#20302 - 12/08/09 07:33 AM
Re: write your Christmas story.
[Re: Anonymous]
|
Ravenwood
member
Registered: 11/11/08
Posts: 170
|
This is the Rewrite!!
I apologize. As usual, the Raven posted before it was fully baked. But... is it ever?
Angel on Your Shoulder
"You’re what?”
“Yes,” Jim answered, still stuffing winter work clothes into the duffle bag.
“But it’s two days before Christmas. You’ll miss Christmas day with the girls and me.”
“I’m sorry. You know I am. But that was his stipulation. Be there immediately or not at all.”
Clova spun and sat, hands pressed to her ears as though that would make the words go away.
“Honey,” he knelt before her and took her face with his hands. “Think about it. You know how I hate for you to have to waitress to feed us, and I’ve been out of work for so long I can’t say no.
”Look,” he continued, taking bills from a shirt pocket and handing them, “I borrowed money from Arthur to get me there. I’ll make enough that you won’t have to work. In fact, here’s enough for you and the girls to go to Dallas for Christmas at your mother’s. Now won’t that be nice?”
She didn’t want to hear, but it did make sense. Too much sense. It was worth them being apart for Christmas for Jim’s sanity alone. He criticized himself unbearably when he wasn’t supporting them.
“Tell me again,” she surrendered, “what did he say?”
“It was Everett with Kincaid Contractors. You remember. He bossed that job in Washington State when you and the girls were with me there two years ago. Kincaid thought the gas company would waive the completion date to the pipeline they’re doing now, given the bad weather. But, no. Kincaid is facing a multi-million dollar penalty if they don’t get moving.”
“Why didn’t he hire you to operate the ditcher from day one?”
“He tried. He called around, and I was with Allied. He thought I still was. He called there again to get me, and he learned they were shut down, so he called here.”
Her shoulders relaxed and she exhaled.
“All right then. But Nebraska? You’re going to need more clothes than that.” She rose and went to the chest of drawers.
..................
The city limits sign indicated Mooring, population three thousand and seventy-nine. Everett had told Jim that a room might be available over the café. A room there would do until the ditch got them nearer to Risenburg.
Before Jim asked about a room, he would eat.
The café must be the only thing open today, Christmas. And many townspeople were there, enjoying each other and festivities. Children ran to tables, to Jim’s as if they knew him, and showed off new mittens or a brightly painted toy, some of the toys were home made.
“Is half the town here today?” Jim asked his waitress. He’d become more sociable and generous with waitresses after Clova began working.
“Oh, no. The movie house shows a free picture on Christmas. Most everyone’s there. A John Wayne film, I think.” She must have noticed him scanning the street. She laughed.
“You were thinking we don’t have a movie theatre, weren’t you? Well, we do. Although the movies are so improper today. Last week we had one that showed a couple on a bed. They were dressed and all, but you know… “
He nodded and pointed to chicken fried steak on the menu, despite the price of seventy cents.
He watched her walk away. She looked great, but he’d never been unfaithful in all the times he had been away from Clova. He told his wife so, though she hadn’t asked.
“Why not?” she’d teased.
“Yeah, right,” he teased in return, “I’d only disappoint her and embarrass me.”
“Oh, she wouldn’t be disappointed.”
He liked hearing that, but Clova also told him he was handsome, and he knew for sure that wasn’t so.
Some patrons were singing carols, though the voices were mostly drowned in the joyous din. Jim thought again of his wife and daughters. He would call except he didn’t know how the money would last, and Clova’s mother couldn’t bear the charges if he called collect.
He pulled the remaining bills from a pocket and counted them again, holding them near. Maybe he would wait to rent the room, wait until after he’d been to the work site. If he could get an advance on his pay, he’d be better off. He could call the family then. Clova would understand.
While waiting for his order, he spread the crude map he’d made from Everett’s directions: seven miles east on farm road eighty-seven, north at the silo, two miles on a dirt road. He should see work activity from there. Jim looked out the window. The windshield of his ’47 work truck was covering over again; he would install snow chains before going on.
Once he had eaten and was underway, blowing snow made finding the work site more difficult than he had planned. Two miles. Did the odometer indicate that had passed since the pavement? The north wind was growing, and he couldn’t see the digging equipment, but he did recognize telltale new dirt crossing the road, and he turned right. He guessed, he hoped, he was going east.
He stopped and pried away the ice that wrapped the wiper blade. It was hard to believe they were still working in this weather, but multi-millions in penalties? He started again, after wiping at fog that refused to stay from the windshield. The Cleveland ditcher should stand out, though the dozers would appear first, with Jim approaching from the backside. He’d operated this same Cleveland in Washington. It was a good little machine. It dug almost two feet wide and six feet deep. All hydraulic operation.
During the war, ditchers were still mechanically operated, little changed from the first models. A few of them were left over from almost that long before. But most of the older ones were melted into Cats and tanks and Jeeps and rifles. Jim had operated the survivors. His age, skill, and two daughters already in the family had prevented him from military service.
And he was skilled. He prided that someone could stand in the ditch of his making and, looking back, they would see not walls, but daylight. The name Jim Boxwood was known to most contractors.
He was experienced with both of the best known ditchers, Cleveland and Buckeye. He preferred the Cleveland. Some Buckeyes could dig deeper, even to twelve feet, but the Buckeye Company was slower in switching their machines to the hydraulics that had shown such merit in the machines of war.
‘Isn’t that the irony of it?’ We make weapons to slaughter men, and we learn how to serve man better in the process. Irony or idiocy?
The dozers showed, interrupting that thought, and he moved slowly past men positioning pipe for the welders. The Cleveland was just ahead. He wiped at the windshield again. It was the same machine all right. He could have picked her out in a yard full of them.
He put the truck in neutral and pulled the parking brake. He didn’t dare let the windshield cool.
Jim didn’t recognize the operator, and he thought it may be because of the parka hood. It wasn’t.
“Hi,” Jim voiced above the sounds of machinery operating, and he pushed a hand forth. “Jim Boxford.”
“I know who you are!” the aged face shaped between a scowl and hatred.
“Pardon me?”
“You’re the man who’s come to take my job.”
“No sir. I know nothing of that. Everett called. That’s all I know.”
The scowl diminished. “Charley Waite. With an e.” He pulled off a glove and took the other’s hand.
“Charley Waite! Why haven’t we met before? I’ve heard of you for years.”
“Too many years. You don’t know, then?”
Jim shook his head. Charley waved back toward the ditch.
“I don’t get enough footage, they say. That’s why you’re here.”
“But there’s something else you could do on the job. The dozers…”
Charley shook his head, then looked fro and aft before making an adjustment to a controller. Satisfied, he continued. “Something else? They won’t hear of it. I’m done!”
Fresh from weeks out of work and fresh from the humiliation such brings to a man, and at Christmas too. Jim’s face reddened.
“Like hell they won’t hear of it! Where’s the foreman’s shack?”
“Up ahead. It’s a doghouse on back of the Power Wagon.”
Jim waved and jumped off the machine. It hadn’t moved far from his truck. He drove the truck forward and parked again and knocked at the doghouse door. Everett and another man were inside.
“Good to see you, Jim. Glad, too.” Everett waved him in, though there was hardly room.
“I’ll stand out here… Charley Waite says he’s out of a job.”
Everett shrugged. “We don’t need more laborers. Besides, Charley couldn’t stand up to that anyway. What favor would we be doing if we get the old fella injured?”
“What about a dozer?”
“We have good men on them now. Abler than Charley. I’m sorry, but that’s a fact.”
“Well then, you need Charley, you need him on the Cleveland, because this cowboy is driving back to Texas. And don’t you ever,” he waved in emphasis, though it wasn’t necessary because of the escalation of his voice, “Don’t you ever call me again to come put a man out of work!”
“Now don’t be a hardass, Jim.”
Jim didn’t wait to hear it all. He waded and slipped back to his flatbed. Everett didn’t call after him, and it was best that he didn’t. When the truck had turned around and passed back beyond the activity, Jim stopped again. Anger and pride turned to cold reality.
'What the heck have I done?'
He took the bills out and counted them again. Was there enough to get home? What fortune that he hadn’t paid for the room!
He would find another café come nightfall and sleep sitting in a booth, if they would allow it. When he got back, what then? On top of what he faced before, he now owed his brother for the loan. What would he tell Clova and the girls? A big penalty comes with being a hardass.
He'd never been labelled that before.
And what about now? The snow was drifting into mounds that the truck already objected to passing through. He might not get home.
When he passed the café in Mooring, it appeared that the crowd was gone and the place was closing. Hwy eighty-seven west was hardly being traveled. And that was good. The white-out of blowing snow had the flatbed in the opposite lane, sometimes in the bar ditch, Jim holding his breath until it crawled back to the surface. What if it didn’t?
Darkness came. Traffic, hardly more than Jim’s truck before, was only the truck now. There was still no way to tell bar ditch from the crown of the road. The wind lessened, and the snow settled. Using high beams, Jim could make out high-line poles, and he gauged where the road was from them. He would stop if he came to a town. But he had no idea where one was. And he didn’t know what time it was. He freed a hand to pinch at tenseness at his neck. Had it been hours? It must have. Thank heaven for the additional fuel tank.
He saw a mound ahead. Taillights were snowed over, but he made out a stranded car. When he stopped to investigate, he found two adults inside. Sleeping. Or were they? From his flashlight beam, their color was alarming. The doors were locked. Jim smashed a vent window and reached in to unlatch. The car reeked of fumes. They must have gotten stuck and left the engine running, unaware that they had an exhaust leak.
Would they revive? Jim dragged the driver out into fresh air. The passenger was a large lady. No. Not large. Largely pregnant. Jim opened her door and leaned her forward enough to pull her elbows back. He began moving her arms in what he had been taught for resuscitation. After minutes, he ran to the man and did the same. Then he returned.
He repeated that switch-off between them several times. Neither appeared that they would recover. Tired, Jim sat in the snow and prayed. He pounded mittens together to get feeling back into his hands and he started again.
The man began coughing and pushed to a sitting position.
“What?” he asked, as in a daze.
“Can you help me here? You’ve both been poisoned with carbon monoxide. If you can help me get this lady from the car, we can do this better.”
The man waddled around to help. Dazed and wading in the snow drift.
“Be careful!” he shouted. “She’s having the baby. That’s the reason we’re out, trying to get her to the hospital.”
“If we don’t get her to breathing deeper… “ Jim started to add that getting her to a hospital, in that case wouldn’t matter, but he didn’t.
She was half wrapped in a quilt, it still under her. They used it to pull her out onto the drift, and they continued resuscitation efforts.
“Oh God! Oh God, Honey,” the man wept, “You got to help us here. You got to.” He turned to the sky. “You got to help us, too. Do you hear me?”
The woman began to cough. In minutes, they lifted her to her feet and walked her to the truck. They squeezed in.
“If you’ll point me to town,” Jim promised, “I’ll try to get us there.”
The more alert the woman became, the more certain she was that the baby wouldn’t wait. But it did.
Elaine and Jasper Mixom welcomed a new human to the planet that night. Healthy. Lungs: real healthy. An eight pound girl. She arrived just before midnight, and she was given the name Christmas.
When the doctor was told of their rescue, he told them, “You had an angel riding on your shoulders tonight.”
“No,” Elaine replied from her bed. “The angel was driving a truck.” She looked to Jim, who stood at the other side.
He didn't speak, just lifted a hand to head off the compliment.
It dawned with a clear sky and sunshine. Still and peaceful. Surprising to Jim, he was alert. Maybe he’d napped more in the waiting room than he had known. He removed the chains. Highway department trucks had the highway bladed. They had even delivered the Mixom’s vehicle. It was in the muffler shop.
The drone of tread on ice, or tread on pavement, lulled Jim happily. He thought of what the doctor had said. It was true: if he hadn’t been there to find the couple... If he hadn’t received the call from Everett before that. And if he hadn’t left the job site in anger. Some days, being a hardass is okay.
..................
Clova wasn’t upset. She’d rarely been upset in their fourteen years together. Usually, it had been when someone mistreated a child or an aninmal. And this time?
“It had to happen as it did,” she reasoned. “Just as it did. The angels ordained it for Christmas and her parents. We are blessed to have been a part of it.”
He held her against him. "And blessed to have each other. But... what about the money we owe to Arthur? What about your job? Didn’t you quit?”
“First, there’s something wrong with the car. Coming from Dallas, I could hardly keep it on the road. A loose hub or a bad tire, maybe. I stopped at two stations, but they were manned for the holidays by boys that must be teenagers. Oh, they washed the windshield and checked the oil, gave out the silverware for a fill up of twenty-six cent gas. But they knew about as much about a car as I do. Though they tried.”
Jim took the car to their mechanic. He drove it onto a lift.
“Look here!” the mechanic pointed out. “The tie rod is loose. The nut is gone and the thing is fixing to fall apart. If it had… all the way from Dallas, you say?
He took a mechanic's red rag from a hip pocket and wiped at his hands. “All I can say is this, Jim. Your wife had an angel on her shoulder.”
Jim stood and gaped, looking at the ruined part. “I believe it.”
The car repaired, Jim returned and told Clova. Then he added, “That’s the good news. The bad news is… “ He turned empty pockets inside out.
“Tell me, Jim. Can there be any bad news?”
He sat.
“No. No, there can’t. The last of the way home, in the night, I saw the brightest star. I thought it must be standing over our house. Like the star over Bethlehem.”
Clova gasped, her hand at her heart. "We did too. The girls and I saw the same star.”
Their excitement and gladness was annexed with the ringing of the phone. Jim answered.
“Hello. Yes. Uhuh. Uhuh. Uhuh. I will. I promise I will.”
He reset the handset on the phone and brushed at his shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
“Just patting my friends. That was Everett. He says Kincaid has pushed some numbers around. The times Charley Waite has worked for them. They are going to credit some of the time he’s worked elsewhere, and he gets to draw retirement. Now, Everett pleaded, can I be back there in two days?”
Jim figured that Charley’s retirement amount paled when compared to multi-millions, but he hadn't mentioned that. He wouldn't. No need to be a hardass. 
|
|
Top
|
 Reply
 Quote
 Quick Reply
 Quick Quote
|
|
|
Moderator: art
|
|
New Reply
