Christmas in Alaska

It had been some time since Jacques, Ken and Lizable had joined the railroad, but finally the winter season had begun and now the holidays were in full force. One morning, only a few days before Christmas and only a few days after Ken's encounter with the coal stores, the orange engine was still feeling bunged up, slow to steam and his voice croaking, but he and Jacques were being filled with water and coal respectively and Bertam was sat waiting nearby with Oliver. They were in earshot of the twins, much to their glee, and they could hear Oliver telling the older engine about a special shipment coming in for the family personally.
Ken could barely wait for Oliver to walk away towards the house before he spoke up.
"You're going to get the Christmas tree?!" He exclaimed.
"Yes. A bit late if you ask me though." Bertam replied coolly.
"I know right." Jacques snickered. "Who was in charge of ordering it? Alexander?"
"Not sure." Bertam verbally shrugged the question off. "Should have been Mrs Benally's turn by family tradition but they've all been busy with Hjelm just opening up."
"Family traditions?" Jacques asked, seeming scornful of the idea but Ken was fascinated.
"Sure. They've got plenty." Bertam was not interested in the conversation anymore, looking over to his crew as they oiled him up.
"Like?" Ken prompted, starting to get giddy.
"The boys put the tree up, the girls decorate, the engines all gather to see the lights turn on in the evening, the next engine down the list goes to pick the tree up from the port, last year's engine goes to pick up the children from Williamson for the turn on and carols and for the evening-"
"You're next on the list to pick up the tree?" Jacques challenged. "Why not us? It's our first Christmas here!"
"Firstly, it would be Irenia that should be picking it up but she is at Hjelm with everyone else. Oliver only told me to do it because I haven't had a day away from there in the last two weeks and she agreed." Bertam answered firmly. "Secondly, we need every engine we can at the mines. Kenai is backlogged with ore, let alone the others. It won't take two of you to bring it up."
"Surely it would be better for us to pick it up then." Jacques retorted. "You can pull more than us and Ken is basically out of commission anyway."
"I can still do things!" Ken protested, although it fell on deaf ears.
"Hey, what's the fuss about?" Alexander finally walked over from the workshop where one of the generators was in pieces, looking between the three engines.
"Oliver says Bertam will go pick the tree up from the port but it should be our turn!" Ken was quick to say, over the top of the others.
"You shouldn't be going anywhere." Alexander pointed out to Ken. "Gonna have to flush you out again by the looks of it."
"But what about your traditions?" Ken whined when his crew agreed.
"Irenia willingly gave her place up, said she'd do it another year." Alexander shrugged. "Although I don't see why you couldn't get it instead, Jacques."
"Because Mr Benally wants me to get it." Bertam inputted urgently.
"If you mean Oliver, of course he would, but if you mean dad, I wouldn't be so sure." Alexander turned back on Bertam. "Let's put it this way, would you rather be helping in Hjelm with the Moly' ore or be hauling a singular tree all the way from the port back here?"
"I want to be useful." Bertam replied, Ken not missing his anxious glance at him and Jacques and knowing he was thinking about the coal incident.
Alexander didn't say anything, staring Bertam down over the rims of glasses he didn't have.
"Alright, I'd rather be in the mine, but-"
"Then it's sorted." Alexander cut Bertam off before he could protest more. "You go to the mine, Jacques can get the tree and join you in a bit and we'll sort out who will pick up the kids later."
Bertam looked like he was going to protest, but Alexander gave him the same look again and he finally seemed to give in.
"Yes sir." Bertam responded regretfully, whistling and setting off out the yard.
"And you had better get a move on too." Alexander turned to Jacques who was grinning in victory. "Won't be long until the ship comes in."
"Yes sir!" Jacques beamed, whistling loudly before he rolled rapidly away out of the south entrance towards the main line.
Ken wordlessly watched Jacques go, his brother not even saying goodbye and adding salt to his wounds over not going to get the tree himself.
"Don't look too glum up there." Alexander pulled himself onto Ken's front out of earshot of his crew, all with a tricky expression. "Just maybe we can't put you back into service today and you'll have to help us get the tree up."
Ken broke out into a massive grin.

While he waited, Ken was given another flush out as promised by Alexander, deep in the workshop among all the generator parts and he did have to admit he felt better, although whether that was in part due to helping with the tree was up for debate. All the same, he remained in the shop until Jacques came back into the yard, but not with the joyful expression Ken had expected, instead looking somewhere between angry and disappointed.
"Look at it! It's tiny!" Jacques exclaimed before he had even come to a stop.
The engine was towing one flatbed, which was rattling sadly behind him, and strapped on top of it was what looked like a massive needle wrapped in green tarpaulin and no longer than Jacques himself.
"Thank you Jacques, we'll take it from here." Oliver managed to get to him before Kojak or Alexander did and his firm tone only irritated Jacques more.
Jacques huffed and puffed away towards the mines as soon as he was uncoupled but the three men soon set into it, removing the tarpaulin and revealing that the tree had been tied up so much it was more rope than tree. Ken heard Oliver complaining about it, but Alexander just elbowed him into silence and the three men picked it up with Ken's crew and other staff to take it up to the flat ground beside the house. Around the engine, a huge structure was set up to stand taller than the tree with a pulley at the end of the span and a long rope wound through that. One end of the rope was tied to the top of the tree and, to Ken's surprise, his driver came up to him with the other end and tied it around his coupling hook.
"This should be much easier with an engine." Alexander remained by the tree but beamed down at Ken with a thumbs up.
"I don't understand." Ken meekly admitted to his driver.
"You're going to pull on that rope and that rope will get the tree to stand up." Ken's driver answered.
"... What?" Ken asked again, imagining the wrapped up tree growing limbs and getting itself stood upright or grappling on to the rope like a support wire to a telephone pole.
"You'll see." His driver chuckled, jumping into his cab alongside the fireman.
Ken was only left confused by his own interpretation, so much so that he didn't really notice the flurry of hand signals between his crew and Kojak and lurched backwards when his driver started pushing his controls, the tree audibly leaping up and hitting the floor again.
"Come on Ken." His driver encouraged gently, keeping a firmer grip on his controls.
It didn't take Ken long at all to get distracted again, watching the tip of the tree begin to arc up into the air, wanting it to go faster and so starting to pull faster.
"Ken! Stop that!" Oliver turned and snapped at the engine with a guide rope in his hands.
"S-Sorry." Ken apologised in barely more than a whisper, shrinking into the rails and letting his crew guide his movements.
Eventually, the tree made it up to stand tall and proud, although still massively bound up as it had been when Jacques brought it up. Once the guide ropes were fastened down, the Benally men took blades to the bounding ropes, cutting them down as much as they could reach before pulling the last bits down. The ropes twirled and spun down like ribbons in a gymnastics competition and the branches of the tree sprung out behind them almost perfectly. The stars could almost be seen in Ken's eyes as he gasped.
"Can we use that for the lights?" Sophia called over as she left the house with several open boxes of Christmas lights on a sled behind her, followed by her mother with one big box in her arms that had something else inside.
"Sure!" Alexander called back before his brother or dad did, but both of them accepted it. Mostly.
The crane was lowered down so that the end of the lights could be attached and brought to the top of the tree, all operated by remote control for raising the beam up and down, and dropping it at the top of the tree. Somehow, the end of the lights actually caught in the branches at the top and stuck there. Below, Sophia was putting on roller skates as Evelyn began to cut into the other box and the crane arm came back down.
With the confidence and ease of someone who had done this a thousand times, she took the other end of the lights and began skating around the base of the tree, wrapping the lights in tight, neat spirals all the way down to the bottom and throwing the end to Oliver who plugged them in.
Meanwhile, Evelyn had brought a huge star out of the box, running on battery power as she had to put some in while she waited for her daughter, and now it was being attached to the crane to be taken up to the top of the tree. The crane of course went slowly up to the top, and while Kojak controlled it, Oliver and Alexander were stood around it, watching where the crane was going to drop it, calling between each other to move the crane to one or away from the other. Eventually, and without much grace, the star was plopped on top of the tree, although nearly falling off as soon as the crane moved away.
"Are you gonna turn them on?" Ken asked as soon as he was released from the rope and rolled over as close to the tree as he could get.
"Not until tonight." Evelyn chuckled.
"We'll just test it all while you're not looking." Sophia teased the engine.
"But I want to see it!" Ken protested.
"You'll see it when it gets switched on properly." Kojak tried to soothe. "It'll be a much better sight when it's dark."
"But-"
"Come on, back into the workshop with you." Alexander hopped down and got into Ken's cab. "I should get back to fixing that generator."
Ken couldn't help but feel mopey when he was shunted into the back of the workshop again, no windows to let him see outside. He was so busy moping that he didn't hear the flick of a switch, followed promptly by popping and swearing from outside.

Sat by himself in the back of the workshop, Ken somehow managed to doze off over the sound of Alexander working nearby and people scrambling around outside, only waking up again when it was starting to get dark and Irenia rolled into the yard looking for the coaches.
"You're going to pick up the children?" Ken asked.
"Yeah, it is my go since Harlon didn't want to leave the mine." Irenia replied, unusually flatly. "I see you're feeling better at least. Edrick had a right go at Jacques when he came in complaining about the tree."
"Edrick did? Wow." Ken winced. Edrick was the most patient of them all and he knew his twin could be irritating. He was starting to regret letting Alexander flush him out again, wondering if he could have helped keep his brother calm.
"You'll get all the gossip soon, everyone will be on their way back from the mine before it gets too dark." Irenia teased Ken gently, backing down onto the coaches.
"What do I do when they get back?" Ken called.
"You'll see!" Irenia called as she left for the small town with Glacier, Icicle, Bear and Wolf in tow.
Ken barely had time to settle back down into his place with a grumble before some of his siblings did indeed come back. Lizable rattled rapidly into the yard, followed by Ace and wildly excited.
"Look Ace, it's already up!" She beamed with the energy of a thousand suns.
"Of course it is, it's getting late." Ace responded, trying to calm her but clearly getting nowhere.
"How did they get it up there?" Lizable questioned.
"Ken helped. Jacques said so, remember?" Ace responded. "Ken, are you here?"
"Yeah, I'm here." Ken responded, rolling over to the entrance to the workshop, still feeling sad.
"You got to help?! You're so lucky! It's been such along day in the mine!" Lizable exclaimed.
Ken got the feeling that he was being put on a pedestal by his only younger sibling, but at the same time he couldn't help enjoying it, his sister's infectious energy sapping away his misery.
"I-I didn't do that much really." Ken meekly replied. "I only helped pull the tree up. The Benallys did all the decorating."
"At least you've done something productive here today." Edrick rolled in next, behind Jacques and while Ken could practically see the anger between the two of them, they thankfully seemed calmer than Irenia had implied.
"Wouldn't expect anything less." Jacques chuckled, reversing into the line beside his twin. "There's more ways to be useful than hauling ore all day."
"Which you didn't do as much of as anyone else. Especially me." Genny laughed, even more so when Jacques pulled a face at her.
"That's because you were unsafe about it." Harlon rolled in with Fallon, the former in his usual mood but Fallon could be seen rolling her eyes.
"The manager counted it." Fallon scolded Harlon and Genny gently. "You did as well as each other."
"Someone decided it would be a good idea to have a contest to see who could move the most ore." Bertam explained, appearing suddenly on Ken's other side when he began to look confused and looking wearily at Genny and Harlon. "I would have objected of course if I was there on time."
"That's because you're no fun." Jacques said to Bertam without missing a beat, the older engine only rolling his eyes in response.
"Control says Irenia is only a few minutes away, let's get in place!" Clarabelle called as she and Danielle finally joined them instead of talking to Sophia.
Before Ken quite knew what was happening, the older engines had scrambled to one side of the yard in a fan shape looking towards the tree. After sharing a baffled look with Jacques, the twins and Lizable slotted themselves on the end and spotted a pop up platform that hadn't been there this morning, facing the tree and the house but sheltered by the nearby buildings and covered with chairs.
Indeed, it was only a few minutes before Irenia's whistle was heard long and loud as she approached, echoing around with the rattling and singing of the coaches behind her. She pulled in alongside the platform to let the children and their parents off, although it wasn't dark enough to turn the lights on apparently as she shunted the coaches around behind the platform before returning to the kids, her and her crew letting them climb in her cab and pull the chord for her whistle, soon being joined by Harlon surprisingly enough. This left the rest of them to chat, and chat they did.
Darkness fell quickly and finally Irenia and Harlon were told to move away and slipped back in with their siblings. All of their crews came down and sat on the fronts of their respective engines to watch as well.
"Are you excited yet?" Ken's fireman asked him.
"I can't wait!" Ken beamed.
"Remember that you helped make it happen this year." His driver was serious for a moment.
"The children will love you forever." His fireman joked.
Ken laughed along but didn't get to respond to them as the small generator for the tree was turned on with a roar by a rather proud looking Alexander, who had spent all day fixing it. Like clockwork, all the attention was on the Benally family and especially on Kojak as he was the man holding the button. The children in particular were very excited and Ken could certainly feel it too. With encouragement from the younger Benallys, the yard was alive with the sound of counting voices from engines and humans, old and young alike.
"Five!"
"Four!"
"Three!"
"Two!"
"One!"
Kojak pressed the button and the tree rapidly lit up from bottom to top in the tight swirls that Sophia had laid and when it hit the top, the star burst into life with sparkles and jets of light bursting from each tip, Ken's eyes only widening as the light display continued. The lights up the tree twinkled like stars in swirls and the star pulsated like it was growing and bursting into sprinkles of light down the guide ropes to the ground. Finally, the light display settled, the lights running up the tree twinkling gently as if they were stars in the sky and the star on top of the tree pulsating as if it was expanding and contracting again, almost like a beating heart.
Kojak took a bow in front of the children with his family before taking a microphone out of his pocket and addressing everyone gathered.
"Merry Christmas everyone!"