Page 6 of Daddy's Little Christmas

I shifted on the couch, pulling one knee up, and started to read.

Arthur Vale.

Born 1918, Savannah, Georgia. Black, soft-spoken, good with his hands. The article described him fixing radios on porches and carving toys for neighborhood kids, all while trying not to draw too much attention in a world that punished him simply for existing.

Henry Easton.

Born 1920, Carbon County, Pennsylvania. White, raised in coal country, the only son of a miner who’d rather draw mountains than dig into them. Too soft in a place that worshipped hard edges.

They both fled. Different reasons, same gut-deep need: get out or disappear.

They met in Harlem in 1946, in a jazz café called The Lantern Room. The artist lingered on that night—sketching strangers on napkins, the only empty seat at the bar being the one next to him. Arthur ducked in just to warm his hands.

I could see it in my head. Arthur sitting down, shoulders hunched against the cold. Henry sliding a napkin toward him, the quick, nervous thrill of being seen.

The article quoted a line from one of Henry’s letters:

“I drew him because I thought I’d never see him again.

Instead, I learned his name and couldn’t stop saying it in my head.”

My chest pinched.

I read on.

Police raids. Quiet corners. Rooftops and borrowed rooms. The constant fear of being caught—of being arrested, beaten, disappeared—for something as simple as holding hands.

Still, they kept building this life between them, carefully, like they were assembling a house made of matchsticks and hope.

At some point, Henry whispered:“I want to build a home with you.”

Arthur answered:“Then we need a place the world forgot.”

That’s when Vermont appeared.

I paused and set the phone on my thigh, staring at the ceiling for a second.

I’d heard people talk about queer history before. I even followed a couple of accounts that did those “this day in LGBT history” posts. But this felt different. Closer.

Two men who were never meant to find each other, deciding the world didn’t get to choose how they lived.

I picked the phone back up and continued to read.

They’d heard rumors from travelers and seasonal workers about a valley in Vermont with old logging cabins and cheap land, a place nobody looked at twice. A place where you could be another quiet face and that would be a blessing, not a curse.

“Vermont is a place where a man can disappear without dying,”

someone had told them in The Lantern Room.

That line made my fingers go numb around the phone.

Disappear without dying.

The article showed a photo of the valley the first time Arthur and Henry saw it—snow-blanketed, the cabins half-collapsed, the lodge leaning to one side like it was tired.

They bought it anyway.

Arthur rebuilt with his hands. Henry rebuilt with his drawings. Winterhaven Lodge, they called it. At first, it was just theirs. Then friends came. Then friends of friends. People who needed somewhere to land—