A Plague Year

Warren continued to curse and to pound the steering wheel, blocking traffic on Maguire Road, until Jimmy broke the spell. “Hey! Let me tell you what they don’t have, bubba.”

Warren stopped ranting long enough to ask, “What?”

“Christmas trees!”

That was true. There was not a Christmas tree to be seen down there. The Boy Scout lot was empty except for a lonely SUV parked at the south end. I looked closer and saw that there was a man sitting in it, watching us.

Warren was suddenly reenergized. “Yeah!” He stomped down on the gas pedal and our truck lurched forward. He executed a smooth right turn onto the sandy dirt of our lot.

That’s when I noticed that someone, probably the much-cursed Mr. Peterson, had rigged out the lot with equipment. There was a red gas generator sitting on a sturdy piece of plywood near the back. The generator had wires running to the four corners of the lot. There were eight tall light poles, evenly spaced along the perimeter, for night selling. There was a canopy on the north edge for shelter.

Warren, Jimmy, and Arthur practically dove out of the truck. Arthur grabbed my arm and dragged me with him under the flatbed. He pointed to a fat roll of chicken wire held in place by leather straps. “First thing to do is set up the tree pen.”

I could hear Warren and Jimmy above us, hopping up onto the bed and wading through the trees until they reached the back. They started tossing the fifty wooden stakes to the ground on both sides of the truck.

Then the four of us worked like maniacs, planting the stakes and unrolling the chicken wire. Within fifteen minutes we had set up a three-sided pen to hold the trees. Then we started a bucket brigade to hand the trees down. Warren, up on the truck bed, handed one down to Jimmy, who passed it off to Arthur, who dragged it into the pen, where I set it up straight.

After the last tree was in place, Jimmy backed the truck to the north parking area. He emerged with a big plastic bag and handed it to Warren. The two of them set to work fashioning three signs, stapled onto pieces of plywood. The signs read CHRISTMAS TREES FROM PENNSYLVANIA; FRESH-CUT CHRISTMAS TREES; and FRASIER FIRS, DOUGLAS FIRS.

I whispered to Arthur, “But we don’t have Frasier firs or Douglas firs.”

“Hey, if anybody calls you on it, say we just sold the last one. And ask them if they’d be interested in a Pennsylvania fir.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Not really.”

“Got it.”

Just as we finished our work, the man in the SUV got out and stretched his arms high. He dumped out the remains of a cup of coffee. Then he walked along the side of Maguire Road toward us. He was a heavyset man, dressed in brown shorts. Although it was a hot day and we were all in T-shirts, he had on a long-sleeve shirt decorated with pins and badges, and a sewn-on patch that identified him as a Scout master.

He turned onto our lot and approached Warren, who smiled and called out, “Happy Memorial Day! Or is it the Fourth of July?”

The man did not acknowledge the greeting except to say, in a flat, lawyerly voice, “If you plan on conducting business in Orange County, Florida, you have to provide rest room facilities.”

Warren smiled even wider. “What’s that? You need to use the rest room?”

“No. You need to provide rest room facilities.”

“Ah. Now, what are those exactly?”

The man pointed to the back of his lot. “Porta-potties.”

Warren’s smile slowly receded. He replied coolly, “Porta-potties? Just to sell Christmas trees? Is that really necessary?”

“I’m not here to argue about it. I’m here to tell you that you are currently in violation of the law.”

Warren didn’t reply, so the man turned and retraced his steps all the way to his SUV.

Two minutes later, a Sheriff’s Department car pulled into our parking lot and a woman deputy got out. She was heavyset, too, but in a very muscular way. She and Warren had a conversation out near the road while the rest of us hung back. Warren was smiling and charming the whole time he spoke to her, and she was smiling, too, when she drove away.

Warren walked back to us and reported, “Okay. We’ll probably get fined for not having porta-potties, but it’s only two hundred and fifty dollars. We can absorb that. Let’s start selling.”

The Christmas tree sale started off well. Several cars pulled in. Couples and families got out, looked at our selection, and then either bought a tree or moved on. Warren handled all of the cash, making change from a wad of bills he kept in his pocket. Jimmy, Arthur, and I talked up the merchandise and tied the sold trees to the tops of cars and SUVs, or we slid them carefully into the beds of pickup trucks.

It was the first hot Thanksgiving Day I had ever known. I was liking it very much, and I was liking Florida. I was more determined than ever to move there for college.

Things continued this way for most of the afternoon, and we had probably grossed over a thousand dollars, but then our luck started to change.

First, a Ryder rental truck pulled up next to the Boy Scout lot. It made that reverse beeping noise and then backed in. We could see what its cargo was very clearly: Christmas trees—Frasier firs and Douglas firs included. Right after that, a stream of cars pulled into the south parking area, disgorging Boy Scouts and their parents.

Arthur muttered, “Enemy spotted, cuz.” He spit on the ground. “Look at that. It’s a damn jamboree down there.”

The Scouts, all dressed in brown shirts, scrambled to unload their trees and set them up. A small group of Scout mothers took up positions along the chicken wire next to our lot. They started calling loudly to our customers, “Don’t buy from them! They’re outsiders! Support your local Scouts! Help your Scouts raise money,” and so on.

The tactic worked. Some of our customers crossed over to the other lot to buy their trees. (It didn’t help that the Scouts had a better selection.)

The sales battle continued, with us barely hanging in there, until about 9:00 p.m. That’s when the street traffic stopped abruptly. The Boy Scout lot extinguished its lights first; then we shut ours down.

As we were cleaning up, Arthur got into an argument with a Scout mother. They were both standing where the fences met. I heard the mother say, “Why don’t you go back where you came from and sell your trees?”

Arthur told her, with fake politeness, “We paid for this lot, ma’am, and we have the right to sell here.”

“You come from Pennsylvania,” she pointed out. “It says right there on your sign. You should go back there.”

“Pennsylvania. That’s right. Caldera, Pennsylvania. You ever heard of that?”

“No.”

“It’s kinda like hell. All fire and sulfur. Are you telling me to go to hell? Because that would not be a Christian thing to do, ma’am. That might, ironically, bring the wrath of God down on you.”

I laughed at that, but Warren did not. He interrupted Arthur. “That’s enough! Let’s close up.” He called over to his brother, “Jimmy, take the boys back to the hotel. You all get some sleep. I’ll stay in the truck and watch the merchandise.”

So the three of us trekked across the long asphalt parking lot, exhausted but mostly happy.

Jimmy bought a six-pack of beer and a two-liter bottle of Coke in the hotel store while Arthur called for a pizza delivery. We ate the pizza and watched holiday specials—including the cartoon version of Frosty the Snowman. (At the end, Frosty does not melt to death. He escapes to the North Pole and lives forever. I wondered what Warren would say about that.)

Jimmy fell asleep right after Frosty. As it turned out, that was exactly what Arthur had been waiting for. He gestured for me to follow him out of the room, so I did. He whispered, “Vengeance time, cuz. The Lord’s vengeance. You down with it?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Do what I do, then. And don’t make a sound.”

“Okay.”

We slipped back through the parking lot like phantoms. Arthur led the way in a straight diagonal line, southeastward, toward Maguire Road. I saw our flatbed truck to the left, but I did not see any sign of Warren