“Well, sorry, but I need a weekend off.”
“You?
“That’s up to you.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he tried, “Why does it have to be this weekend?”
“Because this is when they’re driving to Orlando to sell their trees.”
“Come on, Tom. You’re needed here. What about the carts in the parking lot? Bobby can’t handle them all.”
“So put somebody else out there.”
“Who?”
“Mitchell. Or Reg. Or Gert, for that matter. None of them work as hard as I do, but all of them get paid and I don’t. I deserve some time off.”
Dad exhaled slowly. He asked with resignation, “Does your mother know about this?”
“No. Of course not.”
“She’s not going to like it.”
“She doesn’t like anything.”
“Tom!”
“Sorry, but it’s true. I have to go. I’ll be back home on Sunday. Goodbye, Dad.”
I hung up. I felt bad for a few more seconds, but then I started to feel a great weight lifting off my shoulders. I was free, for the first time in my life. I walked back to the car feeling light as air.
We drove straight up to Aunt Robin’s trailer. When we pulled in, I could see Jimmy’s legs sticking out from under a flatbed truck. The truck looked comfortable enough for a long ride. It had a large crew cab with two rows of seats.
Behind the crew cab was the flatbed, maybe twenty feet deep, with two wooden railings running along the side. The back area was open, except for an orange net hooked across it.
I commented, “No Christmas trees yet?”
Arthur explained, “No. Not yet. We pick them up on the way.”
Aunt Robin came out with Cody in tow. She was lugging a cooler, so I took it from her and set it on the ground.
Jimmy rolled out from under the truck. He called out to her, “Any beer in that cooler?”
“No! Just ice and sodas. You can live without beer on the drive, especially since you got Tom along. You boys need to take care of him.”
“Oh, we’ll take care of him.” Jimmy winked at me. “We’ll take care to get him some beer.”
Aunt Robin fussed, “Don’t you say that, Jimmy Giles! Don’t you even think that.”
Jimmy laughed. “I’m just kiddin’.”
Jimmy stowed the cooler in the truck cab. Then he climbed up onto the flatbed and told Arthur, “You guys start handing me wall stakes, about fifty of them.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but Arthur did. He hurried around the side of Aunt Robin’s trailer, with me right behind him. We scooped up long wooden stakes from a pile that had probably been there since the previous year. The stakes were wet and dirty but still pretty straight. God knows what was living at the bottom of that pile. Fortunately, after three trips, we had our quota of fifty and didn’t have to find out.
After that, all we could do was wait for Warren. I made the mistake of suggesting, “Should we go knock on his door?” and Arthur jumped all over me.
“No! We should not! We don’t go in there. Ever. He’ll come out when he comes out.”
I stammered, “Okay. Okay.” I even added, “Sorry.”
Jimmy smiled kindly. “Warren’s somebody who values his privacy.”
So we just stood and stared at Warren’s front door for five minutes.
I took the opportunity to ask Arthur, as casually as I could, “What’s going on with the play?
“What do you mean?”
“How are the actors doing with their parts?”
“I don’t know. Okay, I guess. Chris Collier’s pretty useless, and he’s the main guy. He’s married to the Grape.”
“Uh-huh. Do Chris and Wendy have any romantic scenes? Kissing scenes?”
Arthur snorted. “No way, dude. If you kiss somebody in Eyam, they die. Slowly and painfully. You may as well blow their head off with a shotgun.”
Okay. We left it at that.
Warren’s door finally opened. He stepped out wearing his Haven High Football jacket and carrying a backpack. He locked up carefully and sauntered down to join us. “Cousin Tom! You made it.”
“Yeah.”
“You ready to sell some Christmas trees?”
“I am. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Me, too. It beats the hell out of moving college boys in and out of Blackwater U.” He asked Jimmy, “You ready, bubba?”
“Yup.”
Warren thought for a moment. “Now, Tom, are you sure you’re allowed to do this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Because we don’t have any insurance if… if anything happens to you.”
“That’s okay. Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“Are you old enough to drive?”
“No, sir.”
“Too bad.” He turned back to Jimmy. “You got all the stuff loaded?”
“Yeah. We got the stakes in the back; the chicken wire’s underneath.”
“Okay. Let’s hitch up Arthur’s car.”
Arthur climbed into the Geo Metro. He pulled it up by the back of the truck and got out. Jimmy reached under the truck and slid out a cable. He knelt in front of the car and attached it to a pair of hooks. Then he reached under the truck again and started cranking a handle. The front of the Geo Metro rose up off the ground until the hood was even with the back bumper. Arthur then wedged a steel frame between the car and the truck, ensuring that the two couldn’t collide.
Jimmy checked it and pronounced it “good enough for government work.” Then we were ready to roll.
Warren pulled himself up into the driver’s seat; Jimmy took shotgun. Arthur and I climbed in and sat on either side of the crew cab’s bench.
Warren summarized, “I can drive, obviously. So can Arthur. If I am in no condition to drive, though, and if Arthur is tired, I guess brother Jimmy can fill in, suspended license and all.” He looked into the rearview mirror. “And if all else fails, cousin Tom, it’s up to you.”
I smiled.
He winked and added, “And with us, cousin Tom, all else fails a lot.”
We drove down from Caldera to Route 16 and started our long trek south, rumbling past a series of tree and shrubbery farms with names like Pioneer Evergreens, Rohrbachs Farm, and Kilingers Nurseries. We soon pulled into the parking lot of a large barnlike building that had GROVIANA written across the top in weathered red paint.
We all followed Warren into a big square space filled with chicken wire, wooden stakes, and boxes. There was a desk over in the far corner, and a man in a blue work shirt was sitting behind it.
Warren called to him heartily, “Hey, my man! How’s it going?”
The man eyed us suspiciously, like we might be there to rob the place.
Warren pointed to Jimmy. “My brother and me bought some trees here last year, right around this time. Sold them down in Florida. Remember?”
The man did remember. He said, “Yeah. Right. Did we ever settle that account?”
Warren looked to Jimmy and then back. “Yeah. We settled it up. We’re good.”
The man shook his head. “That’s not the way I remember it.”
“Well, if there’s still any balance from last year, just add it to this year’s tab. We’re good for it. We got a sure
