Larry Menlove, a previous contributor to Shotgun Honey, writes from Utah. He is published widely and has received many awards for his work, mostly recently with a first place finish in the novel category of the 2024 Utah Original Writing Contest.
Carl turned off the engine again and listened to the oil drain and heater parts cool and waited for the cold night to seep in between shabby window and door seals and generally fall upon his old truck until he was chilled once more.
He watched the old feller work across the road and the sparse Dollar Deals parking lot he had hunkered down in to wait. It was Christmas Eve and the clientele light, most folks having already bought and decorated and now most likely sitting before their trees. Warm. Bellies full. Sugar plums dancing. Shit.
He had been watching the tree lot across the road for three weeks. Binoculars and potato chips. Little flask of bottom shelf tequila. A whole lot of time to watch. Get a job, his wife had told him. Kevin needs presents. So.
Worried him some, how he spent the better part of his evenings in December sitting in his truck watching the old guy work his lot. Someone might wonder. No one paid no attention, though. He found he wasn’t the only one hanging out in the DD PL, He saw all sorts sitting in their vehicles, saw what he realized was unadulterated drama, sadness, joy, going on behind the windshields. Sex. There were all kinds rolling in. Rolling out. A whole lot of time.
The old guy was fit. Bustling around the balsams and spruce, sawing trunks, hoisting the hopes and fears of his customers into the beds of pickups and lashing them to the tops of cars and smiling all along, taking cash, sorry, no credit cards.
When will you get that paycheck, huh?
He thought of it as a swing shift. He’d worked many, but got turned down those few weeks ago when he applied at the feedstore and passed the lot on his way home. The old man was just setting out his trees then, and Carl didn’t want to go home so he pulled over and asked him for a job. Old man just said nope and stepped up into the little trailer in the middle of the lot surrounded by trees for sale.
Carl, his feelings hurt, drove and circled back and parked across the street in the DD PL and watched the old man work. Saw him take in a good pile of money over the next few hours, and when he closed at 10 or so, he stepped up into his trailer and closed the door. Done. Carl sat on, his truck idling, until the light went out in the trailer around 11.
And so, the next evening too. Carl observed. He came back night after night. Never once saw the old man drive away to go deposit his earnings. Noticed the snow piling up on his truck storm after storm. Saw him sell nearly all out of his lot taking the twenty here, the fifty, the hundred from those folks that had room for the fat and tall ones.
Came the point when he had to decide. Figured for a strong box in the trailer with all that money in it. Maybe screwed down, maybe not. Christmas Eve, and the old man was walking toward him over the DD PL. In his thinking, whether this might come to violence, Carl hadn’t noticed him coming. But he walked right on by and through the front door of the Dollar Deals.
Now.
He threw the ignition and jumped the curb and drove into the tree lot. He got out and yanked open the trailer door. Wasn’t even locked. Inside it was warm and smelled like sweat and pine gum. He scanned the trailer. Bed there, unmade. The usual man stuff, playing cards, empty bottles of whiskey. He saw the jar, a big pickle jar stuffed plumb full of bills. My-oh-my.
Problem was there was a photograph leaning there by the jar in a frame. It looked to be the old man and a handful of kids all up against him happy as shit. The frame read “Grandpa We love you!” Well. Kevin got the nicest tree left in that old man’s lot that night. His daddy brought it home in the bed of his pickup. Free.
~ fin ~
Larry Menlove, a previous contributor to Shotgun Honey, writes from Utah. He is published widely and has received many awards for his work, mostly recently with a first place finish in the novel category of the 2024 Utah Original Writing Contest.
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