Sugar And Spice (8 page)

“No. What he considers my half is down more in the valley. We can drive in from the back end. He’s busy working his half. He goes to bed at eight o’clock and sleeps so soundly the house could fall down around him and he wouldn’t hear it. How are you going to explain it to your daughter?”

“I’ll think of something. It’s the season of miracles, isn’t it? Every morning when Amy gets to the site she’ll see whatever we put there during the night. She did tell me this was a seat-of-the-pants operation.

I think she’s right. A mysterious Good Samaritan delivers trees in the middle of the night. She’ll find a way to run with that. She’s a PR person and will play that up to the public. I think she’s right. Can we really do this, Sam? I’m starting to get excited.”

Sam stared across the table at his dinner partner, saw the sparkle in her eyes, felt her hand squeeze his again. He was starting to get excited himself. “Yes, we can do it. When you go home, start making phone calls. I’ll do the same. We’ll start work tomorrow night. We’ll all meet at the back entrance at eight-thirty and take it from there. Do you care for dessert?”

“No, Sam, I don’t think so. I think we should go home and get to work. I have one small question. If we work all night, when are we going to sleep?”

Sam threw his head back and laughed again. “We might have to pretend we’re sick. Old people get sick all the time. We can say we got our flu shots and like a lot of people, got sick.”

“Oooh, Sam, you’re so devious. I think that might work. I don’t see your son or my daughter fussing over either one of us, do you?”

Sam grinned from ear to ear. “Nope.” He squeezed Tillie’s hand. When she squeezed back, he laughed again. “Okay, partner, let’s hit the road and get to work. I think we should do this again sometime, Tillie.”

“I’d like that, Sam. I really would. It was a lovely dinner. Thank you.”

Amy was sitting at the kitchen table nursing a glass of wine she really didn’t want. Every time she thought about Gus Moss, her cheeks burned. The man was a scrooge. An out-and-out California guy who thought only about money. The arrogance of the man!

Amy was startled out of her reverie when she noticed her mother standing in the doorway. “Did you have a nice time wherever you went, Mother?”

“I suppose so. Dinner is dinner. You eat, you chat, you pay the check. Dinner. Is something wrong? You look angry.”

“I am angry. After you left, I drove out to Moss Farms to talk to Mr. Moss, only he wasn’t there. His know-it-all son was there. Mr. Moneybags Moss. I offered to buy his trees and asked for a discount. The best he could do was 20 percent. We can’t operate and make money at that rate. We had words. I called him a scrooge. I think I might have screamed that. He gave me some pie that was very good. He’s in charge of the farm these days. He was so arrogant, Mom. But boy was he good-looking. I’m really pissed off right now.”

Tillie felt so weak in the knees she had to sit down. Her daughter poured a glass of wine for her, which she drained in one long gulp. “I see.”

Amy bolted off her chair and started pacing the kitchen from one end to the other. “What do you see, Mother?”

“That…that you’re upset. I’m…ah…feeling a little slow today. I got a flu shot the other day and for some reason I always get sick afterward. That happens to a lot of people my age for some reason. I could…ah…be laid up for as long as a week. I’m sorry, Amy. I’ll do what I can, even if I have to do it in bed. It’s not easy getting old. Not that you would understand that.”

“Oh, I understand, Mother. It’s called a cop-out. Good night. I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll make breakfast if you can see your way to getting out of bed.”

Tillie felt her shoulders stiffen. “I’ll do my best, Amy,” she said cooly.

Tillie poured herself another glass of wine as she contemplated what the coming days would bring. “This is all my fault,” she mumbled to the silent room. “All my fault.”

The silvery flakes of frost on the windows of Amy’s car alarmed her. She hoped she was dressed warm enough. To her way of thinking it was too cold for this time of year. They shouldn’t have a frost until Thanksgiving, but then what did she know about weather conditions? Not a whole lot, she decided as she climbed into her car to head to the Coleman site, where the tent people would be erecting the tents three days ahead of schedule. Nothing was working right. Everything had a glitch. Even her mother was under the weather. Sometimes, life wasn’t fair.

She had to find some Christmas trees or she was going to fizzle like a dead firecracker. She’d been talking a good game to her mother but it wasn’t working for her. Someone, somewhere had to have some Christmas trees they were willing to sell for a discount for a worthy cause. She’d beaten the bushes, banged the drum, and the tree growers had laughed at her. None to spare, she’d been told.

Orders were placed months in advance, not weeks like she was doing. If push came to shove, she might have to resort to dealing with the crook her mother had signed on with. If she didn’t pull this off, she’d be a failure in her eyes, and her mother’s as well. Amy thought about her bank balance as she drove to the Coleman site. It wasn’t exactly robust, but it was healthy. She’d dipped into it for deposits, and now it looked like she might have to do more than dip the second time around.

She thought about Gus Moss and how nice it had been sitting in the kitchen at Moss Farms. Everything had gone so well until she told him what she wanted. Such a scrooge. Why couldn’t people be more generous? Money wasn’t the answer to everything. Christmas was supposed to be a time for giving, for helping one’s fellow man. What was it Gus Moss had said? Time is money, business is business. Maybe that was her problem, she was taking this personal. The tired old cliché of all PR people came to mind.

Fight fire with fire. Preempt your opponent. Strike first. Amy shivered. Was she a match for Gus Moss?

Probably not. What she knew about Christmas trees would fill a thimble, whereas Gus Moss could write the book on the subject. One of the sharpest PR people she’d ever come across told her she had to subscribe to his credo: dazzle them with rhetoric and baffle them with bullshit, and you win the game.

Like she was really going to do that? Not in this lifetime.

Amy swerved into the vacant lot and was surprised to see three trucks and men hustling about, driving stakes into the ground. She was pleased to see that the tents were made from a shiny white plastic that would lend itself well to the red and green Christmas colors, colors that would stand out and draw attention. Another plus was the site, which was a corner property with an entrance from both roads and more than ample parking. She would have plenty of room to line up her trees if she ever got any to line up.

Amy watched the workers for a few minutes before she drove off down the road to a Burger King, where she bought a honey biscuit and two cups of coffee to go.

Back at the site she opened her laptop and logged on. Time to find some Christmas trees. An hour later, Amy was jolted from her search by a knock on the car window. She looked at the bill, winced, and wrote out the check. She went back to her search as the men drove off. She looked at the tents and was impressed. At least she’d done one thing right.

It was midmorning when a whoop of pleasure echoed in the car. A man named Ambrose McFlint had trees for sale in McLean, Virginia. The banner ad running across the flat screen said the trees were reasonably priced, and free delivery went with the deal. Within minutes, Amy had the car in gear and she was headed for McLean.

Ten miles away Gus Moss was tagging trees he judged ready to be cut in two weeks’ time. Orange tags were tied onto the branches for the first cutting. Red tags meant the second cutting. Purple tags were balled trees to be dug out with the backhoe, but only when the trees were paid for.

As Gus tromped from the Douglas firs to the Balsam firs to the Virginia pines, he let his mind run wild to the young woman he’d shared dessert with last night. Even though he was bone tired, he hadn’t slept well, tossing and turning all night long. He couldn’t get Amy Baran’s expression out of his mind. She’d been shocked, dismayed at his callousness. Then she’d added insult to injury and called him a scrooge.

Would it kill him to sell her a few trees at a healthy discount for the Seniors’ cause? All his life he’d been a generous person, so why was he suddenly turning into a skinflint? He didn’t have to prove anything to anyone except maybe his father. The why of it simply eluded him.

“Jack, Bill, come over here,” he called to two of his workers. See this grove of Virginia pine? I want you to trim the trees, cut away the brush and tag them with these red tags. We’ll cut these trees the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and deliver them after dark. Don’t look at me like that and don’t ask any questions. Just do it.”

“All of them? There must be over two hundred,” Jack, his foreman, said.

“Yeah, all of them. We’ll stagger the deliveries, fifty at a time. I’ll pay you overtime.”

Gus felt his shoulders lighten a bit as he prowled his fields. An anonymous donation of two hundred trees should take him out of the scrooge category.

Every so often Gus glanced over his shoulder to look for his father, but he was nowhere to be seen. He’d had to make his own breakfast that morning. He felt a grin stretch across his face. His father must have had a really busy night. He’d heard him come in, heard him going up and down the stairs all night long.

Obviously he wasn’t the only one who hadn’t had a good night’s sleep.

As he worked through the day, all he could think of was Amy Baran. He suddenly loved the color purple.

Where is she? What is she doing right now? He wished he knew.

He wondered what she would do if he called her up and asked her out to dinner. He nixed that idea as soon as it popped into his head. He knew in his gut Amy Baran would never go out with someone she considered to be a scrooge. So why did I even think about it?

It was noon when Gus made his way back to the farmhouse. He needed some hot soup and a cup of strong, black coffee. He looked up when he felt something brush his cheek. Rain? He was stunned when he realized what he felt was a snowflake. Thick gray clouds scudded across the sky. Snow this early? He hoped not.

Gus almost swooned at the delicious scents that assailed him the moment he and Cyrus entered the kitchen. A fire was roaring in the fireplace. The only thing missing is the girl with the purple hat and scarf, Gus thought as he washed his hands. He ladled soup into a bowl, cut a chunk of crusty bread and fell to it. He was careful to only eat two bowls of soup; otherwise, he’d be sluggish all afternoon. The strong, black coffee made his eyeballs stand at attention. As he sipped the brew he walked around the house calling his father’s name. He craned his neck to stare out the window. His father’s truck was gone.

He must have gone to town for something. He shrugged.

Gus set his dishes in the sink, gave Cyrus a rawhide chew, put on his jacket and hat and was out of the house, all within five minutes. Instead of walking out to the white pine field, he climbed into his pickup.

If the weather held he could clear at least two rows of the beautiful white pines that would bring him top dollar. As he bumped along the rutted fields his thoughts returned to Amy Baran. He felt like a sixteen-year-old again with his first crush.

On the seat next to him, Cyrus growled as he fought with his chewie, which wasn’t crumbling to his satisfaction. “You see, Cyrus, you have to work for everything in this life. There’s no free lunch, even though Miss Amy Baran seems to think there is.” Cyrus ignored him as he continued fighting with the rawhide bone.

Gus stood in awe as he gazed at the white pine grove. How beautiful, how pungent it smelled. Suddenly, he didn’t want to cut the trees. They were just too majestic. Even though his father hadn’t fertilized or irrigated the beautiful trees, they had survived. All the grove needed was to be thinned out. Maybe he would cut every third one instead of all of them. It broke his heart that once the magnificent specimens were cut, decorated by someone in a house that was probably too warm, the tree would slowly die and be discarded. You live, then you die, he thought bitterly.

Angrily, Gus walked among the stately trees, tying long, yellow strips onto the branches. Long strips of the bright yellow tape meant the trees were not to be touched.

Why, he asked himself, was he so angry? Was he angry that his mother died, that his father let everything go to hell, that he’d killed Gus’s birth tree by cutting it down and donating it to the White House? Or was he angry at the young woman in the purple hat and scarf for calling him a scrooge and hurting his feelings? All of the above, he decided as the chain saw in his hand came to life. He worked then like there was a devil on his shoulder, cutting away the thick undergrowth and dead branches. He broke a sweat but continued until it was too dark to see what he was doing. He was sweating profusely and every bone in his body ached as he drove back over the same bumpy fields. He looked down at his watch and was surprised to see that it was six-thirty. His father would be waiting dinner for him.

His father wasn’t waiting for him when he opened the kitchen door. The table wasn’t set either. The huge pot of soup was still simmering on the warming burner. The oven showed a golden roast chicken dinner complete with stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy. Cyrus barked.

Gus shed his outer clothing, and that’s when he noticed the red blinking light on his father’s answering machine. No voice mail for Sam Moss. Gus pressed the button to listen to the message. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline when he heard the sweet, melodious voice of his love. “Mr. Moss…ah, Gus, this is Amy Baran. I’m…ah, calling you to apologize for calling you a scrooge last night. I was upset when I called you Scrooge. At the time I meant it because I was angry. I don’t mean it today because I’m no longer angry. Even though we’re competitors of sorts, I hope you sell all of your trees and that you make a lot of money. Again, I’m sorry for my rude behavior.”