Santa's Bag
"B.," he told himself, "look like your luck done run out. Pray for tow trucks." He fairly crackled with the proceeds of a deal he had closed in Pittsburgh, unloading the fall crop of gourmet-organic, healthful-hydroponic weed and a session afterwards at the big wheel of a little joint across the river in Ohio. But from where he hunched behind the padded wheel of his Porsche, he couldn’t even see back to the road he had spun off of. What the heck he was doing on this hill-billy track, he couldn’t explain to himself. He’d gotten off the toll-road looking for a bathroom. Both headlights were buried and coal-sack clouds had quickly sifted-over the hood and all the windows. It was all wipers and defroster could do to bang an opening for him to stare out of. He doubted the tail-lights showed. In fact, he doubted there was any traffic passing to notice him down this embankment. He didn’t do prayer, it wasn’t his bag, but he wished real hard.
Lyle shifted down and let the tank-truck plow to a stop. Glancing in the right-hand door-mirror, he let a hiss escape his lips and punched on the flashers. He’d have to get out and look.
A smart wind flapped the jacket he wore unzipped over top of his coveralls, as he stomped back along his own wheel-ruts, already drifting over. It damned near snatched off his cap, but he saved it. "Yeah," he said with a grunt, taking the first sideways step down the slope. Something was down there, looked like it might be a little sports job, from what he could see in the dark and the flying snow.
B. jumped– for joy of course– when a rap on the driver’s-side window caught him unawares. He slid the glass down a few inches. "Man, am I glad to see you!" he told the bulky shape.
"You okay?" Lyle asked the driver. He couldn’t see him much, but he did say he wasn’t hurt, sounding pretty lively. "I can offer you a ride, if you want."
B. snapped on the dome light and asked, "How’s ‘bout a tow-truck to pull me outta here?" The engine had never died. He thought the car would probably run, if it just had a road to try it on.
Lyle looked at the little black man. City-type. "Ain’t but two between here and Reading and they’re working accidents on the turnpike. You better come ahead with me." He didn’t say it, but a little guy like that could freeze to death in this sort of weather. Lyle pulled the bill of his baseball cap down a fraction at the thought.
In the cab of the oil-company’s truck, the small man used his finger to dig snow out of the tassel-loafers he wore. Lyle let a hiss escape his lips as he shifted into second and turned his attention fully to feeling his way down the near-invisible road.
He chatted. "Yeah, I figure you can get your heap pulled back on the road some time tomorrow, for all it’s Christmas morning. There won’t be nobody much out and we can get Lammey to come with his wrecker. Figure you took much damage when you went off the bank?"
"I don’t think so. I believe I could drive it if I could get it on the road," B. said. "But what’m I going to do tonight? Where you taking me anyhows?"
"There ain’t much choice. I was out making fuel-oil deliveries, but I can’t take the company truck too far or I’ll hear it loud from dispatch. We got The Inn up on Ten and that’s about it. Ought to do, though," Lyle told him. B. allowed that it sounded like a plan. Lyle picked up the microphone and filled dispatch in on developments. A voice like a chicken gave brief acknowledgment.
The choked parking lot at the motel confirmed what the desk clerk told B.: that they were full up; and two men, one folded into the sofa and one wrapped in a blanket on a spindly chair, were there to back up what B. would otherwise have called a convenient story. He was offered a chance to occupy a free chair with a couple of blankets at no additional cost, and some faint hope that the state police would take the three of them to better accommodations elsewhere at some point during the night, if they could get around to it; it was a bad storm and the turnpike was a mess. B. pulled his leather jacket close with his fists in the pockets and was just drawing a breath to say he’d have to take the chair, when the oil-truck dude broke in.
"Never you mind about that," Lyle said, abruptly. "You can do better at our place, if you don’t mind sharing a late dinner."
B. turned on him, surprised. He let silence grow while wheels in his head spun quickly. He sure wasn’t looking forward to no ride from no state po-lice and sure, he wasn’t going to miss that hard little chair all night. Could the big dude have spotted that he was carrying a load of cash? B. felt like his surge of prosperity ought to be visible to others. But he’d been wrapped up in his jacket and hadn’t flashed a wad.
"Why, no, I don’t mind sharing a dinner," he finally said. "I don’t mind at all. Thank you very much. You sure it be all right with the little lady?"
"No problem," Lyle shrugged and told him the entire train of reasoning that had led him to make the sudden offer of hospitality, "It’s Christmas Eve."
Together Lyle and B. took the truck back to the abandoned oil-company lot. Lyle swooshed the snow off the windscreen with his arm and started his pick-up so that B. could sit in it while he locked things up. After a bit, they pulled up behind a house bright with colored lights around the little back porch. B. was about frozen, as the heater in the pick-up truck never had got going. He thought longingly of his luggage, entombed in the Porsche’s trunk. There was a good sweater in there.
"Hi, I’m Margie; this is Travis." She had "Nice Lady," embroidered in her face. The eight year-old leaning into her had, "Good Kid," knitted into his features. B. cursed himself for a suspicious ghetto-rat.
"Woo-ee, you must heat the place with them Christmas lights," B. offered. Margie and the kid both looked at the tree, gaudy with decorations and grinned proudly.
"You can have a candy-cane," the little fellow said.
"Can I?" said B.. "I got me a sweet tooth, but it been a long time, years, since I had a candy-cane." While the lady took his coat, the boy went to the tree and selected one of the low-hanging striped hooks. The big dude, Lyle it was, came back with a bundle of red he tossed at B. "Try this on. It might fit." B. unfolded it and said, "It sure won’t be none too small, that’s a fact." and pulled the sweater over his head.
"Travis already ate. Nine-thirty’s too late for him, but I waited dinner for you," the mother said. It was nothing fancy, nothing on a sesame-seed bun, either, just steady going at meat and potatoes with a couple of side-dishes.
"This sweet-potatoes? I used to eat me a power of sweet p’taties back in the day." he said. It was something called butternut squash which the Missus gave Lyle credit for growing along with the green beans. "Well, these’s the best turnips I had since I don’t know when. Just need some greens to go with ‘em." They turned out to be parsnips, which Lyle had harvested just that week with his own hands. "Well, I know anyhows you didn’t grow this here beef in the back yard, or did you?" he asked, feeling hungrier. Somehow the food set real well in his stomach.
"That’s not beef," the big dude told him, putting down his fork with a serious air. There was a moment’s silence.
"Do I want to know what it is?" B. asked?
"It’s bear," Lyle told him in a voice of doom. Little Travis and his mother burst out laughing together with both men quick behind them. The boy in particular laughed so hard that he had to be propped up in his chair by his mother.
B. addressed himself to the dissipated-looking child, as his laughter ebbed, "Did you eat bear for dinner, too?"
The child went into elaborate disgust at the thought. "No, it’s roast beef."
"Well, now," B. said, "the cat’s out of the bag."
Slipping out of his shyness, the little guy piped up to his mother, "You didn’t say grace." Margie shook her head. No, we didn’t. You want to say it for us now?"
But the boy’s sense of hospitality had been excited and he said, "Mr. B. say it."
B. set down his fork with a clink. He thought back the cold bottom of that embankment. Then he thought of the roulette wheel slowing, while the little ball bounced to rest on his number again. He recalled the moment he had walked into that dim Pittsburgh warehouse, hoping to close his deal and get away without trouble. "Did you pray before you et?" he asked the boy. Travis nodded quickly. "What did you pray for, then?"
"Thank-you-for-this-food," he trotted the words out on a well used string.
B. smiled. ‘That’s it, just, "‘Thank you for this food?"’
"You can ask for other things," Travis said easily, with the air of an authority.
"Like everybody in the family stay in good health, things like that?" B. asked. Travis nodded. "How ‘bout something you don’t already have, like ..."
"Mom’s divorce," the boy filled in quickly. B. suddenly felt that he was going down another embankment.
"Well, I had in mind something like a new bike," he mumbled.
But Travis’s mother broke in to bridge the embarrassment, "When the divorce comes through, me and Lyle can get married." B. looked straight at her and saw that it was a healed-over injury.
"Seeing as the cat’s out of the bag," Lyle added, "it won’t be long now."
"We just need a thousand dollars for the lawyer," Travis explained. He might have been saying they just needed a glass to hold water, something common. That did produce a small silence.
"It’s why I’m doin’ time-and-a-half on Christmas Eve," Lyle said, to end the silence. "How bout you," he turned his head to the boy. "You all ready for bed yet? There’s going to be presents to open in the morning."
B. hadn’t thought he was going to say the words, it wasn’t his bag, but he interrupted with, "Hold on a minute." He bowed his head. "Thank you for this food and thank you for these nice people. Amen. Now we can eat?"
Lyle had looked out the window and rubbed his jaw, calculating from the slant of the storm, while Margie made up the sofa-bed. "We’ll have you out of here and back on the road bright ‘n early."
"Y’all been very kind to me, taking me in and all," B. told the two of them. "I’d like to pay you at least what I would’ve paid for a room at a motel, not to mention the price of a dinner that wouldn’t have been near as fine as what I had with y’all." He held out some folded bills.
Lyle and Margie shared a pre-arranged look. "Nah," said Lyle, "it’d ruin the Christmas part of it, and all." B. fussed, but they never let him get anywhere with it.
As he lay on the sofa-bed in the evergreen-scented dark, B.’s mind rambled, flakes of thought still falling after the day’s wind that had scooped them up was gone. He wasn’t a religious man. He had left all that behind him along with a lot of other cumbersome baggage. But he was still proud to claim superstition as part if his identity. He didn’t ever want anyone to mistake him for a ... hmm, in deference to the good people who had loaned him the pajamas he wore and the bed he lay in, he cast around for a suitable term: he didn’t want nobody to mistake him for no middle-American, least of all himself when he looked in the mirror. So! That was what prayer was all about: the please and thank you of life. And life, he strongly believed, knew how to punish bad manners. Them that copped an attitude could look for a fat lip from Mama Life. The first thing that went was your self-respect, and it took you down from there. B.’d had a run of bodacious good luck and it made him anxious. He needed to do something to take the curse off. He needed to round off the business with a proper thank you, even if he didn’t end it with, "Amen."
Bright and early he woke to the glow of colored lights and rustle of gift-wrap. The kid had gotten into the presents in a tradition all children seemed to know about. Eggs and scrapple were mixed with candy canes and plastic trucks. The adults stopped their eating every time Travis opened another present to express their wonder at toys that had not seemed half so marvelous when they had bought them. Lyle phoned somebody called Lammey and they stood to bundle into their coats. B. gave back the huge, red sweater with thanks, then Lyle went out to warm the pick-up. When Margie darted out of the kitchen to answer some cry Travis gave out from upstairs, B. stepped into the first floor bathroom and felt in his pocket for a thick fold of used bills. Separating out a thousand made no visible difference in the size of the wad he quickly hid again. He walked into the living room, where the four-inch wide mantle supported three colorful stockings and his fingers dipped in and out of the lumpy one with "Travis" along its length in glitter.
Feeling like he had finished up some important business, he found his coat and took a final squint in the mirror. "You ready to take off?" Lyle called from the open door of the kitchen.
"All took care of," B. answered. "Ready to rock ‘n roll."
With the draft from the door came Lyel’s, "Amen."
appeared December, 2002