Candy Cane Calaboose

by Spaeth, Janet

  Abbey had a plan. All she had to do was find something to light the thing with, and she’d be in business.

  She dug in the utensil drawer fruitlessly until she had an idea. Bracing herself against the cold, she zipped into the garage, grabbed the barbecue lighter off the hook on the wall, and tore back inside.

  Abbey clicked it, and a flame sprang into life. She felt ridiculously happy to see it.

  “And now, my strawberry-pink eyesore, you are about to make yourself useful.”

  She spent the next few minutes rigging up a metal measuring cup and a coat hanger. She did some quick pouring, measuring, and stirring, and after waiting somewhat patiently, was rewarded with a warmish cup of coffee. It was not Starbucks by any means, but she said to herself as she cradled the precious cup in her hands, it was coffee.

  The next matter of business was getting warm.

  She had a fireplace, but she hadn’t gotten around to getting firewood. Her only option was to put on more clothes. Abbey pulled on another sweatshirt and wrapped the throw from the couch around her shoulders.

  The batteries in her transistor radio were dead, so she shook one out of her alarm clock and commandeered another from the miniature flashlight the bank had given her and finally tuned in a local radio station. The reception was uneven at best. Static cut through the announcer’s words, but she hung on every syllable.

  “Lines are down. . .neighborhoods south of. . .plows are waiting out the storm. . .”

  The sporadic news was her link with the outside world. There was nothing quite like being in a blizzard to make a person feel isolated. The swirling snow shut out everyone and everything.

  “. . .Senior citizens. . .residents are urged to use caution . . .hypothermia. . .and small children. . . .”

  Claire. She hoped Claire was all right. Certainly Golden Meadows had a back-up plan—at least a better plan than she had. She grimaced at the gaudy pink candle and the rig she’d designed to make coffee. She was pitiful.

  Anyone would have a better severe weather plan than she had. Mike, for example, was the kind who’d have flashlights with batteries. She didn’t even know where hers was, and if she did find it, she was sure the batteries would be too old. No, she had to rely on a grotesquely pink candle for her light and heat.

  Actually, knowing Mike, he probably had all the residents of his apartment building gathered in one room, singing “Kumbaya.”

  That was mean-spirited, she knew. It was just that she had let everything slide. Everything, except her career. That she had firmly in her grip. She needed to take comfort from that.

  “Closed. . . Also the schools, the mall, the post. . .”

  That was what she was listening for. The mall was closed.

  ❧

  Mike pulled the drapes shut on the window of his apartment. He’d seen enough. This wasn’t going to be one of those blizzards that blew through quickly. No, this blizzard was settling in for awhile.

  It was hard to concentrate when the walls of the apartment shook with every windy blast. That was one of the problems of living on the fourth floor. It seemed as if his floor took the brunt of the storms.

  If the electricity were on, he could watch television, or maybe a videotaped movie. He told himself he could read a book, but the fact was he didn’t want to. He couldn’t concentrate on it.

  He was glad he’d chosen this apartment. It had a fireplace, so he was warm. But despite the comfort of the fireplace, he couldn’t shake a feeling of worry. He knew that his grandmother would be safe at Golden Meadows. The generator would keep the heating system going, and there were round-the-clock aides to reassure the residents. But he wished the phones were working so he could call Abbey. Something told him that this storm had caught her unaware. She didn’t watch television and rarely listened to the radio. He knew that. The blizzard warning had come late too. Had she prepared for it? Was she all right?

  This was the first blizzard of the season. That wasn’t too bad for Minnesota. He remembered years when the snows started coming in October. Maybe it signaled an easy winter.

  He couldn’t shake this worry about Abbey. He opened the curtain once again and looked out. The storm wasn’t breaking, and it didn’t seem to have reached its full fury yet.

  He checked the clock. Six a.m. Abbey was probably asleep.

  God, could You please watch over her?

  He felt better after asking for God’s protection, but he remembered something from his childhood. A burden shared in prayer was halved. That’s what his mother used to tell him. Any load was lightened by prayer, she’d explained, but that didn’t let you off the hook. You still had to do what you could. It was a partnership.

  Now he had to figure out what he should do. Blizzards limited his alternatives to, well, zero. But he’d figure something out. He had to.

  ❧

  The announcer’s voice continued with his broadcast, which arrived in intermittent sputters.

  Abbey peered outside. The storm whirled on, pausing occasionally, then increasing its intensity. She couldn’t tell if it was growing worse or not.

  She shivered—and only partially from the cold. There was something elementally terrifying about a blizzard, although she’d lived through enough of them to know that the safest place for her to be was inside. The problems happened when someone went outside and got stuck in the snow, or perhaps got turned around and lost.

  It had happened to her once. She had been in college, walking home from the part-time job she had at a restaurant. She’d lived only a few blocks away, but the windborne snow was so intense that she’d had to walk with her head down and somehow had turned mistakenly. She’d ended up in an unfamiliar alley and had wandered for over half an hour before stumbling upon her apartment. She’d managed to escape frostbite, although her face had been swollen for a day from the icy blast of the snow.

  This forced seclusion was going to drive her crazy. She cooked herself another cup of coffee, but it tasted terrible. She walked through her house, picking up the newspapers from the past week that had piled up. Then she straightened the towels in the bathroom.

  What she really wanted to do was go to the store. The weekly sales figures were due, and there was the box of sweaters that had arrived late the day before. If they weren’t unpacked soon, they’d be irretrievably wrinkled.

  Of course, the power was probably off at the mall, so the computers were down, and the steamer would be useless, but she could do some of the work by hand, and if she took the sweaters out of the box and laid them out on the workroom table. . .

  There was a break in the wind, and she could see her driveway. The area behind her car was blown clear, and an idea began to form in her mind. She could back out.

  “No travel is advised. . .snow gates on the interstate are closed. . .extremely slippery. . .finger drifts. . .” The radio crackled back into life.

  The snow gates were huge metal gates that blocked the ramps to the interstate during a snowstorm, but they wouldn’t affect her. She didn’t use the interstate to get to the mall. And slippery? She’d go slowly. As for finger drifts, the long, narrow heaps of snow that stretched across a lane or two of traffic, they were no problem. She’d accelerate through them.

  And besides, she reasoned, she’d stay just long enough to do the weekly report and take the sweaters out of the box.

  She got dressed as quickly as she could, pulling on several layers. The temperature in her house was dropping, and according to the thermostat, it was already four degrees colder inside than it had been when she got up.

  A blast of icy wind threw snow in her face as she opened the front door, and instinctively she tucked her head down as she scurried to her car. The man on the radio had been right. It was very slick, and she had trouble keeping her balance with the force of the wind.

  She hurried around the back of her car and stopped. What she hadn’t been able to see from the kitchen window was a huge drift that wrapped around the driver’s side of the car, just
out of her view. It was almost as high as the side mirror. It would take her forever to shovel it out, especially with this wind. She gave up and crept back inside, abandoning her plan.

  The house, although there was a definite chilly edge to the air, was much warmer than outside. She kicked off her snowy boots and dropped her coat unceremoniously on the entryway floor. She was stuck here, and she might as well make the best of it.

  Abbey wrapped herself in the throw from the couch and curled up. Maybe she could just sleep through it.

  At first sleep seemed impossible, but the pound of the blizzard eventually lured her eyes to close and her breathing to even out.

  Then the blizzard began pounding harder.

  She sat up, groggily, and realized that the sound was coming from outside. Someone was knocking at her front door.

  thirteen

  Who could be at her door during a full-fledged blizzard?

  Abbey paused for only a moment. On one hand, her visitor could be an ax-murderer, but on the other hand, this was a blizzard and no one should be out in it, not even an ax-murderer.

  She peeked through the window in her kitchen. Another vehicle was parked beside hers. The snow was swirling so thickly that she couldn’t tell what color the car was, just that it looked to be something with four-wheel-drive. Ax-murderers didn’t drive four-wheel-drive vehicles, she was pretty sure of that.

  She opened the front door a crack and saw a rather tall, huddled shape. It certainly didn’t look like an ax-murderer.

  He looked like Mike. A very cold Mike.

  She threw open her door. “Come in!”

  He stepped inside her entryway, and an eddy of snow-flakes accompanied him. “Do you need firewood?” he asked without preamble.

  “It’s good to see you too, and yes, I do,” she answered. Her heart was ridiculously elated to see him.

  “Wait a second, then.”

  He vanished back into the storm and went to his car. Within moments he was back, carrying an armload of firewood.

  She took it from him. As he kicked off his boots and shed his coat and muffler, she arranged the logs in the fireplace and started the kindling.

  “I’m impressed.” He spoke behind her.

  “Why?”

  “It’s not easy to lay a fire and have it start that quickly. At least I’ve never been able to do it. I have a fireplace in my apartment, but I go through a lot of matches getting it started, and even then it doesn’t always work out right.”

  Abbey rocked back on her heels. “It’ll take a couple of minutes to catch. The trick is where to put the kindling, and to remember to put the logs in bark side down. My dad taught me how to do it. We used to camp out a lot.”

  “Really? You don’t strike me as a camping kind of gal.”

  “I’m not. I never was. My parents were, though, so I got dragged along. I never did figure out the charm of cooking over a campfire. I always ended up with everything charred on the outside and raw on the inside. Plus sleeping in the woods is an open invitation to any biting, creeping thing to come along and bite and creep on you. What’s the point?”

  Mike stood behind her, rubbing his hands together, and she realized he must be frozen.

  “Where are my manners?” she asked. “I have a visitor, and I haven’t even offered him something to wrap up in.”

  He chuckled. “I wonder if Emily Post dealt with blizzard etiquette.”

  She gave him the throw from the couch. “Here, use this. I’m plenty warm here by the fire. . .er, the single little flame that will soon catch.”

  As if on cue, one of the smaller logs sparked into life. Abbey smiled. “Good. Now it’s only a matter of time before the other logs catch too, and we’ll have a real rip-roaring fire.”

  Mike draped the woven throw around his shoulders. “Great. That wind is fierce.”

  Abbey looked out the window. “Is it really bad?” An idea was formulating in her mind. If he could get to her house, then he could take her to the mall. It wasn’t that much further.

  “The roads are awful. It took me forever to get here. I had to go five to ten miles an hour the whole time.”

  “But you got here,” she pointed out, smiling brightly.

  “I hope you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking,” he said, “because the answer is No.”

  “How do you know what I’m thinking?” she asked somewhat peevishly.

  “Let me guess. You’d like a lift to the mall.”

  “Okay, you do know what I’m thinking. Please, Mike. I have so much to do.” She felt like a child wheedling for a toy instead of an adult asking to be taken to work.

  “No. The streets are dreadful.” His voice was adamant, and he sat down squarely on the couch.

  “But you got here,” she repeated.

  “And it was stupid, but I was worried about you.”

  “Which was stupid, driving here, or worrying about me?” The words were out before she thought about them.

  His lips curved in a slow smile. “In this world, worrying about other people is not stupid, at least in my experience—well, I need to clarify. Maybe we’re mixing up worrying and caring. Worrying is out of control, whereas caring is in control. When I start to worry, I know I need to take it to God. It’s an alert to me that I’m not handling something well, but I know that God can.”

  She sat on the sofa beside him. “Only you would see worry as a call to prayer. The rest of the world worries about worry. Just check the cover of any magazine. ‘Fifteen Ways to Worry Less.’ ‘Worried about What’s Worrying You?’ And I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before someone comes up with ‘Worry Your Way to a Slimmer, Trimmer You!’ ”

  “Worry is a signal,” Mike said, wrapping the blanket around him tightly. “Whenever you worry about someone, it’s because you have a concern for them, usually for their welfare. Worry by itself is futile, but if you turn it into action and prayer, then it becomes helpful.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she said slowly. “I worry about a lot of things, like the store, for example. I was even worried about Claire when I saw the blizzard.”

  “You’re sweet to think of her. They do have an emergency generator out there, by the way, so they’re nice and warm at Golden Meadows.”

  Abbey felt her muscles relax. She’d been more apprehensive about the elderly woman’s situation than she’d allowed herself to recognize.

  “No, worry isn’t good at all. It consumes you and does nothing for the person you’re worrying about,” Mike continued, as if knowing where her thoughts had led her. “What we do when we feel worried is up to us. If there’s something we can do to ease our concern, then of course we should do it.”

  “That’s the hardest part,” she confessed. “What if we can’t do anything—like today, when the storm prevented me from getting out.”

  “That’s when prayer comes in. We give it back to God, tell Him that we recognize our anxiety, and we trust Him. That’s the sticky part—letting God do His work, having faith that He is at work, even when it isn’t readily apparent to us. The problem is when we don’t handle our concern well and let it take over our minds. That’s worry.”

  The radio, which had been silent for some time, suddenly sputtered with static. “Situation improving. . .northern Minnesota. . .back to regularly. . .”

  Abbey and Mike looked at each other and laughed. “Well,” said Mike, “thanks for the update, huh? Sort of sums it all up.”

  She rose from the couch and looked out the window. “I think they may have been a bit optimistic about the storm. It looks as bad as ever.”

  She hugged her arms as she sat back down. “I don’t know if I ever thanked you for bringing the firewood—I was so glad to see it. . .and you.”

  His warm brown eyes twinkled with a soft reflection of the fireplace’s cheerful blaze. “My pleasure. See, this blizzard’s not all that bad. You’ve got a fire burning; you’ve got a friend with you. What more could you ask for?”


  “A cup of coffee.”

  He stood up and went back to the front door. She could hear him pulling on his boots and coat. Was he leaving? She stood up and joined him in the entryway.

  “Was it something I said? Look, I can live without the coffee if that’s what the problem is, although I personally don’t see. . .” Her voice trailed off as she realized that under the muffler and pulled-up coat collar, he was smiling.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “It’s not that important—” she began, but he brushed away her concerns.

  He vanished from the warmth of her house and was soon lost in the swirl of white. But within seconds he was back, and he held out a large blue vacuum bottle. “I made this before I left the house. The power did flicker back on for awhile early this morning, and I made a pot just in case. I can’t believe I forgot to bring it inside with me.”

  Within minutes, they were both seated again in the living room, cups of coffee in their hands. As the fire warmed their faces, she felt her tension ease.

  “This is the life,” she said, a bit surprised at how relaxed she felt. Her usual reaction to being housebound would have been restless energy, and she had to admit, if she had been here alone, by now she would have been a nervous wreck. “I suppose I could get used to it, but I’d really have to try.”

  “You should. God didn’t mean for us to spend our lives at work.”

  She studied him covertly. He talked so easily about God. His life must center around his faith. It was something she couldn’t quite understand.

  “Everything with you is God, isn’t it?” she asked.

  He had his head back and his eyes closed, and for a minute he didn’t answer. She couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or praying or just resting his eyes.

  At last he opened his eyes and looked at her with his clear amber gaze. “Yes, it pretty much is. He is my life. Make that a capital L: Life.”