The Christmas Sweater (10 page)

“So you just gave her an apple?” I asked.

“No, Eddie. I just showed her that I love her. Horses have to be reminded of that
sometimes. This old girl had been through some tough stuff, and then everyone gave
up on her. She’d been beaten and felt abandoned. I’m just trying to help her see that
she’s wrong.”

“How do you do that?”

“Well, it may sound funny, but I just try to remind her of who she is. These horses
are trained day after day to forget the instincts and emotions they’re born with.
Everyone wants to feel loved, but when all you feel is alone it’s tough to accomplish
anything else.”

He was losing me. “A horse can feel lonely?”

“Of course they can. In fact, horses are more like us than you think. They’re born
knowing what they’re supposed to become, but they don’t know who they are or how to
get there. I bet it’s the same with you, Eddie. People probably ask you all the time
what you want to be when you grow up, but that’s the wrong question, isn’t it? That
is like saying this horse is a workhorse, instead of saying what she really is: good,
gentle, and faithful. See the difference? The ‘what’ doesn’t matter. The question
people should really ask is,
Who
do you want to be when you grow up?”

I still didn’t really get it. “
Who
do I want to be? You mean like Joe Namath or Evel Knievel?”

“No, not exactly.” Russell smiled. His voice didn’t show
a hint of irritation that I didn’t understand what he was trying to say. “I mean who
do
you
want to be? What kind of person do you want to become?”

“I want to be rich and live far away from here. I am going to have a huge house somewhere
like New York City. I’ll buy the fanciest car, a new TV, and anything else I want.”

“Wow,” Russell said, turning to face the horse. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured
out.”

“I do. I just have to get away from here and all the people who are trying to drag
me down.”

Russell paused for a moment and stroked the mare’s head. “So if you’ve got all that
figured out, then you must know
who
you are.”

“I already told you, I’m Eddie.” I made up for Russell’s patience with a severe lack
of my own.

“No, I don’t mean it like that. I’m sure you already know this, Eddie,” Russell played
to my ego, “but most people aren’t like you. Most people don’t know what they are
going to do or where they are going to live or even
what tomorrow holds. They just keep moving, hoping that the next move or the next
job or the next day they’ll just ‘be happy.’ But a guy like you gets it. That’s why
you’ve been able to make such a great plan.”

I didn’t quite understand why I was getting so many compliments. But I liked them.
“You bet. I have it all mapped out.”

“Good for you. You know people are meant to be happy, Eddie, but sometimes that’s
hard to do if you’ve allowed yourself to become someone you’re not.”

Now I was starting to understand what he was talking about. “Yeah, my grandfather
is like that. He’s so busy convincing himself that he’s happy that he doesn’t even
notice how many things he doesn’t have.”

“Really?” Russell said. He seemed genuinely interested.

“Yep. I used to think he was cool and fun, but now I know exactly who he is: an old
man who’s fooled himself into thinking that he’s successful. He can’t even see that
you’ll never find happiness on a street full of farmers and simpleminded people. He
can have so much more than a
stupid little berry farm. There is a whole world out there, but he’s trapped here
with a bunch of dead enders, bad memories, and outdated ways.”

I could tell by the way Russell was listening that he knew exactly what I was talking
about. I felt smart showing him how much I knew and sharing things that my grandparents
could never understand. I was surprised that someone who looked like Russell “got
it”—but he did.

“Boy, I’m sorry to hear that about your grandparents,” Russell replied sympathetically.
“It’s too bad they can’t learn a little from someone like you, someone who knows what
he wants and goes out and gets it. And you know you’ll succeed because you understand
that the ‘who’ will always lead you to happiness. After that, the ‘what’ and the ‘where’
just fall into place. If your grandparents could figure that out, they might be as
happy as you are. Maybe they’d even be as successful as you’ll be.”

Russell paused a moment and turned to the horse. “Of course, this old girl will figure
all that out just as soon as I remind her that she’s loved.”

I ignored the horse. “I’m plenty happy,” I protested, feeling compelled to reinforce
an already stated fact. “And my grandparents tell me all the time that they love me.”

“I’m sure. I didn’t know we were talking about you.”

“We aren’t. I was just saying.”

“Oh. Sure. You know, Eddie, you seem like a smart kid, so let me ask your advice on
something.”

“Okay.” I played it cool, but I was happy that Russell already thought that much of
me.

“Well, I’ve come a long way with this horse, but I still can’t get her to trust me
completely.” He pulled another slice of apple out from his pocket and brought it up
to the mare’s nose. Her head flinched back violently. Russell held the apple slice
steady, and the horse cautiously brought her head forward and took the apple in her
mouth.

“I told you that she’s been through some tough stuff,” Russell said, “but it actually
goes much deeper than that.

“When she was born her owners raised her on a farm with a bunch of other horses. Then
the farm got sold and the new owners were hardly ever around.” Russell turned
back around to face me. He was almost as good a storyteller as Grandpa. “They hired
someone to care for the animals, but he was a mean old guy who was more interested
in abusing the horses than feeding or grooming them.”

I pictured the gentle horse that stood in front of me being mistreated. It made me
angry. I wanted to help her.

“Anyway,” Russell continued, “one day an older horse on the farm got sick. Instead
of nursing it back to health, the caretaker grabbed his rifle and killed it—right
in front of this poor girl. Imagine that, seeing your friend killed for no reason,
right in front of your eyes.”

Flashes of bright lights and loud sirens filled my head. My father, frail and sick
in a hospital bed. Mom, tired and angry, behind the wheel of our car.

“A few months later, a bad storm blew down a part of the fence around the corral.
The horses’ instincts took over, and they all ran for freedom through the breach in
the fence. That’s when I found her, scared and alone in the woods.”

I looked back at the mare with a new level of appreciation.

“I wanted to see about buying her, so I went over to see the caretaker. He made me
an offer I couldn’t refuse, and I’ve been nursing her back to health ever since.”

Russell turned back toward her and pulled out another piece of apple. “Unfortunately,
she had such a bad experience that she’s never trusted another human.” The mare’s
head flinched again. “I show her love every day, but I think, in her mind at least,
she equates it with fear. So, Eddie, I guess I could use your advice…how do I get
her to realize that not everyone wants to hurt her?”

I’d gotten so engrossed in the story that I’d forgotten Russell was looking for my
help. I tried to think of something smart to say. “Well, I don’t know. I guess you
just have to stick with what you’re doing. I’m sure she’ll eventually see that what
happened to her wasn’t her fault and that you’re her friend.”

I was embarrassed that I didn’t have more to offer, but Russell apparently thought
my answer was better than I
did. His face brightened. “You know, Eddie, you’re absolutely right. I’ve just got
to keep at it. Thanks.”

I was glowing inside, but I didn’t want to press my luck. “Well, my grandparents are
expecting me,” I said as I jumped down from the fence and walked away quickly.

“Come by again, Eddie,” Russell offered.

I didn’t have to say that I would.

That night I snuck downstairs again to watch Johnny Carson. As I came around the corner
into the living room, I saw that it was lit with the flickering greenish tint of the
television. My grandfather sat on the coffee table, his nose nearly touching the screen.
“Grandpa?”

“Shhh,” he said with a finger to his lips. Then he slid over on the table, leaving
just enough room for me.

I sat next to him and we watched together in silence, wanting to laugh, but afraid
to be discovered by Grandma. I could feel the hardness of his strong arm against my
skinny one. For one showing of
El Dorado,
the warm feelings that we had last shared too long ago were back.
Grandpa didn’t know it, but even though I was looking at the TV I was really watching
the story of the last year replay in my head.

I wanted to go back but didn’t know how. So instead I just sat there.

I
need your help today,” Grandpa said cheerfully over breakfast the next morning. After
we ate and cleared our dishes, he led me to the smaller of the two barns. The left
half had been cleaned up and turned into storage for Grandma’s craft supplies. She
was always knitting or quilting or sewing. What was now my room had once been Grandma’s
old sewing room; when I’d moved in, Grandpa had moved all her stuff out here into
his workshop.

The right half of the barn was still Grandpa’s. The border between neatness and clutter
separated the two
areas just as well as any wall would have. He took me to the far corner of the barn
and pulled an old sheet off what looked to me like a pile of scrap lumber.

“What are we doing, Grandpa?”

“Building your grandmother’s Christmas gift,” he answered. “Of course it’s a
secret,
” he added in a tone of mock warning.

I had completely forgotten; Christmas was just over a month away. I couldn’t believe
it had snuck up on me like that, probably because it had been such an unseasonably
warm winter so far. Growing up, I’d always been jealous of Grandma and Grandpa, because
they’d always gotten so much more snow than we had. Even though they didn’t live that
far away, the rain/snow line on the weatherman’s map always seemed to run right between
us. There had been plenty of storms where we’d been flooded and they’d had snowdrifts
up to the top of their porch.

There had been times when I’d imagined myself running away and moving in with them
just to get more snow days off from school. I’d pictured Grandpa and me getting up
early, making a snow fort in the front yard, and drink
ing hot chocolate all day. Grandpa probably wouldn’t even make me wear the bread-bag
boots, I’d thought. It had seemed like a dream.

But now that I was living that “dream,” I realized just how wrong I’d been. Sure,
there were no bread-bag boots, but there was also no snow. Not one inch. There hadn’t
been all year.
Things aren’t always what they seem.
Taylor’s voice played in my mind.

Grandpa handed me some sandpaper and pointed to a stack of carefully cut pieces of
wood that were arranged on the floor and on his worktable. “These need to be as smooth
as a rock from the stream. Start with the coarse paper and work your way down to the
fine, black paper. I’ve got a few more pieces to cut.”

This was the last thing I felt like doing. “What are we making?” I asked, hoping I
would be able to figure out a shortcut that didn’t involve sandpaper.

“I think it would be more fun if I don’t tell you,” Grandpa replied. “Maybe you can
guess as we start to put it together.” He was being coy, probably because he knew
why I was asking.

“Why don’t you just go out and buy her something instead?” I suggested. “I’m sure
she’d rather have something new from a store.”

My grandfather looked at me like he had never seen me before. “No, she wouldn’t. Besides,
it makes you happier when you focus on making other people happy.” They were my mother’s
words in my grandfather’s voice.

He left me sitting alone on a stool. I sanded for a while but stopped when my hands
began to cramp. It was obvious that I would never be a craftsman. The regular sounds
coming from the other corner of the barn told me that Grandpa was busy and not coming
to check on me anytime soon, so I began to explore. Taylor and I had snuck in a couple
of times before, but I’d always been afraid that my grandfather would somehow know
we’d been in there. It was the only place on the entire farm that I was forbidden
to go.

I crossed over to the tidy side and began to look through my grandmother’s things.
There were flowers drying on a potting bench and what looked like a sewing-machine
museum along the wall. There was an old Singer
powered only by a foot pedal connected by a leather belt to a big metal wheel. I was
so intrigued by how it worked that I didn’t notice the workshop had fallen silent.

Next to the old sewing machines was a set of shelves that my grandfather had obviously
made by hand. They were packed with extra fabric and half-finished quilts, bolts of
pajama and shirt fabric, yarn and knitting supplies. One particular ball of yarn caught
my attention, and I picked it up. As I ran a strand of it between my fingers—it was
rough and soft at the same time—my grandfather came and stood next to me.

“Some of this was your mother’s. She was knitting by the time she was eight. She looked
so funny; the needles were almost as long as her arms.”

As he talked, I remembered Mom knitting my Christmas sweater every night, right there
in front of me. I looked up at him with dry eyes. “I’m not very good at sanding.”

“That’s okay, Eddie. There are some things I’m not very good at either. For instance,
I’m pretty rusty at raising kids. Your grandmother did most of the work with your
mom. When you came along, I thought that having a
grandson was going to be fun and easy. I was right…at least for a while.”

Memories of fishing trips and ice cream cones and rigged card games flashed through
my mind. It had been so long since we’d done any of the fun things we used to.

Things were different now.

Grandpa paused, as if he was trying to collect himself. When he spoke again, his voice
was lower and unsteady. “Son, you and I are very much the same. We’re stubborn. We
always want to show people how wrong they are, how we don’t need anyone but ourselves.
Well, I want you to know how wrong I was. I was trying to teach you a lesson, and
instead I missed what was right in front of me: your mom was too tired to drive that
night. I made a mistake, and I’ll regret it until the day that I die.”

I wanted to drop the yarn in my hands and wrap my arms around Grandpa. I wanted so
badly for things to be the way they were before. I thought about what Russell had
told me. Did Grandpa really even know
who
he was? Was he really happy? Could he be feeling as lonely and abandoned as I was?

Before I could say anything, Grandpa went on. “Sometimes our strengths are also our
weaknesses. Sometimes to be strong you have to first be weak. You have to share your
burdens; you have to lean on other people while you face your problems and yourself.
That’s hard to do, but your family is there to provide a shelter from the storms that
come in everyone’s life.”

The yarn suddenly felt alive in my hands. I imagined Mom finishing my sweater, cutting
the last bit off with her teeth. She must have been so proud. Then I saw my mother
staring at that sweater rolled up in a ball on my bedroom floor. The thought of it
brought back a rash of emotions, none of them good. I focused on my grandfather.

Then, once again, I pushed him away.

“I don’t want any help,” I spat. “Everyone I’ve ever loved has been taken from me.
I’m not letting that happen again. I don’t need
anyone.
I know who I am. I’m not like you and I never will be. I’m going to be rich. I won’t
have to be cheap with the woman I claim to love and
make
her a present—I’ll buy her a real one. My kids will have what they need.”

I threw the yarn down as if it had been a snake and turned to run. My grandfather
stepped in front of me and clamped his hands onto my shoulders. I knew that struggling
wouldn’t do me any good, so I just struck as defiant a pose as I could and stared
straight ahead into his chest.

“Look at me.” I didn’t move my head; I just rolled my eyes up until I was looking
into his. “First of all, I love you, Eddie, and I’m not going anywhere. Neither is
your grandmother.”

“You can’t promise that,” I protested. I couldn’t let him in. “You don’t know.” I
didn’t even hear the first part of what he’d said.

“You’re right, I
don’t
know, but you can’t live the rest of your life in fear, guilt, and anger forever.
Like it or not, life is a series of events that we don’t always understand or appreciate.
What happened to your mother isn’t your fault and it isn’t mine. It was an accident.
Just a stupid accident.”

I was right on the verge of a complete breakdown. All of the hurt, all of the pain,
all of the memories wanted to burst through at once. “Eddie,” Grandpa continued, “I
think you have a basic misunderstanding of what you
want
and what you
need.
We don’t always get what we want, but the things that you’ve wanted lately, you certainly
don’t need.”

My swirling emotions turned directly into anger. I said the most hurtful thing I could
think of. “So I guess I didn’t
need
a mom or a dad then.”

I was trying to trap him, hoping he would lash out at me. It would have been easier
for us both if we’d just stopped talking, but Grandpa wasn’t going to be played that
easily. “Eddie, we can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we react
to it. We are all
meant
to be happy. Even you, Eddie, as hard as it is for you to believe sometimes, you
are meant to be happy. If you’re not happy, it’s not God’s fault, it’s not my fault,
or anyone else’s fault. It’s your own.”

The words lit a fire inside me. I rushed to put it out before it began to melt the
coldness I had come to depend on when I felt threatened by kindness. “You’re only
trying to make excuses for God and for yourself. I’m not happy because of
me
? Really? Where was God when Mom
couldn’t even keep food in the house? Where were
you
when Mom was spending every free minute turning that yarn into the only gift she
could afford? I thought family was supposed to take care of family.”

“You’re out of line, son.” He let go of me like I had let go of the yarn.

“No, I’m not. I’m right. You know it.” I sensed something building inside Grandpa
that I hadn’t expected. Fear? Guilt? I didn’t know, but I wasn’t about to back down.

He took a step back and put a hand on a shelf full of yarn to steady himself. He considered
me for a few seconds. I could tell that he was making an important decision.

“Everyone was trying to help you two, Eddie. But your mom always refused it. We aren’t
rich, mind you, but we could have done more than she let us. She wanted to take care
of you herself—she felt like a hand-up was the same as a hand-out, and she didn’t
want that. She didn’t want to feel like she’d failed. She was wrong, and she was stubborn.
I guess you two have even more in common than I thought.”

Even though I had spent my childhood wearing bread-bag boots to school, I’d never
really had any idea just how much my parents had struggled. It wasn’t until after
my mother died that I began to piece it all together.

“Let me show you something.” Grandpa squeezed between the sewing machines and the
shelving and into the corner of Grandma’s part of the barn. I followed him, and we
stood next to each other in front of a green canvas tarp. It smelled like camping.
He looked at me again as if he still wasn’t sure whether he should do what he was
about to. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally said, “Your mother didn’t
know about this. She wouldn’t have liked it. She would have thought it was too much.”

He grabbed the center of the tarp and pulled it away.

A brand-new Huffy.

I was speechless. It was the gift I’d wished for but never gotten: bright red with
a black vinyl banana seat and big, curved chrome handlebars.

My gaze shifted down to the tires. Twenty playing cards had been placed into the spokes
of each wheel to make a custom “clicking” sound as the wheels turned. I rec
ognized the cards immediately as being from Grandpa’s favorite deck.

No wonder he wouldn’t play with me that day,
I thought.

My guilt multiplied. I couldn’t move. My mind was a tangled mess of thoughts, memories,
and emotions.

Grandpa finally broke the silence. “See, Eddie, sometimes the gift you want most is
right in front of you, but you have to get out of your own way to receive it.”

I couldn’t speak, but the expression on my face said more than I ever could.

Grandpa continued, “Grandma knew that I’d taught you some of my present-hunting tricks,
so she wouldn’t let me hide this anywhere in the house. We planned to give it to you
as soon as we were done with the other gifts, but then you gave your mother a hard
time about staying over. I…well, I wanted to teach you a lesson.” Grandpa’s words
trailed off as tears escaped from his eyes and slowly rolled down his cheeks.

Grandpa was crying.

“Son, if I thought something as simple as a bike could
make you happy, I would have given this to you a long time ago. But a bike can’t.
No material thing can. You have to find your way back to the things that will give
you lasting happiness, and you can’t buy them in a store.”

I heard Grandpa speaking, but I was transfixed on the Huffy. I couldn’t take my eyes
off of it. I felt like it might disappear, just like everything else that was good
in my life.

“See, Eddie, you’re not alone. You never were. We didn’t abandon you, or your mother,
and we never will.”

I felt like speaking, but I couldn’t move my mouth. Everything I had made myself believe
was turning out to be wrong—and I wasn’t prepared to face that.

Grandpa went on, “I have some ‘if onlys’ about that day, too. If only I hadn’t taught
you how to hunt for presents. If only I hadn’t tried to teach you a lesson. If only
I’d demanded that you stay. If only I had given you the bike. If only I hadn’t been
so…stubborn.”

I slowly shifted my gaze from the bicycle to my grandfather. His eyes were red, wet,
and very tired. I considered
him and felt the now familiar crush of emotions weighing on me, begging me to cave
in and fall into his strong arms. I pushed back with every ounce of energy I had left.

Every time I trusted someone, I got hurt. Every time I let go, I was let down.
Not again.
I would drive them away before they left.