The Hundred Dollar Bill on Christmas Eve

The envelope

The hundred-dollar bills started three years ago.

Before that, Pat handled the grandkids’ Christmas money. She bought gift cards, twenty-five dollars each, one for the farm store in Blue Earth and one for the Dairy Queen. She bought five. Addie always got hers, the same as the others, in the same little red envelope with her name on it in Pat’s careful cursive.

Then Gene retired. He had run hogs on that farm for forty-one years, finishing barns, and when he finally rented the barns out to a younger fellow and sold the last of his equipment, he decided he was going to do the Christmas money himself.

“Kids don’t want a gift card,” he said that first year. “Kids want to hold real money. That’s what my grandpa did.”

He drove into the bank in Wells the Friday before Christmas, every year. He asked the teller for new bills, the crisp ones still in the band. Banks keep a stack of new currency for exactly that, especially in December, when every grandpa in Faribault County has the same idea.

That first year, he came home with four.

I didn’t even notice until the line-up. I was helping Lily with a bow. When I looked up, Gene had put the envelope away, and Addie was standing at the end of the line with her hand still half out.

She had lined up that first year. She was seven.

I will never forget her face when Gene looked right past her and sat down. It wasn’t hurt yet. It was confusion. She thought he had miscounted.

“Grandpa,” she said, very quietly. “I didn’t get one.”

And Gene said, not unkindly, not loudly, but in front of everybody: “Well, honey, you get plenty from your mom’s side. Your other grandpa takes care of you.”

Then he picked up the remote and asked if anybody wanted to see the weather.