Four Flashlights in the Back Pasture

Getting Ready

The den leader, a retired mail carrier named Jeff, sold me a used four-season tent out of his garage for forty dollars.

It was a small orange dome, two-person, with a vestibule and snow stakes in a little bag. He showed me how to bury the stakes sideways so they hold.

The pack lent us two sleeping bags rated to zero degrees.

I bought two closed-cell foam pads at Fleet Farm, plus wool socks, a box of hand warmers, and a pair of fleece liners for the bags.

I knew the trick about the hot water bottle from the campout. You fill a hard plastic bottle with hot water, screw it down tight, wrap it in a sock, and put it in the foot of the bag.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, while Steve and my dad watched the Packers, I went out behind the machine shed and split a pile of oak from the wood my dad had down there.

Grady stacked. My dad came out once at halftime and watched me swing.

“You’ve still got it,” he said.

“You taught me,” I said. He nodded and went back in. That was the whole conversation, and in our family it was a fairly long one.

I did not tell my parents why we were camping. I called my mother the week before and told her Grady wanted to sleep out back on Christmas Eve after presents, the way he had at the Scout campout, and asked if that was all right.

“Suit yourself,” she said. “Your father will think you’re crazy.”

Christmas Eve

The bank closed at noon on Christmas Eve. I counted my drawer, picked Grady up from my friend’s house, and we drove the forty minutes out to the farm with the back of my car packed to the roof.

My dad was out feeding when we pulled in. He had the tractor running and was setting a round bale into the feeder in the cow yard.

Grady was out of the car before I had it in park.

Dad stopped the tractor, opened the cab door, and Grady climbed up and squeezed in beside him like he had done since he was three.

My dad is different with Grady when it is just the two of them.

We went to the four o’clock service at the Lutheran church in town, all of us in two pews. Candlelight, “Silent Night,” Lily holding her candle so close to her hair that Jill kept reaching over. Grady sang every word. He always does.

Supper was ham and scalloped potatoes and lefse with butter and sugar, the same as every year since I can remember.

Then the living room, the tree, the paper. I have already told you how that went.

Steve did not look at me while the girls opened. My brother is a good man in most ways. He runs a crew for a drywall company in Chippewa Falls, coaches Avery’s softball team, and shovels my mother’s walk without being asked.

He just lets Jill handle Christmas, and he does not look too closely at it.

When it was over, Grady folded the wrapping paper from his flashlight into a square and handed it to my mother, because she saves paper.

Then he came over to me and whispered, “Can we go now?” His eyes were shining. It was the best part of his night, and it had not happened yet.

So we went. We put on our layers in the back hall. I pulled on my red knit hat and my navy down parka.

Grady put on his gray knit hat and zipped the green coat up to his chin. Out on the porch my dad was waiting with his coffee, and you know the rest of that part.