Page 19 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
On the other side of the farmhouse, the Christmas trees farm spread out, neat rows of low trees creating an incredibly well-behaved artificial forest. There was nobody moving around over there yet. He supposed they probably weren’t open this early. The Christmas trees looked toylike from up here, rows of model railroad trees, sparkling with snow and frost on their dark branches.
Hands shoved in the pockets of his coat, he made his way down the hill, skirting frozen puddles under a light dusting of snow that threatened to send him tumbling ingloriously on his face. His shadow stretched long and blue across the field beside him, where faded yellow stubble showed beneath patches of snow.
The farm looked like a painting. Jace didn’t have an artistic bone in his body, but he wondered if Holly or her sisters (however many there were) ever liked to paint or take pictures of this beautiful place. Or was it so ordinary to them that they didn’t even notice anymore?
A sudden flurry of barking made him stop. Two animals were trotting toward him. One was the black and white dog from yesterday. The other—he wasn’t even sure if itwasa dog. It had a fluffy head of silky white and brown hair, andthe rest of it was mostly red and green. Then it got closer and he saw that it definitely had a dog head, and a swishing plumed tail, and the rest of it was covered in a ....
“Is that dog wearing a sock?” he said out loud.
At least it looked like a sock, cheerily red and green striped. The heel was located just above the dog’s rump.
“Uh, hi there.” Jace held out a hand so the border collie could sniff it. Rocket was just as friendly as she had been yesterday, wagging her tail before she settled in beside him. The other one, not so much; it skittered around the edges, sock and all, just out of reach, but at least it stopped barking as long as he didn’t look at it.
Feeling as if he was being escorted by an honor guard, he reached the big open space in front of the farmhouse. Part equipment storage, part parking area, and part yard, it was a wide dirt and gravel space that lapped around the farmhouse to the barn and other outbuildings. Piles of snow had frozen into solidity around the edges, suggesting recent plowing efforts.
A couple of large wooden signs with cheery Christmas trees painted on them, amateurish but recognizable, pointed to the FAMILY CHRISTMAS TREE FARM!! with arrows. He was right, it looked like it hadn’t opened yet. A hanging chain, secured on both ends to a pair of posts, closed off the side road that led in the indicated direction. Coming closer, Jace saw the hours on a second sign: DECEMBER 1-24, 9-4.
“You look like you need something to do, son!”
The gruff voice barked out a statement rather than a question, and carried an air of implicit command that had Jace’s spine straightening even as he turned around. No doubt at all: this was the Colonel. He was a large man, not heavy but solid and tall, with close-cropped iron-gray hair. He wore a heavy canvas farm jacket, work pants, and heavyboots, and he was carrying an axe in one hand and a snow shovel in the other.
“Er—I’m happy to. Sir.” Jace had to resist the impulse to salute. Instead he held out a hand. “I’m Jace Wheeler.”
“Figured,” the Colonel said.
He didn’t bother to introduce himself, but he put down the axe to shake Jace’s hand. His handshake was so hard and abrupt that Jace, even with shifter strength, felt slightly outclassed, and had to resist the urge to wince as the Colonel squeezed his fingers through the glove. The guy had to be in his sixties; what had he been like when he was younger? He released Jace’s hand just as abruptly.
“You want to learn how to cut down a Christmas tree, son?”
“Uh, sure,” Jace said.
The Colonel looked down. The sock-wrapped dog was sitting on his boot, looking wretched. “Uh, let’s put this—critter back in the house before it freezes, and then I’ll show you.”
“What kind of dog is that, anyway?” Jace had never seen anything quite like it.
“Hairless crested,” the Colonel said in a gloomy voice.
After the dog and its sock were firmly deposited in the house and told to stay there, which made it look even more depressed, the Colonel set off for the tree farm with long, swinging strides. They went around the posts—Rocket trotted under the chain—and walked up the short drive to the tree farm proper.
There was a large, open shed, with a decorated Christmas tree on either side of its entrance. Inside there was a folding table, some chairs, and a few big bales of straw. Shelves lined the walls, with a few items on them: a couple of small chainsaws, rolls of twine and plastic, safety equipment.
“Warmup area and checkout,” the Colonel explained. Heleaned the axe and shovel against the wall and picked up a chainsaw. “You take that one,” he said, nodding to the other. Jace picked it up and found that it was lighter than he’d expected. “It’s electric. You ever use one of these before?”
This was not a guy you fibbed to. “No, sir,” Jace said. He’d used a lot of tools, but not something like that.
The Colonel jerked his head in a small nod. Jace couldn’t tell what that meant, though it seemed more approving than dismissive. “You ever buy a tree from one of these places before?”
“No,” Jace said, feeling on slightly firmer footing. “I’m a city kid. We got our tree from the hardware store.” A long time ago, when there had been a tree at all, but he decided not to mention that part.
Okay, that wasn’t an especially approving look. “Well, you don’t just cut it down and throw it at the customer. There’s a technique.”
“I have to tell you that I might have trouble with some of it, depending,” Jace said. He hated talking about this, but he pushed himself through.Honesty, remember.“My hands are a little clumsy right now. It comes and goes. I can handle ordinary jobs okay, but anything that needs a lot of fine dexterity, I might have trouble with.”
The Colonel didn’t even bat an eye. “Son, I’ve had more than a few veterans out here. I’ve taught this to everyone from guys in their eighties to a nice gal with an artificial leg. You have any trouble, we’ll deal with it. Now let’s go cut down some trees.”
Over the next hour or so, Jace learned more than he ever wanted to know about Christmas trees, and the cutting and tying thereof. The farm let customers choose their own trees, and offered easy-to-use saws and safety equipment to anyone who wanted the Christmas memory experience of cutting their own tree. Most customers simply chose a treeand had it cut and tied for them. There was a small wagon for moving the larger trees, as well as tarps and twine for bundling up the branches. Some customers took their trees home with them, while others accepted the farm’s offer of free delivery.
Never pausing, clearly expecting Jace to keep up, the Colonel showed him the process for taking down customers’ information for delivery, processing the cut trees, and noting their exact location in the tree farm in the ledger which was apparently kept for the purpose. Jace’s handwriting had never been great, but with his hands in their current condition, it was a sloppy, barely legible mess. The other writing in the ledger was identifiable as the Colonel’s—sharp, large, square printing—and a flowing hand that was recognizably the same as the handwriting on the flyer, so definitely Holly. Jace’s attempts were going to look like chicken scratch next to that. But he’d handled the trees okay, so he figured that folding under a little bit of clerical work was ridiculous.
