Page 11 of The Christmas Keeper

“Good, good. Well, off I go. See you at the gingerbread house bake-off next Friday at the fire hall.” Off he went, pleased with himself for being an asshole.

Kenan played for another thirty minutes or so, then ended his set. The crowd was saddened to see him lay down his old acoustic, but they understood they were now sitting here past closing time. It took some time to get everyone out. When the last customer left, I rushed to the door like a linebacker and threw the locks shut. Kenan chuckled as he lifted chairs from the floor to place them on the tables.

“How did you do with tips?” I asked, joining him to clear the floor for the broom and mop. It was incredible how much of a mess an inch of fluffy snow can make. Not that I generally paid a lot of attention to the floor, mind you. But Kenan seemed to be a mopper, and who was I to argue with a man who wanted clean floors?

“Really good.” He beamed at me around sixteen wooden legs in the air.

“Cool,” I replied, standing there like a dipshit, trying to think of something to say. “So, about the candle,” I blurted out. He cocked an eyebrow in question before moving to another table. “I’m sorry we had to extinguish it.”

“Meh, it’s okay.”

“Well, no, it’s not really. Al was being a jerk. I mean that candle probably should stay lit throughout the seven days, right?” I hustled around to the next table.

“Only if a miracle is taking place.” He gave me a wry smile. “Generally, we blow them out before bed, but if we have to leave the house, out they go.”

“Oh, okay, well, that’s good. I thought it might be a big sin or something.”

“Nope, it’s all good.”

“Good. Cool.” And dead space. Ugh, why could I not word? “You get presents every night, right? I should have thought to get you something.”

He folded his arms over two spindly wooden chair legs, dark eyes searching my face. “Brann, that’s super kind but we literally have known each other for less than forty-eight hours.”

“Well…yeah but as your friend I should have been prepared for…what?”

His head had tipped to the side, just an inch or so. “Are we friends?” I stared dully. “I mean, we just met. You offered me alittle gig to make money to fill up my tank. Friendship takes a little time to build.”

He had a point. My brain was stuck in tar while my mouth was rolling on a hamster wheel powered by a rodent on crack.

“I hope we can become friends before you head off on the next leg of your musical journey.” He nodded. I, feeling like a total baboon ass, kept talking. “So in that vein of us being potential friends, I’d have felt better about myself if I had gotten you a gift. Your religion must be pretty important to you if you carry a menorah.”

“Meh.” He shrugged before swinging another chair up and around. “As a kid, it was a weekly thing, sure, and I had my bar mitzvah and that was fun. As a teenager, when I went to college, I drifted, and I became adamant and rebelled against all things to do with Judaism. Those were my wild years. My grandpa used to say that all the time. ‘Kenan had his wild years but now God has brought him back,’ he’d say when I was straight enough to finally visit him in the nursing home. Pity my parents were about done with me by the time I stopped snorting ketamine up into my sinuses. Not that I blame them. I did some pretty terrible shit when I was high, blew some big chances.” He talked and worked. I worked and said nothing, eager to learn what I could about him before he saved enough cash to leave. “Anyway, the menorah was my grandfather’s. He left it to me. I guess he died hoping that if I had it, I would start settling down, find a guy, a nice Jewish man obviously, and we would start going to synagogue.”

We stalled by the jukebox as we had run out of chairs. “So your being gay upset the family?”

“Greatly. That was the first disappointing thing I did, or so my parents felt. My grandfather, though, lived through a lot in his time. He was the most accepting person I had ever met. Sometimes, when it’s a dark night, like dark in here,” he tappedhis chest, “I wonder why he died and not…well, not other family members who weren’t quite so understanding.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I softly said, then dared to squeeze his shoulder. “And I’m really sorry for allowing Al to extinguish your candle.

“Meh, it’s fine. I still performed the mitzvah.”

“I have no clue what that means.”

He laughed, a soft rolling laugh that did wild and wooly things to me. “I could tell by the blank look on your face. I’ll explain while we sweep and mop.”

He talked and swept, and I listened and mopped.

When we said goodnight and I went out the back door to get to my car, I was resigned to track down an electric menorah somewhere in this damn county, and I would find eight little gifts.

I was calling it holiday spirit. And if that spirit stuck it to Al while making Kenan smile then ho-ho-ho call me Old Saint Nick.

***

“How is it possible to have a town filled with stores and not one of them has an electric menorah?” I asked Fred and Wilma as I was chopping ice out of their pool with an axe. Yeah, winter farm chores were fun. Not. Fred eyeballed me as Wilma nibbled at the strings of my boots. Small bits of frozen goose water flew into the early morning rays of sun. The clear skies overnight had sent the temps plummeting into single digits. Fa-la-la-la-fucking-la. I stopped to catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my brow. Sweating this heavily when it was four degrees out was sacrilegious or something. “Speaking of religion,” I huffed as I placed my hands atop the axe handle, two impatient geese telling me in goose to hurry the fuck up so they can get a drink. “I need an electric menorah and some little gifts.”

Fred deposited a steaming pile of goose shit on the fresh hay I’d covered their snowy pen with. They had the run of the fenced-in yard during the day, but in the winter I liked to put bedding down so they could keep their little webbed feet off snow and ice.

“Are those your feelings about the holidays?” I asked Fred and got a loud honk. “Yeah, me too, but Kenan is alone and on the road so showing a little cheer to the guy won’t hurt.” Fred was not buying it. Wilma was too busy trying to pinch my ass to get me moving to care. “Ow, hey, that’s not the way to be. I’m just trying to find something for the guy for Hanukkah.”

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