Bring Me Home for Christmas
Page 14

“It’s wonderful, you’ll see. I have to make a run into Fortuna this morning. Can I pick up anything for you?”
“Oh, I hate to ask favors…” Becca said, taking a second bite of a fantastic omelet.
Paige leaned on the bar, facing her. “What do you need?”
“Well, if you’re anywhere near a store that sells sewing supplies, I need a seam ripper.” She lifted the leg with the cast and opened jeans. “I used a sharp knife this morning, but I can see the advantage of having the right equipment. Before I slice off a finger or something.”
“I’ll not only be near that kind of store, I’ll be in one. I’m going to buy construction paper, glue and craft stuff. The kids all get out a little early today because of the holiday and we’re going to make some table favors for Thanksgiving dinner. The bar is usually quiet on Wednesday night before the holiday, so Jack and John can handle dinner alone. There are a bunch of town kids who want to make stuff for their tables.”
Becca’s fork paused in midair. “Don’t they do crafts at school to bring home?”
“Not so much,” Paige said. “They do have Thanks giving stories, an assembly program and they make stuff for the school bulletin boards, but nothing for our tables. And we’ll have a nice, big crowd here tomorrow. Of course, other people have big family gatherings, too, so we’re meeting in the church basement. It’s fun for the kids.”
Becca put down her fork. “Can I come?”
“Shopping?”
“Yes, that. But can I come do crafts? Paige, that’s my specialty, sort of.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Oh, man, I wish I had my stuff! You just don’t know how much stuff I have—patterns and instruction books and stencils, all kinds of supplies. You know, money’s been so tight, lots of teachers just go buy stuff for the class. I used to hit up my surfing team for donations for supplies and once word spread, I had everyone from my mom’s ladies golf group to the neighborhood firefighters buying stuff for my kids. When the elementary school where I was teaching shut down, they let me keep all the things I had donated or bought myself.”
Paige was frowning. “Didn’t I understand that you’re not supposed to travel? It’s a good half hour, one way, to Fortuna.”
“Do you have a console between the front seats in your car? I can sit in the back and elevate my leg by putting it on the console.”
“You’d be sitting beside Dana, the road queen. She loves to go anywhere. She puts her jacket on every morning and says ‘We go now?’”
Becca laughed. “Even better. Love a road queen!” She shoveled some of her omelet into her mouth. “When are you going?”
Paige shook her head. “Finish your breakfast. The kids won’t be home till around two. We have lots of time.”
“Oh, this will be great,” she said. Finally, she thought—something she was actually good at!
Although Paige argued with her, Becca couldn’t help herself. She had great ideas for Thanksgiving projects for kids. She bought terra-cotta flowerpots, black felt and artificial mums for pilgrim-hat centerpieces; she found stencils for construction-paper turkeys; she knew how to make cornucopias out of paper plates and string, and decorative gourds from crumpled-up colored tissue paper. Then there was the standard turkey out of a hand-print. Actually, that was the tip of the iceberg—she had a million craft ideas. But she didn’t want to overwhelm the kids. She was absolutely in her element.
“I see you’ve mastered pushing around a shopping cart while on crutches,” Paige said. “What a woman!”
There were a couple of other women helping out with the crafts—Denny’s landlady, Jo Fitch, and the pastor’s wife, Ellie Kincaid. By two-fifteen, she was meeting the children in the basement of the church. Ellie’s kids, Danielle and Trevor, were nine and five. Danielle’s little friend, Megan Thickson, was only eight and hung pretty close to her; she seemed awful shy. Megan’s little brother, Jeremy, played with Trevor.
The first order of business was an after-school snack—these kids had had a long day. Jo and Ellie served up milk and chocolate chip cookies. Mel Sheridan brought her kids, though they were too young to do anything constructive—they sat at a table with Dana and colored on a large roll of butcher paper. Of course, there was Christopher and about six other kids who regularly attended Sunday school there and played with each other around the neighborhood.
Becca showed them how to glue precut black felt to the flowerpots, making them look like pilgrim hats. The older kids turned them out like little factories. She cut the colorful construction paper for the younger ones so they could glue the tail feathers on the paper turkeys. And she worked on constructing the horns of plenty from paper plates, then showed the older girls—Danielle and Megan—how to crumple tissue paper into the shape of gourds. Because Megan seemed so shy, Becca spent a little extra time showing her the ropes, trying to make conversation.
“Aren’t you supposed to be keeping your leg elevated?” Jo Fitch asked her.
“I forget, but it feels okay.”
“Forget less,” Jo said. “You don’t want trouble.” She pushed a chair next to Becca so she could put her leg up.
“How did you break it?” Megan asked her very softly.
“Oh, I was careless. I jumped out of my brother’s big old truck without looking first and twisted it funny. It turns out I’m lucky. It could’ve been worse. But I did have surgery and have a couple of screws holding it together!”
“My dad had surgery, too,” she said.
“Oh? Is he all right now?”
Megan shrugged and concentrated on her tissue-paper gourds. “Yeah. Except he doesn’t have his job.”
“Oh?” Becca asked. “What was his job?”
“Logger. He cut down the really big trees. He fell and got hurt and ran out of ability and they won’t hire him back.”
“Ability?” Becca asked. “Ran out of ability?”
“You know. What they pay you to live because you’re hurt.”
“Ah, yes, I remember,” Becca said. Disability. She wouldn’t correct the child. It was obviously an emotional issue. “But is he healed?”
She shrugged. “I guess. Except for his quiet spells. And his arm.”
“His arm is hurt?”
“Not exactly,” Megan said. “It ain’t there. But it don’t hurt, he said.”
“Oh,” she said. Sure. What guy wouldn’t have quiet spells, hurt on the job, left disabled, out of disability pay, no job? “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“Three brothers. I’m oldest.” She pointed to the table Christopher occupied. “Jeremy is next oldest. He’s in first grade.”
“I bet you have tons of responsibility around the house.”
“Some. My mom has a job now, so we all have more chores.”
“And will you have to help fix the Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow?” Becca asked.
Megan turned her large, sad brown eyes up to Becca’s and said, “I don’t know. My dad said he ain’t interested in no town turkey.”
Becca was completely baffled. “What’s a town turkey?”
“It’s the one you get from Jack and the church because you can’t buy your own.”
Here was something Becca hadn’t exactly run up against in her school; it was a charter school and it was quite expensive. They gave out a few scholarships, but they didn’t go to children who lived on the brink of poverty, but rather to the kids whose folks earned a living, just not enough of a living to put their kids in an expensive private school. Her kids didn’t need a charity basket to have a Thanksgiving dinner.
She had another epiphany. Just like her stable and secure family life, she’d had a job in a safe zone. Oh, she’d had some challenges, but if she were a teacher in a town like this, there would be a much broader cross section of students who ranged from well-off to quite the opposite.
“Well, I hope you and your mom fix it up and I hope the good smells change his mind, because you know what? I bet a town turkey tastes every bit as good as the kind you go out and buy. And your decorations will make it smell even better!” She put an arm around Megan’s shoulders and pulled her close. “Hopefully this will pass and your dad will find a job. I’m crossing my fingers for your family.”
Megan smiled then. “I think you’re nice. I’m glad you moved here.”
“Oh, I’m just visiting for a little while. I’ll be going home to San Diego soon. But one of the best parts of my visit so far is meeting you.”
“Me, too,” Megan said quietly.
It seemed like the time flew, yet it had been almost three hours. At five, parents started showing up to collect their kids and their crafts. When Becca saw a woman in a pink waitress uniform giving Megan a hug and helping her into her coat, she assumed that was her mother. She hobbled over and said, “Hi, I’m Becca. I worked on some crafts with Megan. She’s such a sweet girl.”
The woman’s smile, as well as her eyes, were tired. “So nice to meet you. I’m Lorraine Thickson. Nice of you to help out.”
“I had fun. I’ve been so bored, grounded with this splint on my leg. Once I met the kids, things really perked up for me.” She put her arm around Megan’s shoulders. “And this one is special. Thank you for coming today, Megan.”
“She rides the bus home with Danielle. Since my kids are about the same age as the pastor’s kids, they stay either at the church or the pastor’s house until I’m off work,” Lorraine said. “You can’t imagine how much it helps.”
“Maybe I’ll see you again before I leave, Megan. The doctor wants me to hang around a couple of weeks.”
“Okay,” she said shyly.
Little by little, the basement of the church emptied of children as they left with their parents. Becca started gathering up construction paper and other art supplies, when Jo Fitch came over to her and said, “No, no, no, Miss Becca. You’re supposed to be resting, keeping the leg up. We’ll handle cleanup. You were a fantastic help and we so appreciate it.”
“Will you be doing anything else with the kids? Because while my brother and his friends are hunting, I’m just sitting around.”
“The Christmas tree goes up this weekend,” Jo said. “We don’t exactly plan activities, but it’s such an event, almost everyone in town turns out. Stick around the bar and you can’t miss the action. You’ll love it.”
The fishermen beat Becca back to the bar, and they had returned victorious. In their coolers, packed in ice, were four big, healthy, robust salmon ranging in size from six to sixteen pounds. All four sweaty, grimy, grinning guys were enjoying a pitcher at a table in front of the fire.
“Ducks and fish—you must be in heaven,” she said, joining them at their table.
Denny immediately pulled up an extra chair to elevate her leg. “Not bad. I think we had a good take.”
“And what’s it going to be tomorrow?” she asked. “Duck or fish?”
“I think it’s turkey tomorrow. Then on Friday, it’s wood.” He pushed a beer toward her.
“Wood?” she asked, lifting her beer.
“The Friday after Thanksgiving we go into the woods and find a tree worthy of what passes for the town square—the parking lot between Jack’s and the church. It has to be about thirty feet.”
“And who does this?”
“Only the most manly of men,” Jack shouted from behind the bar.
“Yeah,” the fishermen called out, lifting their ale toward him.