Nowhere for Christmas

by Heather Gray

  Gavin liked the idea of visiting with Avery during the quiet dark of the night. He had the feeling this woman held a lot of secrets and had her share of pride. Sometimes the cover of night was the best way to get someone past their pride to open up about their secrets.

  He grabbed a couple boxes of brownies and a big bag of sunflower seeds. As he headed to the coffee machine, he wondered when he’d stopped thinking of Avery as the woman who was supposed to have been a man and had started thinking of her as a woman interesting enough to get to know. Probably when she threatened to use her cellphone for pictures then put my name on them for the credit. I’ll bet she would have done it, too, and gone out of her way to make all the shots blurry besides.

  Gavin carried his purchases to the front checkout. Since there was no one else in the store, he set everything down and told the man, “Just a minute.”

  Avery, who stood nearly mesmerized before the slushy machine, turned to face him as he approached. “You want anything to drink?” he asked her.

  She smiled and said, “I’ll stick to the water we brought with us. It’s safer that way, in case I spit my drink out all over you again.”

  “That reminds me,” he said before jogging away. From another aisle, he held up a roll of paper towels and said, “Victory shall be mine!” Then he added it to the collection of items by the checkout.

  When Eli brought the hockey stick back, Gavin asked if he’d care for anything to drink. The teen grabbed a soda out of the cooler and added it to the pile.

  “Is that going to be everything?” the cashier asked without a lick of enthusiasm in his voice.

  “Yep, that’s it,” Gavin answered. Then, leaning on the counter as if talking to an old friend, he asked, “So tell me, why the hockey stick?”

  The man behind the counter shuddered. “Got tired of fishing the key out of the toilet.”

  Chapter Seven

  Almost to Tucumcari, NM

  December 23, 10:00 p.m.

  Avery was taking her turn behind the wheel. The road was more or less deserted, so she’d offered to drive for a spell. “Looks like it’s going to start sticking soon.”

  Snow had started to fall about fifteen minutes prior, but as they continued to drive, the flakes got bigger. She’d flipped on the windshield wipers to combat the ones landing there.

  “It’s a wet snow, too,” said Gavin. “I don’t remember seeing snow in the forecast.”

  “Me either,” answered Avery, “but I only checked the Albuquerque forecast. Didn’t think to look further east.”

  Gavin pulled out his phone and began working his way through the menu. “Huh,” he eventually said.

  “What?” Eli asked.

  “I thought I’d check the weather,” Gavin said, “but I can’t get a signal. That’s never happened along the freeway before.”

  “You think a tower could be out?” asked Avery.

  “It’s possible,” Gavin said, “but if that’s the case, it’ll be a while before it gets fixed. It’s almost Christmas Eve, and there’s weather moving in. I hope nobody gets stranded out here.”

  Eli pulled out his phone and pushed buttons for a while. “I’ve got a signal, but it’s weak. I don’t have a weather app, either, and I don’t have enough bars on my signal meter to download any new apps right now.”

  “No weather app?” Gavin asked, eyes wide.

  “Hey, I’m fifteen. What do I care about the weather?”

  “Can you turn the heat on?” Avery asked Gavin. “It’s getting cold in here.”

  Within a couple short minutes, the temperature had plummeted. Gavin cranked the heat up to full-blast and asked Eli to hand his scarf up to him. After he snugged it around his neck, he shifted toward Avery and asked, “Do you need anything?”

  “I’m fine,” she said as her grip tightened on the steering wheel. “I’d like to pull my phone out, but the wind is really starting to blow, and I don’t want to take my hands off the wheel.”

  “Okay…” he said.

  “Um. Uh. It’s right there in my pocket,” she said, twisting her hip slightly. “Do you think you can reach around the seatbelt and get it?”

  Her eyes were on the road, and the interior of the car was dark. Even so, she couldn’t miss the way Gavin’s eyes widened as he first eyed her face then her front pants pocket.

  “Okay,” he eventually said. “But remember, you asked.”

  Avery almost laughed at how awkward he sounded. Gavin Eastly, world-famous photographer, shy. No one would ever believe her. As his fingers tucked into the lip of her pocket, she asked, “You never did much with fashion photography, did you?”

  “No way,” he said. “I still work with models occasionally for isolated shoots, but I never could have made it in the fashion world.”

  “Why not?” she asked as his fingers gripped her phone.

  The phone slipped out of her pocket, and Gavin moved back to his side of the car. Avery was puzzling over why that bothered her when he said, “I have some great friends who are models. They’re wonderful people. But then you have the ones who are willing to do anything to get ahead – from sabotaging each other to doing some of those things you told me not to mention again in front of your son.”

  Gavin, a blush emphasizing his discomfort added, “I interned with a fashion photographer when I was younger. Being around that scene all the time became a struggle for me. That’s a big part of what pushed me into photojournalism, which I love. There are a lot of great people in the fashion industry. It just wasn’t a healthy place for me to be.”

  “Oh,” she said. Then, changing the subject, she instructed him to hit five-seven-one. “That’ll get you into the phone’s menu.”

  “So, is that the code to unlocking all the secrets of the universe?” Gavin’s voice was warm, the discomfort of a moment ago gone. She felt herself responding to the invitation she heard in the rumbling tone of his words.

  She shrugged and said, “That phone has my life in it, so yeah, I suppose you know the code to my universe anyway.”

  Gavin tapped away at her phone for a bit before saying, “Uh, maybe we should have checked the weather.”

  “How bad can it be?” she asked, gritting her teeth as another gust of wind buffeted them across the road and visibility diminished.

  “They’re forecasting a whiteout over most of central Texas.”

  “Yeah, but we’re going across the panhandle,” Eli spoke up. “That’s not the same as central Texas. We shouldn’t run into more than a dusting of snow.”

  “We might have a problem,” Avery said.

  “What now?” Gavin and Eli asked at the same time.

  “The thermostat keeps creeping up.” Before she knew it, a cloud of steam erupted from under the hood. Avery swung the car over to the emergency lane on the side of the freeway and engaged her four-way blinkers. “What now?”

  Gavin used her phone to call information. “I need a tow truck...Yes, I know it’ll be expensive… I think this qualifies as an emergency… On the freeway… I-40… Somewhere between Santa Rosa and Tucumcari…”

  “We just passed mile marker 323,” said Eli.

  After repeating the information to the person on the other end of the phone, Gavin said, “That’s fine. Yes, I understand. Of course. Thank you.”

  When he hung up, he leaned his head back against the seat and sighed. Then he handed Avery her phone and began typing text after text on his own.

  “I thought you didn’t have service?” she asked.

  Glancing up at her, he answered, “I don’t at present, but as soon as I do have service, Mitchell will have no doubt what I think about the rental car he procured for us.”

  Avery winced. “It wasn’t entirely his fault.”

  Gavin winked at her. “Don’t worry. Mitchell knows me well enough to know I don’t actually plan to cut off all his toes and turn them into a necklace I can give you for Christmas.”

  “On the bright side,” Eli asserted, “nothing el
se should go wrong after this.”

  Avery heard Gavin groan beside her. She tossed a smile to her son and said, “How many times have I told you never to say that?”

  “This is different,” he argued. “I didn’t say it couldn’t get any worse.”

  “Might as well have,” she answered. “Anything else goes wrong after this, and I’m blaming you.” Eli rolled his eyes, and Avery spun back to Gavin. “So how long till the tow truck gets here?”

  “We’re not getting a tow truck,” he said.

  “What!”

  “Guy who owns the tow truck is out of town for the holidays. But there’s a guy who owns a bait shop, and he knows a thing or two about engines, so he’s driving on out here to find us and see if he can fix the problem. He’s bringing anti-freeze, some hoses, and a couple other things.”

  Skeptical, she asked, “A bait shop?”

  “You know,” he said. “A place that sells worms and lures to fishermen.”

  “And women,” interjected Eli. “Don’t forget fisherwomen.”

  Avery shook her head, “Our radiator blew, and a man who sells worms is coming to look at it?”

  Gavin shrugged. “Maybe it’s because we turned the heat on. Or it doesn’t have enough coolant in it. Maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds.”

  After a short pause, Avery asked, “I heard you tell information you needed a tow truck. How did you end up with a bait shop?”

  “They’re related somehow, and when one of them is out of town, they have calls forwarded to the other.”

  “I need a nap,” she replied. Then a couple minutes later, she asked, “So, how much is this going to cost Mitchell?”

  Gavin laughed. “Well, he’s charging a fee for it being after-hours, another because it’s practically a holiday, a bad-weather fee, and then parts and labor.”

  “Dare I ask how much labor is going to cost?”

  “I didn’t, so why should you?”

  “Mitchell is not going to be happy about this,” Avery said.

  “Hey,” he countered, “Corporate insisted they had to have this story. Any problems Mitchell has are going to get passed up the food chain, and it’ll come down to the fact that they insisted this was a condition of taking the feature national. We were provided no contact information so we could speak to someone at Corporate directly if something adverse were to occur.”

  “That sounds awfully similar to lawyer speak,” she said.

  “I may not be a journalist, but I can be persuasive, too, when I need to be.”

  ****

  Almost an hour later, an SUV pulled over into the emergency lane behind them. “He has got to have a specialty lift,” Eli said. “There’s no way it’s as high as that straight from the factory.”

  Eli had a point. The headlights from the SUV weren’t shining through their back window. They were shining over the roof of the car. Well, it is a short car…

  They all three climbed out of the hatchback to greet the man who had come to their rescue. I sure hope it’s a rescue, anyway.

  “Howdy, folks,” said a short man with bronze skin and long black hair. He might have been Native American, but it was hard to tell in the glare from his headlights. His pronounced Texas drawl confused the image.

  “I was driving, and then the thermostat started going up, and before I knew it, steam was pouring out of the engine,” Avery explained.

  The short man from the tall truck held out his hand and said, “Name’s John. Nice to meet you.”

  Avery shook his hand and said, “I’m Avery. Do you think you can help us?”

  He gave her a relaxed smile as if he had all the time in the world. “Pop the hood, and I’ll see what I can do for you.” He casually walked back to his rig and started pulling out gear, including a clamp-able work light to illuminate the engine compartment.

  Not sure what to make of him, Avery peered from his retreating back to Gavin and Eli but didn’t say anything.

  Eli made his way over to her and put his arm around her shoulders, giving her a quick side hug. “It’ll be fine, Mom. I don’t have school tomorrow, and the only work you have is somewhere down this road. If he can’t get this baby started, I’d say he’s got enough room in his SUV to give us all a lift to the nearest motel.” Then he winked at her and said, “At Mr. Jones’ expense, of course.”

  “Mothers who love their sons don’t drag them out into the desert in the middle of the night, putting them at risk of hypothermia, illness—”

  “—and don’t forget the danger of being eaten by wild bears,” her son kindly interrupted.

  Avery elbowed him lightly and said, “I’ll protect you from any bears that come, but you’re on your own if it’s a snake.”

  John moseyed back over to the hatchback, mounted his light to the edge of the hood, lit up the engine, and started poking around. He studied the ground under the car and said, “No water down there, so I don’t think your radiator blew.” Pushing and pulling on various pieces of the engine, he added, “Your hoses all look to be in decent shape.”

  Then he pulled out his phone and made a call. He spoke to the person on the other end in an unfamiliar language that had a haunting cadence, while he removed the cap from the radiator. His conversation continued as he filled the reservoir with coolant and put the cap back on.

  When John finally hung up, Avery asked, “Was that the man who usually drives the tow truck? Was he able to tell you what was wrong?”

  He laughed for a minute before he said, “That was my wife. I was supposed to call her and tell her you weren’t a band of thieving murderers lying in wait for me.”

  “Oh,” Avery said.

  “My sister drives the tow truck. I talked to her earlier. She said if the hoses and radiator were fine to tell you it’s likely the thermostat. That’s not something I can fix, and we don’t have any place in Tucumcari that would have the part in stock. You need to keep heading on down the road until you get to a bigger town.”

  Avery started to interrupt with dozens of questions that begged to be asked. John lifted his eyebrows, a patient look on his face, completely derailing her anxious interrogation.

  When she said nothing, he continued. “Avoid running the heater. Driving a little bit slower might help, too, although I’m not sure. Stop and let the engine cool back down at least every hour, or anytime the temperature gauge climbs up too high.”

  Gavin inquired, “What does the thermostat do?”

  John scratched his head and gaped at them the way someone from up north looks at pickled pigs’ feet. “The thermostat checks the temperature of your engine. When the thermostat says the engine has heated up to a certain point, it tells the radiator to start circulating fluid through the engine to cool it down. If the thermostat’s not working, it can’t tell the radiator what to do and the fluid either circulates all the time or not at all. In your case, it looks like not at all, which is a problem. It don’t matter how cold it is outside, your engine will still get hot and overheat if there’s no circulation.”

  When no one said anything in answer to his explanation, John shook his head and asked, “What brings y’all out on the road tonight of all nights in this heap of… in this car?”

  “What do you mean ‘tonight of all nights’?” Gavin asked.

  “S’posed to be a whiteout. Worst snow storm in decades, they’re sayin’.”

  Avery contended, “But I thought it was forecast for central Texas? We’re cutting across the panhandle.”

  “There aren’t a lot of mountains around here to block a storm. If something comes blowing in, it usually gets a lot further north than it’s supposed to. You sure y’all going to be safe? Might be a good idea to find somewhere to hole up for the night.”

  “We have a deadline,” Gavin and Avery said at the same time.

  He nodded in understanding. “This is one of them TV shows where you have to overcome obstacles to win a prize at the end, isn’t it?”

  Avery and Gavin smirked at each ot
her and shrugged. “Not exactly,” Gavin said, “but I can see why you might think that.”

  John collected his equipment and returned it all to where it belonged. He came back and shook everybody’s hand. As he did so, he had a strange look on his face. Finally, he started to head back toward his rig. Partway there, he swung back and asked, “You know you don’t have a back bumper?”

  “We know,” Gavin said.

  “What happened to it?”

  “It fell off.” Gavin’s voice was matter-of-fact.

  Eli piped up. “The duct tape gave out.”

  Avery said, “Without the duct tape, the paperclips couldn’t hold it in place any longer.”

  “We left it with someone in Moriarty. We’ll pick it up on our way back through,” added Gavin.

  John stared at them, mouth agape, for a minute. Then he shook his head, pivoted toward his too-tall SUV, and pulled himself up into it.

  ****

  With Gavin driving, they were soon underway. Avery sat back, mulling over her reaction to the man sitting beside her. She normally rebelled against being the passenger. Despite her deeply ingrained independence, though, something about Gavin made her comfortable with giving up that control.

  As Avery pondered her revelation, Eli asked Gavin, “Don’t you know anything about cars?”

  Gavin shrugged. “I know the basics, but steam from the engine is beyond my skill set. What about you? Do you know anything about cars?”

  Laughing, Eli said, “If I had a better signal, I’d look up a video online telling me what to do to fix it. I thought all adults were already supposed to know those sorts of things. You know, because you grew up in the dark ages before smart phones and Internet.”

  Crumbling up a napkin that had been sitting on the console, Gavin tossed it back at Eli and said, “You’ve got a lot to learn if you want to get anywhere in life there, bucko. Telling people they look and smell as good as dinosaurs isn’t going to get you too far.”