Stomp Bigfoot Learns Forgiveness at Pine-frosted Christmas
A snowy tale of Christmas heartbreak and angsty wood trolls. From Vermont, 1965. This story is for anyone who hurts during the holidays.
By the 1880s, about one-third of Vermont remained forested. While men killed buffalo in the west, we felled the whispering treetops for farmland in the east. After the Civil War and into the Industrial Revolution, farmers left their soil for the cities and the enlightened promise of the vanishing frontier. Tilled Vermont soil relaxed into meadow. Meadow grew to thicket. From the rejuvenating soil, great forests burst! up with giddy limbs and reclaimed their roots.
A USDA series of Vermont forest surveys claimed that between 1948 and 1966, Vermont forestland grew by 600,000 acres. When Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Wilderness Act of 1964, regions where Fantasticals like the Atlantic Inland Giant Werewolf had struggled to maintain habitat were now federally protected. Millions of forest acres across the continental U.S. were restricted from development. A diminished human presence.
Poachers continued to slay unicorns for their horns and milk, and werewolves for their hides and fangs, and so forth. But the wilderness was vast. In the place of braying dogs, one could hear the silence that whispered amongst the creaking, downy branches, and the wind that brushed a few flakes of snow to mingle in a drift of browned pine quills.
In the Green Mountains, one saddened sasquatch, ragged from long chase, could find no warmth in this infused wilderness insulation. As the holidays grew near, he wandered toward the sounds of traffic and voices. He watched furtively from outskirts.
In the rustic village of Cranberry, Vermont, on the doorstep of the Big Branch Wilderness, Stomp Freedomfoot stole children’s bikes out of their yards, and snatched Danishes from bakery windows.
As he watched the townfolk hang lights one eve, he was struck with a simple wish—that he could walk out openly and help them.
Stomp learns forgiveness at Christmas in pine-frosted Vermont.
1965 - Cranberry, Vermont. Two weeks before Christmas.
The snow fell in heavy wet clumps over the emerald spruce pines of the Green Mountains. Entangled boughs of forest ended at fringes of manicured lawn, and a misted pillow drifted down into the valley and lay thick and quiet. Village voices sprung up from paved streets and muted in the snow. A ’64 Pontiac Bonneville sherrrrrrred through the melty slush and rumbled off into a side street. A mailman waved “Hello!” in his giant earmuffs. Four town gossips got their hair did in a steamy parlor on Seventh Avenue.
Packed inside of a tin trashcan on the Rogersons’ rowhome lawn, Stomp held a Campbell’s can of bird suet slurry, and juggled coals stolen from the Andersons’ burn barrel.
“Ah, hottah! Ah hottah-hottah! Ah hottah-coalah!”
He rolled the embers like a pile of dice and dropped them in the soup can. A coal fell down under Stomp’s stuffed-in body and smoke drifted up from his leg fur. His winter warmer was filled with the finest bluejay suet harvested from the Brenderholts’ finch feeder. He plopped in a snowball. The can steamed up.
“Yes, good. Good steamy hot chocolate.”
Stomp watched across the street as a mom, dad, and two children camped on an ice-gleamed snow fort and shared billowing cups of hot cocoa in mittened hands. One kid raised his mug to drink, and Stomp raised his can to drink. The mom took a sip, and Stomp followed. He wiped a smear of ashen bird suet from his mouth scruff.
“Dolhhhh,” Stomp whined. “I want real hot chocolate.”
The family across the street laughed wondrously and the dad hugged their son and the mom hugged their daughter. They shoved snowballs in each other’s faces and bee-booped each other on the nose. Stomp mimicked them:
“Ha herr herr herr—OWCHY-COALAH!”
The coal under his butt was steaming a hole into his flesh. He sneezed and the trashcan bucked over. The family screamed and fled inside their rancher. The dad stopped to retrieve his son’s wool Sears catalogue scarf. Stomp spilled out of the trash and flames erupted.
“Ha-dowchy! Dowchy-owcha smoke in my eyes!”
A screen door flung open. It was Randy Rogerson.
“Aw, no. You vagrant, you. You dirty drifter. You’re burning up my trash!”
The man leapt down from the porch in his long johns and beat at Stomp with a broom.
“You…you grinch!”
Stomp tried to shield his head from the broom strikes. The snow fort family huddled around the window curtains, enrapt in their jolly red sweaters, sipping hot cocoa.
“Ahm going,” Stomp lamented.
He lumbered off into a back yard, swatted at the smoke in his eyes, and splintered through a line of white picket fences. He staggered out into an intersection. Horns assaulted him with their blasts. He swerved off and lifted his nostrils with his eyes squinted closed. He smelt the forest and stumbled toward the scent of pineburst.
A snowbound lunch crowd dripped snow and sipped coffee at the Cranberry Diner on West Main, next to Demarest’s Antiques and Nanna’s Bakery. Through the large-paned glass, Murry Rae watched a sasquatch in buckskin pants stumble between cars as she poured coffee into Art Brown’s cup.
“Darlin’.”
Put-pit-pit-pit-pit-pit-pt.
Coffee drip-dripped onto the floor.
“Darling.”
Murry Rae’s soft brown eyes returned to the table and the dark roast that overflowed into an expanding brown reservoir that dripped onto Art Brown’s pants. Art, the old land surveyor, looked up at her with his kindly eyes.
“You’re spilling a bit.”
“I’m so sorry. I’ll get you a towel and pay for your check.”
“Don’t worry about the check. A towel will do.”
She hustled to the back and lowered her frustrated eyes that harbored tears. Art Brown gazed out at the he-squatch who flailed and tumbled into the Big Branch Wilderness.
Art Brown saluted with a finger against his forehead at the register. Murry Rae spiked his tab and handed him a receipt.
“I’m so sorry, again. I’m so sorry.”
“Not a worry.” His half-smile brimmed under his white mustache. “You just keep takin’ care of them two sweet kids.”
He walked out into the piling-up snow and toward a green ’47 Ford pickup. She returned to the booth with a rag. Under the coffee mug was a wad of bills that was three times the amount of the check.
Stomp perched cross-legged in the timberline on a ridge above Cranberry and rubbed snowballs in his eyes. He blinked and gazed down into the thick blanket of snow fog that drifted above Nanna’s Bakery and Demarest Antiques, and the quaint chimneys that rose above brick shops and puffed out billows of soft woodsmoke.
Behind him, he heard the rattle of rickety wheels. A brawny squirrel trundled along with a rope harness hitched to a red Radio Flyer wagon filled with green canning jars. A toddler squirrel followed, sucking its thumb.
Below Stomp on the town edge, a gang of children chucked hard-packed snowballs at each other from behind cars in the Ames parking lot. He observed their glee, their competition, and he leaned over and rolled up a snowball.
Stomp hopped back to his feet and sauntered down out of the forest.
“Let’s try this again.”
Little Johnny Chamberlin pelted Jimmy Grangnerton in the back of the head and Jimmy keeled over into a snow drift.
“Score on you, buttmunch!”
Freddie Timberton yelled out: “Nart uh! Can’t use ice, fishsniffer!”
“Shut up, turdherder!”
A gray shadow enveloped Little Johnny’s entire worldview. He turned. He looked up. The snowball in his hand dropped.
“Hello, young snowball warriors. I observed this fun frolic as I washed trashcan ash from my eyes after I was broom-chased from a domicile and my trash coals burnt my rump up no-good. Mind if I join your fun?”
Jimmy Grangnerton recovered from his snow-drift spill and wiped pieces of ice from his eyelashes. He took one look and screamed:
“RREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Little Johnny kicked Stomp in the shin. He reared back and pelted him in the mouth with his snowball.
“Dang dirty fantastical! Shoo! Back to your wood shanty!”
A Salvation Army volunteer gleefully rang his bell in the Ames parking lot. Town folk shopped the cobbled streets in great cheer. And all the children of the village hammered Stomp with snowballs under the town wreaths and quaint snow.
“Drifter!” they screamed. “Drifter!”
Little Johnny: “We’re gonna call Dutch Brown on you!”
“Who-hoh. Hey now. I’m just…hoping to…” Stomp shielded his eyes and took a direct hit on the sensitive spot on his nose. “Owie!”
Stomp stumbled back into the forest and the squirrel dad and his toddler stood with their hands on hips. The dad stepped forward with his cart of wares and smacked Stomp’s foot with an acorn top.
“What’s the matter with you? You trying to bring a whole clan of poachers down upon Big Branch?” The squirrel smacked him again. “Look at them kids now. Look!”
Stomp looked through the thick snow at the gang of kids who pumped their arms and ran screaming through the slush up Main Street. Over by the pharmacy on the lit-up thoroughfare, an oily-haired man in a sanitation outfit trudged through the commotion dragging a wheelbarrow with a smoking burn barrel wedged on top.
“Those kids are gonna tell someone who likes money, and that someone’s gonna tell someone who doesn’t gotta heart, and that someone’s gonna come out here for your pelt.”
Stomp bowed his head. “So? What are you selling, anyway?”
The squirrel turned and plucked out a jar. “Fried green tomatoes—the freshest. Plucked from the finest town gardens. Fried and jarred them myself. Want a sample?”
Stomp blinked. “The prey out in the open with the cart hitched to its back is advising me about danger.”
The squirrel turned up its nose. “Fine, then. The snobby sasquatch doesn’t want our tomatoes. Come on, Halfnut.”
The baby squirrel waddled along. “Cheeka-cheempa?”
“That’s right, Halfnut. A big, selfish idiot trying to draw attention.”
The clumped snow lightened to thin, tender flakes. Stomp stood on the ridge and studied the town stores. The ornate porch and façade of the Colonial Inn was lit-up bright. Across the intersection, he rested his eyes on the elderly ladies who stepped out from the shops of Demarest Antiques and Nanna’s Bakery.
Little Johnny and Jimmy and Freddie and the gang were huddled on Dutch Brown’s cabin doorstep outside town. His home was made of weathered wood slats and the yard was littered with rusted farm machinery. A green ’47 Ford sat in the dirt drive. Bloodied hunting clothes hung from the wash line. Above the door rested a pair of foot-long tusks, sawed off at the base, of a Canadian Wood Troll.
“Knock, Johnny.”
“You do it, Freddie.”
“You brought us here first.”
“So? I don’t wanna get skinned.”
“Do you wanna get paid or not?”
Little Johnny lifted his mitten and knocked hard on the oak door. All the boys took one step back.
Nothing happened. Johnny stepped forward.
BERNK. BERN—
“WHAAAT?”
The voice came muted through the window.
“We’re lookin’ for Dutch Brown,” shouted Johnny. “We got intelligence.”
“Who asks with what intentions for Dutch Brown?” came the booming shout.
“We jus’ got attacked by a ‘squatch down on West Main by the Ames. A big he-bitch vagrant type.”
There was a rustling. The door swung open and a grizzly figure stood in the doorframe in soiled white long johns with a mane like Robinson Crusoe.
“‘Squatch have not been seen in these woods in forty years. Dutch Brown is inclined to question the integrity of these boys.”
“Yessir, on our honor.” Johnny made a crossing motion. “Attacked us right out in the open. No shame.”
Jimmy Grangnerton piped up. “Told us he wanted to burn our rumps with hot coals!”
“That he did, Mr. Brown.” Johnny nodded. “A no-good rump-burner.”
Dutch Brown stared at the boys, flecks of twigs and brush tangled-up in his hair. “Bring yourselves inside then. Not safe out here with the wood trolls about.” He motioned and stepped back into a dim cave. “I have not the means for a creature of such speed and slyness, but I’ve a phone number in mind for some Barnaby boys out of Montpelier.”
The boys filed into the shanty cavern. The air was heavy with warm stew and man funk. In the back room, Art Brown sipped coffee and listened.
Down off North Third, Ray Gerald Framby stood in Mrs. Shangy’s front yard in his county sanitation outfit and shoved the back end of a unicorn carcass into his portable incinerator. The fire beamed a hot glow out into the settling dusk.
“Got dang it.”
He struggled to push the floppy legs in with the hooves and clanged the door shut. His set-up was a homemade burn barrel incinerator atop a wheelbarrow with the words stenciled:
He parked his smoldering incinerator on the sidewalk and walked three steps up onto a screened porch. He knocked twice. The door opened. An elderly woman with a walker peeked out.
“Oh, hello, Mr. Ray Gerald.”
“Hello, Mrs. Shangy. I’ve disposed of the carcass for you. I have your bill here.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Ray.” She took the bill in her hand. “Hm, five dollars. Okay. Would you like to come inside for a drink before you go, Mr. Ray?”
“Oh, certainly, ma’am.” Ray Gerald ran a hand through his oily hair. “Freezing out here.”
He followed her in and peered around. The tables were clean. The counters were clean. Spoons were mounted decoratively on the wall, probably silver. In the living room corner was a shrine to Mr. Shangy. A picture of him in his army uniform next to an F6F Hellcat bomber plane stood next to a red-felt-lined tray that held two distinguished service medals.
She moved slowly into the kitchen with her walker. “Those danged wood trolls have been out around here. The unicorns come down off the mountain to eat my clover and the trolls come in and tear up the unicorns. Nasty creatures.”
“Oh, I know it, ma’am.”
“My husband, Dan, were he still breathing, would have a field day with the shotgun on those nasty tuskers.”
“I know it, ma’am. Things ain’t like they used to be.”
She brought him a mug of hot chocolate. “Do you want to sit? It gets so lonely here at the holiday without Dan now.”
He took two big gulps and chugged it down. “No, Mrs. Shangy, I best get home. Do you have my money?”
She rummaged around in her purse and handed him five dollars. “Here you are.”
He held his hand out and waited.
“Oh.” She went back into her purse. “Here’s a tip.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Shangy.” He shook her frail hand. “May you be so blessed this Christmas.”
He hopped down the porch steps and took up the handles of his wheelbarrow, and whistled as he walked in the direction of Plumpton’s Pawn Shop.
In Mrs. Shangy’s home, the lamp glow was warm. The room smelled of fresh cookies. In the red-felt tray of the shrine to Mr. Shangy, the two war medals were gone.
Murry Rae locked the diner door behind her. The street was quiet now, but alive with the warm glow of lighted street pole Christmas wreaths. A snowplow rumbled by:
Shhhhhhhhhh
And carried on up Main Street.
Murry held to-go boxes of leftover onion rings, shepherd’s pie, and plain spaghetti in sauce. She trudged through town toward the forest edge and the barn weathervane that stuck out above the dusky trees. She felt the weight of Art Brown’s tip in her pocket and approached a gentleman by a Salvation Army bucket ringing a bell.
She walked past and turned and stopped. “Good evening.”
She rummaged in her pocket and could feel her wedding ring next to the wad of tip money. She removed the tip money, hefted it in her hand a moment, and dropped it in the bucket.
“Thank you, miss.”
She nodded and put one booted foot in front of the other up Main Street. The businesses dropped away and the road became wooded. The branches were stark and gnarled against the gray unlighted snow.
Snernk, snerk, snrk.
Low, pig-like grunts came from the woods to her left. She held her dinner boxes closer and hustled up the road. Up ahead, a farmhouse rancher illuminated the woods with its bright-lit windows. She approached the drive and saw two children pop up in the big front window. They lit up with joy and waved to her. She smiled big and waved back.
“Hi, babies,” she whispered.
The screen door wheeent shut. She slammed the inside door and knocked snow from her boots. She set down the stack of to-go boxes and dropped a pile of mail on the table. Each letter was addressed to a “Ms. Murry Rae Framby.”
“Mim and Luke, come for dinner.”
Little footsteps pounded through the house and her children stormed the kitchen.
“Mommy!”
They wrapped their little arms around her. Mim took a big, exaggerated sniff. “What did you bring us, mom? Mermaid soup? Troll pie? Sasquatch stew?”
“Calm, now. I brought us diner food.”
She retrieved three plates from the cabinet and spooned portions onto two of the plates.
“Mom, are you going to eat?”
“I’ll eat whatever you and Luke don’t eat.”
She nearly dropped a plate as a heavy fist pounded the door.
Thunk-thunk.
The door swung in. A hulking figure bundled in a scarf and heavy clothes knocked their boots against the wall. The figure undid the scarf from his face.
It was Ray Gerald Framby.
Murray Rae’s face reddened. The children danced across the room. “Daddy!”
They hugged their dad’s legs and he stomped across the kitchen as mud and slush fell from his boots. He left the front door hanging open and Murry Rae rushed to keep in the warmth.
Ray Gerald went straight for the cabinet, pulled out a plate, and spooned food from his kids’ plates onto his. Little Luke looked up at him with a mischievous grin.
“Daddy, yah stealing my food.”
“Oh, Daddy’s been working hard. You don’t need it.”
Murry Rae’s hands were white from gripping the edges of the table. She stood straight across from Ray Gerald as he sat and began to eat from a great pile. He made eye contact with her as he chewed.
“How are you, my queen? I’m glad to be home.”
She went around the table and picked up his plate and slid the food onto Luke’s plate. “I’m not your queen. This isn’t your home. You need to go.”
“This is so my home. These are my kids.”
“You have not paid one cent into this home I toiled for. You can have the kids every weekend like the divorce papers say when you find a stable place for yourself.”
He kept chewing and looked to the kids, who stood next to him enrapt and watched him eat. “You kids want Daddy to stay, right?”
They both nodded.
“Daddy will stay and save up and soon we’ll have a big mansion. With a baseball field. And ten water slides. Right, Luke? Not this crummy house that Mommy spent all her money on.” He forked an onion ring from Luke’s plate. “Our money.”
She walked to the sink and looked at the outbarn, with its weathervane and single lighted bulb that shone over the snow.
“Please leave.”
Ray Gerald chewed with his mouth open. “If you really want me to go, fine.” He stood up and dropped the plate.
THUD.
“By the way, I need to leave my incinerator here for a couple of days. I put it in the laundry room. If you could wash my dirty clothes, that’d be great, too.”
Murry Rae turned. “This is not your storage space! You will not leave that dangerous, dirty contraption in this house!”
“I got to. I got nowhere else for it.”
She stormed back through the house to the laundry room that connected to the back porch. The thing stank like burnt hair and decay. The children clambered to a window and watched Ray Gerald follow as she dragged it out and dumped it in the yard.
Their voices carried into the woods.
SNRNK. SNORNK. SNORNK.
A pair of yellow eyes parted a curtain of branches and watched from the leaf-stripped winter brush. It prepared to lunge out and hesitated as Murry Rae slammed the front door in Ray Gerald’s face.
“I love you, queen! I’m gonna win you back!”
His dirty laundry was flung through a window and landed in the snow. Ray Gerald gathered up his loose clothes. He hitched up his wheelbarrow and trudged up the road.
The yellow eyes melted back into the timber.
The streetlamps hummed. Shop windows sat stoic and dark. The snow fell light as it found rest on the street. From the alley next to Nanna’s Bakery, Stomp peeked his head around the corner.
All clear.
Stomp moved into the doorway and shrugged the burlap coffee satchel from his shoulders.
clink
He felt around inside his pack and retrieved a pointed instrument. He slid it into the door jamb. The front entrance to Nanna’s Bakery swung open.
He stepped inside and inhaled deeply.
“Come to me, sweetness.”
He moved to the bakery case and cradled a key lime pie, and dumped it in his bag. He plucked a donut up on each finger and let one slide into his mouth and the rest into the bag.
HARUMG.
Crumbs spilled down his chest scruff. He stopped at the register and read the side of a donation canister:
“ALL CAKE PROCEEDS IN MONTH OF DECEMBER WILL GO TO GREEN MOUNTAINS CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL.”
Stomp paused to slip a chocolate mousse cake into his bag and tip-toed back to the front. He locked the door and tiptoed across the alley to Demarest Antiques. He repeated the lock-pick and fell through the entrance.
He slipped amongst a room that was like the inside of a bird’s nest. Ephemera and antiques were stacked in zig zag patterns, with a barely perceptible open space to walk.
“Arga!”
Stomp knocked his knee against an 1830s plow. A shimmering display case caught his eyes from the back. A nightlight illuminated a spinning glass display filled with glimmering rows of stained-glass ornaments.
“Oh.” He whispered at the case and ran a hand over the glass. “Beautiful.”
He pulled a tiny rock hammer from his pack and tapped it.
TINK.
Stomp tapped it once more.
Teenk
The glass shattered and spilled about the counter. Stomp was drawn to one figurine. Jesus was in the manger and Mary and Joseph watched over.
“Family,” he whispered. “Nice family.”
On the display, he saw a similar sign as in Nanna’s:
“ALL ORNAMENT PROCEEDS IN MONTH OF DECEMBER WILL GO TO GREEN MOUNTAINS CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL.”
Stomp put the ornament in his pack and tip-toed back through. He paused at a row of dolls seated on a church pew and picked one up. It was a sasquatch doll seated next to a box filled with Lincoln Logs.
“Hmm.”
He put the doll back down and moved to the entrance. He looked out into the street and shrugged back into the night.
He wandered up Main Street by the back-alley way and came out on a road that led out of town and into reclaimed forest. Through the snowy branches that hung down, he could see the outline of a barn up ahead with a weathervane, and home lights.
He stopped and bent in the middle of the road. He traced a finger between a pair of tire treads. Two big, gnarled feet had tread here, deep with weight down to the pavement. Stomp sniffed and detected the brawny straw scent of a creature’s musk.
He carried on up the road to the barn and stopped.
The lights shone cheerily from this place. Inside, two children stood on their tiptoes. Their mother helped them decorate a Christmas tree. The little boy clapped wildly when she lifted him up and he put the star on top.
Stomp hunched down into the shadow. The barn door was ajar. It was thirty feet across open yard.
“Mamma, look how much good glitter I did.”
Murry gently relieved Luke of the jumbo-sized tube of silver glitter, which was now a pile of silver sand in the carpet.
“You did good, honey. So much good glitter in the carpet for Mommy to clean up.”
Mim climbed up on the couch. “Mom, can we put the lights up?”
“The lights are in the barn, honey. Tomorrow we can.”
Behind her through the double living-room bay windows, a giant figure pranced across the yard like a ballet dancer on ice. Luke gasped.
He flung his arm out and pointed. Murry turned. She saw only soft mounds of fresh snow.
Stomp slipped in through the ajar door. The dim space was hay-scented and dry, and housed a lawn mower and tools and a crumbling hay bale. A dark, coiled lump lay against the wall. Stomp peered down. They were Christmas lights.
Stomp dragged the coil of knotted lights along the wall. He gave the bundle one great shake and the coils fell open. He hung each strand of lights just so from the jutted wall nails and plugged them into a wall outlet.
He knelt and crawled to the haybale in the corner and laid down his burlap pack. Frigid air hushed up through the wooden floorboards and brushed through his fur. But the lights were warm and aglow, and he pulled a few strands of hay over his belly scruff and fell straight asleep.
“You children have confirmed that this beast has attacked you, viciously and ferociously, without abandon, with the cruel and malicious intent to smite you bloodily?”
Theodold Denton of the Barnaby Corporation sat at Dutch Brown’s kitchen table in an all-black suit and top hat, his mustache quivering, his pen poised over a legal pad. Four more Barnaby men stood in a row behind him, stoic, each of them armed.
“Yes, sir.” Little Johnny spoke for the gaggle of children gathered behind him.
Jimmy Grangnerton craned his neck up: “Tried to burn our rumps with hot coals!”
Dutch Brown still wore the same long johns as the day before and pressed a meaty finger into the contract splayed out on the table.
“I require a 25% commission for arrangement of this meet upon completion of the kill.”
Denton looked up. “Fantastical hunting is now illegal, as you surely know.”
The men shifted their feet. Jimmy Grangnerton snuffed up a great booger.
Snurrfffff
“However,” the contractor continued, “it is within legal boundaries to ah…extricate a creature forcibly if they are proven to be a danger to society, as this specimen surely has.”
The “Barnaby, LTD” wording stenciled at the top of the contract was representative of over one hundred years of organized Fantastical stalks. They hunted woodland sprites in the San Diego Bay and they hunted the big-game werewolves of Northern Montana. High-finance traders, black-market operators. The Pinkertons of Fantastical hunts. Bandits in top hats.
The Barnaby contract-writer stood. “We are prepared to offer Mr. Brown and his coalition of aggrieved children a one-time finder’s fee of 12.5% of final cost fetched at market. We will lodge at the Colonial Inn on West Main until the beast is detained.”
The children reached out their hands to shake. Dutch Brown stayed their hands. In the back living room, Art Brown swayed in a rocking chair with his eyes affixed in the coal glow of the woodstove.
“You’ll expend hundreds of dollars a day tracking the creature. For an additional five percent, I—” Dutch looked down at his half-feral child comrades, “We—can help you find the trail. I know a man who knows whereabouts.”
Dutch Brown reached for his phone and rang the County Sanitation Department.
BRONK.
The snowy soccer ball left a dusted imprint on the barn door. Mim aimed at the center and kicked it again.
BRONK.
Stomp jerked awake. His hair stood straight up.
Little Luke in his snowsuit dug foxholes all over the yard with a garden trowel. Murry stood by the stove and watched her children play through the kitchen window. The steam from the pan of rice and chickpeas boiled up in her face and she leaned into the enchantment.
She minced a clove of garlic and laid it in the collage of color, and closed her eyes as it sizzled into the percolating butter. She dashed a bit of salt and cayenne into the mix. She laid the chicken strips in and then slid over a cutting board. Her face alighted with a warm glow and she carved slivers of green tomato and pressed them into the cast iron.
From the wood edge, the yellow eyes watched.
Mim reared back her foot and kicked. The soccer ball missed the door and went straight in through the open sliver into the barn. She walked toward the barn. Suddenly, the ball bound out into the snow and came to rest at her feet.
She squinted into the sliver of darkness. She pulled back her leg and kicked again. Right on target. There was a pause from within.
The ball shot back out into the crust-frosted day-old snow.
Mim picked up the ball and stomped toward the kitchen. The screen door slammed and then the heavy storm door. Her mother had her eyes on the stove.
“Mom.”
“What, honey?”
“Can I have some leftover onion rings?”
“No, honey. We’re about to eat.”
“Not for me.”
“Who for, baby?”
“I want to feed the monster in the barn.”
Murry dropped her spatula and rushed out the door in her socks.
“Luke!”
Luke looked up. He was three feet deep in a snow drift and still digging.
A single eye peeked from the sliver in the barn door and gazed up and down and back and forth.
Snorf. Snorf.
Stomp smelled…what was that? Green tomatoes? In butter, not oil. Yes. Is that…yes, one clove of garlic. He gave the air another snorfle and watched the mother rush out into the snow. Stomp snorfled again.
He smelt wood troll.
There was a rattle from the driveway. The sound of heavy feet rushing through snow. Murry grabbed Luke and swept him up into her arms. The heavy tramping was almost upon them. Ray Gerald Framby burst from the driveway hauling his incinerator wheelbarrow.
“Daddy!”
“Children!”
Ray Gerald jogged right past his kids and around back to the laundry room. He unhitched, sauntered into the front door, and came out licking chickpeas and buttered green tomatoes from his fingers. Murry stood in disbelief.
“Whoo, that was a big haul today. Had to smolder down three more unicorns over on Fourth Street.”
“Children, please go inside while your father and I speak.”
Stomp couldn’t see. He shifted the boor door open another inch. His forehead tuft and goofy inquisitive face peeked out at the pair in the snow.
“What did I tell you yesterday about coming here unannounced?”
Ray threw his arms up. “Kitten queen, I need you. I need to be here to protect my family. Do you know how unfair this is to me? Do you know what you’ve done to me?”
“You’ve had every chance.” Murry’s face flushed with tears. “Every chance. You are a poison. The kids deserve better. I deserve better.”
“But if you just give me the chance,” Ray Gerald stepped forward. “I would do anything for you. I love and respect you so much.”
She held her hands to her chest and let them fall to her side. “No, Gerald.”
“Aw, you’re the worst. You know that? Cast out their father at Christmas. THE WORST.”
The figure in the brush could hold its hunger no longer. It stampeded forth from the bramble, grunting and chuffing.
SNRK. SNRK. SNERNK.
The creature was close to seven feet tall, fully extended, but carried itself in a hunched waddle. Its padded feet were finished off with dull tearing claws. Its face was a smudged-together chunk of hair and jowls. The long chin tusks could gut a man with a practiced swipe.
“ARRAGA!”
Ray Gerald saw the beast first. He instinctively pulled Murry in front of him and turned to use her as a shield. The children’s screams were muted through the living room window. Stomp ripped the barn door open and charged.
BARUMP. BARUMP. BARUMP.
His great legs accelerated to a full gallop in a burst that would make a cheetah lie down in shame. The troll gave a gnarled pig-squeal and reared up to swipe down. Murry Rae saw the bits of flesh that hung from three-inch claws, and the black beads of vacant hunger in its eyes. The claws came down and met with a mass of flying fur that speared the beast into a snow drift.
HARAUGGGGGGGGGGG!
The troll bellowed and beat his chest once. He swelled up and the two creatures circled. Stomp hooted and ape-tossed a handful of snow.
“Come get some.”
“Rrreeeerrnt!”
The troll charged. 1,400 combined pounds met in a tangle of fur and teeth. The pair of beasts was undulating, clawing, growling, clenching. The troll contorted its head and swiped eight-inch tusks into Stomp’s shoulder again and again. Stomp wrapped the beast up, like a boxer in the ropes, and they came together in a grapple.
Ray Gerald moved Murry as the pair did their dance, always keeping her in front of him.
The wood troll smelled like a bear in a clear cut, like something denned, inebriated with a hunger that coagulated and maddened its dark veins. Stomp pushed off and punched. His paw cut on the troll’s jagged teeth.
“Owie!”
The troll countered and ripped Stomp down into a snowdrift. Stomp reached around for a hard object. His hand came upon the soccer ball. He smashed the ball against the troll.
“Bonk, bonk, bonk!” Stomp hooted. “Train’s comin’. Bonk, bonk.”
Rrreeernt!
The troll bit down into Stomp’s collarbone and hung on like a caiman. Stomp stood them both up and pushed with all its might. The wood troll fell back and stumbled into one of Luke’s digger holes.
The troll sat like a toddler and rubbed its bottom.
A great cry face came over the beast and a single tear fell from its eye. The troll sniffled and turned on all fours. Murry covered her hand over her mouth and the creature crawled back into the woods. She turned and ran straight for the house.
Ray Gerald faced a heaving, bleeding Stomp. Inside by the Christmas tree, alight against the gray afternoon, Murry embraced her children.
Ray Gerald, no stranger to beings of the wood, stared at Stomp as if this creature had physically dented his pride. He watched Stomp for a long minute, then seemed to gulp, as if he had swallowed this, and it never happened. He turned, picked up his clunky wheelbarrow with the burn barrel, and walked away.
Stomp lifted an arm and waved. “Okay, then. Buh-bye.”
Stomp vomited in the snow and dripped a game trail of blood back to the barn door. He staggered in and went to his pack. He retrieved a smashed-up piece of the chocolate mousse cake from his thievin’ night, smushed the cake into the shoulder punctures, and lay back against the haybale.
The barn door swung open and illuminated the cave-like space with the brilliance of reflected white snow.
Murry Rae walked in and stopped in front of Stomp. She gazed down at this bleeding, wounded creature that she had only read about as an oafish monster in children’s stories. He wore old pants made of deer rawhide, carried a great tangle of emotional intelligence in his face, and rested under the string of softly swaying lights that he had hung around her barn.
“I have Band-aids and tweezers in the house. Come.” She motioned to him. “Bring your things. I’m cooking chicken with fried green tomatoes.” She started to walk back to the house and turned. “And chickpeas.”
Stomp picked himself up and followed her through the yard. The children pressed their palms and faces against the window glass. The little boy jumped up and down and pointed. Murry held the door for Stomp, and Stomp trudged forward toward this beautiful, resolute woman.
He hesitated for a moment. The forbidden place. Inside a human home. With children and lights and a tree.
He felt a tingle in his heart and stepped inside.
The house was warm and illuminated. One of the children in the next room smashed their fingers on a piano. At the sound of the door, the room went silent. Stomp stood in the doorway. Murry went to fetch bandages. First one, then another set of little hands, grasped the doorway into the kitchen and their little heads peeked around the corner.
Stomp shifted his feet and tried to whistle.
“Whee whoo. Whee whoo whoo.”
The children disappeared. There was a dragging sound, like heavy furniture on a wood floor. Murry came into the room with a cedar chest and a box of Band-aids in her mouth. She dusted her hands.
“You can sit on this. It will hold your weight. Sit down, please.”
Stomp sat down. He shrugged his pack onto the floor.
“Owchy!”
She dumped rubbing alcohol directly into the fur matted with crusted blood. He squirmed and she pulled up a chair.
“Oh, dear.” She grasped a sliver of troll tusk in his shoulder with the tweezers and slid it, and secured a firm grasp, and plucked it out. “What is your name, sir?”
“Stomp Manitobus Freedomfoot.”
“Hello, Stomp. I’m Murry Rae Fram—” She paused. “I’m Murry. Thank you for saving my life.”
She crudely pasted a bandage on each of his wounds and patted his shoulder. “This will have to do. Let’s move on from all this and eat together. Mim! Luke!”
The children scampered across the hardwood floor and they burst in. Mim sat on a chair. Luke went directly to Stomp and climbed up on his lap.
“Oh.” Stomp looked down at the boy who put his finger in his nose. The boy held the booger up for Stomp to see.
Murry went to the stove and bent and inhaled the colorful collage of vegetables and chicken and rice. She arranged plates and portioned scoops for each of them.
“I hope you’re not a vegetarian, Mr. Stomp.”
She lay a plate in front of him. He stared down at the mountain of steaming vegetables. He waited for her to go back to the stove and felt down by his leg in his pack. He reached in and retrieved a chunk of smashed-up mousse cake and quickly mixed it into the rice with the fork. Luke looked up.
“I saw-ed that.”
Mim held a fork and spoon in each hand. “Mom.”
“What, honey?”
“Wouldn’t it be awesome if Dad can come for Christmas?”
Murry brought two more plates. “Yes, baby. That would be awesome.”
They ate in silence. Stomp held his fork with a fist and restrained from dunking his face in the food. Stomp let himself bring his eyes up to meet Murry’s. She chewed slowly and smiled.
Mim pointed her fork at him. “What kind of monster are you, Stomp?”
Stomp stared at the rice and tomatoes. “Oh, well…”
“Honey, Mr. Stomp is not a monster.” Murry reached out and put a hand on Mim’s shoulder and looked to Stomp. “What do you like to be called, Mr. Stomp?”
Stomp chewed on a bite of cake and rice. “Monster is fine.”
Murry closed her eyes as she brought another bite up. “The fried green tomatoes. They intoxicate me.”
Stomp noted her enchantment and shrugged Luke off to the floor. He stood up. “I thank you for this dinner. I’ll leave now—”
“That’s nonsense.” Murry stood up. “Last night you slept in my outbarn. You’ve certainly no place to go.”
Her face was stern and sincere. Stomp looked at the children who had paused chewing.
“Someone will come along to chase me or hunt me and mess up your nice farm cave. That’s how it goes.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I’ve invited you into my home. You deserve better. Sit down, please.”
Stomp looked at the brightened faces around him. “Okay, well, sometimes I get real sweaty when I sleep and smell like eggs, and I get nervous somethin’ fierce and bark like a badger in heat, and—”
Murry stood and put a hand on Stomp’s shoulder. “I’m here for it. Come into the living room. We’ll have dessert. You can tell us a story from your travels.”
Murry cleared the plates and Stomp and the children went into the spacious living room, filled with the scent of cut pine and woodstove smoke, illuminated by tree lights and the sliver of glow that came through the stove, and furnished with a floor-load of scattered toys that could kill a man.
Stomp slipped on a toy fire engine and stumbled to one knee and howled.
“Arrooooh!”
The children laughed and climbed on his back and wrapped their arms around his neck and choked him. Luke climbed up on him again and sat down on his lap. Mim tugged his ears. Luke pointed a stubby finger in Stomp’s face.
“You got hoirt. That’s funny.”
“Yes, so funny.”
Murry brought in small plates with pie and covered the floor in blankets. The children sat by the tree, filled with glimmering ornaments. Murry put her hands on her chin.
“Tell us a nice fairytale, Stomp.”
Stomp gazed out the window at the lowering dusk. “Well, alright.” He slid the entire piece of pie into his mouth and crumbs tumbled from his mouth as he began:
“Once upon a time, alllll across America, there was something called child labor, and there were meat factories in Chicago, and sewing factories in Los Angeles, and alllll the little working children got their fingers sewn up no-good and—”
“Mr. Stomp.” Murry chewed a bite of pie. “Let’s try a different story, please.”
Stomp began again.
“Once upon a time, deep in the mountain wood, there was a sasquatch who roamed the wild, always searching for somebody like him…”
Luke drifted off first, curled in a ball on Stomp’s lap. Mim lay her head down next. Then Murry curled in her blanket. Stomp’s eyelids drooped, and he drifted into a slumber that knew only warmth and the quiet sighs as the little ones slept.
Ten Days Before Christmas.
BRONK BRONK BRONK.
The knock was loud on the front storm door. It was dawn. Murry had not yet left for work.
BRONK BRONK—
She swung the door open.
Four men dressed in all black, each of them in 1800s-style London top hats, stood on her porch.
“Yes?”
“Hello, Mrs. Framby, I presume?” One man extended a hand. “I’m Theodold Denton, contractor for the Barnaby Corporation. Is the man of the house around, a Mr. Ray Gerald Framby?”
Inside, Stomp huddled below the living room window. Luke ran in. Stomp put a finger to his lips.
“Well, I’m Murry Rae—I no longer go by Framby. This is my home. I’m the woman of the house.”
Mr. Denton paused. “We were informed by a local, Dutch Brown, that we could find a Mr. Framby, a man who could help us track a nuisance sasquatch who attacked some children last week.”
Murry stepped into the doorframe. “I’m sure you gentlemen know, in such a quaint town as Cranberry, that we have no such problems here. Children will be children with their stories.”
“Oh, but you do have such a problem, Mrs. Framby.” Denton rested a hand on the pistol at his waist. “We’ve gathered reports of unicorns ravaging town gardens, of wood trolls savaging the unicorns, of this sasquatch beast terrorizing fine folk.”
“That’s unfortunate, but I’m sure you gentlemen know that Fantastical killing has been federally banned for some time now. And we entertain no such types in Cranberry.”
Denton’s mustache quivered and he rested a hand on her shoulder, like a grandfather would scold a child. “Ohh, Mrs. Framby—”
“Murry.”
“Mrs. Framby, this is a nuisance beast, and as a danger to society, it’s under no such federal strictures. Besides, the price a mature beast of this magnitude can fetch on the foreign markets for tooth and claw, well…it’s a hefty sum.”
She recoiled from his touch. “So, that’s what this is about.”
Denton leaned into the doorway and sniffed the air. He pulled a business card from his breast pocket that held a time piece on a chain. “Should you encounter your husband, or should you wish to earn a hefty finder’s fee for any sighting of the beast, please do give us a call.”
Murry slammed the door and leaned her back against it. She exhaled. She tucked the card into a side pocket, where she felt the contours of her wedding ring.
Five Days Before Christmas.
Stomp stood out in the yard under the stars, pink barrettes in his hair, fingernails painted pink, and banged the final nail into the broken barn slat. He stepped back to examine his handiwork. He grinned sheepishly at Murry as she trundled out of the shadows and through the snow.
“See, look—all fixed now.”
Murry looked at the criss-cross of a dozen nails slanted in different directions that Stomp had used to affix a single foot long barn slat.
“Oh, oh hoh,” she laughed. “Look at that. And the slat is even a nice gray color so it wouldn’t accidentally blend in with the rest of the fire engine red.”
Stomp nodded. “Yep.”
Murry shifted her eyes around the yard to the timberline and the crusted troll imprints that were visible even in the dark. Stomp saw her apprehension.
“You don’t have to worry about that again. I marked my territory there, there, and there.” Stomp pointed around the yard. “And there and there.”
“Why don’t you come in for some dinner? It’s been a long day. The children are already asleep.”
Stomp dropped the hammer in the snow. “Tomorrow, I’ll hammer the leaky sink and bonk the upstairs heater that don’t work no good.”
“That’s fine. Thank you, Stomp.”
“Onion rings and diner meatloaf again?”
“Yes.” Murry laughed. “And I brought you a stale apple pie.”
“Oh, so wonderful.”
The house lights were dimmed and candles lit the kitchen. Stomp went in and sat cross-legged by the tree. The Christmas tree glowed quiet and steady. He smelled the food heating up in the oven. A sharp exclamation pierced the room:
“Owt!”
Stomp rushed into the kitchen. Murry held a bloody towel around her pinky finger. She grimaced and sat down.
“I’m not great with blood.”
Stomp pulled up a chair and sat next to her.
“What happened?”
“I tried to catch a glass in the dark.” She shook her head. “Silly me, right?”
Stomp removed the towel from her fingers and held them in his great paw. “I’ll get the bandies and the sting-sting.”
“The Band-aids and the rubbing alcohol?”
“The bandies and the sting-sting, yes.”
Stomp came back in. “Couldn’t find no bandy-aids or sting-sting.”
He dropped a pile of toilet paper in her lap. They sat across from each other in the candlelit kitchen. Stomp wrapped toilet paper around the finger that bled from a tiny, deep cut.
“Here go,” said Stomp.
She shook her head. “I think I’m gonna have a new scar.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” said Stomp. He brushed aside a patch of fur on his side and showed her a jagged stretch of alligator bite marks. He brushed aside another area to reveal an old musket-ball wound. “I have plenty and I’m still here.”
She knelt her head and tears furrowed creases down her cheeks. She began to sob. “Why does it have to be so hard?”
Stomp sat with his hands in his lap. “There’s only one of you and two of them.”
The clock ticked. The light breeze blew against the house and left a low shush against the windows. Firewood crackled in the woodstove.
In the low glow of candles, Murry leaned forward and rested her head on Stomp as her shoulders shook.
Stomp wrapped his arms around and gave her a hug.
Three Days Before Christmas.
The daylight was stark through the big, square diner windows that looked out on Main Street and the green ’47 Ford that sat in front. Murry fiddled with her wedding ring at the coffee cart. She let it drop back in her pocket next to the Barnaby Corporation card that was still there. She poured a fresh cup and took it to the corner booth.
Art Brown saluted from his usual spot, in his usual jeans and flannel, and looked up. “How are you today, darlin’?”
“Oh.” She placed his cup down next to a steaming omelet. “Do you ever feel like you can’t win at anything? Like it’s all quiet desperation?”
Art sipped the coffee. “I used to. Until I settled up with the past.” He took another sip. “Now, I’m just grateful.”
She stood back from the table and looked around. Folks in jeans and suspenders, flannels and Christmas sweaters, sat amiably and shared talk. She plopped herself in the booth and set down the coffee pot.
“Could I tell you something, Art?”
“Course.”
She leaned forward and spoke in low whispers.
Three days before Christmas.
The emerald pine boughs were bent heavy, like the sky had baked a vanilla cake on Cranberry, Vermont and squeezed too much frosting on the branches. The sun glared starkly on the mid-morning snow, now a hard crust. Heavy boots tromped up Murry Grace’s driveway. The forest watched the man swing open the screen door.
Wheeernt
A loud grunting and heaving sounded from within. Ray Gerald’s back first appeared in the doorframe, as he attempted to wrap his arms around an unwieldy object. He advanced a step and dragged out a child’s mattress.
The barn door slid open. Murry Grace rushed out with a paintbrush in her hand.
“What are you doing with Luke’s bed?”
“The cots at the YMCA are all itchy. I paid for this mattress when Luke was a baby. I’m gonna take it.”
“You’re gonna take your son’s bed? You’re unbelievable.”
She rushed forward and slammed her body into the mattress. The awkward bed accordioned back inside and fell to the kitchen floor. Ray stood with his hands on his hips.
“To think, everything I’ve ever done for this family means nothing.” He shook his head and his greasy hair fell over his eyes. “Well, I’m gonna take my toolbox, at least.”
Ray strode toward the barn. Murry grabbed his arm. He shook her off.
“Ray, please don’t—”
“Oh, my God.”
Ray stood in the barn doorway. Mim and Luke held brushes in each hand, faces covered in artistic paint, as they drew a great Christmas mural of a tree with presents on the barn wall. In pink barrettes, fingers painted pink, wearing an XL pair of overalls covered in paint, was Stomp.
Stomp waved. “Good morning.”
“Oh, my God. You let the sasquatch stay. He’s wearing my overalls!”
Murry dropped her paintbrush in the snow. Her face was filled with shame. “This is my home and I can host who I please. He is our friend.”
“He’s gonna pull our kids’ heads off, is what he is. Do you know how dangerous this is? Lookit what you’ve done.”
Stomp tried to interrupt. “Well, sir, I in fact rarely pull anyone’s heads off, and never a child. I believe the last instance was back in ’54. I was aboard a steam trawler in Lake Huron and the first mate was giving me guff about my awful stench—”
“Stomp, please.”
The children watched frozen, their paintbrushes still held mid-stroke. Ray paced a circle at the barn entrance.
“To think, I’ve trusted you with our children.” He scrunched up his face and gestured dramatically. “You are tearing this family apart.”
Murry puckered her lips and her soft eyes sprung up with tears. Ray backed away from the barn.
“This is not the behavior of a good mother.”
He picked up his toolbox and trudged away up the drive.
The night was filled with stars. Their gleam seemed to reach down and touch fingertips right through the windows with the edges of the Christmas tree glow. Mim and Luke snuggled in blankets as Stomp read them How the Grinch Stole Christmas! By Dr. Seuss.
“What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store…what if Christmas, perhaps, means a bit more...”
Murry Rae sat in the kitchen next to the phone in the light of a single candle and stared at the wall. Her face was tangled in knots. She turned the wedding ring over in her fingers. In front of her lay the business card from the Barnaby Corporation.
She shoved the ring onto her finger and plucked up the phone and dialed.
“Yes, could you please connect me to a Theodold Denton?” She waited. “He’s out in the field. I see. Could you please pass it along that I have si—” She collected herself. “I have sighted the nuisance creature they seek and he remains at the Murry Rae farmhouse half a mile up the Ridge Road. Thank you.”
She placed the phone down. She heard a shuffle and looked up.
Stomp stood in the doorway. His face was in shadow, downcast to the floor.
“The children fell asleep. Would you like me to make you hot chocolate? Or I could fix the loose tile in the bathroom…”
“Oh, would you please stop trying to help?!” Murry stood and squared up to Stomp. “How is it that you even belong here? I mean, look!” She plucked a piece of straw from Stomp’s chest. “You sleep in a little straw bed. You bumble around with your bag of trinkets. You, you…just aren’t a dad.”
Stomp shoulders drooped in the doorway. The Christmas tree glow illuminated the edges of his giant frame. He bent and picked up his burlap satchel and shrugged past Murry. He closed the door gently behind him.
Stomp walked out past the barn to the treeline. He found a gnarl of roots upturned with a heavy snowdrift against them. He knelt on all fours:
Ker-ker-ker-ker-ker
He dug with his furred fingers until it was deep enough to block the wind. Then he lay down, with his pack as a pillow, and listened to the creak of the pines.
Stomp was awakened by the low rumble of a gas truck engine. The snow had melted around his body and he lay in dirt. Stomp peeked up over the drift and the morning sun sparkled through iced branches. Footsteps tread toward him.
Stomp searched for a bonking log or a rock and prepared to run.
“I’m not here to hurt you.”
Stomp peeked over the snow drift. A man with a weathered face and mustache, in scarf and a flannel, stood with his fingers hooked in his jeans.
“I’m Art Brown. I’m a friend of Murry’s. My idiot son and some dandy-type hooligans are out to fetch a bounty on you. I ah…came to give you a ride out.”
Stomp stood up. “I could run faster than you can drive.”
Art put his hands out. “That may be. Snow’s pretty deep for runnin’…”
Stomp walked past the man and put his pack in the back of the green ’47 Ford that sat in front of the barn. He gazed to the house. The front door opened and Murry and Mim and Luke came out and stood at the doorstep. The pickup’s suspension rocked as Stomp climbed into the back of the truck. He sat facing Murry and the kids with his hands in his lap.
Art climbed in. The pickup truck rumbled to life. A puff of exhaust spilled out and the truck turned in the yard and crawled back to the driveway. Stomp’s shoulders drooped. Little Luke waved at him and knelt to dig a hole in the snow.
The old Ford grumbled out to the road and came to a stop. Art hung his head out the window. “I could give you a ride up the Seven and you could find your way out into Killington and Green Mountain. A lot of open forest up there.”
Stomp thought about it and looked back down the road at the brick tops and chimneys of town a quarter mile away. “That will do fine. Thank you.”
Art put the truck in gear and they jerked onto the main road. He gained speed and the trees buzzed by. Stomp tapped his paw on the truck roof. Art’s brake lights lit up. Stomp climbed out of the bed and bent to the window.
“Here will do.”
Stomp reached out a hand and they shook. Art turned in the road and rumbled back toward town. It was quiet and the air was damp. The sun filtered through the dense hemlocks. Stomp walked fifteen paces into the forest and knelt in the snow. He buried his face down deep and opened his mouth:
RAUUUUGGGGGGGGGGG
A pair of ruffed grouse drummed their wings and took flight. Clumps of snow fell from upper branches and left motes of suspended snow dust. He stood and inhaled deep, and smelled tomatoes from a quarter mile away. Then he picked a direction and started walking.
Christmas Eve.
Stomp rested on the ridge above town and listened at dusk. He heard the faint rattle of rickety wheels. Along a well-worn path with tiny footprints, the squirrel salesman and his toddler trundled along with their cart of fried green tomatoes. Stomp raised a finger, like a dad asking for a beer at the ballpark.
“One jar of fried green tomatoes for me, please.”
The squirrel stopped. “This big dummy again.”
“Do you always berate your customers?”
The squirrel reached back into its cart. “I don’t accept dried dung as payment.”
Stomp reached into his pack and pulled out a bulging paper lunch bag. He handed it to the squirrel. “Will this do?”
The squirrel peaked in at the bag packed with acorns.
“This will do. Come now, Halfnut.” The squeak of the cart wheels started back up and stopped. “Merry Christmas, big fella.”
Stomp’s eyes already peered back toward the stores closing on Main Street down below. “Merry Christmas, little tree rat and weird little tree rat baby.”
The little old lady that ran Nanna’s Bakery, presumably Nanna, locked up shop early. Next door, the little old lady that ran Demarest Antiques, also locked up early. They walked up the street together in the twilight, chatting under the lighted street wreaths.
Stomp climbed out of a bramble bush and looked both ways. He came down out of the forest to the town boundary, where snowy pines met with store dumpsters on the back property edges. Stomp hugged the alley walls and came around a corner. He peeked around and looked up and down Main Street.
Cars shhhhed by and families strolled the street under the lights. Two stores up, Stomp observed the Colonial Inn, and the group of men in all black and top hats who stood around the ornate front porch and smoked cigarettes. Their voices drifted in the night:
“…In the morning we’ll leave out…ambush at dawn…”
Stomp tiptoed across the street and slunk to the antiques shop entrance. He went to pick the lock and realized the door was open. He stepped inside and immediately stubbed his toe on a piece of African pottery.
“Darnk!”
Stomp crept around in the shadows and browsed. He picked up a short antique shovel, paired with a trowel, and tucked them into his satchel. He moved on and found the church pew with the dolls. He picked up the worn sasquatch doll and the box of Lincoln Logs and shrugged them into his pack. The display case of ornaments glimmered from the back of the store.
He stepped lightly up to the case. The broken display had been replaced anew, and on the counter was a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. The case was unlocked, and a larger sign had been placed on the case:
“PLEASE JUST TAKE ONE. THE COOKIES AND MILK ARE FOR YOU. MERRY CHRISTMAS.”
Stomp whipped his head around the room. He opened the case and swirled the brilliant display. His fingers came to rest on a festive, green ornament ball. Etched in golden cursive on the side were two short sentences.
“Oh,” he whispered. “This one.”
Stomp removed the ornament. He shrugged the wax paper from under the cookies and wrapped the ornament and placed it into his bag. The plate of cookies, he slid into his mouth and chased with the milk.
GARULP. GAR-LUG.
Stomp wiped his chin and rummaged around in the bottom of his bag. He plucked out a wad of thousand-dollar bills from 1875 and dumped them in the donation jar. Outside, he let the door close gently behind him. The sound of gruff voices and the scent of cigarette smoke wafted from the Colonial Inn. He heard the clink of brandy glasses.
Stomp tried the door of Nanna’s Bakery. It was also unlocked.
He stepped inside and noticed the large, crayon-drawn sign on the counter:
FOR THE BURGLAR. MERRY CHRISTMAS.
Stomp brushed his fingers over the chocolate mousse cake that was neatly boxed and rested with a candy cane taped to the cellophane. He put the box in his pack and rummaged again. There was a clink and Stomp removed another wad of thousand-dollar bills and a handful of 1600s gold doubloons. He dropped them into the donation bucket.
On the street, Stomp watched his breath curl and dissipate. The moon was full, a chunk of dough in the sky that was kneaded by tufts of cloud drift. Stomp reached a hand up and pretended to pluck it down and chomp it.
His pack was heavy, and he moved back to the alley, and set his sight on the lighted farmhouse a quarter mile up the hill.
The tree ornaments swayed in the living room. The front door gently closed. The children’s soft sighs whispered in the quiet hiss and crackle of the woodstove. The floor was awash with a gentle glow. Murry Rae slept on the couch snuggled with her children.
There was a series of thuds on the hardwood floor, and a soft “daht!” as a large creature stubbed its toe, and the soft tinkle as an ornament was hooked onto the tree.
Murry Rae yawned and her eyelids fluttered. The woodstove flames flickered and bent as the door swung open, and the creature was gone into the night.
Christmas morn.
Murry blinked in the gray dawn light. The children had moved to their beds in the night and lay in deep sleep. She went into the bathroom.
The face that stared back at her in the mirror was etched with tear streaks. She stood up straight and felt the rough edge of the scar that now lived on her pinky. Her fingers moved to her ring finger.
PLOP.
She watched her wedding band dive down into the toilet, and she reached over and flushed.
In the living room, the kids were huddled around the tree. Luke ran his hands over the shovel. It was clearly a World War I trench shovel. Mim held up the sasquatch doll.
“Mom, look what Santa brought!”
“Oh, that is beautiful, honey.”
Murry Rae sat down with them cross-legged next to the tree. Tucked in the back, near the trunk, Murry spotted the lime green against the emerald. She pulled out the Mason jar and brushed pine nettles from it. Luke pointed:
“What are dose?”
She turned the jar over in her hands. “They’re fried green tomatoes, honey.”
The tree jangled. She looked up. Where there was an empty space the previous night, there was a new ornament. She stood and read the gold cursive letters:
Peace unto you. You are loved.
Murry walked to the bay living room window and looked out.
She heard the rumble of truck engines and heard shouts from down the road. Men with shotguns stood in the beds of speeding trucks and flickered in between the branches that lined the road. She gazed across the peaceful forest and rested her eyes on the figure that stood with its outline camouflaged against a tree.
She held the jar to the window. Stomp nodded emphatically and his teeth bared in a goofy smile. She gasped and hot teardrops fell down her cheeks. Mim got up and wrapped her arms around Murry’s waist.
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
She raised her fingers to the window. “Nothing, honey. I’m grateful.”
Stomp raised his hand to her. Then he blended with the forest, and melted into the wood.
END.
I’m so glad you came along for this Stomp Christmas story. Yes, I know it was sad. If you’d like to support Stomp Roams, you can share the story or tap that little “subscribe” button.
How deep into this world do you want to go? Read Stomp’s last adventure, Stomp Bigfoot Harvests Dynamite and Fights Pirates on Chokoloskee, as Stomp and Gesuvio play with the smuggler manatees in the Everglades in 1891.
Oh man, that was a roller coaster of emotions - from anger & frustration to deep sadness to contentment. Sad at moments with a bittersweet ending. Loved this!
Loved it!💚