Spit, Fire! Spout, Rain!

John waited at the corner, and the veteran stood on the other side, face set in bricks. He did not beckon, but he waved, smirked maybe, and then he went down Eighth Street, headed toward New Hampshire.

At the corner of Eighth and Mass, the veteran crossed to the other side with the light, but John did not make it. He could just jaywalk. he could and he should, but that was how you fucked up a mission. You got stupid and careless. You forgot SOP.

He did not want to run, but this was his chance, and John clipped into double-time, acid burped up his chest, but the veteran moved faster. He did not want to get caught, at least not yet. 
The veteran angled toward the sidewalk at the corner of Eighth. He half-turned back, moved faster.

The crowd thinned as they approached Eighth Street, and when he hit empty road, the veteran double-timed it. John had his six, like they were on scout. He'd follow him anywhere.

The veteran called to him, and who was John to refuse?
John watched the black head of hair move on, move forward. Someone waved at the veteran, tried to stop him, but he did not stop. John didn't either.

His face glowed a pale green under the lights of a tree—he was an alien, not a person, skin slick and chartreuse, a beast spraying acid. John gave him his everything.

The veteran crossed Ninth Street and kept heading north. Mass was closed until Eighth. The veteran stopped again, and his head swiveled until he spotted John.

A child bounced on her toes in a pink jacket and pink hat, and John arced around her. That's how society worked now: if people got in your way, they weren't people anymore, was that it, was the veteran a people?
If he gave up on the veteran, he had nothing.

He did not have to do this. He could let it go. He could. He thought he could. He could wander back to his tent and sleep for days, pre-winter hibernation. Acid pulsed in his chest. 
John did not like these hundreds of faces, crying and cheering and sniffling.

As the veteran's head bounced through the crowd, John tried to keep the same distance between them. Was that it? Or was he in danger of falling behind? A baby cried.
John was barely keeping up.

John thought he had a bead on the veteran's head, that dark pelt of hair. He was glad he was tall. They were headed up Mass toward Ninth Street.

Like Frankie said, he was too content, his ambition was broken, but she didn't say that at all. That was what he thought she should say, and now she was gone. She did not understand, this was it, this was what he wanted.

The lights blazed an electric storm, a red tree here and a green one over there. He passed a family with five startlingly blond children, a starting five of them. John had never wanted that. He had never wanted anything maybe.

The veteran turned, seemed to find John in the crowd, and then, again, he beckoned. Come here, like you do with a dog. The veteran turned, did not wait. He was not interested in conversation, fine. They would not talk this out.

The veteran was gone, had dissolved into the crowd, turned himself into regular people somehow.
John stood at his full height, pushed himself on to tiptoes. The veteran was about half a block away. Acid burned up John's esophagus, and he bit it back, didn't spit.

The crowd cheered behind him for something Santa-related. He could not remember what else happened when they got Kris Kringle down off the damn building. Did Santa pose with the kids? Did that happen anymore?
He did not know.

He would be fine with that, if the veteran got arrested too. 
The cops continued to maybe not scrutinize him. The one with a beard said something to the skinny one, and they both laughed in their bullet-proof vests. They were prepared for war, better equipped for it than John had ever been.

John zigged past a couple with a baby carriage. No, he was moving too fast. He slowed down. Two cops looked at him, or maybe they didn't. That could be the endgame, to just get John arrested somehow, for disturbing the piece, something like that.

John walked faster. He couldn't draw attention, but he couldn't lose him. He wouldn't. People cheered and cheered.

He skirted through two clumps of people, and then John couldn't see him in the crowd.
John's pulse flipped up, his stomach sent a mouthful of burn up to the back of his throat, and he swallowed it down.

He looked the same as he did in Dillons, except he held no sushi. He looked the same as he did in John's thoughts.
John almost waved back. The veteran smiled again, something like it, his teeth glinted, and then the veteran turned and began to walk.

John took two ragged steps that way, a child yelled, "Merry Christmas," and as John got closer, the veteran threw his arm up in the air and beckoned.  For a second, the veteran seemed to smile. To be there was one thing, to be happy about it was entirely different.

Over there, at the street corner, a tall man popped through a wall of people, and he was tall enough, and his hair was dark enough, and John thought it was him.

He saw the wrong tall man and then another wrong man, and then the crowd cheered. Santa began his descent, the stupid old fool. Down, down, down.

John had given up everything to chase down the bear-spray man, he knew that, he admitted it, he couldn't say it to Frankie's face, but he knew, he owned it. 
This could be the culmination of his life. He had not planned on an after.

This was his purpose, his devotion, and if the veteran did not show it did not matter, and then he had a sickly lopsided queasy thought: was it worse if the veteran did arrive, if it ended today, day of thanks?

If he missed the veteran today, he would search for him tomorrow and the tomorrow after that, all his tomorrows. Not today did not mean never.

A couple of kids ran past him playing tag.
Charles should have been there with him. John needed help, backup. There were too many people, too many faces. What if John missed the veteran somehow?
He laughed aloud, and when a woman in a long cashmere coat peeked his way, he clamped his mouth tight.

The obituary argued he was at peace.
John missed him a little. He could admit that.

Harold Whitechurch had stopped showing up at Dillons, and a week later, at the library, hunched over his free computer time, John had Googled all the way to Harold Whitechurch's obituary, down, down, down. via natural causes.