The Christmas Knife

by Jackie North

"What?" he asked shortly.

  "You're Clayton Nash, right?" she asked. "Headed down to Orchard, Colorado?"

  "Yes," he said, not wanting to ask how she knew where he was going. "So?"

  She turned to the guy behind her, who was a little older. His name tag said Ralph, and beneath that it said Manager.

  "This is the guy," the girl said to Ralph.

  Clayton rose up on his toes a little bit. With all that had been going on, it was possible that the theft of the knife and the sheath might have come straight back to him, as though he was the thief. But he was even more confused when the Ralph the Manager smiled at him, reached beneath the counter, and pulled out a bubble package. It contained a charger, including an adaptor, in case he had no outlet in his car, a corkscrew cord for the adaptor, as well as the thin cord that would hook up to his cell phone.

  "This is our last one, Mr. Nash," said Ralph.

  "What?" asked Clayton, completely confused.

  "We just got a phone call from Kyle Tobin. He bought it over the phone and paid for it with his credit card. Wanted to make sure you had one. Said you should consider it a gift from him to you, on account of it's nearly Christmas."

  "Oh, man," said Clayton.

  Now he felt bad about being so brusque with Kyle over the phone and practically hanging up on him. The charger was going to save him. He would be free to call Uncle Bill, when the time came, and he could, perhaps, call Kyle to tell him thank you. And, if Kyle wanted to go on and on about whatever, then maybe Clayton would let him. After all, he had miles of snowy driving to get through, and sometimes the radio wasn't enough.

  "Go on, take it," said Ralph. "It's paid for."

  "Thank you," said Clayton. He had manners when he remembered to use them.

  He went out to the car, threw away bits of trash from the passenger side where it usually collected, and connected his phone to the charger and plugged it in. He walked around the car, checked the tires, and scraped off triangle shaped bits of ice that had coated the taillights and headlights on the passenger side. He used the scraper to make the windows as clean and frost-free as they could possibly be. Then, blowing on his cupped hands, he got into the car.

  The engine hummed softly when he turned on the ignition, and he was ready to go. From Sundance, he had two, maybe three hours to Lusk. From there it was at least a four-hour drive to Orchard. After that, he could head down to the interstate and get a motel there because as he glanced at the clock he realized he would not be arriving anywhere until after ten o'clock. Having driven into what was developing into whiteout conditions, he'd be in no shape to get home to Harlin, let alone make it down to Parker.

  But he'd made a promise to Kyle to be there to get Shawn's Christmas gift, and so by whatever means, he was going to make it. So when it came time to take the turnoff south from Sundance, rather than east or west, he took it, his breath held, his heart pounding, though he didn't want to admit it to himself.

  Highway 585 was bordered by good sized pine trees, at least as he went by the Black Hills area, and that helped to shield the snow a good deal. But when he had to take a right on Highway 85, the trees dropped away and the land turned flat, and that was where it began to get rugged. The snow was blowing sideways right over the top of the road, hiding the edges. At least there was some daylight to see by, and having gone this way before he knew the road somewhat.

  The sky was full of white and he passed nobody going the other way, and for two hours, he was on his own. Just him and the road and the snow.

  Just as he approached the outer edges of the small town of Lusk, he reached for the phone, thinking he'd call Kyle to tell him thank you for the charger. It was then that the phone rang.

  Clayton saw that it was Kyle by the phone number, so clicked the Answer button as fast as he could.

  "Hello, Kyle, listen, I wanted to thank you—"

  "You should not be driving in this storm," said Kyle firmly, interrupting Clayton. "I've checked the weather reports in your area, and it's going to get very bad before it gets better. The temperatures are going to drop down to zero and the snow is going to increase."

  "I've driven in worse," said Clayton. "I actually drive in this kind of weather all the time, thank you very much."

  "And why the hell would you do that?" asked Kyle.

  Clayton tightened both hands on the wheel to slow down for the exit. He needed to pee, and it wasn't good to get road weary, especially not in a storm like this one.

  "I drive an eighteen wheeler most days," said Clayton. "I took a few days off so I'm in my car, but I know how to handle myself on the road. In all kinds of weather," he added for emphasis.

  "That doesn't mean you should be driving in this," said Kyle. "You should get a hotel in the next town. Where are you?"

  "I'm pulling into Lusk for a quick break, and then I'm on the road again."

  Clayton turned on his blinkers and felt the wheels slide as he went around the curve of the exit. His windshield wipers were going full speed, but as the car slowed, the snowflakes also seemed to slow, doing an exquisite dance in the falling light, sparkling in the tall street lights that led the way to the gas station.

  "Have I mentioned that the storm is going to get bad before it gets better?" asked Kyle, sounding wise.

  "Yes, you most certainly did, but if I stop here for the night, I'll get stuck here for days," said Clayton, doing his best to be patient. "The snow can get very deep in this part of Wyoming, however, the further south I go, the less bad the storm is likely to be."

  "So you're going to keep driving," said Kyle. "That's so mountain man rugged but so very stupid."

  "Hey, your precious mountain men could survive through the winter doing all kinds of rugged things," said Clayton, laughing a bit.

  "Well, sure, but they weren't going seventy miles an hour in a blizzard."

  "Fifty," said Clayton. "I'm clocking in at fifty miles an hour at most, which is why this is taking so long. If this had been a sunny day, I'd already be in Colorado, with Orchard only an hour or two away, instead of four."

  "Which means that you won't be here until late," said Kyle, and it was obvious that he was at the computer, looking at the weather report, for he added, "It'll get very bad at the state line, with the temperatures dropping to zero and the wind chill factor will take it colder than that. A foot of snow is expected, and maybe up to three feet in that area."

  "State line is near Cheyenne," said Clayton. He could see the map in his mind's eye, and calculated the distance. "That's only an hour of really bad driving. Check Grover. What is it going to do there?"

  "Not so cold there, and a little less snow," said Kyle, reporting back with a minimum of fuss. "Which means it's going to be more than one hour of bad driving, from the looks of it. But don't worry, I'll be with you the entire way."

  "I don't need babysitting," said Clayton as he pulled into a gas station, half laughing at the thought of this guy he didn't even know thinking he had the responsibility of looking after a seasoned truck driver.

  "Yes, you do," said Kyle, and it sounded like he was laughing to himself as well. "You need to be babysat, and I'm going to do it. To make up for my earlier sins."

  "Fine, fine," said Clayton, realizing that he did not object very much to the idea of being kept company, even if Kyle tended to over-explain everything. "Listen, I'm at Lusk, at the gas station, so I'm going to put gas in the tank—"

  "To keep the gas line from freezing," said Kyle.

  "Right, and because it's not good to drive for hours and hours without a break."

  "So very sensible," said Kyle. "But you still need to be babysat."

  "Yes, sir," said Clayton with a mental salute. "All right I'm hanging up now."

  He clicked the Hang Up button, turned off the engine, and watched the snowflakes falling outside his window. They drifted down hard and fast past the edge of the overhead canopy. Along the wall of the building, where the convenience store was, the snow had drifted into long, white t
riangles.

  If this had been any other drive, he'd stop in Lusk for sure, stay the night in a cheap motel, and see what the weather was like in the morning. But he had miles to go and promises to keep, and he meant to keep them.

  Besides, in his mind's eye, he could picture Kyle standing in the doorway of his ranch house with a view of the South Platte, looking out through the falling snow, waiting for a man he'd never met to arrive. While what Kyle looked like was an indistinct blur, Clayton could imagine he'd have an expression of worry, at the very least. And that thought added to Clayton's feeling about this whole thing, that he was letting people down left and right, even though he was willing to drive into the worst blizzard the plains had ever known to make it right.

  He got out into the freezing cold, filled up his car with gas, scraped the windows, and went inside to pee. As he washed his hands, he looked at himself in the mirror.

  It was one of those polished tin affairs, and only showed the edges of his face, his wild, long-distance-drive hair, blonde like his sister Sarah's, and the scruff of beard growth on his chin. The glimmer of blue eyes. But the mirror reflected no real distinct lines, so he couldn't see his own expression. Still, as he washed his face with cold water, he had to laugh.

  Kyle considered him mountain man rugged but still in need of babysitting. And that, for some reason, warmed his heart a little, adding to the sensation that what he was trying to do, what he was going after, had meaning. And that while Sarah, Luke, and Shawn were rooting for him, maybe Kyle was too.

  Time would tell. For now, Clayton needed to get back in that car, turn on the engine, and ruggedly, mountain man style, make his way through four hours of snowy driving in blizzard white out conditions, and all for a Christmas gift for his favorite and only nephew. When he made it, he'd have a story to tell that Uncle Bill would be proud of.

  Chapter 6

  He almost missed the right turn to the small town of Torrington, whose bright street lights, ten in all, five on either side, contrasted sharply with the darkness beyond. But he kept driving at a steady forty miles an hour, due to the conditions. By the time he reached the border between Wyoming and Colorado, the sky was pitch black, though there was an eerie glow to the snowfall, as though the moon was trying to push its light through to help him but was failing.

  He drove with both hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel till they became numb, all the while cursing himself for thinking he could do this. It was as though he imagined himself some rugged mountain man after all, impervious to the cold, fast enough to outrun the weather, and canny enough to find his way through a snowstorm on a back road that was only two lanes wide with no access to anything but open snow-covered black-as-hell prairie on either side.

  Going steadily, he made it to Grover, where he thought to stop to gas up, and scrape the ice and snow from the passenger side, which always faced west now and was taking the full brunt of the storm. There was a feed and grain store whose outside lights were burning, but there was no gas station, so Clayton pulled into the parking lot anyway and did his very best to scrape off the snow and ice.

  His hands were freezing, but there was nothing to be done about that. He'd been stupid to not take gloves with him just in case. He knew better, and maybe Kyle was right in that he needed a little looking after.

  Back in the car, Clayton checked the level on the gas tank indicator as the windshield wipers whisked across the windshield that was, for now, clean of ice. He had a little over half a tank, which would surely take him all the way to Orchard, which was a little over two hours down the road, an almost straight shot with a few turns. As long as he kept the snowfall on his right, he'd be headed in the right direction. He'd be fine.

  He rubbed his eyes and squinted at the snow and knew that had he not already been driving in these conditions for hours, he'd be more up to the task. Still, this was the last little bit and then he could stop driving. Beyond Kyle's house it was only half an hour to the interstate, where he could find a motel to crash in.

  Though it was late, he dialed Kyle's number and listened to it ring while he pulled back onto the snow-covered road. His headlights ate through the darkness that shifted and shimmied from behind the veil of snow that kept falling and falling. He was gripping the steering wheel so hard he couldn't feel his hands, but he needed to keep going. He'd make it if he just kept going through the endless, ceaseless white.

  The phone made a clicking sound as Kyle answered.

  "Hey, Clayton," said Kyle. "Where are you now?

  "Just two hours out," said Clayton, making his voice sound more sure than he felt. "There's no gas station in Grover."

  "How much do you have?"

  "A little over half a tank."

  Kyle made a humming sound, though Clayton didn't know what that meant.

  "I'm turning on all the lights," said Kyle. "All of them. You won't be able to miss the house, okay? And there are street lights down the main street in Orchard. They'll guide you through town."

  "Okay," said Clayton.

  "You doing okay?" asked Kyle.

  "Yes."

  "You don't sound okay," said Kyle.

  "I can make it," said Clayton. "Just talk to me. Tell me about mountain men. Tell me about anything. Help me stay awake."

  "I can do that," said Kyle. "Shall I tell you about what I'd rather be doing than developing software?"

  There was a hint of shyness in the question, as though Kyle wanted to make sure that sharing, or in Kyle's case, over-sharing, would be okay. And more, beneath the question was a spark of passion, telling Clayton that whatever Kyle was about to share with him was actually quite close to his heart.

  "Yes, tell me," said Clayton. Then, feeling a little more awake and slightly wise, he added, "Sometimes what we do for a living isn't what we want to spend our lives doing."

  "You got that right," said Kyle. "Well, what I'd really like to do is be one of those people who does arts and crafts and sells them at festivals and fairs. Is that stupid or what?"

  Clayton thought for a minute, driving quite carefully but steadily through the snowy night. Somebody had told Kyle that what he wanted was stupid. Which was a damn shame. Although, truth be told, Clayton himself had earlier dismissed arts and crafts as being foolish, but then, he'd never been to a festival or a fair so what did he know? Maybe they had people who wove wool, and he could find a weaver who could make him a good red wool blanket. He'd always wanted one of those—

  "Clayton?" Kyle sounded worried. About him?

  "Sorry, my mind was going off."

  "Open the window a little to give you some brisk air," said Kyle. "Just for a minute or so, so you don't fall asleep."

  Obediently, Clayton did as Kyle suggested and breathed in deeply as the cooler air circulated around the inside of the car. Bits of icy snow kissed his cheek.

  "What do you want to make to sell at one of these fairs?" asked Clayton. "Beaded knife sheaths?"

  "No," said Kyle, and Clayton could hear him take a breath. "Well, maybe. I do want to do leatherwork. You know, belts and wallets and patterns for cowboy boots."

  This was not the answer that Clayton had been expecting, and as he mulled it over, he realized that Kyle was waiting for his response.

  "That sounds cool," said Clayton.

  "Really?" asked Kyle.

  "Really," said Clayton. "I've seen some really good leatherwork in my time, you know, being out on the road. Some of those designs are very intricate. And expensive."

  At that, Kyle started talking. He told Clayton about his plan to buy a truck and an Airstream trailer with his savings from his software job, and how he'd drive from fair to fair, living on the road like a vagabond, but with a purpose. He'd have his tools and supplies with him, and when he was at a fair, he'd do demos, and talk to people about the history of each design.

  Clayton told him that he could hook Kyle up with Ricky, in Dickinson, who could teach him how to brain-tan deer hides, and Kyle practically moaned.

>   Kyle hung up to get himself a drink of water, then called right back and kept on talking. He talked Clayton's ear off the whole way to Orchard, and all the while the snow pounded the side of the car and erased the road. Clayton's eyes were so tired that he thought he was imagining the lights that started twinkling in the near distance.

  As he got closer, he saw that they were streetlights, lined up on either side of the road. In a flash of brightness, his headlights caught the green sign that indicated he'd entered the small, very small, town of Orchard, population 101, elevation 4,406 feet.

  "I'm in Orchard," said Clayton, though he could hardly believe he'd made it. Even if his truck spun totally out, he could walk to Kyle's house from here.

  "Keep driving. Do you see the streetlights? Go past the post office, it'll be on your right, and just keep going. I'm the last house before the river, and I'll be on your right, too. You can't miss me, I'm all lit up like a runway."

  Clayton thought he might have half blacked out or fallen asleep, his body relaxing at last after all these hours because it knew it was almost there. Suddenly, the town's single row of streetlights was already in his rearview mirror, and in front of him, to the right, was a blazing ball of light that broke out into singular lights as he drove closer. It was Kyle's house, the last one before the road got to the river.

  He turned off the main road into the curved driveway, his car slowing down so much that he realized that the snow was deep enough to hit the top of the tires.

  He stopped several feet from the actual front door, shut off the engine and the headlights, and sat there, his whole body buzzing, black sparks dancing in front of his eyes.

  Someone came and opened the car door and Clayton fell out right into the snow. The same someone caught him and helped him to his feet. Smelling like pine and cinnamon, he let Clayton lean against him as they walked to the front door of the house.

  Light and warmth shot out through the open doorway, though Clayton could barely sense the two of them going up the pair of concrete steps that had been carefully shoveled and salted. Then he was inside, blinking and blind, slightly shaking, his hands at his sides curling into fists and then stretching out as he tried to get the blood flow back into them.