by Jon Cohen
Harry, too, he’d move on—to Bradford County maybe, or Tioga County, somewhere on the other side of the Endless Mountains. Start his new life.
He’d thought about this a lot. Harry’s Trees. What would that look like? He could work in a nursery. Or on a Christmas tree farm, there were tons of those. Or launch something of his own. There’d be a little start-up money when he sold the house in Waverly. But what he would not do, was stay here. He deserved nothing more from Amanda and Oriana. He’d done some good here, and that was enough. Spread a little gold, move on. Ramblin’ Harry, the tree man.
“Were there any Rottweilers?” Oriana said.
“Not a dog in sight. My easiest delivery yet.” No Rottweilers, but a yard full of dinosaurs. Oriana would love this part. Harry was about to tell her about it, when he looked over at Amanda. She’d started toward the table with a plate of pancakes and suddenly stopped. She cocked her head, listening to something outside.
“Mom?” Oriana said.
Now Harry and Oriana heard it. Out front, the sound of car wheels braking hard on gravel. Another car braked. Car doors slammed. Voices.
“Somebody hit a tree!” Oriana shouted.
But there’d been no crash. Amanda rushed toward the front of the house, Oriana and Harry behind her. They looked out the living room window. Two cars were pulled over on the side of the road, teenagers piling out. The kids stood at the top of the walk, excited, pulling out their phones and taking pictures of the front of Amanda’s house.
“What the hell—” Amanda yanked open the front door. Looked down. Her hand went to her mouth. There on her front step. A burlap bag.
Harry saw the bag and shrank back, out of view of the open door. Oriana squeezed past him and joined her mother on the front porch.
There were six or seven teenagers. One of them shouted, “It’s the gold!”
Another one shouted, “Open it!” They all began to chant. “Open it! Open it!”
Amanda and Oriana turned and looked at Harry—Harry in the shadows, shaking his head. No, not me. I didn’t put it there. Not me, not me.
Amanda yelled to the kids. “It’s nothing. It’s a prank. Get back in your cars. Go to school.”
They were having none of it. “Open it! Open it!”
Probably the kids themselves, right? They were pranking her. That must be it. Well, she wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. Making her look like a fool. She was starting to get furious.
But Oriana, kneeling behind her, had untied the bag. The morning sun coming up over the maple trees hit the inside of the bag, lighting up Oriana’s face in a golden burst.
Oriana stunned, Amanda stunned. The teenagers, stunned—and then they went crazy. Laughing, pushing each other, fist-punching the air, moving in closer with their phone cameras.
Harry, inside the doorway, about to have a heart attack, as again Amanda turned to look at him. Her face, hard with anger. What did you do? What is this?
A cheer went up from the teenage crowd. “Gold, gold, gold!” Taking a million pictures, pulling up their Facebook pages, Instagram, going nuts.
Amanda looked down. Oriana had reached into the bag and was holding a fistful of gold coins into the sunshine, as if to verify for herself that, inexplicably, Susquehanna Santa had made the fourth delivery to the Jeffers household.
Utterly confused and upset, she too caught Harry’s eye. This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t The Plan, Harry. And there was fear in her look, too. Because the last thing that her mother, the proudest woman on earth, would ever accept or understand was the gift of a bag of gold.
“Oriana!”
She poured the gold from her hand back into the bag.
And what an image that made on the internet, fifteen seconds later, the zoomed-in videos of a glittering waterfall of slowly tumbling coins.
Amanda gripped Oriana’s shoulder. “Go back inside. Now.”
Oriana whipped into the house. She stood in front of Harry, breathless. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do it. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Trembling with hurt, she stared at him. Because how could he not have done it? Why would he trick them? Why would he endanger the mission? “You ruined everything!” She pushed past him and ran upstairs to her room.
“Oriana,” Harry called after her. Shit.
Out on the front porch, Amanda had picked up the bag of gold. She shouted to the teenagers. “You guys get off my lawn. Go to school. And stop taking pictures!” But already, two more cars loaded with teenagers had pulled over. And it would grow. Because that’s the way it went, Amanda thought, in despair. She was one of the winners now. The circus was coming to town.
She stormed back inside the house and slammed the door.
“It wasn’t me,” Harry said.
She threw the bag at him. It him in the chest like a cannon ball.
“Yeah, it wasn’t you? It was the other Susquehanna Santa, was it?”
“Amanda.”
“So, what—I kissed you, that freaks you out, you feel all guilty? I get the consolation prize? Is that it?”
“What? No.”
“I get bought off? Or wait. You feel sorry for the poor widow? You think she can’t make it on her own? She needs the help of a good man?”
“I put this bag on the steps of a double-wide trailer in Lenox.”
Outside, more cars pulled up. “Look at it out there, Harry.”
“I delivered it, and I drove away.”
“You know what?” She pointed out the window. “You go out there. And you tell the world—because that’s what’s about to come to my front goddamn door—that you’re Susquehanna Santa. I don’t want to be the story. You be the story.”
“Amanda, listen to me. Early on, yes, of course I thought about giving you some gold. But I didn’t. And I wouldn’t. Because I know how proud you are. You think I don’t respect that? Well, screw you.”
Amanda took a breath. Harry, angry and hurt, standing there holding the bag.
“I can’t explain it,” he said. “I can show you the trailer in Lenox. A double-wide with a yard full of dinosaur sculptures.”
Amanda took a deeper breath.
And the look on her face was unmistakable. Harry saw it. He’d struck some kind of chord. Some other possibility.
“The gold,” he said. “This whole adventure. It’s about me trying to wipe the slate, not clean, but a little cleaner. To settle my soul, just a little.”
Amanda’s thoughts whirling. Dinosaur sculptures. Cliff, in bed, would talk about Hoop.
Harry seeing it. “There’s somebody else, isn’t there, who needs to play Santa? Somebody else with an unsettled soul.”
“I can’t keep it.”
“You know it wasn’t me. I can see it in your face.”
“I can’t possibly keep it.”
Harry pressed. “The small world of the Endless Mountains. Whoever I gave the bag to—it was somebody who owes you.”
Amanda dazed. “For doing something stupid. Infantile. But...a bag of gold? That’s way, way too much. It makes no sense.”
“Whoever gave it to you—it makes a lot of sense to them. You have to keep it, Amanda. You have to accept what’s being offered here.”
“I can’t.”
“You know what’s even more magic than a fairy tale?” Harry said. “Real life. And it just landed on your doorstep. It’s magic when somebody tries this hard to say they’re sorry.”
Amanda thinking: from the grum to Harry to Hoop to Cliff to me. As impossibly magic as any fairy tale. Hoop—quiet, invisible Hoop—among his dinosaurs, goes to his only friend. And they sit there in the night. And they see their chance. A way to wipe the slate clean.
“And when you accept an apology—that’s also a kind of magic,” Harry said. “You need to accep
t things from people, Amanda. Especially an apology. When someone is this sorry, you accept it.”
He handed the bag back to her.
“And hell, do it for Oriana. Pay off your debts. Put a ton of it away for her college. Be practical. And be gracious.”
Outside, more cars pulling up.
Amanda gave him a long hard look. “All right. You want to talk magic and fairy tales? You want me to stand out there with this bag of gold and smile?”
“You don’t have to smile. Well. Maybe just a tiny smile.”
“Then we make a deal.”
Uh-oh, Harry thought.
“If I have to believe in magic,” she said, “then you have to stop believing in magic. Stop torturing yourself with it. You think buying a lottery ticket caused Beth’s death.”
Harry wanted out of this deal.
“All you did was go into a store. You’d done it a million times. Buying a ticket—a dumb-ass waste of money—but not a magic crime. Not some terrible fairy tale come to life.”
Harry looked out the window.
“You know what I wish?” Amanda said, her voice breaking. “I wish I kissed Dean goodbye the morning he died. I always kissed him goodbye before I went to work. Always. But that day, I didn’t. And if I had kissed him, our lucky kiss, our magic kiss, no harm would’ve come to him.”
Harry turned to face her. Pain in both their faces.
“Except, Harry, kisses don’t protect the people we love. And buying lottery tickets don’t cause cranes to collapse. The world does what the world does.”
She moved close to him. “All this talk about me accepting. You need to accept something, too. You did all this—” she placed his hand on the bag of gold “—to break free from your crummy job, to have an adventure, to help my Oriana. To settle your soul. But, Harry, the biggest, hardest thing you have to do? Stop believing in that lottery ticket and forgive yourself.”
A sound behind them. They turned. Oriana was standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“Harry,” she said. “The lottery ticket isn’t magic. It isn’t.”
Harry looked at her.
“Okay?” she said.
The world hung in the balance.
Harry, unstuck in time, saw Beth in her red coat on Market Street. She blew him a kiss and vanished. Harry blinked and returned. Oriana waiting. Amanda waiting.
“Okay,” he whispered.
Oriana ran across the room and hugged him. Harry reached out and brought Amanda into the circle.
“And The Grum’s Ledger,” Oriana said, her voice faltering. “It—”
Amanda kissed the top of Oriana’s head. “The Grum’s Ledger is definitely magic.”
Amanda looked into Harry’s eyes. He smiled.
The commotion outside in Amanda’s front yard would not be denied.
Amanda nudged Harry toward the kitchen. “You have to get out of here.” It wasn’t just kids now. All sorts of people were pulling up in trucks and cars. “Stay out of those woods until it dies down. Away from the tree house.”
“And the quarry,” Oriana said.
“You going to be able to handle this?” Harry said.
Amanda shrugged. “Oriana goes to school, I go to work.” She held up the bag and jingled. “They’ll follow me like flies.”
“Take that to a bank.”
“Get lost. Go.”
“One more thing,” Harry said sheepishly. “It’s not as much money as you think. It’s taxable income.”
Amanda feigned outrage. “What? You didn’t pay taxes on your end? Santa, you suck.”
* * *
Sure enough, they followed her everywhere. But Amanda figured the way to keep a lid on it was to keep them both safe—Oriana inside her school and herself inside Susquehanna Hospital.
Though she did have to talk to them outside the bank. The press shouted questions at her. There were two state troopers on the bank steps.
“How does it feel?”
“Strange,” Amanda said.
“Louder.”
“Strange!”
Some people applauded. Amanda squirmed. They were people she knew: friends, neighbors from up in the hills, a couple of folks she’d treated in the ER.
“I’m not a hero. It’s just one of those things.”
People laughed and applauded again.
“I have to go work. I’m way late.”
“What are you going to do with the money?”
God, how embarrassing. Amanda felt like she was standing in front of the world in her underwear. “What any sensible person would do. Pay my bills, get new tires for my truck, put away the rest for my child’s education. And that’s it. All gone.”
A television reporter from the Scranton station, WNEP, held up a microphone. “What would you like to say to Susquehanna Santa?”
Which one? thought Amanda. To Cliff and Hoop, you’re more than forgiven. To Harry. She blushed. He’d given her something far more valuable than gold—how could she ever thank him enough? All she could do, for all the Santas out there, was to look into the TV camera and say, “Thank you.”
* * *
Noooooooooo!
No, no, no! Susquehanna Santa practically drives by my house and stops at Amanda Jeffers’s place? A mile apart, he couldn’t haul his fat Santa ass up my front walk and drop that three hundred thou on my doorstep? Would it have killed him? Because it sure was killing Stu, who sat at his desk, head in his hands.
It had all come together. Deliriously together, the stars aligning. I was foreclosing on her. And the Big Fish was coming, and I was about to dangle Amanda’s fancy hand-hewn log house in front of him, and he was going to bite.
Noooooo! Why did Santa swoop in and rescue you, Amanda? You were in the throes of financial despair. We had you. I know we had you.
But okay, okay, Stu told himself. Breathe. So not the Big Fish and The Widow. But I still have Pratt Library. The Pratt closure was a sure thing—but then that began to gnaw at him, because the world was so ruthless. Sure things could suddenly be snatched from one’s grasp.
“No,” he whimpered.
Would the Pratt deal move fast enough to appease his boss, Mr. Bromler? It wasn’t like Stu could go over there and personally bulldoze the place. And what if, spiteful backbiters that they were, town council members finally vote to close Pratt, but then don’t award the contract to Stu and Endless Realty? And even though they’d shaken hands on it, he didn’t trust Jerry. If Santa could betray me, so could Jerry Palco.
He glared at the Susquehanna County map taped to his office wall. It was quiet, the office closed for Mama Bromler’s memorial service. The service was this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. at Kelmer’s Funeral Home. Stu would make sure to squeeze out conspicuous tears. Should he bring a whip and flagellate himself before Mama’s casket? Whatever you want, Mr. Bromler, just tell me.
Stu was almost in tears right now, staring at the map, lit by the late-morning sun. He held the red pushpin for bag number four. Elkdale, Halfordsville, Wynefield—and right there, jeez, Santa, is my house, not Amanda Jeffers’s house.
Stu jammed the pushpin into place, like he was sticking a needle into a voodoo doll. He hoped Amanda felt its sting, the lucky broad. So beautiful, such a nice house, has herself a new boyfriend and now a ton of money. The world is her oyster.
He sat there all morning, looking at all the photos on the internet. Phil Bartek, Ginger Thompson, Brutus the Rottweiler, Amanda the Beautiful. The winners. That’s what the internet called them. The Winners.
“Stu Giptner. Winner.” The words, dust in his mouth. He slumped in his chair and stared in a daze at the fourth red pushpin. He chewed on his lower lip.
He sat and sat. And then he stood. And the next thing he knew, he was in his car and driving toward Amanda’s house. He had to be near the place w
here the bag of gold had actually landed. He couldn’t help it. As torturous as it was, he had to bask in the aura of wealth.
But when he got there, the gawkers were there. Go away, gawkers, I wish to gawk in private. You people don’t understand. That gold was mine. That very house was mine. She was in arrears on her loan, I had a Big Fish, and it was all mine.
Stu gulped back his anguish and drove slowly past the house. A quarter mile down the road, the maple trees dense on either side, he saw an opening in the foliage. An old, overgrown road, the wheel ruts just visible. He pulled his car into it and parked, a few yards in. He needed a smoke. He needed to be near the house. He needed. Stu Giptner needed.
He began to walk back through the forest toward Amanda’s house. He wasn’t dressed for it. In fact, he was wearing a coat and tie and his good shoes for Mama Bromler’s service. He smoked his cigarette and crunched along beneath the trees. Ah, the forest—so good for a man’s soul. Why didn’t he go out into nature more often? Look at all these trees. They’re so...tree-like.
He stubbed out his cigarette on a tree and lit another one. Looked around. Hey, where was that tree house, anyway? Harry Crane, all snug as a bug in his fancy tree house. You know what, while I’m out here, I think I’ll go find me a Harry Crane. What do you say to that, Harry? Let’s you and I duke it out in the tree house. Mano a mano. The last man standing gets Amanda and her gold.
Stu peered into the deep woods, uneasily.
Really, where was the tree house? The rhododendron and mountain laurel scratched at him as he walked. And which way was Amanda’s house? He’d lost his bearings. He lit another cigarette. And for that matter—which way was his car? He stopped and twirled like a ballerina.
The forest seemed suddenly oppressive. Suddenly? The forest was always oppressive, what in God’s name was he thinking, coming out here? He never went into the forest. Nothing good ever happened to children in the forest. He remembered Olive Perkins all witchy on her chair in the Reading Corner, reading Grimm’s fairy tales to rapt schoolchildren. Little Stu among them, his mouth hanging open. Scared the living shit out of him, those stories. That’s why I’m knocking down Pratt Library. The place scarred me for life.
