A Cozy Country Christmas Anthology (6 page)

“Still known as Handy Ham?” Rob punched his
grandfather’s shoulder with a playful light touch. “I’ll bet you
keep busy.”

“Do most of my work for free now, Robbie.
Someone’s gotta keep the widder women in fuses and mown grass.”

A swarm of gnats suddenly appeared beside
Dorothy, tracing invisible, cosmic patterns in the air, trapped in
an endless cycle of futility. She choked back a laugh; on this trip
she was seeing literary symbolism everywhere.

Ham noticed her grimace and jerked his head
toward the house. “Come inside, children. It’s hotter than a
branding blaze out here!”

Fanning herself with one hand, Dorothy
followed Rob inside. Her vision of staggering into the guest room
and collapsing on a bed covered with a cool white spread while lacy
curtains fluttered in the breeze faded at first glance.

An open door to the right revealed a
miniscule bathroom. Turning, she glimpsed a galley style kitchen
through a doorway. The presence of a lumpy couch and a card table
indicated that the room in which they stood served Ham as both
living and dining space. The air smelled of dust and heat. Tears
gritted like sand underneath her eyelids. No room here for three
adults to spend the night—it barely looked big enough for one.

Rob had been right, she wasn’t welcome.
Sibley Corners lacked a hotel or even a motel, he’d warned her,
adding that Ham didn’t have space available for guests. But she’d
been so desperate, grasping at this last chance to catch and focus
Rob’s attention. . .

“Thanks for putting us up, Ham.” Dorothy
could tell by Rob’s sidelong glances that the house was even
smaller than he remembered it. “Are you sure we won’t crowd you? Is
there a motel within a few miles? We could call for a reservation,
take you out to supper—“

“Nonsense! I’m pleasured, Robbie. Don’t get
much company. All the local widder women bring over casseroles and
hand knitted scarves at the drop of a snow flake. Those gals don’t
count as company, act more like a pack of wolves circling a downed
calf.” He arched bushy white eyebrows and smirked. “But I’m still
able to dodge and jump—so far I’ve managed to keep a ring out of my
nose!”

Rob grinned and Ham flapped his hand. “Now,
boy, and tell me about yourself.” He turned to Dorothy and waved at
the couch. “And you, Missie, just set and rest your feet. You must
be so tired after travelin’ from the Cities.”

Rob and his grandfather seated themselves at
the card table, leaving Dorothy marooned near the front door. She
hesitated before crossing the dingy carpet to the couch where she
was immediately sucked down into the quicksand of the stuffing. Her
husband was already deep in detailing his daily routine to Ham,
whose wizened brown face creased in a proud grin.

To disguise her intense interest in Rob’s
revelations of his days, Dorothy selected a magazine from the
battered coffee table. Stockbreeder’s Journal! Faded black and
white photographs of bulls interested her much less than the
torrent of conversation spilling from her normally taciturn
husband.

“So you call yerself a trauma surgeon,
Robbie. What’s that when it’s at home?”

Rob gave a husky chuckle. “It’s a fancy name
for a doctor who puts people back together after they get hurt in
accidents. Hey, my patient last Monday would have made you laugh,
Grandpa. A big, burly guy, he told me before the surgery that he
drives a diesel rig so he’s never home.”

Dorothy stiffened. The parallel seemed
obvious to her—was Rob sending her a message with his choice of
anecdote?

“—
so this guy’s in the habit of
climbing up and perching on the roof to get out of range of his
wife’s constant ‘bellyaching’ about him being gone. So I asked him
as he lay there in bed, his leg in traction, ‘What happened this
time that was different? Did you fall off?’ And he said, ‘Not until
she beaned me with our son’s baseball. Got something for a
headache, doc?’”

Ham wheezed, his gusts of laughter
threatening the stability of the card table that he pounded with a
gnarled fist. “Bet you got a million stories to share with your
wife each week, right, Dorothy? Must be tough on you with your guy
gone so much.”

Ambushed. She forced a smile to her lips. Rob
never shared, but why should he when she had expressed so much
resentment about his profession? She felt again the ache of having
lost someone precious, the sting of throwing away something that
could never be retrieved.

But Ham continued to beam at her. “But I
suppose that’s the life you two have chosen for yourselves. I can
tell Dorothy’s the strong, supportive type that she needs to be
and, Robbie, you was a born doctor—‘member your first patient?”

Guffawing, his grandfather hopped his chair
around to include Dorothy in the conversation. “When Robbie waren’t
more than knee high to a grasshopper, he found this little bunny
with a broken leg. T’was then he found his calling. He splinted the
break and right away Mr. Rabbit’s sufferings were eased.”

Dorothy felt her jaw sag, picturing Rob in
his surgical scrubs, a frown of concentration on his handsome face,
bending over a ball of fluff. “A rabbit?”

To her surprise, Rob’s eyes sparkled as he
met hers, before switching his grin to Ham. “Better tell her the
rest.”

“Oh, yeah, see Robbie had to use his brain
box, didn’t exactly have a medical kit, so he splinted that poor
leg with stalks of rhubarb from his grandma’s garden. The patient
ate the instruments of mercy, so to speak, and hopped off. Never
underestimate the curative powers of rhubarb.” Ham bobbed his head,
still chuckling to himself.

Dorothy yearned to keep the banter going,
basking in the light in Rob’s eyes when he’d looked at her. “Did he
pay you in carrots?”

Her stomach roiled when Rob flicked an
irritated glance in her direction, as if she’d intruded, thrusting
in where she wasn’t wanted. Somehow, in the past several months
he’d managed to barricade himself behind invisible walls, leaving
her standing outside, her fists bruised from pounding to be let
in.

A sharp knock that brought Ham to his feet,
the old man moving with the rolling gait of a sailor just off the
ship.

After greeting the teenager clad in a faded
red tee-shirt proclaiming “Mr. Quick’s Pizza”, Ham unfolded a bill
from a roll tugged from his hip pocket and handed it over with an
expansive grin. “Keep the change, Nicky!”

“Thanks, Ham.” Nicky turned to include the
visitors in the conversation. “My car knows the route here so well
that my turn signal flips on all by itself.”

“Quit yer kidding, sonny, and scoot, my
company’s chomping at the bit for a mouthful of supper.”

Rob waited until the visitor had gone before
asking, “Is pizza your meal every evening?”

He couldn’t mask his concern and Ham’s voice
turned defensive. “I got this for a treat for you big city folks,
Nicky’s mom makes the best ‘pie’ in Minnesota. Hey, Nicky’s just a
kidder.”

Greasy pizza and a can of generic orange pop
served on a rickety card table didn’t agree with pregnancy. Dorothy
poked at the congealing slice on her plate while Rob and Ham caught
up on family news. Ham kept trying to bring her into the
conversation but for all the attention Rob paid her, she might as
well have stayed at home.

She knew Rob felt guilty that he hadn’t
visited his grandfather since their marriage but did he have to
take it out on her? Dorothy found herself frowning again and
glanced up. Despite their proximity, her husband’s gaze travelled
through her as though her chair was empty.

With painful clarity, the finale from their
last fight played on the mental screen inside her head. “You don’t
love me anymore—did you ever love me?”She’d spit those hurtful
words at him, struggling to accept that he’d chosen an unending
line of faceless patients over his wife.

Shivering, the memory faded to a dull throb
at her temples. Glancing up, Dorothy saw Ham’s deep-set eyes fixed
on her untouched slice of pizza.

“You ain’t et enough to keep a newborn calf
steady on four hooves,” he commented, forehead wrinkling into
canyons. “How’s Robbie gonna hug and chalk you at this rate?

“Hug and what?” Rob gave his grandfather a
puzzled grin.

“If yer wife’s healthy and plump, sometimes
there’s a little too much to get yer arms around in one go. So ya
hug a little, mark your place with chalk, and keep hugging till
you’re done.”

Rob pointed a long, capable finger at the
remaining pizza. “Eat up, Dorothy. I’ll never get that pleasure if
you persist in starving yourself.”

A fly buzzed at the window. “As if you even
wanted to!” The words burst out of a deep well of pain inside
Dorothy. Naked longing mixed with hostility quivered in the echo of
her words against the bare walls.

Facing her husband across the cluttered
surface of the card table, she read the truth in his refusal to
meet her imploring gaze. He mocked her because of his conviction
that her love had died, his belief unshakeable while he remained
secure behind the barricade of indifference.

Flicking a stubby finger at a milk bottle
standing sentinel on the sideboard, Ham barked, “That tone of
voice’ll cost you a penny, Robbie!”

To Dorothy’s bewilderment, her husband rose
and fumbled in his pockets before displaying empty palms.

With a sigh, his grandfather reached into his
back pocket and pulled out a shabby leather coin purse. Selecting a
coin with shaking fingers, he handed it over to Rob who strode over
and dropped the penny into the milk bottle, its metal making a
hollow clang against the glass sides.

Ham shook his head with a dissatisfied frown.
“Now, now. You left out the most important part, Robbie.”

After a brief hesitation, her husband bent to
brush Dorothy’s cheek with his lips, a cool, passionless kiss that
burned and stung like a slap.

Maintaining a grip on her composure, she kept
her gaze focused on the bottle, willing herself not to cry. The
glass had a milky tint, as though through the years it had absorbed
some of the liquid it was created to hold.

Ham bounced up and proceeded to clear the
table by sweeping paper plates and napkins into a plastic grocery
sack. When he’d finished, he dusted his hands together and beamed
at his guests. “Who wants the first bath? Dorothy?”

Still struggling with her emotions, she
attempted to hide her surprise. “Not yet, Ham. It’s only six
o’clock.”

The sun seams shaped Ham’s face into a walnut
shell. It seemed apparent that the meal’s tension hadn’t escaped
his notice; he clearly felt under pressure to provide some form of
entertainment. “Ain’t much to do after supper. We could listen to
the ball game on the radio...get an ice cream...play poker?”

“I vote for ice cream.” Rob already stood
near the screen door, looking outside as if longing to escape.

“How about you, darlin’?” Ham turned to her,
his smile anxious.

“Ready for ice cream!” Dorothy infused
enthusiasm into her voice but she didn’t want to go anywhere. She
wanted to remain in close proximity with Rob, hoping to push him
into betraying the anger underlying his polite smiles, opening
doors for her, passing a slice of pizza. But she couldn’t put Ham
in the middle. Her mission this weekend seemed doomed to
failure.

Hooper’s Ice Cream Emporium featured high
stools lined up before an old fashioned soda fountain that would
probably cost a fortune to recreate for a movie set. Dorothy
studied the chalkboard tacked up behind the fountain. A weekend
special named “The Northern Lights” featured scoops of orange and
green sherbet.

Ham introduced them to the other customers
with pride as “my grandson, the doc, and his better half,
Dorothy.”

Dorothy’s tummy had settled down but her back
continued to ache. Since they were up north, she ordered the
weekend special. Perched on a stool, she massaged sore muscles
while studying the bay window fronting on Main Street. Spinning
back to the counter, she touched the napkin dispenser, marring its
shiny silver surface with a print of her index finger.

Their desserts arrived in moments and she
closed her eyes as a spoonful of the blessed coolness melted on her
tongue. Ham, who’d chosen a chocolate strawberry cone, was too busy
licking for conversation. Rob had turned on his stool to chat with
an elderly couple at a nearby table, bending to scratch their
equally ancient cocker spaniel behind the ears as the dog lapped
with concentration at a dish of vanilla ice cream.

The enormous wooden blades of an overhead fan
provided a background hum as they sliced through the hot evening
air. She felt as if she’d stepped into a colorized movie classic,
where the tinkle of the bell over the door might signal the arrival
of a young Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland dropping by for a malted
milk.

Dorothy became acutely aware of the cracked
leather of the stool as it chafed the backs of her legs, the
sherbet melting into a muddle in the bottom of her cup and Rob’s
studied avoidance. He seemed comfortable here, as he’d never
appeared in her world. She realized with a twinge of nausea that
she’d never tried to live in his.

In contrast to her growing misery, her
husband grew boisterous, harpooning Ham by blowing the paper
wrapper off his straw and contributing an entry to the tall tale
contest in session at the counter.

The winner of the contest, an unshaven man in
overalls, was awarded a free refill of his milkshake. He repeated
the story for the benefit of each newcomer. “No placee can beat
this town for heat. Last night, Elsie had a craving for a snack. I
went out to the popcorn patch, peeled back a couple husks, and
filled a bowl with already popped kernels.”

Ham punctuated the latest burst of laughter
by sliding off his stool. “Got to get these young folks to home.
Need their rest, being plum tuckered out from that fast city
livin’.”