Not the Best Day

By Brynn Stein

Henry hates Christmas shopping. Hates it with a passion. But here he is, downtown shopping two days before Christmas. It would almost be bearable except for the jerk in the trapper hat and plaid scarf who keeps turning up like a bad penny, apparently with no other goal in life than to make Henry’s already crappy day even crappier. Henry doesn’t know what's up with the guy, but Henry wishes he’d just go away. That doesn’t seem to be in the cards, however. In a day full of surprises, the biggest is yet to come.

I
T
WAS
two days before Christmas, and against my better judgment, I was in downtown Bakersville. My sister, Erin, was having a party for her friends and insisted that my attendance was not optional. I had told her I’d see her both of the next two days. Our parents had been separated for almost a decade, and we’d fallen into the tradition of spending Christmas Eve at Dad’s and Christmas at Mom’s. All five siblings and our various families tried to make it to both, so I wasn’t sure why I had to go to yet another party. I was
not
a party person. But still, I guessed it was nice that Erin considered me a friend and not just a brother.

Jake, Mark, and Chrissy weren’t invited to this party. It had always been like we five were two separate families, even though we were full biological siblings. The older three were all within five years of each other. Then came Erin ten years later and me a year after that. So it’s always been Erin and me… and then everyone else. Then again, the fact that I was invited and they weren’t might just be because Erin and I were the only two who remained single and didn’t have kids, and Erin didn’t want to deal with kids at a friends-only party. She didn’t really want to deal with kids at all. She vowed that she would never have any and always said that was one good thing about me being gay. I wouldn’t have kids. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that if I ever found “the one” and settled down, I’d love to adopt. But that was so far down the road, if it was even on the map, that I didn’t have to worry about it right then. Besides, I think she secretly knew.

But whatever the reason for the invitation, and whatever my feeling about having to go to yet another party, I was downtown, in the snow, getting last-minute gifts. I had no one to blame but myself, but that didn’t make me any less surly. I’d known I needed a generic gift for Erin’s party for months now, and of course I always needed presents for all three million family members. But every year I waited until the last minute to even start shopping, because as much as I hated crowded get-togethers, I hated shopping even more.

I pulled into the parking garage, fully expecting to be relegated to the very top. I got lucky, however, and caught someone backing out on level three. So before long I exited the elevator on the ground level and walked out onto the sidewalk—and was immediately accosted by Mother Nature. I pulled up my collar against the wind as frozen crystals cut into my face with gale force. That was probably an exaggeration, but it felt that way, so I ducked into the first shelter I could find. And wouldn’t you just know it had to be a toy store. God knew I needed a shit ton of toys, though, so maybe this was a blessing in disguise. At least it wasn’t one of those mall-sized places you could get lost in for three days. It wasn’t tiny, but it wasn’t huge. It might be just the size for my purposes.

One of the things I treasured most about Christmas was that it brought out all the love in the world. Three women were fighting over who was going to get the last ugly doll that no doubt was this year’s “must have” item for girls, while across the aisle in the boy’s section, two men, each holding one end of a toy gun, were pulling back and forth, cussing up a storm. The whole store was like something out of that old Arnold Schwarzenegger Christmas movie from the nineties that my mother liked to watch yearly for some unexplained reason. I was waiting for the group of fraudulent Santa Clauses to come in and join the fray. As silly as that would have been, what was actually happening wasn’t much better.

I made my way around the establishment looking at this and that and quickly regretted foregoing the buggy when I first came in. I picked out a couple of boxes of Lego kits—always popular with my nephews—a xylophone for my baby niece, and a baseball set for Sarah. No, it wasn’t a “girl’s toy.” But it was one of the things she said she wanted, so that was what she was going to get. I juggled everything until I had a good grasp on all the packages. I only had one toy left to buy. Then I could move on to someplace that sold slightly more mature things. Though the way my two older brothers acted sometimes, maybe a toy store was an appropriate place to find gifts for them too.

I made my way back to the doll aisle to see if it was clear yet, and it was a little better. There were only two women arguing over the ugly doll now. So I turned down the stuffed animal aisle instead. I grabbed a large lion with oversized eyes and told myself my youngest niece, Katie, would love it. She had recently started collecting lions, and this was the last one there. There were other types of wild cats with big eyes, but this would be perfect. Whether it would be or not, though, I was
not
going to get into it with the other customers over the more popular toys, and I just didn’t want to have to fight through another toy emporium. Nope, Katie would love it. I was sure she would.

I was rearranging the packages in my arms to include the pillow-sized animal when a boy came running down the aisle and almost bowled me over. I scrabbled at the packages to save as many as possible from their rapid descent to the floor, but then a full-grown man took the same path as the kid and not only sealed the toys’ fate but mine as well.

“Wait, you little brat!” he called after the kid. “Get your ass back here.” The second fleeing figure was probably over six feet tall, though it was hard to gauge a person’s height while sitting on one’s ass on a floor, surrounded by toys. He wore, among other things, a red and black trapper’s hat with a scarf to match. I couldn’t catch much more of a description than that before he was out the door after the kid. I couldn’t have described the teen at all except that he was male, scrawny, probably about thirteen or fourteen, and was running like the devil himself was after him.

“Jerk!” I called after the man and was silently calling down all the plagues of heaven upon him.

“Some people just can’t control their kids, can they?”

An elderly female voice startled me. A grey-haired lady was crouched beside me with her hand outstretched.

Well, at least there’s still one Good Samaritan
, I thought as I grabbed her hand but got up under my own power. It didn’t appear as though she could hold my weight, but I didn’t want to refuse her offer.

“You think it was his kid?” I glanced toward the door again as the woman helped me pick up my packages.

“What else could it be?” she said innocently.

“It seemed more like a robbery to me,” I posited as she handed me my packages one at a time. But I quickly forgot about it one way or the other as the lady and I engaged in a comedy of placing and re-placing the toys in my arms. I had the Legos under my left arm and reached for the baseball set, but she handed me the xylophone, so I shifted the Legos and put the baseball set in the left hand. But I dropped one of the boxes of Legos and she stooped down and picked it up, wedging it under my left arm with the baseball set. Then she handed the other Lego kit and the xylophone to me. By then my arms were so completely full that I couldn’t even shake her hand to thank her for the help.

She must have seen my dilemma. “Oh, no need to thank me. I’m just happy to help.”

“Well, thank you anyway. I do appreciate it.”

“No problem at all. Happy to do it.” She turned back to her buggy and pushed it away. “You have a good day now, dear.”

I stood there for a second, feeling as though I had forgotten something. I scanned the area, trying to remember what I had been looking for when it suddenly hit me.

“Damn it! She took the last lion.” And I remembered again just how much I loved Christmas.
Goodwill toward all.
“Damn it to hell. All because of that trapper jerk and the kid.” I juggled things around again in my arms and grabbed a leopard. “Well, Katie, you’re just gonna have to start a leopard collection. I am not going to chase down a little old lady and steal your lion back.”

F
INALLY
I
stood at the front of the store, peering out the plate-glass window, waiting for my turn. I always liked to watch people, and at this time of year, there were plenty to watch: old ladies with their arms overloaded with boxes and bags, thirtysomethings with armfuls of children, young lovers with arms full of each other. But my attention was drawn by a mangy mutt darting from person to person. Whether she was searching for a handout or a warm coat, I couldn’t tell, but she was obviously a stray. I doubted she actually had mange, but her fur was noticeably dull, even from this distance, and her behavior was certainly not that of a dog that was loved but lost. She was the size of a small shepherd but thin and gangly, so maybe a young dog. Not a puppy, but not full-grown. She weaved in and out of the people and was eventually lost in the crowd.

Before long it was my turn to pay for gifts that hadn’t been stolen from me. As I grabbed up my bags and plodded back out into Antarctica, the dog eventually slipped my mind entirely. The snow had turned to a wintery mix of snow and rain, and the snow on the sidewalks was turning to slush. It was already muck on the roads, and the traffic made that familiar sound of slopping the half-frozen mess all around every time a vehicle passed.

I ducked into the next doorway but didn’t stay long. It was one of those artsy-fartsy stores that wanted an arm and a leg for a tie-dyed shirt with holes in it that I could probably reproduce in twenty minutes with paints and scissors if I was so inclined. So I tried the next building down.

I had managed to get into and out of a couple more places without loss of life or limb or too much money, but I was running out of promising stores on this side. All there was for the next block or so were restaurants and places to buy hardware. So I stood at the corner, waiting for the light to tell me to walk when a beat-up Jeep Wrangler drove too close to the sidewalk and filthy, snowy mush splashed all over the front of my pants. They weren’t particularly expensive pants, and I knew the stuff would most likely come out in the wash, but I had been planning on going straight from here to Erin’s. I didn’t have time to go home and change. I had instinctively inspected the mess at first, but then looked up to yell at the bastard who wasn’t watching where he was going.

When I saw that red and black trapper’s hat and that stupid scarf, I was livid.

“Is it just your mission to make my life miserable today?” I screamed at him, but he was already around the corner.

The “walk” sign was finally lit up, and I—and my now soggy pants—shuffled across the road, aimed at the jewelry store, where I was hoping to find something nice for Mom.

When I glanced down again, to step up onto the curb, there was the little dog I’d seen earlier. Up close, she was even more mangy and scrawny.

“Sorry, buddy,” I told her. “I don’t have anything to eat.” I had my arms full with bags, so I didn’t reach down and pet her. She peeked up at me with those big, sad eyes, and I wished more than anything that I had a sandwich or crackers or something in my pockets, but no, I didn’t have so much as a stick of gum on me. Not that I would have given gum to a dog anyway.

I went into the jewelry boutique, and the dog stayed at the window for a little while, then finally went away. I found a beautiful necklace within my price range that my mother would love, and when I came back out, the dog was nowhere to be seen.

What I did see, however, was the guy in the trapper’s hat again, driving around the block.

“What? Are you circling so you can get me again?” I said in an angry voice but pitched so that he couldn’t have heard me. “Well, I’m ready for you this time, buddy.”

I was too. I stayed far away from the edge of the sidewalk. He still wasn’t watching where he was going. He was driving slowly, regarding the sidewalks much more closely than he was the road. The cars behind him beeped periodically, but it didn’t seem to do any good. This part of the street was at least a passing zone, so the cars could go around him when they were able. There was a somewhat steady flow of traffic, but it wasn’t as heavy as I would have thought. Of course, in my opinion, the smarter downtown shoppers had parked in the parking garage and didn’t have to fight for the few parking spots along the street.

I watched the guy turn the corner again, and he ran over the curb. I really wondered what was going on with him. He wasn’t paying attention. It occurred to me that he might be drunk, but he hadn’t appeared drunk when I saw him in the toy aisle, and there hadn’t been any time for him to drink that much since then. Something was definitely going on with him, though. Besides him just being a general jackass. Which was also certainly the case.