Marley: Stave I
It is my great pleasure to present stave I of “Marley,” my homage to Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” I wrote this story almost two years ago and have been fiddling with it ever since. Now that the holiday season is upon us, I thought it would be nice to share it with the world. I will will release a stave every Wednesday, with the final stave appearing on Christmas Day.
Marley
By Thomas Broderick
Stave I
Marley was dead.
As his initial shock faded, Marley realized that he still had use of his senses. He could see himself, observe what his body had become. His face, etched into a permanent grimace, told of the weeks of agony that had brought him to his end.
Shame engulfed his soul. While alive, moments lasted no longer than it took to imbibe a glass of sherry. The alcohol's artificial warmth masked this undesired emotion and had allowed him to go back to his work. Now, all the sherry in the world could not save him.
Marley looked down at his spirit, where the chains he had forged in life bound to him. Their links, thicker than those on any whaling ship, were latched to a half score of lockboxes and a great padlock resting over his heart. Marley feared that their great weight would drag him down to the depths of Hell.
But they did not, for that was not their purpose.
Marley might never have budged if it were not for the sound of a single, nearly inaudible sob.
“No woman was at my bedside,” Marley said aloud. He turned his head toward the noise.
It was Ebenezer Scrooge. Quickly wiping his face, he stuffed a handkerchief back in his coat pocket. His left hand grasped Marley’s cooling forearm.
Behind Scrooge stood Marley's physician. The man placed a white-gloved hand on Scrooge’s shoulder. “Mr. Scrooge, would you care for a sedative?”
Scrooge sat up straight in his chair. “No,” he whispered. “I’ll be all right.” He released Marley’s forearm as if it were an afterthought.
“Thank you for easing his pain these last weeks. He felt it greatly, even though he did not admit it.”
“Rot of the jaw knows no equal in pain,” the doctor added. He glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner. It was just past midnight. “I must be off, Mr. Scrooge. Should I arrange a burial detail to come in the morning?”
Scrooge nodded. “I will be here to meet them.”
When the doctor momentarily turned his back, Scrooge slipped a small coin purse into the doctor’s bag.
“You didn’t even count them!” Marley roared. He grasped his chains as if to display them. “Look at this! Look what he let happen to me!”
But Scrooge, or anyone else for that matter, couldn’t see Marley.
Standing in the doorway, the doctor took one final look into the bedroom. The small space, barely illuminated by an ancient lamp, had already taken on the appearance of a tomb. “And Mr. Scrooge?”
Scrooge lifted his head. “Yes?”
“Merry Christmas to you, sir.”
Scrooge turned his head away. The doctor left, his footsteps fading away into nothing. Scrooge did not move from his perch. Only in the darkest part of the night, as the lamp burnt through the last of its oil and flickered out, did Scrooge speak.
“Bah humbug.”
#
At dawn, there was a heavy knock on the bedroom door. “Come,” Scrooge ordered. He had not slept all night.
Two men entered carrying a thin coffin. They quickly got to work - wrapping Marley’s mortal remains in soiled bedsheets. In less than a minute they had put the final nail in the coffin.
Marley followed behind Scrooge as the men took his body down the stairs and into a waiting carriage.
Scrooge spoke. “I will not have him buried in a potter’s field, but don’t think you can rob me, either. I…”
Marley could stand it no longer. He turned his back and walked away. Where he was going, he could not fathom.
The streets of London were full of Christmas well-wishers and carolers. Marley was sickened, but not for the reasons he had been in life. His soul had never taken comfort in their words. But when he ignored them in the past, they had been singing for him.
They would never sing for him again.
Chains dragging behind him, Marley left the part of London he knew so well. He aimlessly wandered for many hours, trying to avoid the presence of the living. He found respite in the city’s vast slums. But that was only temporary. There he discovered a sight, something a world away from the merriment just on the other side of the city.
It was a girl, an ‘urchin’ as he and Scrooge had once called them. No older than nine, she was wrapped in rags, leaning against the side of a brick warehouse shuttered for the holiday. Her bare feet were blue. The only sign of life was an occasional puff of steam rising from her mouth.
Her face was an image of Mary.
Marley kneeled at her side. He tried to touch her arm, but his fingers slipped through her.
“If only I could…” Marley trailed off. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the lockboxes attached to his chains rattled with coins. He picked one up and shook it. It was near full.
Without thinking, Marley took firm hold of the lockbox and smashed it against the ground. The metal shook, and the coins jangled with the promise of warmth, food, and life. But the lock did not give. Marley kept trying, up until the moment he realized the young girl had stopped breathing.
The lockbox slipped from Marley’s fingers. As it hit the ground, coins resembling a hundred glistening suns spilled out at the dead girl’s feet. They reflected light off her still-open eyes.
It was then Marley understood. There were no devils, no flames, no torturers. There were only Marley and the world he had created.
Marley repacked the lockbox with every piece of gold. Finished, he considered moving on, to where he did not know. The girl's body silently beckoned him to stay. He would wait until someone claimed her.
At that moment, eternity began for Jacob Marley.