Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

Now, what can I get for you?”

Louis realized just in time that she meant food or drink, rather than jewelry and savings bonds. “Nothing for me, thanks,” he said, giving her a little wave, and trying to edge for the front door.

Her face fell. “Oh, no. Please! You must let me fix you something. Otherwise, you’ll be taking the luck away with you. How about a piece of cake? I made it today. And a bit of strong drink? It’s New Year’s, after all.”

She still didn’t look in the least perturbed. And she wasn’t trying to get to the telephone or to trip an alarm. Louis decided that he could definitely use a drink.

The old lady beamed happily up at him, and motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen. “I’ve been baking for two days,” she confided. “Now, let’s see, what will you have?”

She rummaged around in a cupboard, bringing out an assortment of baked goods on glass plates, which she proceeded to spread out on the kitchen table. She handed Louis a blue-flowered plate, and motioned for him to sit down. When she went in to the dining room to get some cloth napkins, Louis stuffed the pillowcase under his coat, making sure that the salt and pepper shakers didn’t clink together. Finally, he decided that the least suspicious thing to do would be to play along. He sat.

“Now,” she announced, “we have Dundee cake with dried fruit, black bun with almonds, shortbread, petticoat tails…”

Louis picked up a flat yellow cookie, and nibbled at it, as his hostess babbled on.

“When I was a girl in Dundee-”

“Where?”

“Dundee. Scotland. My mother used to bake an oat bannock-you know, a wee cake-for each one of us children. The bannocks had a hole in the middle, and they were nipped in about the edges for decoration. She flavored them with carvey-caraway seed. And we ate them on New Year’s morning. They used to say that if your bannock broke while it was baking, you’d be taken ill or die in the New Year. So I never baked one for my daughter Doris. Oh, but they were good!”

Louis blinked. “You’re from Scotland?”

She was at the stove now, putting a large open pot on the burner, and stirring it with a wooden spoon. “Yes, that’s right,” she said. “We’ve been in this country since Doris was five, though. My husband wanted to come over, and so we did. I’ve often thought of going home, now that he’s passed on, but Doris won’t hear of it.”

“Doris is your daughter,” said Louis. He wondered if he ought to bolt before she showed up, in case she turned out to be sane.

“Yes. She’s all grown up now. She works very hard, does Doris. Can you imagine having to work on Hogmanay?”

“On what?”

“Hogmanay. New Year’s Eve. She’s out right now, poor dear, finishing up her shift. That’s why I was so glad to see you tonight. We could use a bit of luck this year, starting with a promotion for Doris. Try a bit of the Dundee cake. It’s awfully rich, but you can stand the calories, from the look of you.”

Louis reached for another pastry, still trying to grasp a thread of sense in the conversation. He wanted to know why he was so welcome. Apparently she hadn’t mistaken him for anyone else. And she didn’t seem to wonder what he was doing in her house in the middle of the night. He kept trying to think of a way to frame the question without incriminating himself.

Steam was rising in white spirals from the pot on the stove. The old lady took a deep breath over the fumes, and nodded briskly. “Right. That should be done now. Tell me, lad, are you old enough to take spirits?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Louis realized that he was being offered a drink and not a seance. “I’m twenty- two,” he mumbled.

“Right enough, then.” She ladled the steaming liquid into two cups, and set one in front of him.

Louis sniffed it and frowned.

“It’s called a het pint,” said the old lady, without waiting for him to ask. “It’s an old drink given to first footers. Spirits, sugar, beer, and eggs. When I was a girl, they used to carry it round door to door in a kettle. Back in Dundee. Not that I drink much myself, of course. Doris is always on about my blood pressure. But tonight is Hogmanay, and I said to myself: Flora, why don’t you stir up the het pint. You never know who may drop in. And, you see, I was right. Here you are!”

“Here I am,” Louis agreed, taking a swig of his drink. It tasted a little like eggnog. Not bad. At least it was alcoholic. He wouldn’t have more than a cup, though. He still had to drive home.

The old lady-Hora-sat down beside Louis and lifted her cup. “Well, here’s to us, then. What’s your name, lad?”

“Louis,” he said, before he thought better of it.

“Well, Louis, here’s to us! And not forgetting a promotion for Doris!” They clinked their cups together, and drank to the New Year.

Flora dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a linen napkin, and reached for a piece of shortbread. “I must resolve to eat fewer of these during the coming year,” she remarked. “Else Doris will have me out jogging.”

Louis took another piece to keep her company. It tasted pretty good. Sort of like a sugar cookie with delusions of grandeur. “Did you have a nice Christmas?” he asked politely.

Flora smiled. “Perhaps not by American standards. Doris had the day off, and we went to church in the morning, and then had our roast beef for dinner. She gave me bath powder, and I gave her a new umbrella. She’s always losing umbrellas. I suppose that’s a rather subdued holiday by your lights, but when I was a girl, Christmas wasn’t such a big festival in Scotland. The shops didn’t even close for it. We considered it a religious occasion for most folk, and a lark for the children. The holiday for grown people was New Year’s.”

“Good idea,” grunted Louis. “Over here, we get used to high expectations when we’re kids, and then as adults, we get depressed every year because Christmas is just neckties and boredom.”

Flora nodded. “Oh, but you should have seen Hogmanay when I was a girl! No matter what the weather, people in Dundee would gather in the City Square to wait out the old year’s end. And there’d be a great time of singing all the old songs…”

“ ‘Auld Lang Syne’?” asked Louis.

“That’s a Scottish song, of course.” Flora nodded. “But we sang a lot of the other old tunes as well. And there was country dancing. And then just when the new year was minutes away, everyone would lapse into silence. Waiting. There you’d be in the dark square, with your breath frosting the air, and the stars shining down on the world like snowflakes on velvet. And it was so quiet you could hear the ticking of the gentlemen’s pocket watches.”

“Sounds like Times Square,” said Louis, inspecting the bottom of his cup.

Flora took the cup, and ladled another het pint for each of them. “After the carrying on to welcome in the new year, everyone would go about visiting and first-footing their neighbors. My father was always in great demand for that, being tall and dark as he was. And he used to carry lumps of coal in his overcoat to be sure of his welcome.”

“What,” said Louis, “is first-footing?”

“Well, it’s an old superstition,” said Flora thoughtfully. “Quite pagan, I expect, if the truth were told, but then, you never can be sure, can you? You don’t have a lump of coal about you, by any chance?”

Louis shook his head.

“Ah, well. First-footing, you asked.” She took a deep breath, as if to warn him that there was a long explanation to follow. “In Scotland the tradition is that the first person to cross your threshold after midnight on Hogmanay symbolizes your luck in the year to come. The first foot to enter your house, you see.”

Louis nodded. It’s lucky to be burgled? he was thinking.

“The best luck of all comes if you’re first-footed by a tall, dark stranger carrying a lump of coal. Sometimes family friends would send round a tall, dark houseguest that our family had not met, so that we could be first-footed by a stranger. The rest of the party would catch up with him a few minutes later.”

“I guess I fit the bill, all right,” Louis remarked. He was just over six feet, and looked more Italian than Tony Bennett. His uncles called him Luigi.

“So you do.” Flora smiled. “Now the worst luck for the new year is to be first-footed by a short, blond woman who comes in empty-handed.”