Page 4 of The Christmas Mittens
Inside my Subaru, I stared at the tall steeple, illuminated from the ground with two spotlights. A million stars shone in the inky darkness behind the spire. If Katie were looking down on us from one of those bright points of light, I hoped she felt that I was doing a good job of parenting our little girl. My phone buzzed, making me jump. Snickering at myself, I checked the incoming text. It was Gilda. I was five minutes late. Oh yes, she was Katie’s daughter. I replied I was on my way and left the church, the donation, and the striking mystery man behind. There was homework to help with and a tuna noodle casserole to create.
***
After scraping the burned-on noodles off the side of the casserole pan, I filled it with hot soapy water to soak overnight. Gilda was in her room, homework completed, switching back and forth between belting out “Honey, Honey” at the top of her powerful lungs or stomping about to a popular song from a new animated movie about K-pop vampires. I tended to be more of a ’60s and ’70s music fan, so as I wiped the kitchen counters one final time, I tried to block out the pop song shaking the dust from the tops of the picture frames and focus on the ABBA tune playing instead. Not that I disliked K-pop, it had its merits but listening to the same song on a loop became tiresome after a bit.
When the tiny kitchen was tidy, I was ready to settle down and watch some TV. After I poured myself a cup of coffee, I made my way to the sofa via a short trip down the hall to knock on my daughter’s door. Instantly, the volume died down. She was a good kid. She knew I enjoyed my shows on Motor Trend TV as well as the old detective shows as I unwound from life.
“Okay!” she shouted, and the sound of five boys singing in unison halted. She had her headphones on now and would probably spend the next hour or two either chatting with her friends in the drama club, reading the latest book for a report due in Pre-AP English at the end of the month, or if she was feeling cuddly, she would join me to watchKojak,The Rockford Files,orSimon & Simon,and make fun of the clothes and hair the entire time. Or lack of hair in the case of Telly Savalas.
I flopped onto our worn sofa, kicked my socked feet up to the coffee table, and took a moment of quiet to reflect on the day. This brought my thoughts to the mystery man in the dark blue coat. Where had he come from? Where had he gone? Would he show up again? Was there any way I could aid him? Obviously, he was taking care of little ones and needed mittens. But—and this was a big but—if he had a thousand bucks to drop into a donation jar, why not just buy his twins mittens? His coat wasrather plush-looking and incredibly well-cut. The man had me curious, that was for sure. He was a paradox. Taking mittens from a line for the needy then dropping a grand into the jar. Maybe he was a thief who had purloined that plush coat and found the wad of cash in it, and when the guilt over stealing got to him, he left the money for those less fortunate than him. But was he in need or was he not? I felt like a hound chasing its tail.
“All right, enough.” I rubbed my brow and took a sip of coffee. The man in the blue coat was an enigma for sure. And I loved trying to solve whodunits before the cops, the little old lady in Cabot Cove, or the rumpled lieutenant with stubby cigars wearing wrinkled trench coats. How did Columbo manage to wear that coat in LA all the time, anyway? It had to be like having a sauna on your back. “This is not an episode ofThe Streets of San Francisco, and you arenotMichael Douglas.”
Nodding at my firm handling of myself, I pushed the man in the blue coat aside and pulled up a show about some garage in Texas that was rebuilding a car for a man with way more money than I would ever have. A twinge of envy bit at me, but I nudged that aside as well. My life was not bad at all. I’d never be rich, or even well off, but I had Gilda and a home that was partially paid off. That was more than many people, even here in our little county, had. So what if I could never afford to have a classic GTO redone by famous mechanics?
“Daddy, are you drooling over cars again?” Gilda asked, flopping down beside me.
“Maybe,” I confessed, lifting my arm so she could curl up beside me. Her jammies were soft flannel with tiny stars she was nearly too big for, but she held onto them. Perhaps she was scared of letting go of her youth to enter teendom. She would never say that, of course, but maybe she was leery of the things she was facing as she matured. “Did you want to knit a bit and watch an old cop show?”
“Yeah, that would be cool. I want to make a scarf for the line this year.” She was quite a good little knitter. So we dug into our totes, removed our needles and some brightly colored yarn, and began working on mittens and a purple matching scarf while we poked fun atStarsky and Hutch.Who needed millions, fancy cars, or enigmatic men with curls begging to be touched?
Ugh. There he was again. I shoved him to the back of my mind once more and pointed out a dropped stitch in Gilda’s scarf. Nowthiswas what I needed to focus on. Begone and good riddance, Blue Coat Man! Take your auburn curls and your unfathomable aura and hit the bricks.
Chapter Three
Wednesday, December 9
“…then I noticed that bent red oak leaning way over the fence,” Wilson was saying as I ran a file along the teeth of the new chain I had put on the new bar I’d ordered in for his saw. “Nasty stuff red oak. I don’t like it much for burning. Leaves too much creosote in the stove, but I figured I’d just drop the bastard on the right side of the fence before it fell on it. Lord knows I don’t want my cattle getting out into the road. You remember that time when Tim Reynolds run into someone’s cow over on the hogback? Guess the insurance come back on Paul Tuttle as it was his steer what got hit, least that was what Tim said a few days after.”
“I remember. Tim had that fancy Italian sports car he imported all the way from Milan or some such,” I commented as I pulled the slim file over the rakers of the chain. Generally, most folks would take a saw to a chainsaw shop, but we didn’t have one of them within a hundred miles, so they brought them to me. I didn’t mind. “I’d never seen anything so fast.”
“Oh hell yes,” Wilson said, leaning on the counter as we chatted in the storefront. “He used to run that damned thing along them back roads at a hundred and twenty. He passed me and Wanda coming back from the feed store once going so fast he was a blur. Wanda about passed out from the sheer shock of it all. I said then to her one day that damn fool was going to meet his maker. Guess the two-thousand-pound steer in the road didn’t do him in, but it fucked up that little Italian car of his. Thing folded like an accordion. Nothing like the cars we used to make here in Detroit. When I was young and foolish, I owned an old Caddy that could have taken on a moose and won. Cars were made out of good old US steel back in the day. Everything now is plastic and bubblegum packed full of computer chips. Can’t even put your own window down without asking a damn AI for permission.”
I nodded along, smiling, as the old fellow with the bald head and green ball cap rambled on and on. This was what happened all the time when guys stopped in to drop off or pick up. Bullshit started to flow. It was just the way of things in a small town. Customers assumed you had all the time in the world to shoot the shit, which wasn’t always the case. Today I had several jobs waiting for me to complete, but Wilson was a good sort, so I filed and nodded along.
“Anyway, so when I sawed into that miserable red oak, I got pinched. I pushed and pulled on that fucking saw until I lost my temper and went to get my tractor,” Wilson explained.
“Don’t tell me you hooked onto this poor old Jonsered with your tractor,” I said and gave the beaten but still running red saw a gentle pat.
“I might have. Bent the bar all to hell,” he confessed, chuckling as one does when retelling a tale where they’d acted a fool. “Wanda chewed me out proper for doing something so stupid, but I got the saw freed. Still need to finish the job. Hey, you gotany bar oil lying around? I hate to run out to Mercy Falls to buy some if I can pick it up here from you.”
“I’ll look in the back, but I think I have a few jugs left.” I kept lots of chainsaw supplies on hand as they were a necessity for lots of rural folks.
The bells over the door rang out and in stepped Blue Coat Man. My eyes flared. He gave the two of us at the counter a look I couldn’t read, nodded briskly, and removed four little yellow mittens from the line.
“Afternoon,” I called when I found my voice. He was just as beautiful as before.
I mean, of course he would be, Mitch. Seriously, would he have turned into a troll overnight?
“Afternoon,” he replied in a smooth, deep voice that held just a hint of something foreign. “Thank you for these.” He held up the little knit hand warmers. I nodded as I plastered what I hoped wasn’t an asinine smile on my face. He reached into one of his big outer pockets, pulled out some cash, and slipped it into the jar. When he straightened, a dark curl hung down over one honey-colored eye. My throat went dry, and my heart kicked up. “Good day.”
And out the door he went, his coat curling around his long legs.
“Well, ain’t he just something different?” Wilson asked as I stood there like a golem for thirty whole seconds trying to sort out what it was I was feeling. It reminded me of when I had first laid eyes on Katie.
“He sure is,” I whispered, dropped the file onto the counter, and rushed around the register. I nearly went on my face when I tripped over a case of gaskets that had come in this morning. Wilson grabbed my arm to save me from faceplanting. “Thanks,” I coughed out before running to the door and yanking it open. Out to the parking lot I went, sight flying left and then right. Icaught the backend of that funny van again as it rolled along the road, crested the hill, and disappeared from sight. The urge to leap into my car and race after him was strong, but I turned and walked back into my shop instead. I did have a full day’s work to complete. Haring off after some guy in a weird van was not what a responsible business owner and father did. Still, the pull was still tugging on me when I plucked the cash out of the jar. I counted out another thousand dollars. Wilson whistled in awe.
“What the hell is that all about?” Wilson asked. All I could do was shrug. I had no clue what was going on, but now the need to sort it out was like a tick burrowing under my skin. The only way to get rid of that itch was to remove the irritant somehow.
