gwendolyngrace (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gwendolyngrace) wrote2008-01-24 12:01 am
gwendolyngrace) wrote2008-01-24 12:01 am
Entry tags:
Fic Post: Trost Und Freude (Chapter 5/?)
Title: Trost und Freude (Comfort and Joy) (Chapter 5/at least 15)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gwendolyngrace
Recipient:celtic_cookie
Request terms: Sam and Dean of course, and I love John: Lots of John! A Pre-series Christmas Story! Familial bonding, maybe a holiday-themed hunt?
Summary: Saginaw, Michigan, 1990: Going holiday shopping may hold more hazards than just the insane crowds and parents hell-bent on the buying the latest toy. John goes undercover to look into a series of accidents at the local mall. Meanwhile, Dean and Sam respond to Christmas-season festivities at school with unexpected results.
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen
Wordcount (this chapter): about 3,885
Spoilers: All three seasons through 3x08, may or may not be Origins-compliant
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended, not mine, just my fantasy.
Author’s Notes: So obviously, this will not be completely posted by January 31. But I’ll keep going until it’s done, if y’all will keep reading! Many thanks toetakyma the most insightful beta, who after leaving me hanging for so long on the last chapter, got forced to read 5 and 6 this weekend while I had her in my evil clutches…. And thus the continuity between this chapter and chapter 6 is much better than it was when it was just me. So you get them both at once! And even though there's more Sam in this chapter, and more Dean in the next one, we'll just dedicate them both to our birthday boy, 29 years young today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAN!
From the Top
Then
It took a little finessing to convince Gina Tupelo, office manager for the Holiday Happenings regional office, that he was not hunting around on behalf of a lawsuit.
“I mean, we just know someone’s going to try to pin these accidents on us,” Gina said, swishing around in her attractive skirt. She was still young looking and only a little rounded around the edges, but her hair was shot with silver. Something about the trim way she moved through the office made John think of a ballroom dancer—maybe that was what kept her so spry. “Poor Lyle, he’s going out of his mind, requesting additional security, asking about better crowd control—there’s just no budget. Y’know?”
“Yeah, I know,” John agreed soothingly. That’s why I’m doing a more thorough background check on the employees. We think maybe someone’s playing Grinch with his operation.”
“Huh. He didn’t request a purchase order for a private investigator.”
“No—I’m not under contract with him directly. This comes from higher up.”
“Oh.” She grinned. “You know, we run holiday displays for about ten malls in the area, and Lyle’s the best manager we’ve got. He’s always been a bit of a con artist. How he can squeeze so much work out of the mall is beyond me. You know he got them to go in for half of the decorations and pay to have everything installed this year? Usually we get billed for the union, but this year he got around it somehow. Mr. Gustafson just tells him he doesn’t want to know how many laws he’s breaking, as long as it doesn’t come back to haunt us.”
John bit back a bark of laughter. “Haunt. Funny you should use that word.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well….” He scrunched up his face and shifted his weight, making it clear that his next statement was not his idea. “I heard some talk when I was out there earlier this week. People are a little nuts, you know? But seems there’s some thought that the Workshop itself might be haunted. Crazy, huh?” he said, smiling confidentially at Gina’s disbelieving expression. “But I just talked to someone who thought one of the elves actually disappeared.” He chuckled indulgently. “Can you believe that?”
But Gina wasn’t gawping in shared contempt. She had gone quiet. John leaned forward. “Well, it’s just talk, isn’t it?” he confided with a wink.
“I don’t know,” Gina said slowly. “You’ll probably think I’m nuts for even saying it, but they might be right. I mean, you’ve read Del’s statement?”
John frowned.
“Del. Del Masters, the Santa whose eye nearly got poked out?”
“Oh—right. Yes, I’ve read it.” John wondered if he could get his hands on it. Now that he had a last name, he might be able to catch him before he was released from St. Mary’s.
“Well, didn’t he say that the ornaments moved on their own? And what on earth could make a hundred ornaments fly off the tree like that, all at once? I went out there the day after it happened, Mr. McIntyre. There was glass everywhere.”
“So…you think there could be something haunting the area?” John asked quite seriously.
“I don’t know. But I think Lyle’s right to get you investigating. I mean, after what happened to poor Lisa Stoddard….”
“Right,” John said, though he wasn’t certain which one Stoddard had been. “How’s she doing?”
“I talked to her on the phone yesterday. She says she’s always wanted to learn to write with her left hand. Poor thing, putting a brave face on it like that.”
“Life gives you lemons,” John said. He remembered now. Lisa Stoddard had broken her arm when her ladder had collapsed under her. “So, she’s not planning to sue, then?” he asked.
“Lisa? Oh, no, I can’t imagine. She was all alone when it happened.”
“What was she doing there, again?”
“She’d gone in to freshen up the paint on the Workshop building. She says she’d just put down her brush and stopped for a break. She turned around to lean on the ladder while she rested, and BAM! The whole thing toppled.”
“Was it an old ladder?”
“No—what’s even weirder is it was aluminum. Nothing should have broken that thing, certainly not Lisa. Even if,” Gina leaned in flirtatiously, “she could stand to lose a few pounds.”
“Does anyone else have a grudge against the company?” John asked.
“Oh, well…. There’s always a disgruntled parent or two, but nothing threatening, if that’s what you mean. And I hate to think it’s one of our people. Lyle’s usually so careful about who he hires. But at this point, I really hope you find something. Lord knows the police just think it’s pranksters.”
“What about the teenage employees—couldn’t they be rigging stuff to go off? Could they have tampered with her ladder, and so on?”
Gina shrugged as if to say that John was the expert. She patted his arm. “I guess that’s what your background checks will decide.”
“Guess you’re right.”
He took the lists and the photocopied files with him to read through that night.
~*~
The school had a pickup loop that had been plowed, but piles of snow still lined the edges, reducing its usual two lanes to one and a half. That morning, cars had been backed up around the corner to drop kids off. But when John pulled up, the loop was practically deserted. He checked his watch, fearing that he’d lingered too long at the management office and was late. He was late, but only by about fifteen minutes.
Sammy was standing just inside the double doors, snow pants and coat on, but coat unzipped and mittens dangling from the cuffs. When he saw the big black car, he grabbed his stuff and came running. He had to use both hands to open the heavy back door.
“How’s Dean?” Sam asked as soon as he climbed inside.
“Hello to you, too,” John said. “And how was your day?”
“Sorry.” John watched in the mirror while Sam, blushing, buckled his seatbelt. “School was fine. How’s Dean?”
John chuckled. “He’s pretty miserable, but I think he’ll live. Hey, Sammy? Where’re all the other kids?”
Sam paused before answering. To be on the safe side, John kept the car in Park until he understood the situation better. Over the years, John had come to appreciate that any hesitation on either of his sons’ parts was a sure sign that he wasn’t about to get the whole truth. Usually he reminded himself that keeping certain things from parents was a part of being a child, especially a sibling. But part of him insisted that any secret, however small, was a potential danger in his children’s lives. He couldn’t protect them if he didn’t know everything that was going on, even tasks as banal as volcano projects.
“They’re…um…they’re staying a little later.”
“Why?” John drew the word out, fighting not to growl it.
Sam paled. This was even more damning than his embarrassed flush. In John’s experience, it meant he had just caught Sam with his hand in the metaphoric cookie jar. “Sammy?”
“I din’t hafta stay. I’m not breaking any rules.” Sam said it too fast, and his pitch rose steadily into the stratosphere as he jumped to his own defense. John hadn’t even figured out what to accuse him of doing yet.
“Stay for what?” He twisted to look over the seat back directly at Sam.
“For…for a practice. But I’m not in it. I don’t hafta be,” Sam added quickly.
John narrowed his eyes. Something did not add up. “Practice for what?”
“A pageant. Is Dean all alone at home?” Sam asked.
John recognized the deflection, but Sammy had a point: he’d left Dean a couple hours ago and they really did need to get back. “We’re not finished with this conversation,” John promised, but he put the Impala in gear and made the left-hand turn to drive the short trip home.
Once inside, Sammy stripped off his outer layer and hurried to his room. “Don’t bother your brother too much, Sam,” John called after him. “And let me know if he needs anything.” Sam opened the door gently and disappeared through it, while John settled himself on the couch to sort the files and pull out the likely targets.
~*~
When Sam came in to their room, Dean was sitting up, flipping through a magazine. A short stack of comics lay on the bed next to him.
“Don’t come too close, Sammy,” he croaked.
“Dean, we gotta problem,” Sam said urgently.
“We?”
“Dad picked me up an’ he asked about all th’other kids, and I tol’im I din’t hafta be inna pageant,” Sammy babbled, ignoring Dean’s comment.
“Whoa…. Slow down, dummy…why’d you tell him about the pageant?”
“He noticed I was waiting all by myself, Dean. He asked where everyone was.” Sam’s eyes were bugged out.
“Why didn’t you just say they’d all gone home already?”
Sammy leafed through a comic book. His silence was an eloquent answer. Dean sighed. “Okay, well, what did he ask and what precisely did you tell him?”
Sam related the exchange with their father. “It was freaky, Dean, like…he knew exackly how to ask so I couldn’t make something up. You’re right, Dean: Dad’s like Superman, only he’s got x-ray vision for thoughts.”
“Yup, I said, Dad’s good at stuff like that,” Dean agreed. “Okay, so when he asks again—and he will—you say that you came in to the school too late and all the parts were assigned, so they just asked you if you really wanted to be in it and you said no.”
“Okay.”
“Can you remember?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, nostrils flaring. “It’s basically what you said Miz Johnson told you, anyway. Only backwards.”
“Wanna practice?”
Sam bit his lip. “Okay. You be Dad.”
Dean cleared his throat with a wince. When he spoke, it was using as deep and growling a voice as he could manage. “So, Sammy, what’s this again about the pageant at school?”
“Whaddaya mean, Dad?” Sam said, wide-eyed and cherubic.
“Why aren’t you in it with the other kids?”
“Oh.” Sam nodded. “Miz Johnson said I din’t have to if I din’t want to.”
“Why’s that?”
“B’cause she said they’d have to take parts away from th’others to make a part for me, since we got here so late.” He beamed. “How was that, Dean?”
“Pretty good. But don’t grin so much—you need a better poker face.”
“But you won’t teach me poker.”
“You don’t need to know how to play to have a poker face, dumb-butt!”
Sam giggled. “R’you feeling better?”
“Sure. I’m ready to run the marathon, Sammy.” He would have been a lot more convincing if he hadn’t started coughing. “Crap,” he observed when he could talk again.
“Dad said to tell him if you want anything.”
“M’a little hungry. Maybe ask him if I could have some Ramen?”
“Okay.” Sam went out. His dad was sifting through a ream of photocopied pages in manila folders. “Dad?”
His father closed the file he was reading quickly. “Hey, Sammy. How’s he doing?”
“He asked for Ramen.”
Dad nodded. “We can do that.”
“Gotta wash the pot, though.”
“Yeah, I know. You have any homework?”
“A little. Gotta draw a picture of something you do in the snow. An’ I have some writing.”
“What letter are you on?” Mrs. Peabody had been teaching them to write by using words that all started with the same letter. They had a different letter every assignment.
“T. Twenty-five words that all start with T.”
“Okay.” Dad put the stack of folders on the floor by the sofa arm. “I want to take Dean’s temperature, anyway. Here. You set up here at the coffee table, kiddo, an’ I’ll wash the dishes and make Dean his soup. Deal?”
“Yessir.” Dad got up and went in to talk to Dean.
Sam gathered up his bookbag and dug for his supplies. He wrote his words out first, to get them out of the way. Then using a blank sheet of paper, he drew a black car shape on one side of the page, coloring in the tires as two concentric circles with white showing between. Next to this, he drew two bubble figures, one taller than the other. He colored the tall one green, because Dean’s puffy coat was Army green, and the short one he made blue, because his snowsuit was blue. He colored their hair in so it was clear they were facing away, toward the open white corner of the page. On the white expanse, he took a yellow crayon and wrote, “SAM” and next to that, “DEAN.”
Satisfied with his masterpiece, he folded it up and put it and his spelling list into his bag.
“Sam, come eat,” Dad called from the kitchen. They ate together at the bar counter.
“Can Dean come out and watch TV?” Sam asked during the meal.
“No, he’s going back to sleep.”
“M’I sleeping in your room again?”
“I think it’s best, kiddo,” Dad told him. “You done?”
“Yes,” Sam said glumly. Evenings weren’t as fun when Dean wasn’t able to spend time with him.
“Okay. Now go on and watch your shows. I want to check on Dean again.”
Sam went back to the living room and pulled out the remote to turn on the TV. Sitting on the floor put his head right near the cushions and the skirt. They smelled faintly of stale beer, but Sam could almost imagine it was the warm, yeasty smell of bread baking.
After a few minutes, Dad came back out and invited Sam to sit with him on the couch. Sam thought he knew what was coming. He tucked himself onto his father’s lap and braced to emulate Dean’s best poker face.
“Now, go slow,” Dad said, “and tell me about this pageant business. Why aren’t you in it with the other kids?”
Sam took a deep breath. He knew his only shot was to stay cool. “There’s a pageant, but Miz Johnson said they’d have to take lines away from th’other kids, so I said I din’t want to be in it, and she said okay.” He was careful to keep his voice steady.
“And that’s what they were practicing?”
“Yup.”
“Without you.”
“Yessir.”
“Hm. That’s it?” Dad frowned.
Sam nodded, his head banging against Dad’s chest. He was glad he could look away without making it obvious. “Honest, Daddy.”
To Sam’s surprise, Dad gave him a squeeze. “Okay.”
Sam twisted around to look at him. “Okay?” He’d been so certain Dad would detect the lie. He’d been sure Dad would demand a more thorough explanation. Luckily, he was too genuinely confused to give himself away, but he reminded himself that he had to stay calm. Dad was very, very good, and he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
“Yeah. You said you didn’t want to; she listened to you. So, okay.”
Sam couldn’t believe his luck. Dad believed him! Unless it was a trap. “Huh.”
“What?”
Whoops. He hadn’t meant to say anything out loud. Sam thought fast. What would Dean do? Affecting his brother’s easy confidence, he shrugged. “I dunno, I jus…I thought you’d be mad.”
“With you? No. Why don’t you go get ready for bed? You can watch more TV, but I want you in your PJ’s before Dean gets to sleep and you disturb him.” Dad kissed his head lightly and applied a little pressure to his back. Sam slid off the couch and went readily. First, he wanted to tell Dean about his success; second, he wanted to get away quickly before Dad changed his mind and decided to probe further.
Dean was sitting up, leafing through a comic book when Sam came in to change. “Dad said you were s’posed to go to sleep,” he told him.
“Yup,” Dean said. “I just haven’t done it yet.”
While he changed, Sam related Dad’s uncharacteristically mild reaction to Sam’s explanation, and Dean agreed that it was weird, but neither could figure out why. Maybe Dad didn’t care about school plays and stuff, although he’d been sure to go other times. Maybe he was distracted because Dean had been sick. They couldn’t decide.
“Anyway, it’s a good thing, because I bet you would’ve caved if he’d put on any pressure.”
“Would not!”
“Whatever.”
“Take it back.”
“Dude, what are you, seven?” Dean asked, then chuckled. “Oh, wait: You are.”
Sam scowled and went back out to watch TV.
Sitting next to Dad was cool, even if Dad was working on something, reading the files he’d set aside earlier. Sam wasn’t sure what Dad did, but Dean had told him it was important and that he shouldn’t ask about it. Anyway, that wasn’t what he wanted to know, tonight. Tonight, Sam wanted to ask about when they could go shopping, since Dean said they’d have money for their Christmas fund because they didn’t get pizza the night before. But asking to go buy Christmas presents was tricky, and not just because he didn’t want to interrupt. Dad thought he still believed in Santa, and Sam didn’t want to disappoint Dad. Not that he didn’t believe, exactly, but he wasn’t as sure as he used to be.
On the one hand, no matter where they went, Santa always found them. Even last year when they’d been living in Ohio, and stayed overnight with that nice Mrs. Kirkland. Sam had woken up that morning to find that several of the wrapped gifts under her tree were for him and Dean. But he knew that most of them—the socks and the Swiss army knife and even Dean’s gloves—were really from Dad. And even though they each had one present “from Santa,” Sam suddenly wasn’t sure. Dad had always assured him that Santa’s presents (the “main present,” as Sam came to call it) were never boring things like clothes or school supplies.
Thinking back on last Christmas, though, it seemed to him that Mrs. Kirkland and Dad had exchanged some suspiciously gleeful looks over his Ninja Turtle Sewer Playset and Dean’s Walkman—before he or his brother had opened them. It seemed like they’d already known what was inside the packages. And how was that possible, if the gifts came from Santa? He’d tried to ask Dean, but Dean just told him that Dad must have called Santa to let him know where to find them, and Santa must have told Dad what they were getting. That had satisfied Sam at the time, but the more he thought about it, the less sense it made.
Sam was pretty sure “Santa” was actually Dad, or at least that Dad bought the gifts and gave them to Santa, who then turned around and gave them right back. Because two Christmases ago, Sam dimly remembered, they were down in Alabama. They’d been staying with a friend of Dad’s and then Dad made them leave really quickly in the middle of the night. They went to a cabin in the backwoods. Dad said it was because he wanted them to learn to track, but Dean thought it was because they were pretty much out of money. In any case, Dad had driven them into town on the Saturday before Christmas so they could get groceries and supplies, because they’d left a lot of their things behind. Dad went through the store and as they were walking back to the car, he’d stopped.
“Damn. I forgot the aspirin,” Dad said. He’d put Dean and Sam in the car with the sacks of food while he went back for the extra item.
Dad had taken a long time getting the pills. When he came out, he’d had a paper bag with a lot more than aspirin in it. He put the bag in the trunk, so Sam hadn’t seen what was inside then. When they got back to the cabin, though, he peeked in the bag. There’d been a couple coloring books inside, and copies of “Motor Trend,” “Car Collector,” and “Car and Driver.”
And when Christmas morning came, his present “from Santa” had been coloring books and new crayons—the box with the sharpener right in it. And Santa had brought Dean the same magazines he’d seen in Dad’s grocery bag. He’d asked Dean about that, too, and Dean said that probably Dad had to help out because the cabin wasn’t marked on any of Santa’s maps.
So if Santa did exist, he was getting an awful lot of help from Dad.
That was okay, Sam thought, because he knew Santa had a big job. And Dad was usually pretty awesome, even if he did have to leave them with Uncle Bobby or Pastor Jim, and even alone occasionally. If anyone could help out Santa, it was Dad. But it left open the question of whether Santa existed at all. His previous classmates all seemed to think he did. Moreover, it seemed like Dean believed, so Sam was pretty sure he was real.
Which was kind of a problem, because Sam hadn’t written a letter this year, and he wasn’t sure there was time before Christmas for something to get to the North Pole. Kris Melrose in his class had told him that Santa had a bunch of deputies who worked in the mall. Sam had no idea how far away the mall was, but maybe, if Dean got better, they could all go. He’d use his Christmas money to get something small for Dean and Dad, from Sam, not Santa. And while they were there, Sam could tell Santa’s deputy what he wanted. Or maybe he should trust Dad with the information, and ask him to use his connections. But if Santa really wasn’t real, and really was just Dad, then Sam didn’t want to appear foolish.
It was all very confusing. He thought he’d disappoint Dad if he told him he didn’t believe in Santa and Santa was real, but he was also afraid that if Santa wasn’t real, he’d make Dad sad by asking for something Dad couldn’t get for him. And none of that helped him figure out what to do with his Christmas money.
He really wished he could talk about it with Dean. But Dean was probably asleep by now. Sam yawned, nestling down so he could lay his head on Dad’s leg.
To be on the safe side, he decided, he’d write a letter quickly. It was less than two weeks until Christmas, but Uncle Bobby had told him that the postcard they’d sent him from Maine had reached him in five days, and from Maine to South Dakota was probably about as far as from Michigan to the North Pole. Maybe Kris Melrose was going to the mall and would deliver the letter for him. Though he wouldn’t be able to buy anything if he couldn’t go, too.
Sam thought about his problem all the way through the reruns and Wonder Years and halfway through Growing Pains. Just as he was drifting off, he came to the only solution that made any sense: He just had to figure out how to get to the mall himself.
Continue to Chapter 6
Author:
gwendolyngraceRecipient:
celtic_cookieRequest terms: Sam and Dean of course, and I love John: Lots of John! A Pre-series Christmas Story! Familial bonding, maybe a holiday-themed hunt?
Summary: Saginaw, Michigan, 1990: Going holiday shopping may hold more hazards than just the insane crowds and parents hell-bent on the buying the latest toy. John goes undercover to look into a series of accidents at the local mall. Meanwhile, Dean and Sam respond to Christmas-season festivities at school with unexpected results.
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen
Wordcount (this chapter): about 3,885
Spoilers: All three seasons through 3x08, may or may not be Origins-compliant
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended, not mine, just my fantasy.
Author’s Notes: So obviously, this will not be completely posted by January 31. But I’ll keep going until it’s done, if y’all will keep reading! Many thanks to
etakyma the most insightful beta, who after leaving me hanging for so long on the last chapter, got forced to read 5 and 6 this weekend while I had her in my evil clutches…. And thus the continuity between this chapter and chapter 6 is much better than it was when it was just me. So you get them both at once! And even though there's more Sam in this chapter, and more Dean in the next one, we'll just dedicate them both to our birthday boy, 29 years young today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAN!From the Top
Then
It took a little finessing to convince Gina Tupelo, office manager for the Holiday Happenings regional office, that he was not hunting around on behalf of a lawsuit.
“I mean, we just know someone’s going to try to pin these accidents on us,” Gina said, swishing around in her attractive skirt. She was still young looking and only a little rounded around the edges, but her hair was shot with silver. Something about the trim way she moved through the office made John think of a ballroom dancer—maybe that was what kept her so spry. “Poor Lyle, he’s going out of his mind, requesting additional security, asking about better crowd control—there’s just no budget. Y’know?”
“Yeah, I know,” John agreed soothingly. That’s why I’m doing a more thorough background check on the employees. We think maybe someone’s playing Grinch with his operation.”
“Huh. He didn’t request a purchase order for a private investigator.”
“No—I’m not under contract with him directly. This comes from higher up.”
“Oh.” She grinned. “You know, we run holiday displays for about ten malls in the area, and Lyle’s the best manager we’ve got. He’s always been a bit of a con artist. How he can squeeze so much work out of the mall is beyond me. You know he got them to go in for half of the decorations and pay to have everything installed this year? Usually we get billed for the union, but this year he got around it somehow. Mr. Gustafson just tells him he doesn’t want to know how many laws he’s breaking, as long as it doesn’t come back to haunt us.”
John bit back a bark of laughter. “Haunt. Funny you should use that word.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well….” He scrunched up his face and shifted his weight, making it clear that his next statement was not his idea. “I heard some talk when I was out there earlier this week. People are a little nuts, you know? But seems there’s some thought that the Workshop itself might be haunted. Crazy, huh?” he said, smiling confidentially at Gina’s disbelieving expression. “But I just talked to someone who thought one of the elves actually disappeared.” He chuckled indulgently. “Can you believe that?”
But Gina wasn’t gawping in shared contempt. She had gone quiet. John leaned forward. “Well, it’s just talk, isn’t it?” he confided with a wink.
“I don’t know,” Gina said slowly. “You’ll probably think I’m nuts for even saying it, but they might be right. I mean, you’ve read Del’s statement?”
John frowned.
“Del. Del Masters, the Santa whose eye nearly got poked out?”
“Oh—right. Yes, I’ve read it.” John wondered if he could get his hands on it. Now that he had a last name, he might be able to catch him before he was released from St. Mary’s.
“Well, didn’t he say that the ornaments moved on their own? And what on earth could make a hundred ornaments fly off the tree like that, all at once? I went out there the day after it happened, Mr. McIntyre. There was glass everywhere.”
“So…you think there could be something haunting the area?” John asked quite seriously.
“I don’t know. But I think Lyle’s right to get you investigating. I mean, after what happened to poor Lisa Stoddard….”
“Right,” John said, though he wasn’t certain which one Stoddard had been. “How’s she doing?”
“I talked to her on the phone yesterday. She says she’s always wanted to learn to write with her left hand. Poor thing, putting a brave face on it like that.”
“Life gives you lemons,” John said. He remembered now. Lisa Stoddard had broken her arm when her ladder had collapsed under her. “So, she’s not planning to sue, then?” he asked.
“Lisa? Oh, no, I can’t imagine. She was all alone when it happened.”
“What was she doing there, again?”
“She’d gone in to freshen up the paint on the Workshop building. She says she’d just put down her brush and stopped for a break. She turned around to lean on the ladder while she rested, and BAM! The whole thing toppled.”
“Was it an old ladder?”
“No—what’s even weirder is it was aluminum. Nothing should have broken that thing, certainly not Lisa. Even if,” Gina leaned in flirtatiously, “she could stand to lose a few pounds.”
“Does anyone else have a grudge against the company?” John asked.
“Oh, well…. There’s always a disgruntled parent or two, but nothing threatening, if that’s what you mean. And I hate to think it’s one of our people. Lyle’s usually so careful about who he hires. But at this point, I really hope you find something. Lord knows the police just think it’s pranksters.”
“What about the teenage employees—couldn’t they be rigging stuff to go off? Could they have tampered with her ladder, and so on?”
Gina shrugged as if to say that John was the expert. She patted his arm. “I guess that’s what your background checks will decide.”
“Guess you’re right.”
He took the lists and the photocopied files with him to read through that night.
~*~
The school had a pickup loop that had been plowed, but piles of snow still lined the edges, reducing its usual two lanes to one and a half. That morning, cars had been backed up around the corner to drop kids off. But when John pulled up, the loop was practically deserted. He checked his watch, fearing that he’d lingered too long at the management office and was late. He was late, but only by about fifteen minutes.
Sammy was standing just inside the double doors, snow pants and coat on, but coat unzipped and mittens dangling from the cuffs. When he saw the big black car, he grabbed his stuff and came running. He had to use both hands to open the heavy back door.
“How’s Dean?” Sam asked as soon as he climbed inside.
“Hello to you, too,” John said. “And how was your day?”
“Sorry.” John watched in the mirror while Sam, blushing, buckled his seatbelt. “School was fine. How’s Dean?”
John chuckled. “He’s pretty miserable, but I think he’ll live. Hey, Sammy? Where’re all the other kids?”
Sam paused before answering. To be on the safe side, John kept the car in Park until he understood the situation better. Over the years, John had come to appreciate that any hesitation on either of his sons’ parts was a sure sign that he wasn’t about to get the whole truth. Usually he reminded himself that keeping certain things from parents was a part of being a child, especially a sibling. But part of him insisted that any secret, however small, was a potential danger in his children’s lives. He couldn’t protect them if he didn’t know everything that was going on, even tasks as banal as volcano projects.
“They’re…um…they’re staying a little later.”
“Why?” John drew the word out, fighting not to growl it.
Sam paled. This was even more damning than his embarrassed flush. In John’s experience, it meant he had just caught Sam with his hand in the metaphoric cookie jar. “Sammy?”
“I din’t hafta stay. I’m not breaking any rules.” Sam said it too fast, and his pitch rose steadily into the stratosphere as he jumped to his own defense. John hadn’t even figured out what to accuse him of doing yet.
“Stay for what?” He twisted to look over the seat back directly at Sam.
“For…for a practice. But I’m not in it. I don’t hafta be,” Sam added quickly.
John narrowed his eyes. Something did not add up. “Practice for what?”
“A pageant. Is Dean all alone at home?” Sam asked.
John recognized the deflection, but Sammy had a point: he’d left Dean a couple hours ago and they really did need to get back. “We’re not finished with this conversation,” John promised, but he put the Impala in gear and made the left-hand turn to drive the short trip home.
Once inside, Sammy stripped off his outer layer and hurried to his room. “Don’t bother your brother too much, Sam,” John called after him. “And let me know if he needs anything.” Sam opened the door gently and disappeared through it, while John settled himself on the couch to sort the files and pull out the likely targets.
~*~
When Sam came in to their room, Dean was sitting up, flipping through a magazine. A short stack of comics lay on the bed next to him.
“Don’t come too close, Sammy,” he croaked.
“Dean, we gotta problem,” Sam said urgently.
“We?”
“Dad picked me up an’ he asked about all th’other kids, and I tol’im I din’t hafta be inna pageant,” Sammy babbled, ignoring Dean’s comment.
“Whoa…. Slow down, dummy…why’d you tell him about the pageant?”
“He noticed I was waiting all by myself, Dean. He asked where everyone was.” Sam’s eyes were bugged out.
“Why didn’t you just say they’d all gone home already?”
Sammy leafed through a comic book. His silence was an eloquent answer. Dean sighed. “Okay, well, what did he ask and what precisely did you tell him?”
Sam related the exchange with their father. “It was freaky, Dean, like…he knew exackly how to ask so I couldn’t make something up. You’re right, Dean: Dad’s like Superman, only he’s got x-ray vision for thoughts.”
“Yup, I said, Dad’s good at stuff like that,” Dean agreed. “Okay, so when he asks again—and he will—you say that you came in to the school too late and all the parts were assigned, so they just asked you if you really wanted to be in it and you said no.”
“Okay.”
“Can you remember?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, nostrils flaring. “It’s basically what you said Miz Johnson told you, anyway. Only backwards.”
“Wanna practice?”
Sam bit his lip. “Okay. You be Dad.”
Dean cleared his throat with a wince. When he spoke, it was using as deep and growling a voice as he could manage. “So, Sammy, what’s this again about the pageant at school?”
“Whaddaya mean, Dad?” Sam said, wide-eyed and cherubic.
“Why aren’t you in it with the other kids?”
“Oh.” Sam nodded. “Miz Johnson said I din’t have to if I din’t want to.”
“Why’s that?”
“B’cause she said they’d have to take parts away from th’others to make a part for me, since we got here so late.” He beamed. “How was that, Dean?”
“Pretty good. But don’t grin so much—you need a better poker face.”
“But you won’t teach me poker.”
“You don’t need to know how to play to have a poker face, dumb-butt!”
Sam giggled. “R’you feeling better?”
“Sure. I’m ready to run the marathon, Sammy.” He would have been a lot more convincing if he hadn’t started coughing. “Crap,” he observed when he could talk again.
“Dad said to tell him if you want anything.”
“M’a little hungry. Maybe ask him if I could have some Ramen?”
“Okay.” Sam went out. His dad was sifting through a ream of photocopied pages in manila folders. “Dad?”
His father closed the file he was reading quickly. “Hey, Sammy. How’s he doing?”
“He asked for Ramen.”
Dad nodded. “We can do that.”
“Gotta wash the pot, though.”
“Yeah, I know. You have any homework?”
“A little. Gotta draw a picture of something you do in the snow. An’ I have some writing.”
“What letter are you on?” Mrs. Peabody had been teaching them to write by using words that all started with the same letter. They had a different letter every assignment.
“T. Twenty-five words that all start with T.”
“Okay.” Dad put the stack of folders on the floor by the sofa arm. “I want to take Dean’s temperature, anyway. Here. You set up here at the coffee table, kiddo, an’ I’ll wash the dishes and make Dean his soup. Deal?”
“Yessir.” Dad got up and went in to talk to Dean.
Sam gathered up his bookbag and dug for his supplies. He wrote his words out first, to get them out of the way. Then using a blank sheet of paper, he drew a black car shape on one side of the page, coloring in the tires as two concentric circles with white showing between. Next to this, he drew two bubble figures, one taller than the other. He colored the tall one green, because Dean’s puffy coat was Army green, and the short one he made blue, because his snowsuit was blue. He colored their hair in so it was clear they were facing away, toward the open white corner of the page. On the white expanse, he took a yellow crayon and wrote, “SAM” and next to that, “DEAN.”
Satisfied with his masterpiece, he folded it up and put it and his spelling list into his bag.
“Sam, come eat,” Dad called from the kitchen. They ate together at the bar counter.
“Can Dean come out and watch TV?” Sam asked during the meal.
“No, he’s going back to sleep.”
“M’I sleeping in your room again?”
“I think it’s best, kiddo,” Dad told him. “You done?”
“Yes,” Sam said glumly. Evenings weren’t as fun when Dean wasn’t able to spend time with him.
“Okay. Now go on and watch your shows. I want to check on Dean again.”
Sam went back to the living room and pulled out the remote to turn on the TV. Sitting on the floor put his head right near the cushions and the skirt. They smelled faintly of stale beer, but Sam could almost imagine it was the warm, yeasty smell of bread baking.
After a few minutes, Dad came back out and invited Sam to sit with him on the couch. Sam thought he knew what was coming. He tucked himself onto his father’s lap and braced to emulate Dean’s best poker face.
“Now, go slow,” Dad said, “and tell me about this pageant business. Why aren’t you in it with the other kids?”
Sam took a deep breath. He knew his only shot was to stay cool. “There’s a pageant, but Miz Johnson said they’d have to take lines away from th’other kids, so I said I din’t want to be in it, and she said okay.” He was careful to keep his voice steady.
“And that’s what they were practicing?”
“Yup.”
“Without you.”
“Yessir.”
“Hm. That’s it?” Dad frowned.
Sam nodded, his head banging against Dad’s chest. He was glad he could look away without making it obvious. “Honest, Daddy.”
To Sam’s surprise, Dad gave him a squeeze. “Okay.”
Sam twisted around to look at him. “Okay?” He’d been so certain Dad would detect the lie. He’d been sure Dad would demand a more thorough explanation. Luckily, he was too genuinely confused to give himself away, but he reminded himself that he had to stay calm. Dad was very, very good, and he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
“Yeah. You said you didn’t want to; she listened to you. So, okay.”
Sam couldn’t believe his luck. Dad believed him! Unless it was a trap. “Huh.”
“What?”
Whoops. He hadn’t meant to say anything out loud. Sam thought fast. What would Dean do? Affecting his brother’s easy confidence, he shrugged. “I dunno, I jus…I thought you’d be mad.”
“With you? No. Why don’t you go get ready for bed? You can watch more TV, but I want you in your PJ’s before Dean gets to sleep and you disturb him.” Dad kissed his head lightly and applied a little pressure to his back. Sam slid off the couch and went readily. First, he wanted to tell Dean about his success; second, he wanted to get away quickly before Dad changed his mind and decided to probe further.
Dean was sitting up, leafing through a comic book when Sam came in to change. “Dad said you were s’posed to go to sleep,” he told him.
“Yup,” Dean said. “I just haven’t done it yet.”
While he changed, Sam related Dad’s uncharacteristically mild reaction to Sam’s explanation, and Dean agreed that it was weird, but neither could figure out why. Maybe Dad didn’t care about school plays and stuff, although he’d been sure to go other times. Maybe he was distracted because Dean had been sick. They couldn’t decide.
“Anyway, it’s a good thing, because I bet you would’ve caved if he’d put on any pressure.”
“Would not!”
“Whatever.”
“Take it back.”
“Dude, what are you, seven?” Dean asked, then chuckled. “Oh, wait: You are.”
Sam scowled and went back out to watch TV.
Sitting next to Dad was cool, even if Dad was working on something, reading the files he’d set aside earlier. Sam wasn’t sure what Dad did, but Dean had told him it was important and that he shouldn’t ask about it. Anyway, that wasn’t what he wanted to know, tonight. Tonight, Sam wanted to ask about when they could go shopping, since Dean said they’d have money for their Christmas fund because they didn’t get pizza the night before. But asking to go buy Christmas presents was tricky, and not just because he didn’t want to interrupt. Dad thought he still believed in Santa, and Sam didn’t want to disappoint Dad. Not that he didn’t believe, exactly, but he wasn’t as sure as he used to be.
On the one hand, no matter where they went, Santa always found them. Even last year when they’d been living in Ohio, and stayed overnight with that nice Mrs. Kirkland. Sam had woken up that morning to find that several of the wrapped gifts under her tree were for him and Dean. But he knew that most of them—the socks and the Swiss army knife and even Dean’s gloves—were really from Dad. And even though they each had one present “from Santa,” Sam suddenly wasn’t sure. Dad had always assured him that Santa’s presents (the “main present,” as Sam came to call it) were never boring things like clothes or school supplies.
Thinking back on last Christmas, though, it seemed to him that Mrs. Kirkland and Dad had exchanged some suspiciously gleeful looks over his Ninja Turtle Sewer Playset and Dean’s Walkman—before he or his brother had opened them. It seemed like they’d already known what was inside the packages. And how was that possible, if the gifts came from Santa? He’d tried to ask Dean, but Dean just told him that Dad must have called Santa to let him know where to find them, and Santa must have told Dad what they were getting. That had satisfied Sam at the time, but the more he thought about it, the less sense it made.
Sam was pretty sure “Santa” was actually Dad, or at least that Dad bought the gifts and gave them to Santa, who then turned around and gave them right back. Because two Christmases ago, Sam dimly remembered, they were down in Alabama. They’d been staying with a friend of Dad’s and then Dad made them leave really quickly in the middle of the night. They went to a cabin in the backwoods. Dad said it was because he wanted them to learn to track, but Dean thought it was because they were pretty much out of money. In any case, Dad had driven them into town on the Saturday before Christmas so they could get groceries and supplies, because they’d left a lot of their things behind. Dad went through the store and as they were walking back to the car, he’d stopped.
“Damn. I forgot the aspirin,” Dad said. He’d put Dean and Sam in the car with the sacks of food while he went back for the extra item.
Dad had taken a long time getting the pills. When he came out, he’d had a paper bag with a lot more than aspirin in it. He put the bag in the trunk, so Sam hadn’t seen what was inside then. When they got back to the cabin, though, he peeked in the bag. There’d been a couple coloring books inside, and copies of “Motor Trend,” “Car Collector,” and “Car and Driver.”
And when Christmas morning came, his present “from Santa” had been coloring books and new crayons—the box with the sharpener right in it. And Santa had brought Dean the same magazines he’d seen in Dad’s grocery bag. He’d asked Dean about that, too, and Dean said that probably Dad had to help out because the cabin wasn’t marked on any of Santa’s maps.
So if Santa did exist, he was getting an awful lot of help from Dad.
That was okay, Sam thought, because he knew Santa had a big job. And Dad was usually pretty awesome, even if he did have to leave them with Uncle Bobby or Pastor Jim, and even alone occasionally. If anyone could help out Santa, it was Dad. But it left open the question of whether Santa existed at all. His previous classmates all seemed to think he did. Moreover, it seemed like Dean believed, so Sam was pretty sure he was real.
Which was kind of a problem, because Sam hadn’t written a letter this year, and he wasn’t sure there was time before Christmas for something to get to the North Pole. Kris Melrose in his class had told him that Santa had a bunch of deputies who worked in the mall. Sam had no idea how far away the mall was, but maybe, if Dean got better, they could all go. He’d use his Christmas money to get something small for Dean and Dad, from Sam, not Santa. And while they were there, Sam could tell Santa’s deputy what he wanted. Or maybe he should trust Dad with the information, and ask him to use his connections. But if Santa really wasn’t real, and really was just Dad, then Sam didn’t want to appear foolish.
It was all very confusing. He thought he’d disappoint Dad if he told him he didn’t believe in Santa and Santa was real, but he was also afraid that if Santa wasn’t real, he’d make Dad sad by asking for something Dad couldn’t get for him. And none of that helped him figure out what to do with his Christmas money.
He really wished he could talk about it with Dean. But Dean was probably asleep by now. Sam yawned, nestling down so he could lay his head on Dad’s leg.
To be on the safe side, he decided, he’d write a letter quickly. It was less than two weeks until Christmas, but Uncle Bobby had told him that the postcard they’d sent him from Maine had reached him in five days, and from Maine to South Dakota was probably about as far as from Michigan to the North Pole. Maybe Kris Melrose was going to the mall and would deliver the letter for him. Though he wouldn’t be able to buy anything if he couldn’t go, too.
Sam thought about his problem all the way through the reruns and Wonder Years and halfway through Growing Pains. Just as he was drifting off, he came to the only solution that made any sense: He just had to figure out how to get to the mall himself.
Continue to Chapter 6