My dad was standing at the porch rail with his coffee when Grady and I came around the house pulling the sled, and he said it the way he says everything, flat and quiet: “You’re really doing this.”
“We’re really doing this,” I said. The sled was loaded with a tent bag, two sleeping bags, two foam pads, a cooler, and a feed sack full of split oak.
Grady had the rope over his shoulder like a sled dog.
In Grady’s other hand was the flashlight he had opened forty minutes earlier. Black plastic, three batteries, a lanyard. The orange price sticker was still on the handle. It said $14.99.
Inside the house, on the living room floor, my brother’s girls were still sitting in a drift of wrapping paper.
Avery, who is twelve, had a new tablet, a pair of good snow boots, and a gift card. Lily, who is nine, had nearly the same.
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
I had done the math in my head while they opened, the way I do the drawer at the end of a shift.
About $600 apiece. Same as last year. Same as the year before that, give or take a pair of earrings.
When Grady unwrapped the flashlight, my mother had smiled across the room at him and said, “We know that’s what boys like.”
Then she looked at me as if she had done something thoughtful, and in her mind I think she had.
Grady had said, “Thank you, Grandma. Thank you, Grandpa.” He said it like he meant it, because he did.
He is eight, and he does not keep score. I keep score. I am a bank teller. It is the job.
Now my dad was on the porch and the snow was starting, small and steady, slanting a little on the light breeze that comes across west-central Wisconsin on a December night.
The yard light was buzzing on its pole by the machine shed.
“It’s supposed to get down to fourteen,” Dad said.
“I know, Dad. I checked. Light breeze all night, an inch, maybe two. Grady’s bag is rated to zero and so is mine.”
I kept my voice easy. I was not out there to argue with my father on Christmas Eve.
He looked at Grady, then at the sled, then at me, and opened his mouth.
Then he shut it again and lifted his coffee cup, which is my dad’s version of a whole speech.
“Fire pit’s still back there,” he said finally. “Behind the shed.”
“I know,” I said. “I cleared the snow off it on Sunday.”
Grady was already pulling. The sled runners hissed on the packed snow of the yard, and then we were past the corner of the machine shed and into the dark, and the porch was behind us.