Slider’s Son Read online

  Everybody gasped at the shiny skates.

  “You weren’t supposed to spend money,” Little Joe said. He looked up as if he was scared he’d have to give them back.

  “I didn’t,” Grant said. “I didn’t spend any. Dad found the blades. I polished ’em up and made the straps myself from some cowhide we had. You . . . you like ‘em?”

  “Like ’em? You crazy? Of course!” Joe’s eyes glowed when he grinned at Grant. “Thanks.”

  “Wish you’d got my name,” Orland said. Then he looked at Martha. “Not really. I like my socks.”

  Little Joe held one skate in each hand. He grinned.

  Grant felt like he could burst. What a good Christmas. And it wasn’t even Christmas yet.

  On the way out of school, Frank said, “Hey, Grant, you gonna share your candy cane with your best buddies?”

  “Uh, actually, I’m gonna save it for a present. Sorry. Otherwise I sure would.”

  “Well, gosh darn it all. Okay, then. For who?”

  Grant shrugged.

  “What? Somebody you’re sweet on? Haha! Get the joke?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Grant said, “but I don’t have any presents to give, so I’ll give it to somebody.”

  “Grant’s got a sweetheart!” Frank yelled.

  “Shut up.” Grant punched him lightly. “I might give it to Shirley or Harley.”

  “See ya at the train,” Frank said, headed home.

  Kids were emptying out of the schoolyard, in a hurry to get home and start Christmas vacation. When the yard was almost empty, Little Joe hung back to thank Grant again. “That might be the only real present I get,” he said, “depending on Dad . . .”

  “You’re welcome, Joe. Glad you like ’em. Hey, you should go try ’em out. Maybe I’ll run home and get mine. Want to meet me at the rink before we gotta go to the train?”

  “Really? Swell!” Joe took off running toward home.

  That gave Grant time alone. Just what he was hoping for. He waited near the steps, hopping on one foot and then the other to keep warm, not sure if he was waiting in vain. Finally, the big door opened one more time. Suzy Matheison slipped out the door, her pale face almost as white as the snow.

  Grant stepped to meet her at the bottom of the steps.

  “Hello, Grant O’Grady,” she said, her cheeks taking on a hint of pink.

  “Suzy.”

  “Yes, Grant?”

  “Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas to you, Grant O’Grady.”

  He thrust out his hand. In it was the candy cane.

  “For me?”

  “For you.”

  “Wh-why?”

  “’Cause you—’cause I like listening to you sing. You have a sweet voice. I just wanted to.”

  “Thank you, Grant! I’ll lick it real slow so it lasts past Christmas. Just since it’s from you. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Suzy.” His heart thudded.

  “Merry Christmas, Grant.” She smiled at him and held the candy cane to her chest in her mittened hands.

  Grant ran home to get his skates. He felt like he could float.

  Thirteen

  Christmas

  When Grant came downstairs on Christmas morning, there was no bike parked under the tree. A long, slim brown package lay wrapped under the Christmas tree with his name on it.

  Harley got a sled and Shirley got the Madame Alexander fairy princess doll Grant had seen at Sims’s and three more of the Bobbsey Twins books. Three red-and-white striped candy canes hung on the tree branches.

  Grant pulled the wrapping off his box. He could hardly believe his eyes. A .22 rifle. Maybe better than the bike he wanted. Not as fast, of course, or as good for getting places, but maybe better. A more grown-up present.

  Mamie made pancakes and eggs and toast. While Mamie stuffed a goose Uncle Neil had shot for Christmas dinner, she made everybody get dressed in Sunday clothes for the Christmas church service.

  Slider looked pained to be wearing his suit on a weekday, but they all trooped to the white clapboard Lutheran church at the far end of Main Street. Slider had been a Catholic growing up like most Irish boys, but since he didn’t attend anymore, Mamie took over the family religion and declared them Lutherans.

  Grant loved the smell of pine branches and candle wax and cherry oil wood polish inside the sanctuary. He passed time by staring at the hand-carved wooden altar, imagining how long it would take to carve that. Then he gazed at Jesus hanging on the cross, suspended in the church’s one stained-glass window.

  Here they were, celebrating the birthday of the baby who would grow up and have to die like that.

  Only twenty minutes had ticked by, so he stared hard at the preacher, trying to imagine the white-haired Reverend Tollefson as a boy, or even as a young man. Did he always want to be a preacher? He couldn’t imagine a much worse job than having to visit the sick and old ladies, preside at funerals, and stand in front of the congregation to lead the same boring liturgy and talk about God every Sunday morning. Worse than being a doctor because it sure wasn’t as useful. What on earth made some young boy want to do that?

  He imagined shooting his rifle during the sermon, looking at targets in the church. The best one was the spot where black wrought iron met like an X at Jesus’ halo in the stained glass window. But he couldn’t shoot Jesus. That would be sacrilegious for sure.

  After church, Orland and Little Joe hustled over to Grant. “What did you get?” Orland asked.

  “A rifle. What’d’you get?”

  “A new bike.”

  “See ya,” Little Joe said, “Merry Christmas,” and he hurried off toward his mom and his little sisters, waiting for him in the corner of the church yard. No Big Joe to be seen.

  Grant shook his head, watching Little Joe. He knew why Little Joe rushed off. He didn’t get much of anything for Christmas, and he hadn’t wanted them to ask what he got. His biggest present was probably the ice skates Grant gave him.

  “Did you want a bike?” Grant asked Orland.

  “Sure,” Orland said. He looked Grant in the eye. “I was really hoping for some paints, but Sims has bikes. They don’t have paint sets.”

  Grant nodded. “Sorry, Orland.”

  “It’s okay. The bike is swell. It’s blue.”

  After church, when Grant opened the front door, the warm aroma of roast goose and wild onion smacked him in the face.

  As soon as he hung up his coat, he sat down on the floor and picked up his rifle.

  Mamie stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Grant, wash your hands and come peel potatoes. Shirley, you wash and come set the table.”

  Grant washed. Shirley sat, fashioning a throne out of a few pieces of kindling and brown wrapping paper for her fairy princess doll.

  “Shirley!” Mamie handed Grant a knife. “What did I say?”

  Shirley jumped up, settled her doll against the Christmas tree, and scampered into the kitchen.

  “How come Harley doesn’t have to do anything?”

  “You didn’t, either, when you were six.”

  “Did too,” Shirley said. “I started setting the table when I was four. I ’member.”

  Mamie finished basting the goose, put it back in the coal-burning oven, and wiped her hands with her apron. “You’re a girl, Shirley. ‘Man may work from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.’”

  Grant turned his face down to his potatoes so Shirley wouldn’t see his face. He was so lucky to be a boy. Who’d want to be a girl, anyhow?

  “That’s not fair,” Shirley said. “That’s stupid, actually. You work all the time, too. No reason Slider can’t help.”

  “Hush now.” Mamie glanced toward the living room. “I’m not on call twenty-four hours a day, either. It’s Christmas, Shirley. Let’s just put up with the way it is for today. Hear? You rather get a gun or a sled for Christmas? And you think I’d trust the boys with Grandma’s tablecloth?”

  Grant saw Shirley turn her
back on Mamie with Great-Grandma’s crocheted lace tablecloth in her arms. She shook her head violently for her mother to see, her curls from the rags she slept on last night shaking, but Grant saw her face scrunched up, so mad she could cry while she flipped the lacy white material over the table.

  Slider’s brother Neil came from McVille, the town six miles away, right after church, hauling an armload of kindling and a slab of bacon. “Helped my neighbor butcher a pig,” he said when he handed the bacon to Mamie. “Been savin’ it to bring you.” He put the kindling in the tinder box by the stove.

  “Thank you, Neil.” Mamie gave him a peck on the cheek—the side that wasn’t marred by the big red birthmark stretching from chinbone to eye on one side of his face.

  “Merry Christmas,” Neil said. He gave Shirley a brown bag with lollipops in it and hair ribbons, and a paper doll saved from a McCall’s magazine. Harley got a whittled wooden train engine, coal car, and caboose with wooden wheels that spun on nails. “You make that?” Slider asked Neil.

  Neil grunted a yes.

  “Huh,” was all Slider said, raising his eyebrows in approval.

  Grant wiped his hands and opened his heavy little brown bag. Inside was a cardboard box of fifty Remington .22-caliber short-rifle shells and a brand-new baseball.

  “Thanks!” Grant palmed the ball, feeling the smooth fit and fingering the stitches. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled the new leather smell. Then he picked up the box of rifle shells. How’d you know I needed ammunition?”

  Neil grinned, the big red birthmark scrunching up by his eye. “Just a hunch.”

  Grant ran upstairs to the room he shared with Harley. He lifted the little box Lorraine had whittled for him and carried it downstairs. He filled it with rifle shells, lining them up in two neatly stacked rows. “Look,” he said to Neil. “Perfect. Thank you.”

  Harley made a path around the kitchen table legs and hooted like a train whistle. Grant, holding his potato-peeling paring knife again, watched his mom’s ire grow every time Harley hooted.

  “Psst,” Grant whispered under his breath. Harley didn’t hear him. Grant didn’t want his mom to go getting crabby on Christmas, especially after Shirley’s outburst. “Hey, Casey Jones,” Grant whispered to Harley.

  Harley hooted again. “I am Casey Jones,” he said.

  Grant grinned. “I figured.”

  “This is the roundhouse where the track switches,” Harley said, pointing at the spot in the middle of under the table where the legs met at the pillar support and fanned out.

  Grant nodded and looked at Mamie and back at Harley. “Maybe you better build tracks out west.”

  “Huh?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have the roundhouse in the middle of the kitchen when Mom is trying to get the biggest meal of the year ready.

  “I’m not bothering anybody,” Harley said. “Hoo! Hoo!”

  Mamie stood at the stove, stirring gravy from fat she’d skimmed off the goose-roasting pan. She set down her big wooden spoon and turned to Harley. “You, young man, need to help your sister set the table. You can play with your train later.”

  “But—”

  Grant caught his eye and shook his head. “Better go, buddy.”

  Harley gave a giant sigh, but he drove his engine to the living room and parked his train behind the davenport where Slider and Neil were sitting, and went to help Shirley in the dining room.

  Mamie grinned at Grant. “I was about to kibosh that caboose. He was working my last nerve.”

  Grant nodded. “I could tell.”

  Mamie turned back to salt her gravy.

  When they finally sat down to dinner, Grant’s stomach rumbled like a train. Everybody heard it and laughed.

  Grant watched Uncle Neil fit his knees under the table. Grant thought again about how Sims referred to Slider as a “bear of a man.” If Slider was a bear, Neil was an even bigger, giant bear. He was lithe and fast, a powerhouse of a first-baseman on the ball diamond, and could dig a short hop out of the dirt or stretch nine feet in any direction to catch a wild throw. If Slider as pitcher made the Larkin Meadowlarks a winning team, Neil made them nearly unbeatable. He ran the elevator in McVille and drove to Larkin for every game and practice. But in the house, he seemed awkward and out of place, almost too big for his chair, and his birthmark, which nobody noticed on the ball field, stuck out, red and freshly scrubbed.

  The roast goose melted in Grant’s mouth. Juicy, with gravy and potatoes and home-canned corn besides. He tried to eat slowly to make it last a long time, but it was so good, he couldn’t help himself, and he wolfed down two platefuls.

  Mamie poured coffee. “Want some?” she asked Grant. “You’re almost a man.”

  “Okay,” Grant said, hoping he could go shoot his .22 pretty soon. He liked the smell of coffee, but when he lifted his cup to his mouth, it was bitter and brackish. Like creek water with ash mixed in. He made a face.

  Neil and Slider laughed. “Here, boy,” Neil picked up the sugar bowl with two fingers and handed it to him. “Add some milk and sugar, ’til you get used to it.”

  Grant did, and then it wasn’t bad, sweet and milky. It still wasn’t good, but it was a grown-up thing to drink, and he was proud to be included.

  Neil’s hands were so big, he could hardly fit two fingers opposite his thumb on the teacup handle to drink his coffee.

  Mamie used her egg beater on cream from Bill Beatty’s dad’s dairy mixed with a little sugar and beat it to a sweet whipped cream froth for the top of the pumpkin pie. When she served it, Grant ate slowly now, because he was already stuffed to the gills. He rolled the creamy pumpkin flavor around on his tongue so each bite would last a long time.

  After pie, Shirley crumbled soap flakes into the basin and Grant poured in hot water from the kettle on the back of the stove.

  “Harley, you have to help with dishes,” Shirley said.

  “No, I don’t. Mom didn’t say.”

  “I’m saying,” Mamie said, pouring herself another cup of coffee. “You help your sister and brother do the dishes, and then you can play all you want the whole rest of the day.”

  “Come on. Hurry up, then,” Shirley said.

  Shirley washed, Grant dried the china and big pots, and Harley dried silverware and unbreakables. After what seemed like the longest hour of the year, they were finally done.

  “I wanna go sledding. Grant, take me?” asked Harley.

  “Not right now. I’m gonna go try out my rifle. When I get back, I promise we’ll go sledding.”

  Harley stuck his lip out.

  Uncle Neil said, “Come on, Harley. I’ll help you rig up a water tank tower for your train. So you can get water to the engine boiler.”

  “Okay!

  Grant put on his warm clothes to head out the door with his gun and ten rifle shells in his coat pocket. He stopped at the door and looked at Shirley, alone on the floor with her fairy princess. “Shirley, want to come with me?”

  “You teasin’ me, Grant O’Grady?”

  He shook his head. “Naw. Come on.”

  Her face lit up, and she jumped up from the braided rug, settled her doll into the throne she had made, and ran to put on old, warmer clothes. While Grant waited, he practiced sighting down the shiny new barrel.

  Shirley was tying her wool plaid scarf under her chin while she slipped out the door, closing it tight. “Did you want a gun?” she asked.

  “Sure! Who wouldn’t want a nice .22?” They walked toward the edge of town and the train tracks. “Did you want a doll?”

  “Not really. She’s pretty, though. And I’m glad for my books. It’s just . . . I’d a rather I got a gun, but they’d never give a girl a gun.”

  “That’s kinda what I figured.”

  She frowned at him. “That why you asked me to come along?”

  “Partly.” He didn’t want to tell her that he knew Orland and Frank and Little Joe would be busy with their own families, so he didn’t have anybody else to show his new
gun to anyway. He said, “I felt bad—what Mom said about being a girl and all.”

  “It’s not fair!” She glared at him. “It makes me so mad sometimes . . .” Her voice trailed away. Then she shook her head and threw back her shoulders. “I’m not gonna be like that when I grow up. I’m never gonna get married and do nothin’ but housework. I’m gonna be something. Maybe a doctor or a scientist like Madame Curie. Or something. Anyway . . .” she squinted at him, against the sunshine glaring off the snow. “I bet I’m a better shot than you with the rifle.” She grinned at him.

  “We’ll see about that,” Grant said.

  They walked in silence for a while.

  “Don’t tell,” Grant said, “But I wanted a bike.”

  “I won’t tell. You neither!”

  “’Course not. Or I wouldn’t a asked you to come.”

  They walked to the creek line, looking for some kind of meat to shoot.

  Forty minutes later, no rabbits or birds or squirrels in sight, Grant’s toes ached with cold. He was sure that Shirley’s did, too, but he knew she wouldn’t complain if he didn’t.

  “Maybe we should do a little target practice,” Grant said. “I’m gonna aim for . . . that tree branch. The pin cherry. Right side, above the crotch. See?” He slid a shell into the chamber and the bolt into place. He held the sleek gun carefully, settling the butt of the stock against his shoulder, and lining up the sights. He squeezed the trigger. A piece of bark skipped off the scrawny little tree, along the edge of his target branch.

  “Can I try?”

  He reloaded and handed the gun to Shirley. She sighted carefully and the branch cracked in the middle. Her shot hit more dead-on than his did. They took turns until the tiny tree was so riddled, it toppled right over. The sight seemed true and accurate.

  “Poor tree,” Shirley said. “Never did anybody harm.”

  “Sheesh,” Grant said. “You’re a girl after all.”

  “Never said I wasn’t.”

  “Don’t shoot like one.”

  “That’s ’cause I’m an O’Grady, as much as you. We got dead-eye aim.” She grinned at Grant. “With a baseball and a gun. Sure wish girls could play ball.”