Christmas Jars Reunion

by Jason F. Wright

  “Why do you say that?”

  “If it’s December and an out-of-towner wants to go to Chuck’s, it’s usually about jars.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Christmas Jars. It all goes down at Chuck’s every year. Ever heard of it?” Tracy tried to make eye contact with Al in the mirror, but Al was staring out the window and wondering how Queen was doing.

  Couldn’t hurt to call and check in on my mail, he thought.

  They rode quietly around the other side of town in a loop that took them back to U.S. Highway 4 and toward Chuck’s. Tracy pulled in the parking lot and into the last open space. He turned around to face Al.

  “Here you go. Almost noon. Get ready for some chicken and tots you won’t soon forget.”

  “Thanks, Tracy.” Al looked at the cab’s meter: $86.90. “Uh-oh, I guess I lost track of the meter. I’m not sure I have that much on me—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. That’s more of a guideline. I own the cab.”

  “How much then?”

  “How about a twenty and a chicken-leg-and-thigh platter?”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. And you have to call me if you need to get anywhere else around town while you’re here.”

  “Deal.” Al handed him two ten-dollar bills and hopped out of the cab. He reached back for his crutches and Tracy helped him through the front door of Chuck’s.

  Al stepped into a wonderful cloud of smells and sights unlike anything he could have imagined from pictures and prose on a web site.

  Eva, Chuck’s all-time favorite waitress, greeted them at the door with a menu, an accent, and a smile.

  She showed them to a corner booth and promised to bring them some sweet tea.

  “Let me see if Gayle is around,” Tracy said and he walked over to the register. Eva was hugging a woman good-bye and thanking her for a generous tip. A moment later Eva walked through the swinging door and into the kitchen.

  Tracy returned to the booth to find Al studying a menu. “Listen, friend, you don’t need this. I’ll order for you. You mind?”

  Al shook his head. “Not at all.” He opened his jacket pocket and retrieved a bottle of pain pills. His tea arrived and he downed his midday dose of two painkillers. He returned the bottle to his jacket pocket and looked up to see Eva and Gayle approaching their booth.

  Eva wore an uninteresting waitress’ uniform with a white name tag engraved with her name and a cartoon chicken.

  Gayle wore a white turtleneck under a forest-green sweater with smooth black slacks. Her hair was straight; an unusual style, Al thought, for a middle-aged woman. But it fell well on her shoulders. Her makeup was light but stylish. Her perfume the same. Her eyes were tired but friendly.

  Tracy stood and hugged Gayle. “Gayle, this is my new friend, Al. He’s visiting.”

  Al tried to stand, but Gayle spotted the crutches on the floor under their table and quickly put her hand on his shoulder. “No need, but thank you. We got you in that booth, but we might not get you out again. Let’s not take any chances.” Her smile was a shade shy of bright, but more than could be expected for a woman still mourning her husband.

  “Thank you,” Al said and he shook her hand. “Al Allred. A pleasure to meet you.”

  “All mine. Welcome to Chuck’s. We love visitors.”

  “I can tell.”

  “What brings you to town?” Gayle asked.

  “Just passing through. For now. Mostly hunting for better weather than Idaho.”

  Gayle grinned. Al watched over her shoulder as someone from across the diner wiped numbers off the Board and replaced them. When the person turned around, Al recognized the smile from the photos on the web site.

  “Hope,” Gayle called, “come meet someone.”

  Hope put the marker down and strolled confidently to the booth.

  “This is Al, he’s visiting in town. First time at Chuck’s.”

  They shook hands. “Welcome. I hope you brought a full jar.”

  Tracy and Gayle both laughed. “You’re shameless,” Gayle said.

  “What? That’s a big goal over there.” Hope nodded toward the Board. “A thousand and one? Think that will happen easily?”

  It was obvious to everyone but Al that Hope was teasing.

  “I don’t have a jar,” Al apologized. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hang on,” Hope said and she bolted to and from a display of empty jars behind the register with their signature label on the front. “You do now.” She set it on the table in front of Al.

  “Don’t pay her a wink of attention,” Gayle said and tugged playfully on Hope’s ear. “She’s our Christmas Jar missionary.”

  “More like nun,” Hope added.

  Gayle laughed again. “Don’t make me call Marianne.” Gayle looked back at Al. “I wish I could chat but I’ve got to run back to the back.” She reached for and shook Al’s hand one more time. “Good to have you here. And if I know this girl, she’ll have you volunteering before your tots cool off.”

  Al said good-bye and watched the two women walk arm-in-arm back through the swinging doors. When he looked longer than Tracy thought appropriate, the cabbie grabbed his attention. “That was nice, huh? Nice of her to come out and say hello.”

  “Yes, indeed. Very nice.”

  ~~~

  The point is, someone cared enough to give us a Christmas Jar.

  Giving is the point of the Christmas Jar. It’s not a lot of money, but our intention is they know someone cared enough to give it.

  —Leona

  Fifteen

  ~~~

  Hope’s evening was unusually free. She’d finished her latest edition of “Hopeful Words,” her column in The Daily Record, and had caught up on laundry and cleaning the night before.

  Marianne and Nick were already in the Middle East but hadn’t called to check in since their layover in Munich. Hope considered calling them, but reminded herself that this was their honeymoon, after all.

  Gayle was having a private family dinner at home with her boys. Their first since Chuck died.

  Hannah, Lauren, and the twins were Christmas shopping a hundred miles away on a Girl’s Night Out. They’d said they’d be home late that same night, but Hope and half the town knew they would find a hotel near the outlet stores and make one last pass through the shops before heading home. Hope regretted not accepting their invitation to tag along. She wasn’t a fan of the long drive, but she loved the outlets as much as anyone. Not to mention spending time with the girls.

  Hannah’s husband, Dustin, was probably still at the shop with Clark. They’d been glued together of late as Clark absorbed the legacy and intricacies of Restored, Inc. Clark was staying with the Maxwells in Lauren’s spare bedroom and, as far as Hope knew, hadn’t even left the property since arriving in town.

  Maybe he’s too busy, she thought. I bet he doesn’t even remember asking me to help give him a run of the land.

  “I bet they’re both hungry,” she said aloud. “Working hard all day . . . well, of course they’re hungry. Lauren’s not there to make them eat.” Men are so helpless, she thought.

  She opened the fridge. Sandwiches? No. Warmed-up Chinese? Yuck, Hope, even you wouldn’t eat that. She shut the fridge too hard and her Chuck’s Chicken ’n’ Biscuits magnet hit the floor. “Well, duh,” she said to the cartoon chicken on the magnet.

  Hope changed her clothes, brushed her hair, changed her shirt again, brushed her teeth, and put lotion on her hands and elbows. Then she made a very familiar drive to Chuck’s for three box-dinners and then to the Maxwells and their adjacent shop.

  Hope was surprised to find the front door was locked. Odd, she thought. She looked through a window but the house was dark. The doorbell hadn’t worked since long before Adam died.

  Hope knocked on the door and waited. She knocked again. Nothing. She stepped off the porch and walked around the side of the house to the shop. Restored’s white pickup truck was parked in its usual spot. Hope peered throug
h the window of the shop’s customer door and saw what she guessed were Clark’s legs poking out from underneath an antique pedestal desk. The door was unlocked and she quietly pushed it open.

  “Hello there,” she said, standing in the doorway. The shop was gray, and she wondered why Clark and Dustin didn’t have the overhead light on. Either she hadn’t been heard or she was being ignored. She chose to presume the former. “Hey there,” Hope tried again, but the legs didn’t move.

  She scanned the shop for signs of life elsewhere. There were none. Just me and the legs, she thought. She casually kicked at one of the feet to get the legs’ attention.

  THUMP!

  “Goat cheese!” a voice yelled and the head belonging to the legs swung to the side and into view.

  “Oops,” Hope said, holding a plastic bag of chicken dinners in one hand and her mouth with the other. “Sorry!”

  Clark rubbed his forehead and stood up. He had an iPod sticking out of his front jeans pocket and ear buds in his ears. He pulled them out. “That’s gonna leave a mark,” he quipped.

  “Yeah, about that, sorry, again, really. I didn’t think that through, I guess.”

  “Clearly not.”

  “Speaking of knots. You’ve got one.”

  Clark put his hand on his forehead. A bump was forming dead center just below his hairline.

  “It’s not that bad,” Hope said.

  “If you’re a unicorn, maybe.”

  Hope pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. “I’ll get some ice.”

  Clark hit the light switch and ruffled his hair to dislodge the sawdust.

  Hope returned with three or four ice cubes wrapped up in a paper towel.

  Clark looked incredulous. “Really? Really? You’ve never made an icepack?”

  “Sorry. I’m not much of a nurse.”

  Clark smiled and put the already-drenched ball of melting ice on his forehead. “It’ll work.”

  Hope lifted the plastic Chuck’s bag in the air. “I brought dinner for you and Dustin.”

  Clark looked left then right. “No Dustin. Just me tonight.”

  “I thought he was here.”

  “He was—two hours ago. He left to get his kids from the sitters since Hannah and the others are out shopping.”

  Hope felt foolish for not realizing Dustin would have been home tending to his children. “Dumb outlet shops,” Hope said. “They’re like magnets for those girls.”

  “Not you?”

  “Yikes, no. You couldn’t pay me enough to fight that mob for Christmas gifts.”

  Clark squinted his eyes, but Hope couldn’t tell whether he was sizing up her white lie or wincing from the pain. Clark put the ice back on his forehead. “I’m definitely hungry though, may I?”

  “Of course.” Hope pulled two box-dinners from the bag and handed them to Clark.

  He cleared off Adam’s old desk, and Hope dashed into the kitchen for two sodas, silverware, and napkins.

  When she returned they sat and Clark asked about Hope’s day.

  Hope asked about Clark’s.

  Hope asked about Clark’s weekend plans.

  Clark asked about hers.

  Clark thanked her for the dinner and said he hadn’t eaten since a very early lunch Lauren made before she scurried out of town with the girls.

  Hope asked if he liked his dinner.

  “Oh, yeah,” Clark answered. “This chicken is amazing.”

  Hope agreed.

  They ate silently for a moment more before Clark said what both had been thinking.

  “This is weird, isn’t it?”

  “A little,” Hope smiled.

  “Why?”

  “Good question,” she answered. “Maybe it’s the giant horn on your head.”

  “Oh! Ah! So funny! My pain is a joke to you. Wonderful.” He put his hand on the bump again to check its size.

  “It’s not that bad,” Hope said.

  “Not that bad? I could hang things on this.”

  “That’s what I mean, it’s not that bad. Think of all the uses.” Hope tried not to laugh, but the effort to hold it in caused her to cough and a tiny piece of chicken flew out of her mouth and onto the desktop between them.

  Clark pinched his fingers, threatening to lift and eat it. He flicked it at her instead. “Even I have my limits,” he said.

  As they ate their chicken, tots, and rolls, they reminisced about their on-again-off-again romance. Hope wondered aloud why their timing had always been so terrible.

  Clark wondered silently why more than once he’d chosen to quit Hope instead of baseball.

  “What is it about us?” Hope asked, though it was directed as much at herself as it was at Clark.

  “You said it. Timing.”

  Hope shrugged.

  “Different dreams. We both wanted the big time. But I wanted to play for the New York Mets and you wanted to play for the New York Times.”

  “True.” Hope remembered the occasions they’d teased one another about who would make the move to the Big Apple first.

  “Baseball’s been my dream since high school. You know that. Heck, everybody knows that, right? But now I can’t even get an everyday roster spot with the Class A River Bandits.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’m no closer to working for the Times than you are playing in the Majors.”

  Clark took another drink of his soda and bent the metal ring on top back and forth until it broke off. “What does that make us then? Two dreamers with bigger dreams than talent?”

  “I hope that’s not true. Maybe our dreams just haven’t been the right ones. I’ll admit I still think about that life. Living in NYC, taking the subway to the paper, writing columns at a messy desk in the bullpen and getting lost in the shouts about deadlines and edits. Seeing my name and picture above a column read by millions. . . . All I really have so far is the messy desk and a column read by hundreds.”

  “And I have a swing made more for batting cages than the Big Leagues.”

  “But,” Hope quickly added, “I’ve become very content in this world I live in. I love the paper and the people I work with there. The circulation may be small, but the readers are wonderful, and more people are reading my stuff every week. So maybe my dream is fine, I just need to dress it differently.” She looked Clark in the eye. “What about you? Can you really be happy here with slightly altered dreams?”

  “We’ll see,” Clark said, but just as he started talking again, he accidentally belched. “Oh, no. That. Just. Happened. Sorry.”

  “Please. That was so weak it wasn’t even worth an apology.”

  Hope waited a moment for Clark to continue his thought, but when he didn’t, she switched gears, reminiscing about meeting the Maxwell family for the first time and getting a tour of the shop. She told Clark that she’d never met anyone who loved his job as much as Adam had loved his.

  “I get that,” Clark said. “I’ve been here before to visit and when Mom and Dad would walk in the front door, Uncle Adam would grab me and pull me out here to the shop.” Clark smiled and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, man, I’d forgotten about this. One time I came here to make a Pinewood Derby car because Uncle Adam told me I couldn’t lose with his help.”

  “You made a what?”

  “You’ve never heard of a Pinewood Derby?”

  Hope didn’t have to say no, her crinkled face did the talking for her.

  “That’s an embarrassment. Really. I don’t know that this dinner can continue.”

  “Oh, come on, what is it?”

  Clark’s eyes danced at the memory. “It’s for Cub Scouts—you know what scouting is, right?”

  “Sure, I once wrote a column about one of the local troops.”

  “Good, so imagine these scouts getting together once a year to race cars they’ve carved out of a block of wood.”

  “Sounds like a million laughs,” Hope giggled. She began to stuff trash into her cardboard box.

  “It is if y
ou’re a young puberty-straddling cowboy!”

  “Did you just say—”

  “I think I did.” He put up his big right hand to stop her from speaking. “Anyway . . . every kid gets a block of wood the same size. It’s a kit, with matching hard plastic black wheels, nails, everything; the whole package is exactly the same so it’s fair for everyone. Then you carve your car however you want to make it as fast as you can. No two cars are ever alike.”

  “That could be fun, I suppose.”

  “It’s not just a race though.” Clark began gathering up his own trash. “That’s what Uncle Adam said. It’s a process. Everyone gets the same resources and the same set of rules. But the kid who wins does so because he does more with what he was given. That’s the trick.”

  Hope tossed both dinner boxes into a tall trash can.

  “I get it. It’s a level playing field.”

  “Exactly.”

  Hope examined Clark’s eyes. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “Dinner?”

  “No, obviously you’re enjoying dinner; you’re with me. I mean you’re enjoying the shop.”

  Clark smiled. “I’ll ignore the first question on the grounds that you’re full of yourself.”

  Hope pretended to be offended.

  “I think I am. Enjoying the shop, that is. I can see why Adam loved this life. Creating things, restoring life when sometimes clients don’t think the furniture is worth saving.”

  Hope walked toward a machine and flipped what she assumed was the power switch. “You said you were getting good with all this stuff. What about this?”

  “It’s a sander,” Clark said. “It’s a very tricky piece of equipment.”

  “How so?”

  Clark grabbed a piece of scrap wood from a box and held it on the belt. Flecks of wood shot into the air. “Wait.” He powered off the sander. “Put these on.” He pulled a pair of goggles from a nail on the workbench by her waist.

  “Seriously?”

  “Non-negotiable.”

  “Fine. But my eyes are my best feature.”

  Clark missed her retort; he was across the shop, hunting for another pair of goggles.

  He walked up behind her and flipped the switch back on. “May I?”

  She turned her head. “May you what?”