her belly.

“What’s wrong?” said Joseph.

Mary’s pants were soaked. There was an instant puddle around her feet. “I think I’m having the baby.”

Joseph stuck his thumb out for a…

I’ve been saving this for Christmas Eve.

The story takes place in Auschwitz, 1941. On Christmas morning. It was cold in the concentration camp. Bitterly cold. Most of the prisoners inside were Polish, not Jewish. The Jews wouldn’t arrive until mid-1942.

The Polish prisoners were huddled together that morning, trying to keep from freezing. The temperature was low. There was frost on the ground.

The prisoners were ill equipped for the cold, clothed in striped pajamas made of thin cotton. Some prisoners used strips of torn fabric as makeshift mittens or boots.

Their hands and feet were cut and battered, from manual labor. Their clothes were soiled, from working in muddy trenches. Already, many of the Polish prisoners were suffering from frostbite. Some were dying of pneumonia. The lucky ones had already passed.

This morning, at sunup, their captors had given them a horrible Christmas present. In the roll-call square, the SS had erected a huge Christmas tree overnight. The tree was

decorated with pretty electric lights. But beneath the boughs were the corpses of inmates who had either been worked to death, or had frozen to death.

The inmates saw the bodies of their loved ones, lying there, in contorted positions, with peaceful looks on their frozen faces.

Many prisoners rushed to their loved ones’ remains, but were kicked away. The others just looked on in vapid silence.

One Polish prisoner recalled that this Christmas tree was the Germans’ “present for the living.”

And the hits kept coming. The SS announced to the prisoners that anyone caught mentioning Christmas, even just a little bit, would be killed. They were also prohibited from singing Polish Christmas carols. Forbidden from exchanging trinkets as gifts.

That day, all prisoners were forced to march into the roll-call square, in the biting frost, to listen to a radio address of the Pope’s Christmas Eve…

The young woman emailed me her story. She said she was lonely. She was 32 and single. Her therapist said she was depressed. He suggested medication. Then, her therapist asked whether she had plans for Christmas. She gave a bitter laugh and lit a Marlboro.

“Christmas is just another day,” was her philosophy.

To be fair, she had reason to be depressed. She had relocated to north Alabama for work. She had no friends in this city. Her family lived twelve states away.

Her townhome had no Christmas decorations. What was the point? Who was going to see them? Plus, she was hardly ever home. She spent her life in a cubicle.

Each year, the newly built townhouse neighborhood emptied at Christmas. It was a soulless subdivision. No decor in the yards. Namely, because most of the homes were occupied by young, urban professionals with decent jobs, new cars, and rooms full of crappy Ikea furniture.

Every Christmas, it was a mass exodus. The residents all packed up their late-model SUVs and vacated to their

hometowns.

But the girl was still home. In this vacant neighborhood. This anemic housing complex. Sort of like living on an empty movie set.

A few days before Christmas, she saw an old man walking his dog. Her neighbor. He was a widower, that was all she knew about him. She was on her front stoop, smoking, when he passed her home.

“Hi,” she said.

He gave her a nod and a smile.

Together they watched his little Yorkie waddle around the frozen grass, locked in a half squatting pose, caught in the painful throes of constipation. The Yorkie’s name was Buddha. Currently, little Buddha was having a difficult time finding the much needed relief of enlightenment.

“Are you having a nice Christmas?” the old man asked.

Shrug. “Christmas is just some other day.”

He smiled.

The conversation was brief. They bid each other goodbye…

Thank you. That is the​ purpose of this column. I want to say “thanks.” I don't know you, but I believe in the good you do.

In public, I used to see you sometimes and think to myself: "I wish someone would thank them." But I never do because if I did, you’d think I was a complete nut job.

Maybe I am a nut job. But I’m allowed to be that way. After all, I am a columnist—sort of—and that means my proverbial box is missing a few crayons.

Long ago, I used to deliver newspapers with my mother. We used to deliver to a fella who would answer the door in pajamas. He had messy hair and a bushy white beard. He always gave me a five-dollar tip.

He was generous. If he wasn’t home one day, he would pay me ten bucks the next day. He was a columnist, my mother told me. And that’s why he was such a weirdo in weird pajamas. Even his house smelled weird.

I suppose I

ought to thank him while I am at it.

Also, thanks to the man I saw in the gas station who bought a lottery scratch-off ticket. Who won thirty bucks, then turned around and gave the cash to a woman behind him in line. What a guy.

The woman thanked him in a language that sounded like Russian. The man thanked her back using fluent hand gestures.

Thank you, Cindy—the woman who translated one of my speeches in American Sign Language for the front row​. She told me I talked very fast and now she has problems with her rotator cuff.

She also taught me how to cuss in sign language.

Thank you to the seventy-year-old man who went back to school to get his GED. And his forty-six-year-old daughter, who tutored him.

And you. You deserve thanks, but you don't always get it. In…

Christmas Eve. Southeastern Kansas. The middle of nowhere.

Kansas is one of those places that gets a bad rap. People speak of Kansas like it’s Death Valley, or the hindparts of Mars.

People say stuff like, “Yeah, I drove through Kansas once, I was bored spitless for six hours.”

But that’s only because they aren’t seeing the Sunflower State the right way. The Thirty-Fourth State can bewitch you if you open yourself to its quiet beauty.

First you have the sunsets. Kansan sunsets are neon red and gold, vivid enough to put Claude Monet to shame. The sundowns are an ecological phenomenon, caused by red dust in the atmosphere which has traveled all the way from the Sahara to suspend itself above Bourbon and Neosho County.

Also, you have sublime flatness. Millions of Americans visit the Gulf of Mexico each year to stare at prairie-flat blueness. Kansans have a gulf of their own.

Currently, the state has 15.8 million acres of virgin prairie. You can stand at certain places in this state and,

literally, be hundreds of miles from the nearest Super Target.

In the wintertime, however, Kansas has earth-stopping blizzards. This is the geographical center of the nation. They get all the weather you didn’t want.

Tornadoes. Fatal summers. Snowstorms harsh enough to make Scandinavia look like a weekend in Honolulu.

It was during one such snowstorm, on Christmas Eve, that Marie was at home. She was a young mother, with two children. They lived in a 40-foot single wide, perched on 200 acres of family land.

The blizzard of aught-nine was apocryphal. Many evangelicals believed this was the literal end of the world and were sincerely repenting of their evil ways, committing themselves to prayer, fasting, and self flagellation. Meanwhile, the German Catholics decided to take up vodka as hobby.

To say the storm was “bad” is like saying invasive dental surgery is “kinda fun.” In some places…

Granddaddy placed me on his knee, he fuzzed my hair and smoked his Bing Crosby pipe. The world smelled like Prince Albert in a can.

“The year was 1862,” Granddaddy began his story. “The day was Christmas. The place was eastern Virginia.”

East Virginia. God’s country. Where the Rappahannock River traverses the Blue Ridge Mountains, then dumps itself into the Chesapeake like a pitcher of ice tea. The War was on. The landscape was torn up from war.

“And it was so cold,” said Granddaddy.

Paralyzingly cold. The winter of 1862 was brutal. You could break a tooth eating a bowl of soup.

Eighteen-year-old privates were sleeping on barren earth, huddled together like puppies beneath woolen blankets. Grown men—military men—spooned together, just to survive.

But this cold snap was nothing compared to the hunger. Some soldiers were so hungry they were eating their tobacco. There are stories about soldiers eating their own shoe leather.

Christmas morning came with fresh misery. A wet snow had fallen overnight. Gaggles of army boys awoke with frostbitten noses and frozen

earlobes. Others were coughing themselves to death.

The opposing armies were camped on opposite sides of the river. Gray coats on one side. Blues on the other. Before evening, these countrymen would probably be killing each other. “It was a hell of a time to be a soldier.”

I interrupted my Baptist grandfather. “Grandaddy, you can’t say ‘hell.’”

My grandfather, the grizzled veteran who spent his youth dodging shells in Anzio, Italy, said, “Son, there is no other word for war but hell.”

That morning, a few young soldiers were on patrol near the banks of the Rappahannock. They stopped patrolling when they saw the enemy on the other side of the river, also patrolling.

Both groups halted.

Soldiers on both sides of the river were skin and bones, with sunken eyes and the pallor of cadavers.

It was a stare down between adversaries.…

It was dark when we pulled up in the wilds of Locust Fork, Alabama. A big group of us. The small house stood in the country. I think the cows were watching us.

A throng of us fell out of our vehicles like clowns riding in circus cars. We had guitars, banjos, accordions. It was cold, we were wearing jackets and goofy smiles.

“Shouldn’t we knock on the door first?” someone said.

“No, you don’t knock on the door.”

“But how will they hear us if we don’t tell them we’re here?”

“We have to sing loud and wait for them to offer us figgy pudding and stuff.”

“This house is built like Fort Knox. They’ll never hear us outside.”

Thus, we all stared at the cold, masonry exterior looking back at us. We sang as loud as we could.

For song lyrics, some of us carried paper books. Others just made them up. We sang the main carols. “Silent Night,” “The First Noel,”

“Bohemian Rhapsody.”

We waited for someone inside to notice us, lingering outdoors, wearing our funny hats, wassailing our butts off. But nobody did at first.

Someone among us pointed out the obvious. “We are, literally, singing to a wall.”

Then we saw a young woman come to the door. She was slender and small. College age. Her hair is the color of fire. She has a tiny feeding tube affixed beneath her nose. Her steps were cautious, but we were all so proud she was walking again. There are a lot of people who have been praying for Morgan Love.

Morgan has been through hell. She’s been in and out of hospitals for most of this year. Recently, she just arrived home from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Her stomach and intestines haven’t been working right. But through it all, the young woman has remained a…

I remember the day we got married. I was a bundle of nerves. I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I just drove around town in my car.

I ended up eating a huge lunch at a barbecue joint because I was so nervous. I didn’t know what else to do with my time, so I ate a big barbecue sandwich. Then I ate one more. Then I ate a third sandwich.

I remember the way I felt when I arrived at the church. Like I was going to puke. Either from the 27 pounds of pulled pork I had just eaten, or from the anxiety. Or both.

I was trembling. I remember feeling so stupid. I can’t explain it. Like a kid playing dress-up. Like I wasn’t fully an adult. Like I had no right to be here.

I threw the truck into park, stared at the church, and wondered whether I should turn around and drive away. I could just aim my truck for Canada,

and nobody would ever find me.

The parking lot was filling with cars. People were walking into the church. And I was caught in a daze, just watching them.

I remember finally walking into the groom’s dressing room. Like a zombie. My uncle was standing there. The same uncle who hasn’t smiled since the Woodrow Wilson administration. He was just looking at me with his trademarked scowl.

He said, “Where were you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you getting cold feet?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

I nodded. “Sort of.”

I got dressed. It was my first time ever wearing a tux. I felt ridiculous in it. The necktie made me look like Winston Churchill after a very bad night.

I walked into the sanctuary. The pews were full with three quarters of Brewton, Alabama. I could hardly breathe. Everyone was looking at me.…

The lunch lady noticed him, sitting in the corner. He always ate by himself in the cafeteria. He never interacted with the other students. There were holes in his shoes.

The older woman approached his table. She knew her presence embarrassed him. She knew he didn’t want the attention.

But hey, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

He was skinny. And in bad need of a haircut. The boy had body odor, too.

“Is this seat taken?” she asked.

He just looked at her.

“Well?” she said. “Is it?”

Without asking, she took a seat. She ate her own lunch beside him. It is a little known fact that lunch ladies actually eat lunch too.

It didn’t take long before she became his friend. They sat together every lunch period. The other kids poked fun at him for eating lunch with an elderly woman. But then, his fellow students could often behave like turds.

She learned a lot about him

that year. She learned that he lived in a broken home. His dad left when he was a baby. His mother had bad habits that occasionally landed her in legal custody. Oftentimes he didn’t have enough food at home.

“What did you have for supper last night?” the lunch lady once asked him.

“I didn’t,” he replied.

That year, on Christmas Eve, the lunch lady had an idea. She got the others in the school kitchen involved. Then she got her church friends involved. It was a covert operation. Hush hush.

One night, under the cover of darkness, a group of older women—dressed in dark colors—crept up to the boy’s home. On his doorstep, they placed a battalion of foil-covered casseroles, with Post-It-note cooking instructions attached. There were sacks of homemade Christmas candy. Peppermint bark, Christmas-tree cookies, gingerbread, salted nut-butter cups, taffy. There were groceries.…

The hospital room was decorated for Christmas. The young man was sitting in his bed, wired up to a horde of machines. The kid was watching something on the television mounted on the wall. Barely able to keep his eyes open. He was 8.

“Are you in any pain,” the nurse asked.

The little boy was weak. His neck was gaunt. His head was covered in bandages. Beneath his cap was a large crescent-moon scar on his scalp, from where doctors had operated on his brain.

“I’m not in pain,” the kid said drowsily.

He was watching some Christmas movie in black and white. His mother remembers this specifically.

His mother was right beside him, reading a book. She was a single mother. She worked full-time as a night waitress, and she worked on a landscaping crew in the daylight hours.

She didn’t notice, but she fell asleep. Because when she awoke, there were medical staffers gathered around her son’s bed. The heart monitor

was as flat as a prairie highway.

They rushed her son away.

“What’s happening to my son!” she screamed.

“Ma’am,” said one staffer. “Try to calm down.”

She called her son’s name. But her boy was already being whisked down the hall by a team of scrubs and lab coats.

She found herself in a waiting room. No family to support her. No parents. No husband. No nothing. She felt as alone as anyone had ever felt. And she needed a cigarette.

That’s when she noticed a guy walking into the waiting room. Jeans and a light jacket. He sat beside her. He started talking with her. A nice guy. Cheerful and easy going. He asked about her son. And she talked to him. She opened up to him. She let him hear it all. She told him everything until she started crying. She…