Chapter 10 #2
“Harrison, you do not understand,” she said impatiently.
“It’s supposed to snow. If it snows, we are stuck.
For days! We do not know how to do snow here.
We are not one of those states north of the Red River where everyone toboggans to work.
There are not enough snowplows to help us, so we need to be prepared.
Did you not hear about the Snowmageddon of ’21? ”
He vaguely remembered a statewide power outage during a freak winter storm that went on for a week. “I think I might have heard a couple of things,” he said uncertainly. But Amy didn’t hear him. She was already in the van.
He climbed into the passenger seat and looked around. Duchess was in the dog booster behind them, curled up and asleep. “This thing is like a cockpit,” he said, taking in the enormous dashboard and the futuristic lighting.
“It’s a beast,” Amy agreed. “We need a store.”
“I saw one a couple of miles toward the highway,” Harrison offered.
“Food?”
“Yes.”
“Clothes?”
Clothes? “Umm…maybe some T-shirts?”
“Hmm,” Amy said. “Did it look like the kind of place that would have lighter fluid or fire sticks, that sort of thing?”
Harrison laughed. “Are we going to have to burn the house down to survive?”
“You jest, but we have to be prepared for all possibilities.” She put the minivan in gear and took off. At a clip, he noticed.
The minivan rode like a boat, a soft swaying on its axle. Amy turned on the radio. “Are you okay with rock and roll?”
Harrison grinned. “I’m okay with whatever you can pick up out here.”
“We used to come out here in high school,” she said. “There’s an old quarry halfway to Sherman where we would go to drink the booze we stole from our parents.”
“Sounds totally safe,” he said.
“No, it was terribly dangerous and I would absolutely die if I knew one of my sons was doing that. But come on, we weren’t saints, right?” She looked at him. “Wait…were you?”
“I…I wasn’t a saint,” he said. But he had been, sort of.
Only because he was playing golf when he wasn’t at school.
As Amy went on to tell him about the night the sheriff rolled up and caused them all to scatter on foot (she lost her favorite pair of sandals, which still seemed to be a source of irritation), Harrison realized that he didn’t have a history to share.
Everything in his life had been about golf.
He could not begin to imagine what it would be without golf.
That picture, in his head, was just a blank landscape.
Just before they reached a highway, he pointed out Carlotta Jane’s General Store and Amy pulled in.
Next to Carlotta Jane’s was a taco shack, and on the other side, a tire store.
All three storefronts were festooned with Christmas lights.
The glass windows were painted with pine trees and snow.
Amy got Duchess, and together, they walked inside, both of them coming to a halt right over the threshold. The place was…interesting.
The wood floors and paneled walls gave off a barnlike vibe.
So did the fake barn windows painted on the walls.
The head of a longhorn steer hung on one wall, which Harrison thought was a choice.
Just inside the entrance was a rack of cowboy hats and belts, almost as if people raced in every day for the hat and belt before they got down the road.
A sign indicated boots were in the back.
On the other side of the center Christmas tree was a rack of toys and a big box painted to look like a chimney.
A sign invited the patron to buy a toy and put it in the chimney to be distributed to underprivileged children.
Behind that, Harrison could see a small grocery section, and next to that, home goods.
“Wow,” Amy said, cradling Duchess to her. “This store has everything.” She sounded impressed.
Harrison turned around and pulled a cart from the line of them. “Shall we?”
“We definitely shall,” Amy replied. She pulled a mat out of her tote, put it on the baby seat of the cart, and deposited Duchess there. She pointed in the direction of the groceries.
They wandered the aisles with an eclectic selection of delicacies mixed in with the more run-of-the-mill offerings. Harrison held up a tin of caviar to see what Amy thought about adding it to the basket. Amy looked at him like he was an alien and held up a tin of bean dip.
“Now we’re talking,” Harrison said, and put the caviar back on the shelf. “Fritos? Or tortilla chips?”
“What do you think?” Amy asked.
Harrison pretended to consider it. “Both.”
“Both!” she echoed with delight, and leaped across the aisle, grabbing a bag of each and tossing them in.
They carried on down the aisles, filling the cart with junk food and foods they wanted to try. Fancy summer sausage. A remoulade sauce. A jar of tiny pickles. Oreo cookies. Popcorn. Candy.
At some point, Amy halted their progress and leaned over the side of the cart to have a look at the contents. “You realize there is very limited nutritional value in this cart, don’t you? What if we are stranded for a long time?”
“Gosh.” Harrison scratched his chin. “Cannibalism?”
“Possibility,” Amy said. “Or maybe we just hike out?” Her eyes were shining with amusement. “But I think we’ve got a pretty good shot of surviving another Snowmageddon with this load. Let’s check out the home goods.”
They veered into that aisle, where Harrison picked up a can of lighter fluid and a single pack of chopped wood, which he slid onto the bottom rack. When he stood up, Amy was putting two bottles of wine into the cart. “We have plenty of booze, remember?”
“But do we?” she asked skeptically.
Harrison laughed. “I like the way you plan for disasters.”
“Thank you. I figure if I’m going to die, I’m not going to die sober. You?”
“Definitely not sober.”
She grinned at him, and he felt a stir in his chest. It was that thing his body did when he was feeling on the verge of giddiness, like after a great putt, or when a woman liked him.
They carried on, circling through the boots to examine them.
Harrison tried on some blue ostrich cowboy boots that carried a price tag of almost one thousand dollars.
The boots had very pointy tips, and there was something about them that made him walk a little bowlegged.
He walked down the aisle with his pants legs tucked into the boots, trying to fit his feet into them properly.
Amy could not contain her laughter and said he walked like a sumo wrestler.
She grabbed some boots that were actually sandals.
Beneath the quarters and uppers of the boot was a Crocs-like thong.
She did the fashion walk up and down the aisle and she and Harrison giggled like kids.
When they’d tired of the boots, they turned the corner and found blankets. She picked up a burnt orange Texas Longhorns blanket. Harrison picked up a fleece lap rug. “You do know there are at least one hundred blankets in that house, all Christmas themed, right?” he reminded her.
“This afternoon there will be one hundred and two. It’s so cold! So dreary! The more blankets the better, don’t you think?”
As if he could disagree with anything she said right now. “I do.”
They tossed the blankets into the cart and continued on, past the Christmas ornaments without stopping, and Amy noted the remarkable constraint that required.
They turned down another aisle and found themselves in the dog section.
After a healthy debate, during which Amy made Harrison hold Duchess up so she could, in turn, hold up an elf costume, an Olaf costume, and a Santa costume, they decided that the elf costume, with its cute little hat, was essential to keep Duchess warm during the coming Snowmageddon.
They didn’t waste any time, putting the costume on the dog immediately, then putting her back in the cart.
Harrison found moose antlers for a larger dog and put them on Amy. She took a selfie. “Hey,” she said, when she checked out the photo. “Do you see what I see?”
Harrison leaned over her shoulder to look at her phone. And then they both slowly turned to look behind them at dozens upon dozens of Santa’s Helpers—the elves on shelves that moved at night—staring at them. They looked at each other, and Amy whispered, “Run.”
They walked as quickly as they could out of the aisle and turned the corner into what could only be considered nirvana at Carlotta Jane’s: the aisle of ugly Christmas sweaters.
“We have to,” Harrison said. “It’s the only way we’ll stay warm, right?”
“Right. The amount of polyester alone has to trap body heat better than a NASA space blanket,” Amy said.
“Okay. You choose one. I’ll choose one. No peeking. We’ll do a sweater reveal at the lake house. Deal?”
“Deal.”
They searched through them, and when they had each selected one—rolling them up so the other could not see what was on the sweater—they decided it was time to cash out before they’d spent their entire savings.
They made their way to the cash register, Duchess’s nose in the air, sniffing the many delectable smells, her elf hat firmly in place.
The woman at the cash register had a small Christmas tree woven into her hair. “You two find what you need?” she asked as she began to scan items.
“Not quite,” Harrison said, and pointed to a basket behind her. “We’ll take a couple of those surprise Christmas ornaments.”
“Our biggest seller. You never know if you’re going to get a plain old ball or something really fun.” She finished ringing up the items, leaned over to scratch Duchess behind the ears, then gave them the total.
Neither Harrison nor Amy moved a moment. “Wow,” Amy said, the first to speak.
It was a lot. Not that he couldn’t afford it, but the conservative fiscal gremlin that lived in him was protesting loudly. “I’ve got this,” Harrison said, and reached for his wallet.
“No, you don’t,” Amy said, and put her hand on his arm. “I’ve got this. You bought pastries.”
“You ate one donut, Amy.”