Too Old for Christmas Read online

  Sean dumped the full bucket of water into the trough he had purchased for the mules. It would take several more trips to the creek to have enough water to hold his livestock until morning.

  Need to get digging your own well next to the creek. You shan’t have to go too deep to hit year-round water.

  Sean nearly dropped and spilled his last bucket of water at the sight of the slight form slithering out the back of his wagon—right next to where he had dropped his cache of food and whiskey—and running in a crouch around the side of the barn. The intruder no doubt hoped to stay hidden behind the animals. Inflamed gums or not, Sean refused to let the thief flee with whatever he might have taken. He set the bucket on the ground and gave chase.

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  Chapter 2

  ~o0o~

  S

  ean rounded the barn and spotted movement in the bushes on the rise. He ran towards it, guessing as much as seeing which way the intruder tried to escape. In his mind he had decided it must be a boy, one of the few children in Columbia. The form was too small to be a full-grown man.

  A tangle of Manzanita bushes slowed the boy down long enough for Sean to catch up to him. He grabbed the back of the boy’s jacket. The action threw both of them to the ground, both thrashing at the branches as they knocked prickly twigs away from their faces. The boy grunted as Sean’s weight landed on his slight form. The shrubbery collapsed beneath them. Sean rolled off the boy and pulled both him and the child to their feet, never losing his grip on the jacket. Sean didn’t know if the sudden sprint up the hill or his anger was the cause, but a blazing headache stabbed at his temples as if he were surrounded by knife-wielding demons poking at his head. He felt in no mood to be gentle.

  Sean gave the boy a good shake. “Enough of your shenanigans, boy. What be you doing around my wagon and animals? Speak now, or I be taking my belt to you without waiting for your da to tan your hide.”

  “Da? You mean my pa?” the boy demanded belligerently. Then he stared at his feet and said, “I don’t have no pa. He’s dead.” The boy spoke the last so quietly it took several seconds for his words to penetrate Sean’s brain. He loosened his hold. Before he could respond, the boy continued. “Please let me go. I’ll do whatever you want. Just please don’t tell my ma.”

  “We’ll be stepping over here out of this mist, then. And you’ll be telling me why you be snooping around my place.” Sean pulled the boy back to the cover of the barn. Once they were both standing next to the back of the wagon, Sean took a few minutes to look over the little vagrant who had invaded his property, no doubt up to no good.

  “Now tell me, boy, what be you not wanting me to tell your ma?”

  The boy began to heave deep breaths as he fought back tears. “I didn’t mean to take it. It’s just…It’s just I’m so hungry. I…I didn’t think you’d miss one piece.”

  One piece? Then the boy hadn’t gone after his whiskey bottle, Sean realized. “Show me the piece.”

  Slowly the boy reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out one of the chunks of dried beef Sean had purchased earlier at the mercantile.

  “For a piece of jerked beef you’d be a thief, would you? Nay, take it. If you be that hungry, I’ll not be denying you the food.”

  “No. I’m really sorry. Please take it back. Ma says we don’t take charity.”

  “You’ll not be taking charity but ‘tis fine to be stealing, is it? And your ma will be praising you for it, will she now?”

  “No, sir.” The boy shook with fear as he turned pleading eyes up and focused on Sean’s face. “Please don’t tell my ma. I’m sorry I took it. I’ll do work for you, anything you want. Just please don’t tell her.”

  Sean’s whiskey-fogged brain struggled to sort through the puzzle surrounding the situation. His thief—repentant thief—seemed far more afraid of his mother than him. The boy looked young, not even in his teens, and spoke respectfully to him rather than arguing or making excuses. He claimed he was hungry, yet when the meat he had taken was freely offered, he refused to accept it. Something about the boy’s words bothered him greatly.

  Then it dawned on Sean. The boy had insisted his family did not take charity. It was not the first time that day he had heard those words. Sean stared at the dark ash blonde hair and grey eyes—a boy he was sure he had probably seen around town and ignored. Could there possibly be any connection between this boy and the aggravating blue-eyed beauty he had spoken rudely to in the mercantile?

  “What be your name?”

  “Jesse McNair, sir.”

  “And your ma be not feeding you?”

  “She does the best she can. But, with the Chinese doing so much of the laundry business, and there being storefront bakeries in town, sometimes what she earns only pays for oatmeal or cornmeal. But, she sends me to Mrs. Sears for schooling. Then I’m supposed to take what I learn and teach my brother while ma works….” Jesse broke off speaking and bit his lower lip as if he had revealed something he shouldn’t. He continued weakly. “But sometimes I don’t get anything to take for lunch. Ma says an education is more important than lunch every day. I…I don’t think she eats lunch either.”

  When Sean had walked up the hill towards home, he had decided his rotten luck that day couldn’t get any worse. It had started with blinding tooth pain, made worse by his need to work in the rain while in pain, expanded by the encounter with the beautiful but aggravating woman in the mercantile and had been topped off by the bone-wrenching visit to Doc Massey to have his tooth pulled. But, he’d been wrong. It had gotten worse. Instead of being able to come home and fix something soft to eat before drowning his pain into oblivion that night with the rest of the whiskey, the woman’s boy stood before him trying to hand back to him a chunk of dried beef he had stolen because he was hungry. How was a man well on his way to being blind drunk, a man with a swollen cheek dripping bitter-tasting blood and pus into a flannel pad, one whose head hadn’t waited for the hangover before it started throbbing, supposed to deal with this latest complication?

  “Nay, I’ll not be offering you charity and I’ll not be telling your ma. But, you’ll get what be left of the meat after I get my share. And, you’ll be working for it, boyo. I be not feeling like doing aught but crawl in a hole ‘til I get better or die, but ‘tis time I build a fire and put my coffee and a pudding on to boil. And, you’ll be helping me. When I be done boiling my beef, you can have them both plus some of t’other.”

  “Both? You’re going to boil two pieces of meat tonight?”

  “Aye, if you shan’t be taking all day giving me that work you promised. See if there be a dry spot under yon cover.” Sean pointed to the section of canvas still covering his roof trusses. “Gather some stones from that pile.” Sean pointed to the rocks he had collected for his fireplace, “and build a fire ring inside where ‘tis dry, but not too close to the walls, mind you. I’ll be starting a fire with the dry I have under the oilcloth,” Sean pointed to the pile of small twigs and branches he had gathered and kept as dry as possible. “You can be gathering the driest deadfall you can find to feed the fire whilst I start our supper. If need be, you can drag it here and use my hatchet to chop it in smaller pieces…” Sean stopped and eyed the boy critically before he continued. “Well, sore head or no, I may be needing to do the chopping. ‘Tis likely you be not old enough to use a hatchet, now be you?”

  Jesse pulled himself to his full height. “Ma says I’m too old for Christmas this year. If I’m too old for Christmas, then it must mean I’m old enough to use a hatchet.”

  Sean blinked and tried to shake his head free of the cobwebs. Too old for Christmas? He’d never heard such foolishness in his life. He strained to absorb the full implications of what the boy revealed about his family’s situation—one far worse than he would have guessed when he met the blue-eyed beauty in the store. And he now knew something about the woman he hadn’t known when he talked to her face-to-face. The boy
had told him his da was dead. It meant his mother was a widow—one who struggled to care for her sons.

  A pretty widow won’t be lasting long in these parts. And why be you worrying about it, boyo?

  Sean softened his voice. “Remains to be seen about the hatchet, now doesn’t it? Drag in some deadfall whilst I care for my mules.”

  Jesse placed the stones he had brought to the driest spot in the half-finished cabin to form a fire ring. Sean gathered up a handful of dry twigs and browned leaves he kept covered with an oiled cloth and dumped them into the center. He scraped a Lucifer across the sole of his brogan to start a fire.

  “So, Jesse, do you use the hatchet at home?” When the boy silently shook his head, Sean continued. “Then ‘tis best you not be saying much about using it here just like you be not wanting much said about you taking the meat.” Once he felt sure the twigs had caught fire, he closely supervised nine year-old Jesse, who had confessed his age after come careful coaxing, through the process of chopping up some of the smaller deadfall branches the boy had dragged closer to the house.

  Sean sent the boy down to the creek with instructions to bring back the bucket a third full with water. He used it to fill a small pot he kept in his barn. After adding two pieces of the dried meat to the pot, he balanced it and the coffeepot on rocks to heat over the fire. He brought a short section of log over to use as a stool and eased down on it. He did his best to stay awake and ignore the pain while he waited for the water in both his coffeepot and the dinner pot to boil. Seeing Jesse stand awkwardly off to the side keeping a close eye on the meat he had earned, he motioned to the boy over to sit in a spot close to the fire.

  “Tell me now, did you come here after school?”

  The boy hesitated before answering. “Yes.”

  “This the first time, then?”

  The confession came slowly. “No. I come here a lot of times after school. But only if you aren’t here so I don’t get in your way. My pa didn’t like me around getting in his way, so I figured you’d think the same. But, I like talking to your mules better than teaching my brother school lessons. A lot of days I come here instead of going straight home because it helps me forget I didn’t eat lunch.” The boy hesitated. “You aren’t going to tell on me with Ma, are you , Mr. Flood?”

  Sean ignored the boy’s question.

  “My mules don’t take well to strangers, boy. ‘Tisn’t safe you being around them.”

  “They like me well enough, Mr. Flood. I call the girl mule Miss and the boy mule Mister. If they’re in their stalls, I give them a little feed so they stand still for me while I brush them.”

  And it explains why the feed be disappearing fast, now doesn’t it?

  Muddling over the unsettling information about the boy’s interaction with the mules, Sean detoured around the concern in his mind with his next question. “How be it you know my name?”

  “I asked around who owns those mules. Folks in town know you.”

  Sean mulled over the boy’s resourcefulness. The more he considered what had taken place earlier in the afternoon, the more he began to suspect the boy spoke the truth about his relationship with the mules. Even as Sean fed his animals that night, banged on the wall of the barn to scare off what he had first thought was a wild animal, and caught the boy climbing out of his wagon, the mules had not given any hint a stranger was in their midst. They were not disturbed in any manner.

  “’Tis Hattie and Boomtown I be calling them. I be leaving it to you to figure which be which.”

  “Boomtown! Never heard an animal named that. Did you name them?”

  “Aye and nay. Hattie I named for chewing on my old Army hat. Been careful whilst around her since. Boomtown be named by an old prospector thinking he’d be striking it rich in the high Sierra with a mule to pack his gear. Sold Boomtown to me to buy ship passage back to the states, he did. You be watching those mules close, young Jesse, especially if there be something about to spook them.”

  A puzzled look crossed Jesse’s face. “What kind of name is Flood? It makes me think of that Bible story.”

  “’Tis a good Irish name. Comes from the old Gaelic tuile, meaning flood in English. But, aye, ‘twas a kindness my ma and da didn’t be naming me Noah. Been hearing enough about my name as ‘tis.”

  Then Sean quickly asked him own question hoping to get an honest answer by catching the boy off guard. “How long’s your da been gone?”

  “Since last spring.”

  “Your da got sick, then, did he?”

  “No. He was mining further up the river during the heavy spring run-off. He fell in and drowned. At the wake I overheard some of the men say he’d been drinking and got in a fight and that’s why he fell in, but Ma won’t say.”

  “You have a step-da, then?”

  “No. Men come around, but Ma’s picky. That’s fine with me. I don’t like most of the ones who’ve showed up, even when they’ve taken a bath and shaved first.”

  Aye, likely she’d be having no use for an almost toothless Irishman with a bristly beard to hide it and a mouth stinking like a rotten bog more oft than not, now would she?

  “What’s she picky about?”

  And why be you wanting to know, boyo?

  “Better not get any ideas about Ma, Mr. Flood,” Jesse warned. “I saw your bottle of whiskey in your wagon and you look like you already drank half of it. She won’t have nothing to do with no drinker.”

  “Nay, boy, none of your cheek, now. I nay be having you calling me a drunkard. ‘Tis medicinal…for my bad tooth.”

  “Pa used to say his drink was medicine, too, but Ma still didn’t like him getting plastered. Ma doesn’t want nothing to do with no soldiers, neither, and I saw your old Army blanket and musket like my pa carried. She used to be a laundress for the Army but says she won’t do it again. That’s where she met Pa—at Fort Kearney.”

  Sean considered the boy’s words during the silence that followed. He had been outfitted and assigned to his infantry unit in the regular Army out of Fort Leavenworth. But, men pulled into the war with Mexico had come from many places, many of them part of state militias who looked upon regular Army soldiers—especially those like Sean who were Irish Catholic—like they were vermin.

  “’Tis true I fought against the Mexicans for a year, but had my fill, sure I did. Only good thing I got out of it was a love for working with mules. Mexicans used mostly pack mules, not wagons, for their hauling. We captured a big supply train. The brass thought ‘twas punishing us Irish by turning them over to us. But, the joke be on them. Still, there be no more Army in my future. What else be your ma holding against a man?”

  “Ma won’t have nothing to do with no Presbyterian. She says one was enough, but I’m not sure what she means. A lot of people say there are too many Methodists in this town, and they’d go to a Presbyterian church if one came here, but not Ma.”

  Sean raised an eyebrow. Back home, the Irish had no love for the Presbyterians. That dated back to the animosity between the Irish Catholics and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. Almost always, whether in the United States or in England, the Irish Catholics were the ones discriminated against.

  Locally, no one bothered much with the Italians who had settled around Columbia, and they made up a goodly portion of the parishioners who attended the Catholic church on Gold Street. Then again, the Italians weren’t flooding into North America the way the Irish were.

  McNair. No doubt a good Scotch-Irish name, Sean reasoned. The Scotch-Irish, originally from Scotland, were brought into Northern Ireland and given land taken away from the displaced Irish. Many of the Scotch-Irish immigrated to North America over a century earlier, unlike the Irish coming within the last decade due to the potato famine.

  The boy’s da had probably been a Presbyterian. Maybe the widow McNair had been raised Baptist or Lutheran or some other faith. With both the Methodist North and the Methodist Episcopal South in town, she wouldn’t be at a loss for a church to attend if she was a Metho
dist.

  Sean knew Presbyterianism was one trait the aggravating woman couldn’t hold against him.

  “Do you go to another church then?”

  Jesse shook his head no. “Ma doesn’t like to be around people much. She doesn’t like people to see…well, she just won’t go around a lot of people if she doesn’t have to.”

  The boy scrambled to his feet. “I’ve got to go do something, Mr. Flood. Please don’t eat the meat you said I could have and please don’t throw it away. I promise I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll save it for you, boy. I still be needing to cook my gruel. Be quick about it, though. With the clouds, ‘twill be getting dark early, and you best not be getting home to your ma too late.”

  “I’ll be quick. I promise.”

  Once the boy left, Sean rolled his log back far enough to lean against the wall of his cabin, grateful the drizzle had let up and the canvas wasn’t leaking water on him. He leaned forward again long enough to pour a cup of coffee. He carefully sipped, taking care to channel the hot liquid away from his raw gum. He once again worried the outside of his swollen cheek with his finger, feeling the squish of the inflamed gum and tasting the poison his meddling released.

  Sean considered whether he should make some of the willow bark tea as soon as he finished his coffee and meal, or if he should rely more on the whiskey to get him through the night. He could always drink the tea for the morning’s hangover.

  And you be knowing what the widow McNair would say, now don’t you, her with her willow bark tea? Then again, she be the boy’s ma, not yours.

  Before Sean knew it, Jesse returned holding the hand of another boy Sean guessed to be a couple of years younger. This one had the look of the blue-eyed, dark haired beauty Sean had tangled with in the mercantile.

  “This is my brother, Benjy, Mr. Flood. He’s only seven. He doesn’t get enough to eat, either. Will you let him have one of the pieces of meat you promised me, even though I did the work, not him? Whatever else you were going to give me to eat, I want to share with him.”