Strangers

they made a nest for themselves behind the as-yet-undelivered packages. In a few minutes the driver returned, cursing, slammed the truck's cargo-bay door, and drove away into the city before the alarm sounded.
        Ten minutes and many blocks from the People's Center, the truck stopped. The driver unbolted the rear doors, took out a single package without realizing Jack and Oscar were inches from him behind a wall of boxes, and went into the building before which he'd parked. Extricating themselves from their burrow, Jack and Oscar fled.
        Within a few blocks they found themselves in a district of muddy streets and dilapidated shanties, where the poverty-stricken residents were no fonder of the new tyrants than they had been of the old and were willing to hide two Yankees on the lam. After nightfall, supplied with what little food the slum-dwellers could spare, they departed. for the outskirts. When they came to open farmland, they broke into a barn and stole a sharp sickle, several withered apples, a leather blacksmith's apron and some burlap bags which could be used to fashion makeshift shoes when their shabby prison-issue eventually fell apart - and a horse. Before dawn, they had reached the edge of the true jungle, where they abandoned the horse and set out on foot once more.
        Weak, poorly provisioned, armed only with the sickle - and the gun they had taken off the guard - without a compass and therefore required to plot a course by the sun and the stars, they headed north through the tropical forests toward the border, eighty miles away. Throughout that nightmare journey, Jack had one vital aid to survival: Jenny. He thought of her, dreamed of her, longed for her, and seven days later, when he and Oscar reached friendly territory, Jack knew that he had made it as much because of Jenny as because of his Ranger training.
        At that point he thought the worst was behind him. He was wrong.
        Now, sitting beside his wife's bed, with Christmas music on the tape deck, Jack Twist was suddenly overcome with grief. Christmas was a bad time because he could not help but remember how dreams of her had sustained him through his Christmas in prison-when in fact she had already been in a coma and lost to him.
        Happy holidays.
        
        Chicago, Illinois.
        As Father Stefan Wycazik moved through the halls and wards of St. Joseph's Hospital for Children, his spirits soared. That was no small thing, for he was already in a buoyant and elevated state.
        The hospital was crowded with visitors, and Christmas music issued from the public address system. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, other relatives, and friends of the young patients were on hand with gifts, goodies, and good wishes, and there was more laughter in that usually grim place than one might ordinarily hear echoing through its chambers in an entire month. Even most of the seriously afflicted patients were smiling broadly and talking animatedly, their suffering forgotten for the time being.
        Nowhere in the hospital was there more hope or laughter than among those people gathered around the bed of ten-year-old Emmeline Halbourg. When Father Wycazik introduced himself, he was greeted warmly by Emmy Halbourg's parents, two sisters, grandparents, one aunt, and one uncle, who assumed he was one of the hospital's chaplains.
        Because of what he'd learned from Brendan Cronin yesterday, Stefan expected to find a happily mending little girl; but he was unprepared for Emmy's condition. She was positively glowing. Only two weeks ago, according to Brendan, she had been crippled and dying. But now her dark eyes were clear, and her former pallor was gone, replaced by a wholesome flush. Her knuckles and wrists were not swollen, and she seemed to be completely free of pain. She looked not like a sick child valiantly fighting her way back to health; rather, she seemed already cured.
        Most startling of all, Emmy was not lying in bed but standing with the aid of crutches, moving among her delighted and admiring relatives. Her wheelchair was gone.
        "Well," Stefan said, after a brief visit, "I must be going, Emmy. I only stopped by to wish you a merry Christmas from a friend of yours. Brendan Cronin."
        "Pudge!" she said happily. "He's wonderful, isn't he? It was awful when he stopped working here. We miss him a lot."
        Emmy's mother said, "I never met this Pudge, but