SPN FIC - White Christmas
I'm cheating on this one a little bit. Jacksonville, Florida actually had a white Christmas in 1989, but since I've already tackled 1989, this is 1988. A little artistic license. I hope you forgive me. :)
Characters: Dean (age 9), Sam (age 5), OMC
Pairings: none
Rating: G
Spoilers: none
Length: 1693 words
Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah. No money.
White Christmas
By Carol Davis
The top of the boy’s head barely came level with the counter, so all Geoff could see of him was a small dome of dark hair.
Which started to sink out of sight.
A sound Geoff recognized all too well accompanied the sinking. It took him back more than a dozen years, to when Petey and Jonathan were small and had taken a world-shattering hit. Given that when you were five, anything more complicated than the peas being the wrong size was world-shattering, well… It was a familiar note.
When he stepped out from behind the counter he found the boy sitting on the floor, knees drawn up, lower lip covering the upper, tears dribbling relentlessly down round, cold-reddened cheeks. The little guy had a knitted cap scrunched up in one fist and was wringing the life out of it.
“What’s up, little man?” Geoff asked.
The boy peered up at him and snuffled in just the right key: the one guaranteed to melt the hardest heart.
“He’s okay.”
An older boy, maybe eight or nine, moved up close to the counter and set down a carton of milk, a roll of toilet paper and two cans of soup. Once his hands were free, he bent down to grasp the smaller boy by the arm and got a squeal of dismay for his trouble. Murmured encouragement got him nowhere.
“Find everything you wanted?” Geoff asked.
“Pudding,” the older boy sighed. “He wants pudding.”
“Already made, or the mix?”
“Already made. Please.”
“In the cooler, to the left of the orange juice and the eggs. Vanilla, chocolate, or butterscotch.”
They were brothers - that couldn’t have been more obvious if they’d been wearing matching outfits. And newcomers: after three years of running the mini-mart, Geoff knew all the neighborhood kids by sight if not by name. Visiting relatives for the holidays, maybe. The shoulders of their jackets and their shoes and the legs of their jeans were soaked from the hammering, mostly-frozen rain that’d been falling for the last couple of hours. Maybe that was the problem, Geoff mused: they’d just arrived after a long drive and the littler boy was tired and cold, and wet from running into the store from their car.
He heard the cooler door thwack open as he looked out the glass front of the mini-mart and saw no cars other than his own. When the older boy came back, Geoff asked him, “Live near here?”
“Yeah. Sort of. He’s okay.”
“Am NOT,” the smaller one said hotly.
“Get up off the floor, Sammy,” his brother instructed him. “I got you Chicken ‘n’ Stars, and pudding. We’re gonna go have supper.”
“I don’t WANT it.”
The older boy’s distress filled his eyes as he carefully sorted four one-dollar bills from a little clump of cash he pulled out of his jacket pocket, then placed them on the counter. He produced a smile that was polite but fake as Geoff handed him his change, both of them listening to the noise drifting up from the floor that said Sammy was about two breaths away from a full-on tantrum. The older boy gazed wearily down at his brother for a moment, then shrugged, “He’s mad because we can’t go to Disney World.”
“Ah,” Geoff said, tucking the soup into a paper bag. “Gotcha.”
“Don’t WANT to go to Disney World,” Sammy howled. “Want to go HOME.”
In a sense, it was a good thing he was sitting on the floor. If he’d been standing up, he’d likely start bouncing off the display shelves like a red-jacketed pinball. With a wash of sympathy for the older kid, Geoff abandoned bagging the groceries and crouched down beside Sammy, a move that Sammy greeted with a purple-faced glower of outrage.
“Hey,” Geoff offered quietly. “Don’t be so rough on the bro.”
“I HATE him.”
“No you don’t. He got you Chicken ‘n’ Stars. And pudding. Double-header.”
“I wanna go HOME.”
“Aw, how come? You don’t like Jacksonville? I moved here myself, all the way from Michigan. It’s nice here, when it stops raining.”
“I don’t LIKE it. There’s no SNOW in Florida. Santa’s sleigh doesn’t work in no SNOW.”
Geoff glanced up at the older boy, who sighed again and rolled his eyes: universal parent-and-older-sibling-speak for I don’t know what the hell he’s carrying on about.
“You from up north?” Geoff asked the brother, who shrugged an acknowledgment. “See, here’s what I found out when I moved down here,” he told Sammy. “I was pretty worried about the whole Santa thing too. So were my sons. Petey and Jon. They’re in college now, but man, were they worried. So I asked around, and I found out that Santa’s got this fancy arrangement underneath the sleigh. Ever see a seaplane? It’s got pontoons on it so it can float on water. Or one of those boats that’s got wheels underneath so it can work like a car? Santa’s sleigh, same deal. If there’s no snow, these wheels come down, and presto. He can go anywhere he needs to. Plus there’s the whole ‘flying’ thing. So don’t worry, big guy. Santa’s got it covered.”
Sammy scowled at the linoleum for a minute, then groused, “He thinks we’re in Nohio. We’re s’posed to be NOHIO.”
“We’re going back, Sammy,” his brother said. “I told you that. We’re just gonna be here a few days, then we’re going back to Ohio.”
“We can go now.”
“No. We can’t. You know what Dad said. You’re gonna go back to your same school, with your same teacher, and we’ll be in our same apartment. But we have to stay here a few days so Dad can work. Now come on. We’ve gotta go back and eat supper.”
“I don’t want no soup.”
“Then I’ll make you a sandwich.”
“I don’t want no sandwich.”
The brother offered him a look that said You want a good smack upside the head?
“I want DAD,” Sammy howled.
“He’ll be home in a little while. I told you.”
The older boy’s gaze drifted to the front of the store, to the parking lot beyond. What he was thinking was pretty obvious: he’d heard the same reports Geoff had, that the roads all around Jacksonville were coated with ice, that the sleet and freezing rain was going to go on falling, and the driving situation would get a lot worse before it got better. Every news channel was saying the same thing: stay home. Stay off the road.
Geoff would have laid money that the boys’ father was out on the road somewhere.
“That milk’s a little bit out of date,” he said, beckoning to the older boy. “Here, let’s switch this for the newer stuff.”
The boy followed him - although somewhat reluctantly - to the back of the store.
“Your dad out driving somewhere?” Geoff asked quietly. When the boy nodded - even more reluctantly - Geoff told him, “You guys on your own?” The boy didn’t answer, but there was a flash of something in his eyes that said yes. “If you don’t hear from him, if it gets late and he should have been back, you call me. The phone number’s on the receipt. I’m here till midnight. If it’s later than that, call me at home. I’m Geoff Thompson. I’m in the phone book.”
“Okay,” the boy murmured.
Sammy was still sulking on the floor when they returned to the checkout counter. Geoff finished bagging the groceries, tucked in a couple of candy canes, then reached underneath the counter and pulled out one of the battered umbrellas he kept there for times like this.
Well…not quite like this. For rain. Ordinary, unfrozen rain.
“You should get back,” he told the older boy. “Stay warm. You can bring the umbrella back tomorrow. Or whenever.”
“I want Dad,” Sammy mumbled from the floor.
The older boy reached down, took him by the arm, and hauled him to his feet.
Sammy burst into tears.
“Sammy,” his brother said helplessly. “Come on, cut it out. We’re gonna have soup, okay? Then you can watch cartoons.”
Sammy wasn’t the only one who was tired and cold and wet. His brother looked at Geoff like he’d entirely run out of maneuvers. And patience. And the ability to think. Geoff smiled at him in a way he hoped was supportive, opened his mouth to speak…
And looked out the window.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
It was snowing. Not a flake or two here and there, Mother Nature’s version of sprinkling salt on a burger. It was full-out, White Christmas, already accumulating on the asphalt type snow. Which would do nothing to improve the condition of the already lousy roads, but…still.
“Sammy, look,” the older boy said, a little awestruck himself. “It’s snowing.”
Sammy yanked himself out of his brother’s grasp, went to the door and pressed his face and palms to the glass.
“They said it doesn’t snow here,” the older boy murmured.
“Last time was like forty years ago,” Geoff admitted, eyes glued on the drifts of white coming down from a steel-gray sky.
The three of them stood at the door of the mini-mart for a while, watching the snow come down. A little before five, the older boy spotted something that made him stand a little straighter. He was looking at the motel across the road - where they were staying, no doubt. More specifically, at a car pulling into the motel’s lot.
“Dad’s back,” he said, and the cheer that filled his voice was a wonderful thing. “We gotta go. Thanks, mister.”
Within seconds, he’d seized the bag of groceries from the counter - leaving the umbrella behind - grasped Sammy’s jacket with his free hand, and propelled both of them out the door. The bell over the door tinkled as they went out. Geoff stood watching them slip and slide across the lot, stop briefly at the road until the traffic cleared, then run across to the motel as if, like Clarence the angel, the ringing of the bell had given them wings.
“Anytime, boys,” Geoff said softly. “Anytime.”