The Grill

A Christmas Gift. (3634 words)

Old Cpt. Croley lived alone in a modest Cape Cod-style cottage in the hamlet of Harts Mill, Maine, ten minutes and one stoplight from the working-class harbor town of Rockland. At seventy-five years young, the barrel-chested, lifelong bachelor, with a shock of swept-back white hair, and a matching beard and mustache, was best described as tough, intelligent, and fiercely independent. After growing up dirt-poor in the shadow of a Waterville shoe-making factory, he escaped mill town misery by joining the US Navy. He was serious and diligent, and trained as a cartographer and navigator. Encouraged by his superiors to enroll in officer training school, he accepted the challenge and went on to graduate in the top ten percent of his class, earning a reputation as a no-nonsense leader of men.

In his retirement, Cpt. Croley had turned his attention and considerable energy to reading, birdwatching, hiking with ‘Shadow’, his faithful black lab, and attending yard sales and estate auctions. He bought anything he thought was interesting or could be fixed up and then sold for a few dollars’ profit. It wasn’t about the money; it was about the process, the process of being active and keeping his body and brain engaged.

The epicenter of Cpt. Croley’s fix-it and sell-it work was the post-and-beam barn at the side of his house. The barn was a veritable Aladdin’s cave full of not-quite-antiques, collectable knick-knacks, miscellaneous paraphernalia, and semi-working wonders of art, engineering, and science.

Inside the two story timber building were dozens of old guitars and amplifiers, most of a 1967 Ford Mustang, vintage road signs, hand tools, glass tube radios, an upright piano, typewriters and microscopes, a bear trap, a blunderbuss, a steamer trunk full of nautical charts, a whaling harpoon, and a full size casting of Venus de Milo wearing a feather boa and a pair of World War One flying goggles. In the barn’s various stalls were old English motorcycles, taxidermy animal heads, bicycles, and lawnmowers, coils of rope, grappling hooks, and boxes full of brass sailing cleats. Cpt. Croley also loved clocks. The second floor of the barn was filled with them… grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, pendulum wall clocks, alarm clocks, kitschy novelty clocks, and countless boxes full of wrist watches, stopwatches, and pocket watches. And overseeing this treasure trove of semi-valuable collectibles was Roger and Pete, a pair of well-fed barn cats that kept the place almost entirely free of rodents.

Most days, sometimes for an hour or two, sometimes for an entire afternoon, Cpt. Croley and Shadow would go out to the barn—and if it was chilly—fire up the old Vermont Castings woodstove, turn on the local classic rock station, and then start tinkering around with one project or another. And depending on the result, if the fix was a success, Cpt. Croley would leave the barn, load whatever he had just worked on into the back of his blue 1980 GMC Jimmy, drive it to one of several local Antique Malls to see if he could sell it or trade it for something even more interesting.

Around Thanksgiving, Cpt. Croley changed his routine. He would start to fix up certain items and put them aside in preparation for what he liked to call his Roadside Holiday Giveaway. He was wise enough to know there was an element of foolishness to it, because there was always the chance—and it had happened in the past—of some greedy so-and-so taking everything and then presumably selling it. But in general, Cpt. Croley knew that people who picked up free stuff off the side of the road were probably down on their luck and could use a helping hand. It might be a matching pair of bedside lamps, a weed whacker, a set of wooden salad bowls, a brass bed frame, or a full-length mirror. Whatever the thing was, if Cpt. Croley thought some needy soul could make good use of it, and the item might brighten up their holiday, he’d make sure it was in good working order, run a rag over it, and then truck it the half mile from his house up to the vacant lot on the other side of the road from Tripper Reid’s Trading Post.

It was this charitable side of Cpt. Croley’s personality caused the annual Christmas conflict between him and Tripper. Each year, during the second half of December, Tripper complained bitterly to anyone who would listen to him about…“Cpt. Croley’s crap, junking-up my parking lot.” The truth was, it wasn’t his parking lot. The vacant piece of land where most of Tripper’s customers parked was actually owned by the town and just happened to be across the road from his store.

Tripper lived to work and worked to live. And in his mind, the Trading Post was the center of the known universe. And with his balding head, bulging brown eyes, squat body, and slim girlish arms, he looked like he had been the victim of a black-magic joke, as if a high priestess of the dark arts had got drunk one night, and then just for a laugh, decided to see what a cross between a short, stocky human being and a Bull Frog might look like. Tripper Reid was also spectacularly unlucky with women and was a convicted criminal. A few years back, after a well-publicized custody battle with his fourth wife, Brittany Sue, over a Blue Tick Coonhound called Charlton Heston the third, he did eighteen months in jail for assault and stealing Brittany Sue’s stepbrother’s entire NASCAR memorabilia collection and selling it online.

Tripper had inherited the Trading Post from his mother, who had inherited it from her cousin and occasional paramour, Tripper Reid the first. The store sold everything, from fishing tackle and live bait to secondhand clothing, cheap beer, soft pretzels, hard liquor, lottery tickets, tinned goods, mystery meats, generic cigarettes and chew, deep fried chicken, and under the counter Adult DVD’s…for those paranoid customers who wanted to enjoy pornography without revealing their sexual proclivities online. And on most Thursdays, from nine PM to midnight, an enforcer from the Vultures Motorcycle Club called Derek El Diablo did tattoos for fifty bucks apiece at a table in the back room.

Tripper was a talker and a know-it-all. If something had happened somewhere in the county, he knew about it. This font of knowledge came from gossiping with customers and reading every single word, every single week, of The Free Press, the local newspaper that reported on weddings, funerals, free bean suppers, regional elections, automobile accidents, Friday night fist-fights at the Cushner Meadows Mobile Home Park, houses going into foreclosure, lawsuits being settled, and the occasional low-ball lottery win. And if Tripper Reid ever caught a customer off guard and started to share with them something he had just learned or knew about… once he got going, wild horses could not and would not hold him back. The unsuspecting customer might have asked him a fairly mundane question like, “Hey, do you know what road connects Anderson Lane to Buck Street?” And that was all it would take. Tripper would launch himself into a non-stop lip-flapping fit that might last for ten minutes, if the listener was lucky. He’d give them the full history of Anderson Lane and how it ended up getting named and connected to Buck Street, and how to find it on a map because its GPS coordinates didn’t match its actual location. And after a heavy rain, how the Fire Department—of which he was a volunteer—would have to close the road and use pumps to clear the water out of the low-lying areas… and how he planned to run for assistant fire chief once he retook his EMT test and his bunions got better. And once he qualified as an EMT, he planned to sell first aid kits in the store and run CPR classes on Sunday nights in the basement of the Elks Lodge. The overwhelmed listener might try to keep up or even add to the conversation, but it was pointless… Tripper Reid would just talk right over the top of them, regurgitating his vast local knowledge until the one-way-conversation-victim might consider murder or even suicide, but then realize—just in the nick of time—that the best thing to do was walk away without excusing themselves and leave Tripper alone to enjoy the sound of his own voice ricocheting around the four inside walls of his store.

One morning during the third week of December, Tripper stood on the front porch of the store stuffing a wad of chew between his bottom lip and what was left of his lower teeth when he saw Cpt. Croley pull his blue GMC Jimmy onto the vacant lot and climb out of the vehicle. The two men made lingering eye contact but did not acknowledge each other. Tripper then watched Cpt. Croley—the way a mouse peers out from the safety of a wood stack at a big barn cat—unload an electric snow blower, a pair of fishing poles, a red Radio Flyer wagon, a portable hibachi barbecue grill, and a set of studded snow tires. Cpt. Croley arranged the items in the corner of the lot closest to the road, then placed a big handwritten sign on top of them that said, “Free. All In Good Working Order. Merry Christmas!”

Tripper cupped his girlish hands around his thin tobacco-stained lips and shouted, “You can’t leave that crap there. That’s where my customers park.”

Cpt. Croley ignored Tripper as he fussed around with the sign to make sure it had maximum visibility.

“You should take that junk to the dump,” shouted Tripper, “What do you think this is, a recycling center?”

A gray Ford F-150 pulled onto the lot and parked next to the collection of free stuff. A rugged-looking young man in his late twenties with thick brown hair and a beard, wearing work boots, jeans, and a tan canvas jacket, jumped out, pointed to the fishing poles, and said, “Free?”

“Yep!” replied Cpt. Croley, “and all in good working order too.”

“Great!” said the young man as he grabbed the fishing poles and placed them in the flatbed of his truck. As he drove off, and he and the captain waved to each other, Tripper shook his head, spat a thick, slimy slug of chew juice out the side of his mouth, and shouted, “I’m gonna report you to the township. You’re junking up the whole neighborhood.”

Instead of climbing back into his truck, Cpt. Croley paused and studied Tripper in his chew-juice and ketchup-stained Call of Duty T-shirt that didn’t reach the waistband of his sagging sweatpants and exposed his bulging, hairy belly. Then he cast his eyes across the rundown storefront, the abandoned singlewide mobile home at the side of the store with the camouflage tarp stretched across its roof, the empty dog house and chain beside a Camaro on blocks, and the pile of black plastic bags full of trash that hadn’t quite made it to the dump. As Cpt. Croley climbed back into his GMC, raised his right hand, and said—talking more than shouting—“Happy holidays, Tripper.

The fishing poles hadn’t lasted two minutes. The red Radio-Flyer wagon went away before it got dark. The set of snow tires disappeared the next day. But the electric snow blower and the barbecue grill stayed put and got rained on and then snowed on. Every time Tripper looked out the window of his store or went outside to evacuate his halitosis mouth of used-up chew, the first thing he saw was the two unclaimed items. Tripper briefly considered throwing both of the Captain’s cast-offs into the back of his truck and taking them down to the dump himself. But that idea evaporated the second he realized he’d probably be doing his annoying neighbor a favor, so he let it go.

Back in the musty warmth of the store, Tripper sniffed the air and detected the distinct organic aroma of rotting flesh and fur. He smiled. The mice must have got into the latest batch of poison he’d put down and started to die in the walls. Tripper quickly dismissed the smell and picked up a copy of The Free Press. The paper was full of holiday advertisements celebrating and connecting the birth of Christ to rampant consumerism. The Mega-Bucks lotto was up to five-hundred and fifty million dollars. Tripper briefly daydreamed about being filthy rich and having access to an unending pile of cash. The first thing I’d do, he thought to himself, is get me one of those Hollywood hair transplants, then some of that six-pack liposuction, a brand new Dodge Ram 350 with all the bells and whistles, and a pair of Polaris 850 snowmobiles. Then I’d get the big Brittany Sue tattoo removed from my chest.

The door of the store swung open, and in walked Mr. Lamont, the tall retired school teacher with his neatly combed, graying-red hair, ruddy complexion, and dressed in a blue L.L.Bean jacket, tan corduroy slacks, and hiking boots.

“How-ya doin Tripper?”

“Oh. pretty good. You?”

“Never better!” said Mr. Lamont. “My nephew Nick, Nancy’s boy, the one in the Army, just got home from overseas. We’ve been worried sick about him. It’s the most wonderful Christmas gift ever. Got any holiday plans?”

“Nah,” said Tripper, “Probably just sticking around the house. I ain’t been goin-out much since Danielle took off with that son of bitch Dwayne from the Dollar Store.”

“Danielle?” said Mr. Lamont. “Is that the gal that works at the abattoir? I thought you guys were getting serious.”

Tripper furrowed his brow and shook his head. “Yes, it is. And yes, we were,” snapped Tripper, “But as far as I’m concerned, she can kiss my ass. She ain’t nothing but white trash anyway. You need anything?”

“Nope. Just dropped in to grab a Free Press.”

The door of the store swung open again, and a young woman with purple hair, a nose ring, and black fingernail polish, poked her head inside, pointed across the street, and said, “Is that snow blower up for grabs?”

“The sign says free, don’t it?” griped Tripper.

The young woman raised her eyebrows, made eye contact with Mr. Lamont, and then ducked out of the store. Not wanting to get drawn into one of Tripper’s famous, Cpt. Croley rants, Mr. Lamont quickly followed.

Tripper watched as Mr. Lamont helped the young woman load the snow blower into the back of her minivan. After they both drove off, Tripper looked at the remaining item, the grill, and thought, I bet that piece of shit sits there till next Christmas. Who the hell does he think he is, dropping his old junk off in front of my place of business? The nerve of some people. Then Tripper reopened The Free Press and continued to read about the VFW’s free Christmas day dinner, toys for tots, coats for kids, the results of the Salvation Army’s December food drive, Santa’s downtown Christmas Eve parade, and the local heating oil company that had just donated a thousand gallons of K1 fuel to the homeless shelter. If I were running the homeless shelter— thought Tripper—I’d put a quiet word out, sell five-hundred gallons of that oil for half price, leave the rest of it for the homeless, and then have myself a real, cash-rich Christmas for once.

Christmas Eve was a washout. A cold, hard rain that lasted most of the day did a good job of dampening the holiday spirit. The highlight of Tripper’s day was watching an exhausted-looking mother and her twin boys struggle to load Cpt. Croley’s remaining piece of junk, the grill, into the back of their beaten-up old station wagon.

Tripper hated station wagons; he called them “Loser Cruisers” and swore blind he wouldn’t be seen dead in one. He had recently shared this opinion with another member of the volunteer fire company whose wife drove a station wagon. In response, he was told, “All Hursts are station wagons, Tripper. And if you don’t start exercising and stop eating so many Tasty-Cakes, and drinking all that Mountain Dew, you’ll be taking a ride in one whether you like it or not.”

Christmas Day came and went quietly for Cpt. Croley. He called his two remaining siblings in Arizona and Florida, then took Shadow down to the beach for a long walk. As he looked out beyond the constantly changing line of where the ocean met the land, he realized that he still—after all these years—missed being at sea. He had enjoyed being part of a big, important team. But he knew life was all about change; his career had been like a line in the sand at low tide. It had quickly been covered over, and he wouldn’t be missed. Other equally capable men and women had filled his shoes and his Captain’s cabin, and the echo of his name and the orders he’d given had long since vanished in the wake of countless changes of command. On the way home from the beach, as he passed Tripper Reid’s Trading Post, he saw that the grill had finally gone, and that made him smile and feel good.

Tripper’s Christmas Day had been quiet, too. He’d gotten up late, driven into Rockland for a McDonald’s breakfast, then, after he returned home, he went into the store to help himself to a few supplies, potato chips, Ring-dings, and a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper. He also grabbed a handful of lottery tickets. It was as illegal as gay marriage in Afghanistan, but he had an ongoing deal with his buddy, Gas Station Garth. Should he win, Garth would do the interview with the Free Press and maybe even the local TV folks and say he’d bought the ticket himself. Tripper would give him ten percent of the winnings for pretending and then keep the rest. It was a foolproof plan. After Tripper scratched the silver foil off his hopes for a new life of luxury, then casually shrugged-off his latest loss, he went upstairs to his apartment, turned on his eighty-five inch smart TV and settled in for an all-day play-date with his favorite video game, ‘Redneck Rampage’ in which he helped Leonard and Bubba fight their way across Hickson, Arkansas, to rescue their prized hog Bessie, and save other good, god fearing country folk from extraterrestrial invaders.

During the first week of January, the Free Press printed a review of the previous year, complete with an annual community highlights section full of photographs and heartwarming local stories. Tripper’s bulging, amphibian eyes went straight to the County Sheriff’s crime log. He loved to see who’d been busted over the holidays for drinking and driving, disturbing the peace, domestic abuse, and shoplifting, and which of the accused were acquaintances and customers.

Cpt. Croley searched the paper to find out when the library was having its January book sale, learn how many dogs and cats had been adopted from the local animal shelter, and see if he could find himself in the photographs of the New Year’s Day polar bear plunge. It had been years since he’d taken part, but he still went down to the harbor to cheer others on and hand out towels and hot chocolate. Although neither man could have possibly known what the other was doing, Tripper Reid and Cpt. Croley both read the last story on the last page of The Free Press at exactly the same time, and it made each of them gasp out loud.

A Christmas Gift

Dear Editor,

Last year was very tough on my twin boys and me. My husband passed away from cancer, and I lost my job right before Thanksgiving. After paying all my bills, there was almost nothing left over for the holidays. So on Christmas Eve, on the way home from my sister’s house, I saw a portable barbecue grill on the side of the road. The sign next to it said, ‘Free. All in good working order. Merry Christmas.’ That gave me an idea. I told the boys, seeing as there wouldn’t be many presents under the tree this year, perhaps we could have a barbecue and call it our 4^th of July Crazy-Christmas-Cook-Off. The boys thought that was a great idea, so we pulled over and loaded the grill into the back of our old station wagon. Before going home, we stopped at Hannaford’s to buy all the fixings for our cookout. Inside the store, I bumped into an old friend who worked there and had recently been promoted to manager. After we caught up and I shared what had happened to my husband, and explained my situation, she offered me a job on the spot, starting the first week of January, Monday through Friday, with health insurance and no weekends. On top of that, she paid for all my barbecue supplies out of her own pocket. I cried, and she hugged me. Then she wished me and the boys a happy holiday and went back to work.

After we got home and unloaded the groceries, the boys and I pulled the grill out of the station wagon and set it up in the backyard. I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any old charcoal or dead mice in it, so I removed the lid and could not believe what I found. Inside the grill was a zip-lock bag. And inside the Ziplock bag was a note that read “Happy Holidays” and ten fifty-dollar bills. Thank you, and God bless you, whoever you are. And because of your kindness, my boys and I still believe in Christmas.