cali does Christmas with franksolich

[franksolich]

note: this is a work of fiction, although it's based upon some scraps of real-life happenings, as I don't have the imagination to make up things like this; this is dedicated to both Traveshamockery here, who inspired the idea of writing this, and to the bitter old Vermontese cali primitive, with the hopes that they both enjoy it.

cali does Christmas with franksolich.  The snow was fast, furious, and blinding, as cali tried maneuvering her car down the highway, nearly being swept off the road every several feet.  Beads of perspiration formed on her forehead; she was nervous, because here she was, out in the middle of nowhere on the roof of Nebraska, having no idea what lay between here and Sioux City, where she hoped to find habitation for this night, Christmas Eve.

There was a car behind her—she could see the headlights every so often through the swirling snow—and she wondered where it was going.  Getting paranoid, to cali it seemed as if it was tracking her on purpose, steadily keeping up with her, and then slowing down as she slid into the ditch, and then waiting as she steered the car back onto the road.

cali was an older woman, mid-60s, and alone; she had no idea the nature of people in this country.

Suddenly she slid off the road, and this time it was obvious she wasn’t getting back on.  The car behind her stopped in the middle of the highway, and a man walked up to the driver-side window, rapping on it.

“You’re not going to get out, and it’s even worse up ahead,” he said.  “It’s already only 16 degrees, and it’s going to get colder.  You’ve got to come with me, madam, to a safe place, as the road-clearing crews don’t like having to deal with frozen corpses.”

cali mulled that over, realizing even though she didn’t know the stranger, she had no other choice.

He guided her over to his vehicle, and then went back to hers, to attach a flexible 6’ telescoping rod to her radio antenna, the red "N" flag of the University of Nebraska flapping in the wind, after which he pulled out her two suitcases, which he tossed into the back seat as he returned.

“We’re going to my place, which is up a mile, and then two miles down, from her,” he told her.

“You’ll be warm and safe there, until something can be done about your car.”

She looked at him, questioningly.

“Oh, the flag,” he said; “that’s to show anybody who comes along, that there’s a car buried underneath the snow—and trust me, by morning, your car’s going to be buried deep—so they won’t hit it or stack more snow on top of it.”

The flag wasn’t why she was looking him over; he was a stranger to her, and she had no idea of his nature.  She was an older woman, and a quite formidable being, but this was a man, and a man much younger than her.  Was he dangerous, or was he someone she could handle?

cali relaxed a little as she continued staring, and he continued concentrating on the road, what could be seen of it, ahead.  True, he was a man, and much younger than her, and about 6’3” she guessed, maybe 175 pounds, a little thin and pale, and he might be more fragile than he seemed.

The stranger kept driving, sometimes at 15 mph, other times at 5 mph, never stopping.  Then seeing something, he abruptly turned.  cali tensed; she thought he was purposely steering into a ditch but apparently he knew what he was doing, because he’d actually turned onto a road invisible through the blinding snow.

He had this unusual habit, cali thought; he drove the automobile as if it were a bulldozer, slamming into drifts.  “It’s the only way to do it,” he told her, “if we want to get to safety.  It means that every spring I have to have the tie-rods, and sometimes the front axle, replaced, but excresence happens.”

Some minutes later, he turned down into what seemed a giant basin filling with snow.  cali noticed, through the wind and darkness, a multi-colored star-shaped decoration perched atop some sort of rising; other than that, she could see nothing else.

“Somebody’s been here,” he said, “been here about an hour ago.”

cali had no idea how he’d know that, as she couldn’t see a thing.  He stopped the car, and touching her on the arm, pointed.  “Okay, the house is there, about thirty feet away.  Just step out of here and walk straight ahead; it’s a pretty big house, and you’ll inevitably bump right into it.

“If you trip over steps, it’s good, because it means the front door, which is unlocked, is right in front of you.  I’ll bring in your bags, behind you.”

But actually he reached the front porch before she did, and yanked her up.

They walked inside the house, into what was apparently the dining room.  It was an enormous room, cali thought, as large as the living room past the archway; she guessed the living room was at least forty feet long, and the dining room only slightly less.  There was a lamp turned on.

The dining room table was in front of them, and there were wrapped Christmas presents on it.

Four cats came running out from a far room, and seeing cali, stopped and began sniffing her, but getting a signal from the stranger, their owner, they relaxed once he signaled to them that she was kosher, okay.

Seeing the presents, the stranger commented, “it was the neighbor who was here—he’s the one who’ll come out sometime tomorrow to excavate your car and get you going again.

“But for the meantime, make yourself at home, as no one’s getting anywhere tonight.”

He showed her the locations of the light-switches in the living and dining rooms, and the telephone and computer, and then took her into the kitchen, where on the counter were various dishes of home-made holiday treats.

“Oh, the neighbor’s wife must’ve been here too,” he commented.

He opened the door to the refrigerator, seeing it stocked all up—gallons of real milk, cartons of cream, eggs, boxes of butter, containers of sour cream, several half-gallons of real ice cream in the freezer, and sundry other items.  It was a very large refrigerator, more suitable for a restaurant than a home.

cali glanced at the inventory; besides all the dairy products, there were loaves and loaves of real wheat bread, boxes of Malt o’Meal porridge, three gallons of real orange juice, a couple of boxes of bran cereal, a bag of flour and a bag of sugar, frozen strawberries and peaches, corn, peas, and hash browns, boxes and bags of pasta, boxed pancake mix, syrup, the usual condiments, and in the freezer, oddly about $400 in Canadian coinage.

“Oh,” he said.  “I didn’t have anywhere else to put them, and this seemed about as good a place as any.  You can see the refrigerator’s pretty big, and one might as well use the space.”

He opened the cupboards, which ran the length of the kitchen, about thirty feet, cali guessed, exposing all sorts of canned and jarred goods.  “I put anything that’s not canned or jarred in the refrigerator,” he pointed out; it doesn’t hurt them.

“When I was new out of college, one time for about nine months, I rented an apartment that had ‘weevils,’ or whatever those little white larvae are, and they got into boxed and bagged goods.  I had that problem only one time, but once one’s in the habit of jamming all into the refrigerator, one can’t break it.”

He gave cali a guided tour of the house, showing her the placement of light-switches and somesuch, the sanitary facilities, the back porch, and the bedrooms.

Sizing her up, opening one door, he said, “This is where you can sleep tonight, in the Victorian room.  It’s here in the unheated part of the house, and gets down to probably about 35 degrees at night, but I’ll stock it with blankets and quilts and a portable heater.

“There’s the Hanoverian room and the Stuart room and the New York room, but this one is closest to the main part of the house.  Usually guests during winter sleep on the couch in the living room, but I imagine you’d prefer private accommodations.

“And besides, you’re from Vermont,” he pointed out; “I hope you don’t think I was being nosy or presumptuous, but I did notice the license plates on your car.  And being from Vermont, you’re probably used to this sort of thing more than I am.”

cali, noticing there was a wooden high-backed armless chair among the furniture, agreed it would be okay.

The stranger obviously named each room after the portraits which decorated the walls; cali thought the entire place looked like an art museum, hundreds and hundreds of custom-framed portraits of medieval and renaissance-era personages, covering even the walls of the hallways.

She did notice, however, with disguised disapproval, the framed autographed photograph of George and Barbara Bush in the living room, and a framed photograph of Nancy Pelosi hanging above the tank of the commode in the bathroom.

To cali, it seemed as if there was nothing but pictures, pictures of people.  The large living room, for example, had but four pieces of furniture lost in acres of empty floor space, and the dining room, the same.  His own bedroom, larger than any single room in her own house, had but a bed and a bureau, nothing else.

And the appliances and utensils in the kitchen could’ve fit into a shoe-box.

“If you want, there’s coffee and tea and hot chocolate; make yourself at home.

“And anything else that’s here, it’s yours, feel free.”

After which he went to turn on the computer to read the Drudge Report.

While he was preoccupied at the computer and she was making tea, the telephone in the dining room rang.  She waited for him to pick it up, but he ignored it.  She wondered what was up with that, and came out, pointing at it, indicating to him it was ringing.

He nodded that he understood, and said, “Go ahead and answer it, if you want.”

cali picked it up, disturbed that it seemed of no consequence to him, and said “hello” into it.  There was a woman at the other end of the line, who muttered something unintelligible, and hung up.

“Oh, the femme,” he said; “or, as you’d call her on Skins’s island, the ‘significant other;’ she was probably calling to see if I’d gotten home okay, and now thinks she dialed the wrong number.”

This guy was one strange bird, cali thought, but at least he appears harmless.

cali was struck by the absence of a television, even a radio, in the place.

“But you can have music, if you want,” he said, pointing to a jerry-built cabinet sort of thing in the living room, which when opened betrayed a collection of what looked to be audiological equipment from the 1940s, including a pair of head-sets that seemed to weigh about twenty pounds.

“It was built for me by a friend years ago,” he said; “but since it’s a lot of time and trouble and effort and struggle for me to use it, I don’t mess with it often, maybe six hours a year.

“But you can mess with it all you want, madam; just remove those prongs behind the ear-pieces of the headsets, and you can hear perfectly fine.  I’m sorry there’s no loudspeakers, but if you can stand the weight of the headphones, you’ll find the quality better than state-of-the-art stereo systems.”

cali sorted through the assortment; mostly medieval and renaissance music, harpsichord pieces, and oddly, what seemed to be recordings for speech therapy.  She wondered why the latter, as while his accent was a little strange, his diction was crystal-clear precise and unmistakable.

She listened to music for a while in the semi-darkened living room while he sat in front of the computer, under the archway separating the living room from the dining room, rapidly punching away.  One time while changing recordings, she asked him what he was writing.

“Oh, a Christmas story for Mrs. Alfred Packer,” he said, and nothing else.

It was odd, cali thought; it was almost as if she, and everything else, wasn’t there, just him alone.

cali watched as she listened, gazing dreamily at the snow falling down hard outside, the various colors of the lighted star blinking through the driving wind.  The house seemed to be more than half windows, and one could see the storm from all places, all directions.

As the evening wended on, cali decided she’d like to get some shut-eye.  He didn’t respond to her comment, and so she got up and walked over to him.  He still didn’t respond, as if he wasn’t even aware she was there, and so she gently tapped him on the shoulder.

And just as quickly immediately pulled back; he was cold, the coldest person she’d ever touched.

He said “good night” to her, still pounding away on the keyboard.  She went to the bedroom she’d been assigned, the Victorian room, with all its framed portraits of nineteenth-century of British personages.  She was less nervous than she’d ever been since meeting the stranger, but as a precaution, took the high-backed chair and lodged it underneath the door-knob inside the room.

Before bundling under the covers, cali surveyed the room for reading material, so as to pull her asleep.  There were no regular books, but there were what seemed a couple of old scrapbooks, and so she took those with her to bed.

These were scrapbooks apparently kept by the stranger’s mother, one for him and one for what was apparently his younger brother.  She read with interest the yellowed newspaper clippings—as a little lad, he had the unusual penchant for getting into news stories—and the old black-and-white and now-faded color photographs. 

This scrapbook, and the other one, had been made with scrupulous care, in exact chronological order.  He seemed a sullen saturnine brown little lad, while his younger blond brother exuded warmth and smiles.  Also, his younger brother did better in school, and seemed better liked by his teachers.

The parents looked more like grandparents than parents, cali thought; perhaps they were late children.

In the back of the first scrapbook, there was an obituary of his mother, who’d died when he was 18 years old; earlier on in the same book it appeared that his father had died the year before, when he was 17.  In the back of the second book, there was an obituary of his younger brother, who’d died at the age of 17, when he was 19.

That explains him, cali thought.

Getting drowsy, cali shut off the light and shrank under the bed-covers.  When she was almost asleep, suddenly she felt the four cats pouncing on top of her.  This was obviously their bedroom.  Finding a stranger therein hardly fazed any of them; they all worked themselves under the bed-covers too.

The next morning, Christmas morning, cali awoke.  The room was light because of all the windows, but at the same time snow was piled up to nearly the top of the windows.  cali got dressed and went out into the kitchen to make some tea for the morning.

He was sitting in front of the computer, still working on the story, but indicated sure, he’d take some hot tea too.  He’d obviously slept during the night, because now he was attired in a sleeveless t-shirt and tan curdoroy pants, but barefooted and unshaven.

“The snow’s supposed to stop in a couple of hours,” he said; “about mid-morning, and then because it’s Christmas, it’ll probably be late afternoon before the road-clearing crews start working, and the neighbor comes over to get your car out.

“So we’re stuck inside here for a while.”

cali suggested she could make a Christmas dinner; what would he like?

Oh, anything, he said, just so long as it didn’t have dead fish, onions, olives, peppers, mushrooms, or beans in it.

That left a lot of options, and so cali and he consulted with the primitives in the cooking and baking forum on Skins’s island, to see what they were having this Christmas day.  The two of them narrowed down their choices to oeufs farcis sur lit de broccoli and oeufs et epinards en casserole, in the end deciding that since cali was familiar with both, she’d make both.

While cali was busy in the kitchen, the telephone rang.

He ignored it again, as if it wasn’t even there, even though it was only a few feet away.

cali answered it, the caller at the other end of the line identifying himself as the neighbor, just calling her host to wish him a merry Christmas, sorry the conditions were keeping him away from their Christmas dinner, and that he expected to show up with the snow-plough around four in the afternoon.

cali set the table in the dining room, shoving the presents over to one side.  The presents were many, but the table was large enough to accommodate sixteen, so there was plenty of room.

While the two of them sat around the table, enjoying the repast, he pointed to the presents.

“They’re for you,” he said; “all of them.  They’re for you.”

cali was mystified.  They didn’t know each other, and had met each other unexpectedly only yesterday.

“But they’re yours,” she insisted; “besides, how do you know what they are?”

“I have no idea what they are,” he said, “but whatever they are, they’re all presents for you.”

She looked at him, even more confused.

“Look,” he explained; “I spent a couple of years during the early 1990s wandering around the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants.  I was there on my own, getting by on my own wits, which meant I was seeing things from the bottom up, not the top down.

“The abysmal poverty and misery there was so incredible—one had to see it before one could possibly imagine it—it left a powerful impact on me.  The place made squalid Dickensian London look like affluent 1950s suburbia in America by comparison.

“It was medieval.

“My ancient Catholic conscience troubled me, and troubles me to this day.

“Since I already have all I need or want, there’s no point in giving me presents.

“And everybody who gives me presents, gives them to me fully well knowing they’re going to be passed on to someone else; I don’t want them, whatever they are.

“For the givers of presents to me, the ‘excitement’’s in where they’re going to end up.

“Trust me, really, I don’t keep presents.  I have all I need and want.”

cali continued looking at him, still confused.

“It’s okay,” he assured her; “everybody already knows these are going to end up in other hands, and they’re always curious into whose hands they go.”

He shoved one gift over to her.  “This one’s from the neighbor, and it’s for you.”

She opened it; it was a new biography of Clare Boothe Luce.

He shoved the second one over to her.  “This one’s from the neighbor’s wife, and it’s for you.”

She opened it; it was a framed photograph of Henry Luce.

He kept shoving the presents to her; it was a mix of things, such as socks, a couple of $25 gift cards, Preferred Stock men’s cologne, a shirt, a book about the silkworm industry in France during the 1850s, a belt, a Swiss wrist-watch, and from the senior business partner, a new bush helmet.

From the femme, three heavy large coffee-table-sized books of the art of Elizabethan England.

“They’re all yours,” he said, “but here’s the biggest one.

“The grumpy old guy who lives across the river from here, a widower—he’s now out in California visiting his daughter, her husband, and her kids; I take care of his place while he’s gone—he’s made of money, makes more money in a five-day week than I do in a whole year.

“His Christmas present to me’s always the most expensive one, but it really belongs to you.”

cali opened it up.  It was a glass-domed anniversary clock, obviously an antique from before the first world war, perhaps even from the turn of the last century.  It was in perfect shape, Swiss-made, with all sorts of artistry in it.  Instead of four rotating balls at the bottom, for example, there were four porcelain Bottecelli angels blowing trumpets.

“His daughter probably found it,” he told cali.  “It’s yours; I don’t need it.

“Merry Christmas.”

cali protested at its probable worth.

No way, he insisted; he had something similar of far more value, but it was kept in a safe-deposit box at the bank, only the glass dome here he said, pointing to an empty glass dome sitting atop a bookcase.

“It’s an anniversary clock, wholly sterling silver excepting for the porcelain face and the hands; the face has the royal monogram ‘E II R,’ and it’s one of only 250 made, in 1977, for H.M. the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

“Having that, I don’t need this.

“It’s for you; keep it in your home in Vermont, to remember me by.”

A couple of hours later, as she washed the dishes, cali was still debating on how to turn down the clock; the other stuff, she had no problem taking simply as tokens of goodwill, but this was surely valuable.

The neighbor came in the back door, greeting her and introducing himself.

“You’d better take it,” he said, “because if you don’t, he’ll despise you.  Take it.”

It was decided cali would ride with the neighbor back to her car stuck in the snow; the road crews were already out, and she’d probably be in Sioux City by suppertime this Christmas night.

After the vehicle was dug out and warming up, cali said to the neighbor, “you know, there’s something about him.  I can’t put my finger on it, though.  There’s something really peculiar about him.”

“Oh,” the neighbor said; “you didn’t notice?  You didn’t see it?  He’s deaf, and never heard a single word you said, and has no idea who you are.”

[Chris_]

[Traveshamockery]

What Chris said!!!!!!  Excellent story!   

 

BTW - do you really have names for your bedrooms?

[BattleHymn]

What Chris said!!!!!!  Excellent story!   

 

BTW - do you really have names for your bedrooms?

Well, the $400 in Canadian currency really does live in the freezer.  I have no doubt the rooms have names. 

[franksolich]

BTW - do you really have names for your bedrooms?

Yeah, and that's them.

The Victorian room, the Hanoverian room (framed portraits of British personages of the 18th century), and the New York City room (framed photographs of New York City during the 1940s).

It's better than calling them "the first bedroom," "the second bedroom," and so on.

There's a fourth spare bedroom, but no name for it, as the pictures are miscellaneous, with no particular theme.

All these however are in the unheated part of the house, and don't get used often, if at all.

My bedroom is 100% Hans Holbein, the very best painter who ever was.

It took like, ever since I was 17, to accumulate all these, by the way.  My favorite's the very large copy of the Darnley portrait of Elizabeth I circa 1575, and it's hung so it looks over my shoulder when I'm on the computer.

Still lives, landscapes, impressionists, abstractists, and any painters after Winterhalter (other than Norman Rockwell) are for people who don't appreciate fine art.

[franksolich]

Well, the $400 in Canadian currency really does live in the freezer.

Coinage, not paper currency.

I guess it puts a new meaning to "cold cash," but really, the freezer's about as good a place to put it as anywhere else.  It's not being hurt where it's at.

[BattleHymn]

Coinage, not paper currency.

I guess it puts a new meaning to "cold cash," but really, the freezer's about as good a place to put it as anywhere else.  It's not being hurt where it's at.

Oh, I figured it was a mix.  If it's all in coins, I'm guessing most of it came from the truck stop? 

[franksolich]

Oh, I figured it was a mix.  If it's all in coins, I'm guessing most of it came from the truck stop?

Yeah, when I do the books there once a week, I cull out the Canadian coinage, as it's no good around here.

You recall, of course, that I live on the major Winnipeg-Mexico City highway; no truck drivers coming up from down south, but lots of truck drivers going down from up north.