by Cronk, LN
Wilma’s was attached to a gas station, which not only added to its charm, but made it convenient for us to pick up minnows on our way to the lake. One morning after Christmas, Jordan was with us.
“I’d like a cherry slushy,” Jordan told Charlotte when she took our orders.
“We don’t have slushy’s.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, looking confused and pointing his thumb toward the gas station. There was a door connecting the two. “There’s a machine right in there.”
“That’s not ours . . .”
“Well, can’t you get me one from there?”
“No,” she said. “If you want one you have to go in there and get it and pay for it in there.”
“I’ll bet if I wanted one she’d get it for me,” I told Jordan.
“I especially wouldn’t get one for you,” Charlotte said. “If Dorito wanted one I might figure out a way to do it, but that’s about it.”
“Boy,” I said. “For somebody who works for tips you sure aren’t very friendly.”
“Yeah, right,” she said, turning to leave. “Like you’re going to tip me.”
Actually I always tipped her and I tipped her good . . . but I always left it in front of somebody else’s plate. All I left in front of mine was a shiny penny . . . I was pretty sure she knew about the other tip though.
While we were waiting for our food, a little girl who was about Dorito’s age walked by our table with her father. She was dressed in camouflage from head to toe. Tanner chuckled when he saw her and I made the Pon, Pon signal at him. Tanner laughed and shook his head.
“What’s that?” Jordan asked.
“What’s what?”
“That sign? I don’t know that sign.”
“That’s ’cause it’s not a sign,” I said.
“Well, what is it then?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Tanner said.
“I would tell you,” I said, shrugging at Jordan, “but then I’d have to kill you.”
He looked at me, puzzled.
“See,” I explained, “when we were growing up Greg used to make up these hand signals for stuff, but if he didn’t make it up for you then he’d never tell you what it meant.”
“Like what?”
“Can’t tell you,” Tanner said. “They were all secret.”
“Oh, come on,” Jordan said. “Tell me one of ’em.”
“I could tell him what this one meant,” I said, pinching my thumb and forefinger together and holding it toward Tanner’s face.
“And I could pound you through the back of that booth,” Tanner replied.
Now Jordan looked really interested.
“Just tell me one,” he begged.
“Okay,” I said. “You know how he and Laci were always growing their hair out to donate it to Locks of Love?”
Jordan nodded.
“Well, he was always bugging me to do it too, so he’d do this,” I made a “V” with my fingers and then opened and closed them like scissors, “to try to convince me to do it too.”
“So’d you ever do it?” Jordan asked, trying to remember.
“Ha!” Tanner said. “That’s a laugh! David was way too worried about what other people thought of him to do something like that. He was mortified just that Greg was doing it! You’ve never seen anybody as uptight as David was in high school.”
“I was not uptight!”
“He was more uptight than he is now?” Jordan asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Tanner nodded.
“Well you try hanging around with the friends I had,” I protested. “I had Greg turning into a long-haired, hippie-freak every two years and making hand signals at me all the time and you were like the mutant spawn of the incredible hulk and a garbage disposal. If it hadn’t of been for Mike I wouldn’t have had any normal friends at all!”
With that, Charlotte appeared and put down three plates in front of Tanner, two in front of Jordan, and one in front of me.
“I can’t believe you teach health,” she muttered, giving Tanner a bottle of ketchup.
“Hey,” Tanner whispered after she’d left. “We could make up one about little Ms. Sunshine there!”
Jordan and I laughed and we worked on it over our meal. We weren’t as good as Greg, but fortunately Jordan and I had a repertoire of sign language going for us and we taught the sign for “cheerful” to Tanner. We chose that one because we knew Charlotte would get the gist of it.
When she came back to our table to give us our bill we all fanned our hands out and passed them in front of our face from our chins to our ears, wiggling our fingers and giving her big, cheesy smiles.
She stood there, glaring at us, and looking for all the world as if she’d really like to make a certain hand signal of her own.
~ ~ ~
JORDAN RANG THE doorbell on Christmas Eve.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, handing me a small package.
“Hey,” I said. “Thanks. Come on in.”
“Hi, Jordan,” Laci said, stepping into the living room, followed by Dorito.
“Hi, Laci,” he said, handing her a bag with more presents in it.
“You didn’t have to get us anything,” Laci said.
“Yes, I did,” he argued. “David won’t take any money for tutoring me . . . my mom and I wanted to thank you somehow.”
“Just pitch a no-hitter for me at your first college game,” I said and he smiled.
Then I opened my present.
“Thanks, Jordan!” I said. He’d gotten me a flash drive with a ton of songs on it.
“That’s for the next road trip our youth group goes on,” he grinned. Then he assured me: “Don’t worry . . . I paid for ’em before I downloaded ’em.”
Laci and Dorito opened their presents while I went and retrieved one for Jordan from under the tree.
Jordan opened it and grinned again. It was a little miniature basketball goal like the one in my office.
“Wow, David,” Laci said when she saw it. “You really went all out, didn’t you? What’d that set you back? Three bucks?”
“It’s the thought that counts,” I told her.
“Actually, I love it,” Jordan said. “And I’m afraid I’ll probably get a lot of use out of it . . .”
“Okay,” Laci said doubtfully, looking at his smile. “As long as you’re happy.”
The doorbell rang again and we opened it to find Tanner.
“Hi, Tanner,” Laci said, giving him a hug. “Come on in.”
Dorito bounded up in front of Tanner and Tanner opened his arms wide. Then Dorito hauled his fist back and slugged Tanner in the stomach as hard as he could.
“DORITO!” Laci yelled.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “It’s just something they do.”
“So it’s okay for him to punch people?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “Just Tanner.”
“Yeah,” Dorito agreed. “I only get to hit Tanner.”
“I don’t think we need to be teaching him that it’s okay to be hitting people . . .”
“Come on, Laci,” I said. “Haven’t you ever felt like smacking Tanner?”
She looked at me, still uncertain and I tilted my head at her.
“I guess you’re right,” she finally smiled, nodding at Dorito. “Go ahead and hit him as hard as you want.”
Dorito took a few more swings and then Tanner scooped him up and held him over his shoulder.
Tanner glanced at me.
“I, ummm, you know,” he said, nodding his head across the street. He was letting me know that he’d dropped our new puppy off with his mom.
“Gotcha,” I said, giving him the thumbs up.
“What?” Dorito asked, looking at me up upside down.
“Nothing,” I said.
“It’s about a Christmas present, isn’t it?”
“Nope,” Tanner shook his head and flipped Dorito back onto the floor. “I happen to know that you aren’t getting any Christmas p
resents this year.”
“Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!” Dorito was bouncing up and down, tugging on Tanner’s arm.
“Boy,” Jordan said. “Tomorrow’s gonna be fun at your house.”
Tanner and I decided to go ice fishing the day after Christmas. I told him all about the puppy and how excited the kids had been as we drove along.
“Hoover?” Tanner asked, incredulous. “You named her Hoover?”
“It’s your brother’s fault . . .” I said. Jordan had wanted to make sure Lily knew the sign for “dog” before Christmas morning so he’d been reading her a book all about a dog that sucked up food like a vacuum. Somehow Dorito had gotten his heart set on naming her Hoover.
“And you couldn’t talk him out of it?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Your family’s got a real issue with names . . . you know that?”
“Didn’t you just miss our turn?” I asked.
“No . . .”
“Aren’t we going to Cross Lake?”
“Naw,” he said. “I thought we’d go to Makasoi.”
“Why?” Cross Lake was about twenty minutes closer, was bigger, and it had better access.
“Cross Lake’s always too crowded. I’d rather go to Makasoi . . .”
“Whatever,” I said. “You’re driving.”
We pulled into a convenience store and went in for some drinks and food for the day. We were standing in line to pay when Tanner noticed two Latino men talking near the door.
“What are they saying?” Tanner whispered.
“Who?”
“Those guys over there . . . what are they saying?”
I tuned in.
“Hola, hombre, tus dientes son muy blancos.”
“Gracias.”
“¿Como los pones tan blancos?”
“Realmente, nada.”
“¿No usas un tratamiento de blanqueador ni nada?”
“No, los cepillo muy bien dos veces al dia . . . trato de ir al dentista dos veces al año.”
“Hombre, son bien blancos.”
“Gracias.”
“They’re talking about teeth,” I said quietly.
“Teeth?”
“Yeah. The guy in the black coat wants to know what the other guy does to get his teeth so white.”
“You’re serious?” he asked. “They’re talking about teeth?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Tanner said, looking disappointed. “It just sounded a whole lot more interesting than that.”
“Mike called me last night,” Tanner said a few days later. We were getting ready to go hunting, but first he was fixing a gutter on his mom’s house that had come down in our last ice storm.
“What’s going on with him?” I asked.
“Nothing, I guess.” He seemed to hesitate and he also seemed to be avoiding my eyes, but of course he was up on a ladder.
Finally he said, “He asked me if I’d be his best man.”
Oh, I got it. He was afraid my feelings were going to be hurt because Mike had asked him and not me.
“Did you tell him ‘no’?” I laughed.
Tanner looked down at me, puzzled.
“Why would I tell him ‘no’?”
“’Cause they don’t make tuxes in your size.”
“Very funny.” He adjusted the gutter with one hand. “No . . . I told him I’d do it, but I was kind of surprised that he asked me.”
“How come?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he shrugged, taking a nail out of his mouth. “We just haven’t been hanging out all that much anymore.”
“Well,” I said. “He does live four hours away . . .”
“I suppose,” Tanner agreed.
“But you guys have always been best friends – that doesn’t change just because you don’t see each other very often.”
“I suppose,” he said again.
“He asked me to be an usher,” I told him. “It’ll be just like when we were little . . . all three of us together again. It’ll be great.”
“Yeah,” Tanner finally smiled and looked down at me, nodding. “It’ll be great.”
~ ~ ~
ONE OF THE many good things about living in Cavendish again was that we almost always had someone to babysit the kids. We had my parents, Laci’s parents, my sister, Mrs. White, Charlotte and Jordan. We usually asked Charlotte first because she always let us pay her. None of the others would – not even Jordan. He was forever going on about how he wanted to pay me back for all the help I was giving him in math.
Charlotte came over one Saturday in January to babysit because Laci and I were going to a workday at the church. It had snowed hard the night before and Dorito was beside himself with excitement.
“Can we go out now?” he was begging Charlotte as we left. “Can we go out now?”
“Is it okay if Lydia comes over later?” she asked us, holding up a finger to quiet Dorito.
“Sure it is,” Laci told her.
“Can we go out now? Can we go out now?”
“Have fun,” I smiled at her and closed the door.
When we got home Lydia and Charlotte were playing in the snow with Lily and Dorito and about a half of a dozen neighborhood kids were sledding on our hill.
“We’ve got such a great yard,” I told Laci and she grinned at me. She took Lily inside to lay her down for a nap and pretty soon Dorito and I were having a snowball fight against Lydia and Charlotte. We were hiding behind a snow fort that someone had started while we were gone, trying to make snowballs, when all of a sudden . . .
Wham!
Before I knew what had hit me, I was sprawled face down in the snow, barely able to breath. There was only one person who was big enough to do that to me and he’d been doing that to me ever since we were about ten years old.
“GET OFF ME, TANNER!” I hollered, but of course he couldn’t understand what I was saying because my face was full of snow, so he just sat on me a little harder. I hollered a few more times and he must have decided that I was saying ‘Uncle’ (which I knew was what he wanted to hear) because he finally let me up.
“I’m gonna kill you, Tanner,” I said, wiping snow out of my eyes.
“You and what army?” he grinned.
As if in reply Jordan came sailing out of nowhere and knocked him to the ground and then Lydia and Charlotte each sat on one of his arms while Jordan and I pinned down his legs. Dorito started stuffing fistfuls of snow down the neck of his coat, but nowhere near enough as far as I was concerned.
Tanner laughed for a minute, but once he decided that he’d had enough he just raised his arm and lifted Lydia right off the ground. Charlotte screamed when she saw that happen and abandoned her post almost as fast as Jordan and I did.
We all scattered and I wound up near the front porch just as Laci came out with the baby monitor.
“She settle down?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Laci nodded, sitting on the top step. I climbed the steps and sat down next to her, putting my arm around her as we watched everyone play in the snow. Tanner grabbed Charlotte and pinned her down while Dorito and Jordan stuffed snow down her hood.
“I don’t know why Tanner doesn’t want kids,” Laci said quietly. “He’s just a big kid himself.”
Charlotte finally got free and chased Jordan across the yard with a fist full of snow and I thought about the two of them . . . Charlotte and Jordan.
Four years earlier Charlotte had come down to Mexico on a mission trip. At the time she’d told me that she despised Jordan . . . absolutely couldn’t stand him. I didn’t understand why she let him make her so upset and I asked her why she didn’t just ignore him. After some prodding she’d finally confessed that God had told her that she and Jordan were going to be together one day . . . something she desperately didn’t want to believe at the time.
Now I watched as they chased each other, laughing, and throwing snow at each other.
“Hey,” I said to Laci. “Rememb
er that snow day when we all wound up at Greg’s house?”
“When his grandmother was there?”
“Yeah.”
“What about it?”
“Remember how we got invited to stay for lasagna?”
“I’m not making lasagna,” Laci said.
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing it takes too long and for another thing I don’t have the ingredients.”
“Oh,” I sighed.
“I will order pizza though,” she said, smiling.
“Good enough.”
We walked into the yard.
“Where’s Lydia?” Laci asked, looking around.
“She had to go,” Charlotte said.
“Oh. I wish I’d caught her . . . I was going to invite everyone to stay for pizza. Do you want to stay?”
“Thanks, but I can’t.”
“How come?” I asked, immediately disappointed.
“I’ve got a date,” she answered.
“What about you, Jordan?” Laci asked.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said, nodding. She turned to go inside when Tanner called out to her.
“What about me? Aren’t you going to invite me?”
“I kind of figured it was a given that you’d stay,” Laci said, glancing back at him. “I’ve never known you to turn down a meal.”
Depending on how late it was and what the weather was like, I usually either walked or drove Charlotte home after she babysat for us. Even though the pizza was going to arrive soon, I decided I’d walk her home that night.
“What?” she asked after we’d reached the sidewalk.
“What, what?” I said.
She looked at me and smiled.
“Well, obviously you want to talk to me about something or you would have driven me home.”
“I’m that predictable?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” she said. “Let me guess. You want to stay and meet my date.”
“No,” I said. “I want to stay and glare at your date . . . or maybe go on your date with you and make sure he stays in line.”