TOYS FOR TOTS
She’s always enjoyed pushing buttons; I think she got it from her mother, who was always quick to punch for the floors when we got into elevators. She likes gadgets, phones, cameras, computers—anything with buttons. She adjusted the heater higher and turned the louvers in the vent toward herself, closing her eyes and savoring the warmth.
I didn’t say anything as the windshield wipers, set on automatic, slapped across the glass three times.
“Gimme your gun.”
“Why?”
“I wanna shoot you.”
With more than a quarter century in law enforcement, I’m savvy to the holiday ways of criminals and emotionally disturbed people. “No.”
She’d arrived from Philadelphia, and I was driving her down from the airport on the winding Zimmerman Trail descending into the shimmering retail lights of Billings, Montana. It was the holidays, and my daughter needed things. Cady pulled a few strands of strawberry blonde hair from her face with a bright grin. “So . . . I’ll ask again, what do you want for Christmas?”
“I don’t need anything.”
She turned in the seat and, refusing to dim the cheer, reached back, scratching the fur behind Dog’s ears. He grinned, too. “That—is not what I asked.”
I navigated the traffic light at Grand and Twenty-Seventh Street. “I’d rather you saved your money.” I slowed the truck and watched the first snowflakes drift down from the darkened sky in an innocent fashion, the way they always did; we were two hours from home across some of the emptiest high plains countryside, and I wasn’t fooled. “Do we have to go to the mall?”
Three more slaps of the wipers.
The clear, frank, gray eyes opened and traveled across the defrosting windshield with a frost of their own that was doing anything but de. “You are not adopting the proper gift-purchasing and gift-giving attitude.” She let that statement settle before continuing. “No, we don’t have to go to the mall; but if you could run me down to Gillette, I’d like to get you a ton of bulk product for Christmas.”
Gillette, Wyoming—one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world.
“A week ago, you said we could do some shopping when you picked me up.”
I did.
“You promised.”
I had.
She stretched out a hand, the Burberry coat sleeve riding up her arm, and flipped on the radio, readjusting the station to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” “You always get like this at the holidays.” She fooled with the search button, this time coming up with Andy Williams and “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” “What’s the best gift Mom ever gave you?”
“You.”
Three slaps.
“Besides me.”
I thought about it but couldn’t really come up with anything. I added, as an afterthought, “She bought me these Peerless stainless-steel handcuffs that are on my belt.”
“I’m not buying you handcuffs for Christmas.” She pulled the visor down, sliding open the hidden mirror I always forgot was there, and smoothed her lip gloss with her index finger. “What about your radio?”
I glanced at my dash and Andy Williams. “What’s wrong with my radio?”
Cady snapped her reflection shut and flipped the visor up with a wave of her hand. “The one at home, the weather thinga-ma-jiggie.”
“The NOAA radio?”
She reinforced the point by throwing the finger with the lip gloss residue at me.
It was true—the thing had died. Everyone on the high plains has one sitting in their mud rooms—little, dark-gray plastic radios that pick up the frequency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration so that their owners can find out just how many feet of snow are going to be on the ground in the morning. Dog had knocked the device from where it crouched on the counter, at which point it had stopped receiving the local NOAA alerts. I had finalized its demise with a Phillips screwdriver in an attempt to take it apart on my kitchen table while talking to my daughter long distance. “It died.”
She nodded in exasperation. “I know; you said you killed it.”
I glanced back at Dog. “It was natural causes.”
“So you need another one.” She emphasized the word with a smile.
I really didn’t; I’d gotten in the habit of not listening to it after my friend Henry Standing Bear had alerted me to the fact that I had a tendency to leave it on, giving Henry the impression that, although we were in my kitchen, we were on a ship and he was getting seasick. I still suspected the Cheyenne Nation of moving the radio close to the edge of the counter where Dog could get tangled in the cord. The Bear had his own ways of knowing the weather and, better yet, knowing which way the wind blew.
“I guess.”
Excited with the thought that she had found the perfect gift, she nudged forward on the truck seat. “Where do you buy them?”
“Radio Shack.”
“Where’s Radio Shack?”
“The mall.”
Three slaps.
* * *
I successfully avoided the Rimrock Mall by suggesting that we go to one of the big-box stores, so I parked the Bullet beside a light post in the parking lot at Best Buy down by Big Bear Sports Center, near the MasterLube with the pro–Montana State mural that said GO, CATS! Cady slipped out the passenger side as I opened the suicide door and let Dog free onto the snow-dusted grass berm to relieve himself.
She came around the truck and stood with me, her arm linked with mine. Cady watched Dog lift his leg on the candy-striped lamppost, and I leaned against the fender, drew her closer to me, and studied the lights of the MasterLube. I was a good four hundred miles over and what I really needed was to get the oil changed in my truck.
“I’m not buying you an oil change for Christmas, either.”
I brought my eyes down to her as she watched Dog continue to pee. With the glistening in her eyes and the flakes resting gently on her hair like a blessing, she looked so much like her mother that I had to catch my breath in my mouth “You . . .” I bit the vapor escaping from my lungs along with my words.
She looked up at me. “Is it Mom?”
I glanced away and lifted up my hat, scratched the hair underneath, and then lodged it back on. “I don’t know . . . I guess.”
She nodded and bumped her hip into mine, pulling in even closer against my arm, and, when I wasn’t quick enough placing it around her. She squirmed her way into the crook and draped the offending appendage over her shoulder. “I miss her, too.”
“I know you do.”
She continued to watch Dog. “You need to get with the Christmas program, Daddy.”
“I know.”
She sighed against my chest, and I could feel the words welling up in her. “Dad, I may not be coming home for the holidays as much anymore. I’ve kind of got my own life back East, and I’m thinking I’d rather use the time off from the firm in the summer.”
I thought about my undersheriff Victoria Moretti’s younger brother, the Philadelphia patrolman who had asked my daughter for her hand and pretty much everything else. “Sure.”
“If this is our last Christmas together, I was thinking that it would be nice if it was a good one.”
“Uh-huh.”
Her head shifted past the thick collar of my sheepskin coat, where she could watch Dog. “That’s one long pee.”
I watched as he gave out with the last few surges. “He saves it up for when you come home.”
Dog, aware that we were talking about him, broke off the irrigation and came over to poke his jealous muzzle between us. Cady turned her face up and stood on tiptoe, grazing her glossed lips against my stubble.
“I’m probably going to get some things for some of the other people on my list, too, so in a very short period of time you will be required to brighten your mood and come in and help me carry. All right?”