by Eli Easton
Great. I was spending Christmas in a house of bears. My existential identity crisis was bound to be complete by New Year's. Thanks for that, Universe.
When Hank’s dad finally let him go, they gave each other a kiss on the cheek, then the parents swapped places so they could each hug the stuffing out of the other son.
If Mr. Springfield hadn’t been what I expected, Mrs. Springfield surely wasn’t. She had straight, dark brown hair pulled back in a braid that hung down to her waist. She had sharp cheekbones and wore no makeup. She looked like an old-fashioned farmer’s wife, like a black-and-white candid of a 1900s prairie family or something. She was sturdily built and wore jeans and a hippy long sweater that was woven of some kind of nylon yarn in rainbow colors. I wondered if she’d put on the rainbow for my benefit.
It was easy to see how Micah, Mr. Cool, had come from this unconventional pair, but not Hank. Funny. I’d assumed it would be the other way around.
“Welcome!” their mom said to me, letting Hank go. She wrapped me up in a hug just as rabid as the ones she’d given her boys. I was used to French greetings so I hugged her back and gave her the standard two-cheek peck.
She giggled. “Oh, aren’t you adorable! I’m Lilith and this is Karma.”
Lilith and… Karma? No way.
“Sir,” I said, holding out my hand. But Karma Springfield pushed it aside and pulled me into strong arms.
“Karma,” he insisted, straight into my ear, “Or just Kar is fine. Merry Christmas!”
“Yeah, um, Merry Christmas.” I tried to gasp for air inconspicuously once he let me go. “It’s so generous of you to allow me to spend the holidays with you.”
“Oh, Sloane,” Lilith cooed. “Any friend of Micah and Holden’s is more than welcome here. We would hate for you to be alone at Christmas.”
Wait. Micah and Holden? As in Holden Caulfield? I turned to give Hank a knowing smirk, but the slippery devil was already escaping, bungling toward the back door of the farmhouse with two big suitcases.
Micah knelt down and was inundated by the eager dogs. “And these guys,” said Micah, “are Cutter, Grinch, and Samson.” He pointed to an older basset hound, a white bulldog, and a golden retriever in turn. “They’re all big old cuddle bugs.”
“Hey, guys.” I squatted down, which must have been a canine signal for ‘I wish to pet you now’, because all three dogs were on me in a flash. They were cute, and friendly, and about fifty times more excited than I knew how to deal with. I stood up.
“I’d better help unload,” I said, grabbing my two bags from the back.
I gamely followed Hank into the house. “What a cutie-pie,” I heard Lilith say behind me. “You’re in the blue room, Sloane!”
“Thank you!” I called back with a smile.
The farmhouse was rustic inside, with simple wooden furniture that fit the feel of the old stone house. It was decorated for Christmas with red and gold baubles and swags of bare pine boughs. The Springfields had made an effort to have the house cozy for the holidays, which I deeply appreciated. It felt homey in a way my parents’ apartments never had. I soaked it in like lotion on dry skin. I passed through a dining room that had one whole wall of stone and exposed beams and followed the clomp of Hank’s boots up an enclosed staircase. Grinch, the bulldog, followed me. I wondered idly if the dogs divvied up monitoring duties and, if so, why Grinch had gotten stuck with the total stranger. Was he the alpha and thus given the most dangerous assignment? Or was he runt of the pack, given the clueless guy who probably wouldn’t pet much? I didn’t mind. He had an entertaining waddle.
The second floor of the house had a narrow hallway and low ceiling with a maze of rooms off it. The original building had to be at least a few hundred years old, and the floor and ceiling both tilted a little. Micah hadn’t been kidding when he said they had a lot of bedrooms. I passed a room with blue walls that was likely my assigned abode, but I ignored it in favor of torturing Hank.
I followed him into his bedroom and thunked down my stuff. So this… this was the fountainhead of Hank, aka Holden, Springfield.
I flopped down on his bed and tried to absorb the vibe. Grinch settled with a grunt by the door, watching me.
Hank had not one but two posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger. And not Terminator or Predator Arnold either. One showed a young bodybuilding Arnold, in a gym lifting weights. A second poster showed him taking the oath of office as California’s Republican governor. There was a black-and-white graphic print that had a stark black cross in the middle of it and yin-yang symbols in the corners. There was a statue of a Catholic saint on the windowsill. There was what looked like an old baseball trophy and a picture of some huge Russian-looking weight-lifter guy lifting an enormous barbell, maybe at the Olympics. There was a shelf of books next to the bed. I had fun trying to decipher the titles upside down while I titled my head back to look at them. They included a section of mysteries with some beat-up Agatha Christie and PD James, and four paperbacks of Nietzsche. Nietzsche for fuck’s sake.
Jesus, no wonder I couldn’t figure this guy out.
“You have a habit of throwing yourself on my bed,” Hank grunted at me.
“If not me, who?” I quipped profoundly.
He was already unpacking his suitcase and sorting the mass of dirty clothes he’d brought home—because, finals—into piles for the washer. I was sure he was doing this as an excuse to ignore me rather than an urgent need for clean underwear. But I was here for the holidays, and I was not going to let him be awkward for the entire break. Aversion therapy by repeated exposure. That was the ticket.
I watched him work. Hank looked particularly at home in this setting, with his backward baseball cap and his beard a bit scruffier than usual thanks to finals week. He’d worn a thermal shirt, which was tight across his massive chest and biceps, and his jeans were pushed low in the front, like usual. It always looked like his waistband was caving under the pressure of an invisible beer gut, or was shirking away from the manliness of his thick abs. His room was in the back of the house with a window that overlooked the barn and had cutesy cotton calico curtains. They made me want to start singing “Oooooklahoma!” The ceiling was low with thick wooden beams, and the door of his closet was made from rough barn wood. He looked like an all American farm boy standing in this room.
And why was that so fucking hot? I was supposed to be getting past this.
“So were you switched at birth? A changeling? Kidnapped by aliens and reprogrammed?” I asked.
“What?”
“You don’t seem a whole lot like Lilith and Karma,” I pointed out.
Hank blushed. “Yeah, um… wonder what room Mom wants you in.”
“She said the blue room.”
“This way.” Without waiting for me to answer, Hank picked up my suitcases and led me back to the blue room. Grinch padded after us.
We stood awkwardly in the doorway. “Thanks,” I said. I felt a twinge of guilt for getting on his case so early in my stay.
“Sure.”
He turned to go, but some devil got into me and I put my hand on his arm and pulled him back hard. “Merry Christmas… Holden.” I whispered breathlessly.
His eyes narrowed. “You tell anyone, and I will kill you.” His ears turned bright pink.
I grinned. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
* * *
Micah and Lilith took me on a tour of the farm. Grinch padded along after me like he was tethered to my ankle by bungee cord. We started in the barn. There was a big stall in the back that was open to a fenced pasture. I could see a few tan-colored cows out nosing through the snow to get grass. Micah whistled, and they looked up. One of them started trotting over eagerly. The other two followed.
Micah climbed over the gate and greeted the approaching thousand-plus-pound animal with no fear.
“Hey, True!” The animal—definitely a she—stopped in front of Micah and rubbed her jaw against him like a cat. He was smiling an all-out sunny smile as
he scratched her chin and shoulder. “Hey, baby. How’s it goin’?”
The other two cows showed up, and Micah tried to give them attention too, but the first one, True, wasn’t having it, trying to push her way into Micah’s hands.
“Wow, I had no idea cows could be so tame,” I commented. Then again, I’d never been close to a cow.
“Oh, Trueheart was born here on the farm, and the boys helped with her birth. They about petted her to death when she was a calf, so she got used to it,” Lilith explained.
“She’s certainly not shy.” Weren’t cows supposed to be meek and mild? These ladies were rather pushy with each other and with Micah, like toddlers in a sandbox.
“Nope. Not at all. Micah?” she called out. “You’re on morning milking this trip.”
“Ouch!” Micah held his side like she’d just stabbed him, but he didn’t really seem to mind.
“You milk them?” I asked, surprised.
Lilith laughed. “Yes, Sloane. That’s why we keep them. We get milk, and sometimes we raise a beef cow too. We don’t have one right now, though.”
“Hey, Sloane, come meet the girls.”
I wasn’t entirely sure about that, but it would be embarrassing to act afraid of a dairy cow, especially since I was studying to become a vet. I climbed over the gate trying to mimic the casual cowboy way Micah had done it. Grinch, being much smarter than I was, stayed on the human side of the gate.
“Here.” Micah pulled me closer by my coat and took my hand. The cows were ignoring me, all fixated on Micah or each other, and when Micah put my hand on True’s jaw, she gave me a suspicious look. After a lengthy flat stare from big brown eyes, she nudged into my hand as if demanding I pet her harder.
“Scratch her chin. She likes that.” Micah said.
“Sure, she does. Who doesn’t?” I joked as I scratched her strong jawline. “Maybe you can do this for me after supper.”
“Maybe.” Micah gave me a weird smile.
“So you really know how to milk a cow, huh?”
“Yeah. What, you don’t?” Micah asked with mock seriousness.
I bent down to look at True’s swollen teats. God, those suckers were like four inches long. “Not really my area.”
Micah laughed. “No? You mean you won’t do that for me after supper?”
I choked on some spit and coughed. What the fuck? Did he just imply what I thought he did?
Micah pounded me on the back. “Kidding, Gregore. Come on, let’s finish the tour.”
They led me through the barn, which was old and rustic and spider-webby and cool, and up some rickety steps—Grinch struggling a bit—to an upper level where they kept hay and straw. We went through a little door and came out on the back side of the barn. Ahead of us was a fenced-in area with bunch of chickens and a few ducks.
A hand-painted sign, Chick City, hung over the gate.
“Let me guess, you guys named it,” I said with a laugh.
“That was Hank’s brilliant mind. Don’t blame me,” said Micah.
We went inside, Micah closing the gate carefully behind the three of us. Grinch was apparently not to be trusted with the fowl, so he sat at the fence, his gaze locked on me like I was an unexploded nuke, or maybe like I was about to pull BBQ ribs out of my pocket.
“It’s really good for the birds to be outside on grass,” Lilith informed me. “They eat bugs and weeds and seeds, and that makes their eggs more nutritious for us. They also get lots of leftover veggies and cuttings from the garden.”
“Wait ’til you taste mom’s scrambled eggs,” Micah said. “They’re better than any eggs you’ve ever had, guaranteed. I can’t even eat the ones at school, I’m so spoiled.”
Lilith beamed proudly at this. As with the cows, I was surprised that the birds were tame. Micah approached one with goldenrod feathers, and the bird squatted down and let him pick her up.
“This is Eggy,” Micah said, bringing her over to me. “Eggy Lee.”
“Cute.” I stroked her head. “Was that Hank too?”
“Yup. He’s the punster in the family.”
“Of course he is,” I said, by now resigned to having nothing about Hank make sense.
“And that beautiful male over there is our Christmas dinner,” Lilith said, pointing to a large brown bird.
As if realizing we were watching him, the bird puffed up his feathers, his huge fan-shaped tail snapping. It was a turkey, and not just a boring turkey either. It was the kind you saw in old American paintings—a real turkey, in the flesh, with magnificent bronze plumage that had a blue sheen to it, a big fan tail, and red fleshy stuff hanging from his head.
Lilith and Micah both watched me for a reaction. There was a pause.
“Yum?” I said doubtfully.
Lilith laughed. “It’s okay. I know it’s a little strange for most people to meet their food before they eat it. But that’s what we believe in.”
“Mom.” The tone was tight. I turned to see Hank coming in the Chick City gate. He was wearing a red parka and ski cap that made him look even more ornate than the turkey. “Sloane doesn’t need to hear all that stuff.”
“I’m sure Sloane is curious about how we live, especially since he grew up in other countries,” Lilith said patiently.
“Yeah, like we’re the average American family,” Hank muttered sarcastically. “Anyway, I’m gonna run over to the Fishers to pick up the pies. Wanna come, Frenchie?”
“What do you call him?” Lilith asked with surprise.
“He thinks he’s funny,” I said dryly. “But surely the inventive rascal who came up with ‘Chick City’ and ‘Eggy Lee’ can do better than ‘Frenchie’.”
Hank hung his head in mock defeat. “I’m never going to live down this visit,” he muttered.
“You shouldn’t call him that if he doesn’t like it,” Lilith said in a motherly tone. “That’s rude.”
“Yeah, Holden, that’s rude,” I echoed.
I had him, and he knew it. He narrowed his eyes at me. “Hey, Sloane, wanna drive with me to go pick up some pies?”
“Sure, Hank, I’d love to,” I said sweetly.
It became clear when we got in the car that Micah wasn’t coming. Grinch looked truly despondent to be left behind, sitting in the driveway, his giant head on his paws and his eyes bottomless wells of self-pity. I waved to him guiltily as we pulled away.
“So pies,” I said, as Hank pulled out of the driveway. “Do we have to hunt down and kill the Great Pumpkin first?”
I’d meant it as a joke, but Hank groaned. “You don’t have to go to that.”
“Go to what?”
“The, um, turkey killing ceremony.”
“There’s a ceremony?” I asked. “Are you yanking my chain?”
His big hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel. “Look, my parents… they’re different. That’s all.”
“Okay.”
“Like they think if they’re going to eat meat, then they should raise it and give it a good life and kill it as humanely as possible.”
“That’s… noble,” I said with a shrug. “In France, the best restaurants keep their own livestock in back and things are served very fresh, if you get my meaning. It’s not that weird.”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t France. This is like… Xanadu or Woodstock or something. Just… you don’t have to do everything we—they do. That’s all.”
He didn’t look happy. I probed around it in my mind like a sore spot, trying to understand it. “Your parents seem amazingly nice.”
“They are.”
“So….”
“So nothin’. It’s just… look, they were vegans once. Like growing up, Micah and me, we got beans and tofu and kelp, that’s what we ate. Then, suddenly, they went all ‘primal’ and have to raise their own meat and chant over it…. It’s just… I don’t take it seriously because it’ll change again. That’s all.”
That clearly wasn’t all. There was something about it that bothered Hank, I could tell
by the wasp-stung tightness to his voice. But I couldn’t for the life of me see what that might be. Clearly, he loved his parents, but there was a tension there I didn’t understand. I knew he and Micah weren’t vegetarian, because I’d seen him scarf burgers and meat lovers pizza at school so…?
Mysterious Hank and his enigmatic mysteriosity!
I decided changing the subject was the better part of valor. After all, a visitor should know when to stay out of the family drama. “So… what kind of pies are we getting?”
Hank sighed from the depth of his soul. “I swear, you’ll think you died and went to heaven. Mom and Dad don’t eat sugar. Or flour. Or grains of any kind. So we get pies from an Amish lady, Mrs. Fisher, every year for me and Micah. They are, in a word, phenomenal.”
“What flavor of phenomenal?” I insisted, suddenly hungry.
“My favorite is blueberry. Micah loves the peach rhubarb, and we always get pumpkin and shoofly too.”
“Shoofly?”
“Oh, my poor Frenchie,” Hank said knowingly. “You don’t know what you’ve been missing.”
~8~
Sloane
THE PLACE where we picked up the pies was an actual Amish farm. I was excited to see one in real life. I’d seen them before on TV, of course, and I’d googled them before we left PSU. But this was the authentic, non-reality show version.
The Fishers had a farm larger than the Springfields. On all sides of the farmhouse were snowy fields with their crops cut down for the season. The barn was old and freshly painted red, the farmhouse a classic white. The house had several add-on appendages as if it had been around forever and just kept growing. A black buggy was parked near the barn. Add in a simple pine wreath on the door, and it was about as Heartland as I could have ever wished for.