The Christmas Tags I Read Out Loud

Mama had told me not to look at her like I’d won, and I hadn’t won anything. Nobody in that room had won anything.

Gunner’s big one was the eighth present. It was a battery dump truck, big enough to ride on, John Deere green, and the box was almost as tall as he was.

“Gunner,” I said. “From Aunt Leah.”

He ripped the paper off one whole side and saw the picture on the box and screamed. Then he turned around and hollered at the whole room, “Aunt Leah got me a tractor! Mama! Aunt Leah got me a tractor!”

“It’s a dump truck, buddy,” Dakota said.

“It’s a tractor,” Gunner said, and nobody argued with him.

That was when I heard Misty make a sound. Not crying, exactly. More like breath going out of her.

I glanced back for just a second. She was sitting with her arms crossed tight over the gray sweatshirt, and her eyes were wet.

Mama was watching her from the recliner. Mama didn’t say anything. She just watched the way she used to watch us when we were little and she was waiting to see which one of us was going to tell the truth first.

I went on. Nine. Ten. Eleven. A jewelry kit for Harley. Mittens. A flashlight for Dakota, the good kind, the one that clips on your hat for blood tracking.

The little ones were too busy to notice anything. But Dakota had quit tearing paper after the third present.

He’d started reading every tag before I could get to it. He’d lean over and look at the name and then look at me.

Nine is old enough to count. Nine is old enough to remember last year.

The last present was his. It was a long box, about four feet, wrapped in the same snowman paper I’d used on his bow the Christmas before.

I had bought a new roll of it on purpose. I wasn’t sure, wrapping it, if that was kind or not.

It was a new arrow kit and a real hunting release, and a ground blind, the small kind a boy could carry. I’d spent a lot of my November overtime on that box.

“Dakota,” I said. I held it out to him with both hands. “From Aunt Leah.”

He didn’t take it right away. He looked at the box, and he looked at the paper, and then he took it and set it across his knees.

He didn’t open it.

He looked at me for a long time. Nine years old, with his daddy’s jaw and Misty’s eyes, sitting on Mama’s carpet in his pajamas with the colored lights going on and off on the side of his face.

Then he turned and looked at his mama on the couch.

Misty put her hand over her mouth.

The room got quiet. Even Gunner, sitting on his dump truck box, got quiet, the way little ones will when they feel something change in the air and don’t know what it is.

Dakota set the long box down on the carpet. He stood up.

“Aunt Leah,” he said. “I need to tell you something.”

My heart was going so hard I could hear it in my ears. I thought he was going to be angry.