Page 2 of The Christmas Mittens
As the car warmed, I stared out at the bike resting against the totes filled with holiday decorations. Gilda had insisted we haul them to the front. She adored Christmas. Most kids who were born on December 25 complained about getting shortchanged, but Gilda never did. She was incredibly happy to have the whole world decorated in tinsel and stars just for her special day. A practical child, she knew that funds were low most of the time and never really pushed for much in terms of gifts. Aside from the boy group pajamas last year, which were already an inch too short. The girl was growing like a weed. Blossoming into a rare and precious flower that blessedly had her mother’s empathy, fire, and thick hair. My hair…well, it was thinner than I would like and creeping back like a glacier. Male pattern baldness. The genetic gift that keeps on giving. Even though we’d not been touchy feely, I missed my parents. As I gazed at a tote packed full of tiny tin soldiers that lined the windowsills every year, I wondered if my malaise wasn’t part SAD and part just being lonesome…
“If there is such a thing as a wishing star in the winter sky, I think I’d like to wish for someone to share my life with. Someoneto help raise Gilda, to cuddle with at night, to share the ups and downs, and to grow old with,” I whispered before realizing it was broad daylight and no stars were visible so the wish was null and void. “Okay, Morose Melvin, time to get to the shop. Enough whining about what you don’t have. Focus on what you do have.”
I plugged my phone in and brought up a little cheerful podcast I’d found a few weeks ago while working on a chainsaw for a customer. It was a happiness-positive mindset sort of thing that inspires the listeners to complete projects, hit a goal, or just feel better about themselves and their lives. Today, they were talking about being comfortable with your own company as a means to open yourself up to finding love and connection with someone else. Rather like what RuPaul closes her show with every week. And I did love myself. Sort of.
Okay, I had some work to do on that.
Traffic was light on the back roads that led to our picturesque town. And yes, I did have to stop along the way to let a grouse cross the road. The ruffed grouse was Pennsylvania’s state bird. He was a handsome fellow with a lovely neck ruff of black feathers, a rounded tail, and perfectly camouflaged feathers. When I was younger, we used to hear the males drumming in the spring to attract females. They would find a fallen log to stand on and start with slow beats, producing a thumping sound, then increase the speed to a steady rhythm. Sadly, the drumming isn’t as prevalent now as it used to be. Habitat loss, predation, and diseases are lessening their numbers, so seeing one in the road was a nice sight. He stood there for the longest time, frozen, until he eventually returned to crossing. I was in no hurry. I always stopped for the wildlife that meandered onto our small country lanes. Black bears, deer, eastern turkeys, and many other critters always got the right of way as far as I was concerned. We had moved into their woods, not the other way around, and my bosswas pretty lenient when I was late. One of the few perks of being the owner.
Once Mr. Grouse made his way into the woods, I continued the ten-minute ride to the bustling metropolis of Grouse Falls. Main Street was quiet as I slowed to twenty-five, then pulled up to the lone traffic light. I hit the blinker to turn left as my podcast reminded me that today was a day filled with endless possibilities and new joys waiting to be discovered. I wasn’t all that sure about that, but I whispered to myself a few times that I was radiant with joy before I pulled off into the tiny parking lot of Grouse Falls Small Engine Repairs, which sat across the street from Franny’s Craft Emporium. Up the road were the grocery store, the library, and a closed car wash. And that was pretty much it for this stretch of highway. Highway being used incredibly liberally as it was a two-lane road with some pretty significant potholes that had never been fixed due to lack of county funds. By next spring, the gaps would be large enough to swallow a pickup truck.
Franny was outside watering her mums when I parked. I gave her a wave and exited my car just as she was coming to the end of her parking lot—a dirt area that held two cars, three if they were compact—to shout over to me. Franny was a little deaf, bless her heart, so yelling was her standard mode of communication. She was clad in culottes, rubber boots, and a bright yellow knitted sweater that hung to her knees.
“Mitchell!” she bellowed, sending the male cardinal sitting in the pine beside my shop to wing. I’d fill the feeder as soon as I got inside. “Are you coming to the knitting circle Thursday?”
“I was planning on it,” I said back. Said, not yelled, as we were standing facing each other across a twenty-foot road. With no traffic. Maybe today was the day she had put her hearing aid in. “I’d like to get started on the light blue fish sweater for Gilda soon.”
“Excellent! The other knitters are coming as well. Pearl wasn’t sure she could make it, but her son went home yesterday, so she’s clear for our weekly meeting. Oh, and the pastor sent me a reminder about the mitten and scarf drive starting this week.”
“Okay, I’ll hang the line in the window and start working on mittens alongside Gilda’s sweater.”
For the past ten years, as things got worse and worse for rural folks, the local nondenominational church ran a charity outerwear drive. All the local businesses hung thin clotheslines inside their shop windows with coats, scarves, mittens, gloves—anything a struggling person or family might need to stay warm. Under the line was a small donation jar that went to the church’s food bank, but it was usually empty. If you couldn’t afford mittens then your ability to donate to the food bank wasn’t high. No questions were asked if someone claimed anything from the line. They were free for all. Some folks took the little cards that Pastor Pete handed out to hang on the lines with the phone number of the church as well as the nearest emergency shelter, county assistance offices, and medical offices. Some didn’t. No one ever preached or pushed those who claimed the offerings on the lines. We just wished them a happy holiday season and then added a new scarf or set of woolen mittens.
“I think I have that glacier blue yarn you ordered last week,” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
Nope, no hearing aid today.
“Awesome. I’ll grab it Thursday night,” I said with more volume.
“What?” She cupped her hand around her ear. I sighed. She was doing really well for being eighty-seven with two new knees and sparkly new teeth. Now if we could just convince her to wear her damn hearing aid.
“Franny, where is your hearing aid?” I shouted back to her.
“No, I don’t think you paid, but I ain’t worried. I know where you live.” She laughed aloud, turned, picked up her watering can, and toddled back into her shop.
Chuckling to myself, I grabbed my yarn bag, my lunch, and opened up my own shop for the day. The brick building that housed my business was built by my grandfather in the late-’50s. He was a watch repairman and supported his family of five for many years on what he earned fixing timepieces. Then the red brick store had gone to my father, who turned it into a thriving small engine repair shop that he had left to me. The front was large, with two big windows that allowed the meager winter sun to shine in on new chainsaws and other small gardening tools and accessories such as oil, gas cans, and the like. I enjoyed keeping the showroom in good shape, tidy and dust-free, because most people out here still used firewood for heat, myself included, and that was a thriving side of my business.
With winter fast approaching, I had been setting aside my chainsaw work for snowblowers, snow throwers, and generators. I did have a lot of ice fishermen dropping by as a nice lake sat a few miles out of town. Augers, mostly, were brought in for repairs. I also offered winterization services for summer equipment. For a small fee, I’d drain the fuel, change the oil, replace spark plugs, and the like. The back room was packed with jobs for next spring as well as stock, a workbench, and a woodstove. The shop wasn’t fancy, and it smelled like oil and gas, Gilda always commented on, but it kept us fed, warm, and able to buy skeins of yarn for a K-pop sweater for her birthday.
Flicking on the lights and then flipping theCLOSEDsign toOPEN, I found myself chiding the lonely inner Mitchell. Lots of people managed just fine being single. The podcast host was right. Focus on the good things the day would bring. Like new yarn and a happy daughter and spaghetti for dinner. I’d had one grand love. Having two would just be greedy.
With that pep talk completed, I set about stoking the fire to warm the shop and hanging the thin clothesline for outerwear in the window with the shiny red chainsaws. I placed a small empty mayo jar under the line, the same one Gilda had painted last year, withDONATIONS FOR THE FOOD PANTRY, then nodded at my work. It looked good. Now I needed to get knitting. Maybe during my lunch hour, I could whip one up. Using a simple pattern, I could get one mitten done easily in two hours. I’d use larger needles and thicker yarn to speed up the process. I had some red yarn in my bag. That would be festive to start things off. Maybe some green too. I’d have to check what I had left over from last year’s drive when I got home. I had a tote stashed in my bedroom closet.
While I was thinking about mittens and a matching bonnet for a child, a beat-up truck pulled up and Wilson Garrett, an old farmer who raised beefers out on Pock Willow Road, slid out of the Ford. He lifted a chainsaw with a badly bent bar from the bed. I winced. How the heck had he managed this? With a sigh, I put aside mulling over knitting patterns to tend to the first customer of the day. Seemed like today was on track to be another normal, quiet day in the life of Mitchell Baxter. Not like anything exhilarating ever happened, and gosh darn that was just how I liked it! Accept the day for what it is and revel in its monotony. No, wrong word. Revel in itsmagnificence.Yes,thatwas the word the podcast host had used.
Chapter Two
Tuesday, December 8
The following day I was back at work enjoying my midday meal.
A ham sandwich, some salty chips, and a giant dill pickle. I’d fished several out of a barrel at the Shopper Mart yesterday as a treat for myself and Gilda, who had aced her essay about George Washington. The girl had worked her butt off in study hall to turn it in on time for her sixth-period history class. Even with the cover being the rapping Washington, she’d gotten an A. Seemed her teacher was a fan of Christopher Jackson, just like the rest of us were, but he was hoping for a more sedate man on the cover of her paper. In all honesty, the man is divine. Mr. Jackson, that is, not the junior high history teacher. So we’d both had a baggie with a fat dill in it for our lunches today. She’d texted me at lunch to tell me how crispy hers was and to remind me she was staying late for drama club practice. I remembered, of course. It was in my little phone calendar. I’d told her I would be outside the gym at six, which would give me time after I closed the shop to work on her sweater.
Just as I had taken a bite of my gherkin, the bells over the door rang out. Silently cussing the person interrupting my meal, I nonetheless tossed my pickle down next to my sandwich and rose from my stool at the workbench. I’d been elbow deep in replacing spark plugs in a snowblower for Phyllis Parks, who worked at the library where Katie had been employed, before I started work on yet another snowblower for Gregg Tillmans, a county worker, who had discovered a mouse had not only nested in his snowblower but had chewed through several wires. Good thing he had noticed the smell of mouse pee before trying to start the Cub Cadet. He might have had a fire on his hands.
I took a moment to wipe my fingers on my napkin before rising from my stool to saunter through the old curtain separating the workshop from the storefront. Oldies from the ’60s were playing on the radio as I entered the showroom. Pausing, I stared in surprise at a stranger dressed in a dark blue, single-breasted wool coat that hung to his knees. He had a glorious head of chestnut curls, nicely tended eyebrows, and a rather well-groomed beard. He was possibly the handsomest man I had ever seen, and yes, that included Christopher Jackson. I thought to speak out, but he was removing two sets of baby mittens from the line, and so as not to embarrass him, I merely smiled when he glanced my way. The man had exquisite eyes. Honey brown framed with lush chocolate lashes. He nodded at me, shoved the mittens into the deep pockets of his coat, and then placed some cash into the donation jar.
“Oh, you don’t have to—” I started to say as he turned to exit the shop, the tiny brass bells jingling merrily as he disappeared from sight. There was no car in the parking lot out front. I scurried around the counter, nearly knocking my old cash register askew, to dart after him, but when I reached the door and peered out, all I saw was a milk truck followed by a silver van with a spare tire stored on a rack across the back doors.What make of van it was, I had no idea. I’d never seen anything that looked remotely like it, but surely it wasn’t the ride of the man who had just taken two sets of mittens for a baby. Where on Earth had he come from? Where had he parked? Scratching my head, I blew out a confused breath before going back inside. Maybe the van wasn’t his at all. Perhaps he had walked down the road from a camping site in the state game lands. If he was camping with a baby or two, I hoped he was well-stocked. It was getting darn chilly at night.
