Season of Giving
December 1975
After he closes the blinds at Valley Hardware, Norm McKinnon enjoys a cherry-tipped cigar. He places the ‘Closed’ sign in the window, hauls the sandwich board in from the sidewalk and locks the door behind him. He always waits until closing time to count the day’s earnings, easing his large frame into a creaky rolling chair. There’s a small window in the back office that looks out onto the racks of outdoor inventory. His wife Lois often tells him to clean it up, but why bother? He knows exactly where everything is. He’s halfway through the two dollar bills when a crash breaks his concentration. Glancing up, he reshuffles and starts again. Sharanne, his daughter, is sweeping the floor. She knocks on his office door. He looks up, annoyed. Dinner will be ready soon and it’s taking longer than it should to finish up.
“What?” he says, exasperated.
“There’s a man rifling around in the yard.”
Norm flies out of his seat and whips open the back door but he’s too late. A man in a hunting jacket gets into a navy blue Ford pick-up and tears out of the alley. Norm throws his cigar to the ground, swearing as he realizes the culprit has stolen every last bolt of stainless steel fencing cable.
“Well I’ll be…”
Sharanne stands beside him. “What are you going to do?”
He turns to his daughter. “Don’t worry. I’ll get back what’s mine.” Norm sends her upstairs to her mother. By the time he zips up the day’s purse, he’s formed a plan to catch the thief and make sure no one ever steals from Valley Hardware again.
~
December 1995
After he closes the blinds at Valley Hardware, Lorne prepares a steaming mug of Earl Grey tea with milk and honey. He places the ‘Closed’ sign in the window, hauls the sandwich board advertising ‘Christmas Specials’ in from the sidewalk and locks the door behind him. Ella is helping him stock the shelves for the holidays and he smiles to hear her humming “O Christmas Tree”, his favourite carol. He’s barely taken his first sip of tea when she breezes into the office.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?” He’s counting the day’s cash and doesn’t look up.
“The computer says we should have a dozen of the 30 piece DeWalt drill bit sets, but the shelf is empty.”
“Check the storeroom,” he mumbles, counting twenties and wrapping a thick elastic around the bundle.
Ella doesn’t move. “I already did.” She bites her lip. “The computer also says we have four MagLites and three sets of headphones, but… we don’t have any of those things.”
Lorne sighs.
Ella waits.
Lorne despises the contraption the insurance company bullied him into installing. What was the point in a video camera if nobody ever stole from Valley Hardware?
“How far off is the inventory?”
Ella puts her arms around her dad’s shoulders as though she might keep them from slumping.
“Alright,” he says, looking at the framed photograph of Grandpa Norm, taken weeks before his heart attack. “I’ll watch the stupid video.”
He wouldn’t find anything, but for the sake of the store, he has to check.
Later that night he sits with Monica on the couch, Knox and Wesley snoring between them, and he watches the grainy black and white footage. It’s all so mundane. The same customers, day after day.
“My life is pretty ordinary, when you look at it from above,” he says.
“Shhh,” Monica says.
He turns his attention back to the monitor. The camera captures his customers’ heads bobbing through the aisles in a familiar rhythm. Even from a bird’s eye view, he knows which caps belong to whom, and none of these people are thieves.
“This is pointless,” Lorne says. “These are my regulars.”
Beside him, Monica bristles. “All this time, you’ve been looking for a stranger?”
Lorne considers this. Could the thief actually be someone he knows? The thought makes him ill.
“Let’s call it a night.” Monica rubs her eyes.
“I knew those cameras were useless,” Lorne mutters.
“They’re not. Re-stock those items and turn the camera on that aisle. You’ll catch your thief.”
The next day, Lorne is miserable. Every time a customer walks down the small tools aisle, he glares at their backs from the cash or makes excuses to sweep the floor nearby. He wastes the morning stalking farmers and contractors. It’s no better at the coffee shop. He can’t help but notice how big the pockets of everyone’s blue work coats are. Someone could easily fit a thermos or even a circular saw blade in one of them, not to mention something as small as a drill-bit set. By mid-afternoon, he has a headache so fierce he has to lie down. Lois comes in to relieve him for an hour and he heads upstairs to sleep it off. When he treads back down just before closing, the mayor is chatting with Lois.
“So, we can count on you for a few gallons of apple cider?” the mayor inquires.
“Of course,” Lois answers.
Lorne moves to close the blinds. “What was all that?”
“The Olde Fashioned Christmas Saturday night.”
Lorne nods, remembering. The town closes off the street and all the merchants give out hot drinks and cookies. There are hayrides and Santa Claus and carolers. A pop-up petting zoo surrounds the manger. Everyone loves it.
He looks at Ella’s grandmother and walks down the small tools aisle. The drill bits are missing, again. He curses.
“Lorne?” Lois comes to stand beside him.
He used to love having the store full of people at Christmas. He would recommend stocking stuffers, offer drinks and turn the music way up. The clean-up the next day always takes hours, but he loves it. Loved it.
“I don’t want crowds of people coming in here Saturday night,” he mutters.
Later on, they don’t have to watch all the footage. Lorne took a nap between three and five thirty, so whoever the thief is, he (or she!) came in between those hours. Monica brews some herbal tea. Lorne is far too jumpy for caffeine.
Rush hour at Valley Hardware is just after five o’clock. Once the work day winds down, folks come in for supplies for the next day’s labour. At ten minutes after five, three customers remain in the store. And Lorne knows them all. The first is Hilda McGuire. Lorne dismisses her out of hand. She’s an elderly church lady.
“What could she possibly want with drill bits, or flashlights…?”
“Or headphones?” Monica is giving him a look that he interprets to mean that he’s not being as open minded as say, Agatha Christie.
The next customer on the screen is Stan Kozilik, who, Lorne reminds his wife, won the pumpkin contest the year before.
“Stan and Marie! Of course. No, they wouldn’t steal either. It looks like they’re looking at the hammers anyways.”
Lorne is tempted to smile. It might be fun to guess who the thief was if they were detectives parachuted onto the scene to investigate this crime with cold, neutral eyes. It might be amusing if it weren’t his store.
The last customer is Gary Schafer.
“Do we know this guy?” Monica asks, squinting at the baseball cap bobbing on the screen. “He looks familiar.”
“He’s Ella’s soccer coach,” Lorne says.
“Right. I knew I recognized him.” She’s quiet for second. “Doesn’t he also dress up every year as–“
“Santa?”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Lorne.”
As a rule, Lorne doesn’t visit Lois, his ex-mother-in-law/ employee, in her home. But he’s at a loss. She opens the door and gives him a look.
“What would Norm have done?”
Lois puts her hand over her heart and tears flow down her cheeks. She’s laughing. “You’re not gonna do what Norm did! Oh my. You better come in.”
She puts on a pot of tea and offers Lorne a peanut butter cookie. He’d forgotten how her home always smelled like baking.
“So, you heard the story,” Lorne says.
“I got the gist of it.”
“Did people steal from Norm back in the day?”
“It’s retail,” she says with a shrug. ‘Most of the time you never catch the thief.” She takes a cookie for herself and Lorne waits until she’s finished for her to go on.
Lois sits back. “But there was this one time, back in ‘75…”
~
“…The day after the thief took off with the bolts of wire, Norm went to the coffee shop as usual at ten o’clock. As casually as he could, he asked if anyone knew who owned a navy blue Ford pick-up. As you can imagine, half the farmers in the Valley owned a truck like that! He nursed his coffee, left his change on the counter and crossed the street to head back to work. Just as he was leaving, Eldon McQuarrie followed him out and asked if he was looking for a young fella. There was a new farmer who’d set up at the old Taylor homestead west of Elizabeth’s Corners. ‘He’s got a Ford, new-like, and blue’. Bless Eldon’s soul, he never asked why Norm wanted to talk to the man.
Well, Norm thanked him, and that afternoon, I stayed on cash and he took his tool box and went for a drive. He pulled off to the side of the road at Elizabeth’s Corners and began to walk the fencerow. The fields were newly frozen but he could still see where fresh posts had been delivered. It didn’t take long for him to find his cable. The stainless steel wire was stretched out and stapled to the posts. If nothing else, the thief knew what he was doing. The fence was beautiful, cable so straight and taut it was fit for a Wallenda…
I guess he must have hesitated a moment before he did it, but once he looked back at the barn and spotted the truck, there was no changing his mind. Norm took his pliers and began taking apart that perfect fence, pulling off the wire and leaving a tangled mess in the brush.
He must have been out there in the cold a good hour or more when the farmer came out and started yelling at him. What in the Sam Hill was he doing? He was trespassing. Etc. etc.”
Lorne shakes his head. “These are the kinds of stories that end in “hunting accidents.”
Lois laughs. “You’re probably right. Where was I?”
“The angry farmer.”
“Right. So, Norm stuck out his hand and said, “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Norm McKinnon and I own Valley Hardware in town.” The gentleman turned every shade of red you can imagine. What could he do? He promised to pay for every stolen bolt and he did. After that, Norm put a double lock on the yard but I don’t know if that was necessary. Word got out. People would come in a tip their hat to my Norm, and funny enough, we sold a lot of fencing that year. Oh, that husband of mine! He was his own walking advertisement … and he finally put some order in the outdoor racks,” Lois chuckles.
“But what about the thief?” Lorne asks.
Lois shrugs. “Never stole from us again.”
Lorne wishes the thief was someone he could tell off and be done with, but this was a man he’d run into at the grocery store or the soccer pitch or… the Olde Fashioned Christmas. He couldn’t very well drive to Gary Schafer’s house, heave open the other man’s garage and try to find his missing drill bits. Dramatic retrievals and McKinnon heroics were the stuff of legends. And Lorne was just a man.
Lois seems to read his mind. “You have to confront him. It’ll eat away at you until you do.”
He thanks her and helps himself to another peanut butter cookie, for courage.
The night of the Olde Fashioned Christmas it snows. The band plays “Winter Wonderland” under soft snowflakes and people mingle around bonfires in the middle of the street. The artist’s co-op has set up an indoor-outdoor market and shoppers fill their bags with local honey, ceramic mugs and polar bear woolen mittens. The mayor presides over a tree-lighting ceremony while the Rotarians, dressed up as elves, corral the children into a line-up to see Santa Claus. Lorne’s plan takes place while he serves cider alongside Monica and Lois. The band takes their last request and revelers bid one another goodnight. When the last child receives their candy cane from Santa, with a quick nod to Lois, Lorne slips away and approaches Gary Schafer.
“Santa!”
The soccer coach in the velvet costume turns and looks at Lorne.
“A word before you retire for the night?” Lorne doesn’t wait for an answer but sits on the stool previously occupied by Santa’s helper.
“I had a look at my surveillance footage at the store the other day…”
Santa’s shoulders slump. The jolly costume hangs off Gary’s frame as the man shrinks into himself.
“…We’ve known one another for years now. I don’t understand why you’ve been stealing from me.”
Gary Schafer is at a loss for words. Some children pass by and he fakes a smile in their general direction before his face cracks.
“I buy so much from Valley Hardware–“
Lorne feels his blood pressure rise. He was expecting an apology. “So, you think it’s okay to help yourself to free bits because I once sold you a drill?”
The miserable man pulls off his fake beard and holds his head in his hands.
“Are you hurting, financially?” Lorne ventures. Some of his anger dissipates. There’s something pitiful about Santa without a beard.
Gary shakes his head.
“I would never go to your building site and help myself to a couple of two by fours. This just makes no sense.”
“I’m really sorry.”
Lorne shakes his head. Monica would want him to forgive the guy. Maybe not right this second, but eventually.
“I want you to pay me for everything you’ve stolen.”
Gary stands up, his stuffed belly slipping below his big leather belt. “I swear I’ll pay you back every penny.”
Lorne has no idea how long Santa has been stealing from him, and he’s embarrassed to admit he hasn’t kept an eye on his inventory. He hoped the best of people. He almost wants to blame the insurance company for all of this, even though he knows that doesn’t make sense. He’s getting up to leave when Gary stops him; lowers his voice.
“You’re not going to tell other people about this, are you?”
“THAT was his apology?!”
One of Lorne’s favourite things about his wife is how quickly she goes from being mild and pastoral to hell-fire angry. Her temper often makes Lorne feel better about the world, and the calm person he manages to be in the midst of all the crazy.
“I know,” he says. “I was so flabbergasted I just walked away.”
“People are so entitled, they have lost all integrity. And they don’t even care! His reputation was his to lose.” Monica is so angry she begins stabbing her finger in the air with every point. Lorne is suddenly very tired.
“Let’s go to bed,” he suggests.
She stops her pacing and stares at him. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”
“ I don’t know, I don’t know,” he says.
But he knows.
It’s the Friday before Christmas holidays and Lorne and Ella are closing the blinds and sweeping the floor before they lock up for the night. The bells on the door chime.
“We’re closed…” Lorne begins to say, and then looks up and sees it’s Gary. “Oh, hi.”
Gary is holding an envelope and twists his hands together, looking furtively around the store to see if there are other customers. Ella breezes past the two men.
“Hi Coach. Merry Christmas,” she says.
“Same to you,” he replies.
She disappears from sight and Gary clears his throat. “This is for you.”
Lorne glances at the cash. “Thank you.”
“Merry Christmas.”
Lorne watches Gary Schafer dodge between traffic, get into his car and drive off. In the spring, when the snow melts, Gary will start training with the junior girls soccer team. Ella will show up ready to play and he’ll see in her eyes and the eyes of every member of the team that they trust him completely. When they make the championships, Valley Hardware will sponsor the team and Lorne will remark to the other parents what a talented coach Gary Shafer is. And many years later, decades later, when Lorne retires and is celebrated by his friends at the community centre, Gary will look across the room and catch Reverend Monica’s gaze and he’ll nod, ever so slightly, and raise a glass to Lorne, an exceptional businessman in ways sometimes only the most wretched truly understand.
END