And There Was Light
By Jeff Hampton
(Note: This is an excerpt from a new novel with the working title,"Aransas Morning," a story of friendship, love and redemption on the Texas coast. This story is also included in the new Christmas collection, "When the Light Returned to Main Street," available by clicking Christmas Stories above. Another excerpt from "Aransas Morning" among my Short Stories is "Allie and Bo.")
The early morning breeze blew the seashell wind chimes hard against the window as Shelly turned on the lights and began getting things ready for the day’s business. The shop didn’t officially open until 7 a.m., but Shelly always tried to be there by 6:15 to take care of a few stalwarts that needed a jolt of caffeine to-go on their way to their boats or their own businesses. And this morning was no different, with Bo coming through the door right on time at 6:30.
“Hope you’re making it strong,” he said loudly as he brushed past the tables in his stiff coveralls to the counter where he plunked down his dented thermal mug. “Gonna be chilly out there for sure.”
“Now Bo, have I ever not made it strong?” Shelly asked as she watched the stream of dark brown liquid tumble into the carafe that she’d positioned under the coffee machine just in time.
“No, but I’m just saying: The wind is whipping up pretty strong even for the first day of winter.”
Shelly was startled by that pronouncement. “Winter . . . is that today?”
“Yep, December 21st, just like always. If you’d stop long enough to check your almanac, or a calendar at least, you’d know what the season is. You’d also know that Christmas is four days away.”
“Oh, I’m well aware of that,” Shelly said as she nudged the carafe out of the way to fill up Bo’s mug. “Shopkeepers have been talking Christmas since Halloween – hoping for a strong year – and they’ve been decorated since before Thanksgiving.”
“All but you,” said Bo. “What’s your problem? Don’t got the spirit?”
“Oh, just haven’t got around to it yet,” she said. “And besides, who are you to be telling me how to run my business. I don’t see any Christmas lights strung from your mast out there.”
Shelly snapped the plastic lid onto Bo’s full mug and handed it to him. “Here you go – straight from the beans into your smart mouth.”
“Thanks sweetie,” Bo said as he put a wrinkled dollar bill on the counter. “Keep the change.”
“Oh gee, thanks!” Shelly said with mock enthusiasm. She knew that Bo knew that the same cup of coffee cost her other customers $1.50. It was written in white chalk on the board above the counter where he stood most mornings.
Bo winked and was headed for the door when Shelly stopped him with a question.
“Hey Bo, have you seen Sam around lately?”
“No, haven’t seen him in a week. He’s probably holed up in that tin can of his. These newcomers to the island are never quite sure how to handle themselves once the summer tourists leave and the weather rolls in. See ya!”
It was 30 minutes after Shelly turned the Open sign around that another customer came into the shop. She knew it was going to be a quiet day and was reading the newspaper when Harry came in with the mail.
“Anything interesting today?” she asked, not looking up from her paper.
“Just the usual junk. Looks like you got a few cards,” he said as he dug into his large, worn leather bag and pulled out a small bundle bound with a rubber band. “And a letter of some sort from Dallas.”
“Oh really?” Shelly said, setting the newspaper aside and sliding off her stool to inspect what Harry was placing on the counter. Sure enough, there with the usual offers for cheap auto insurance and steam carpet cleaning were some green and red envelopes embossed with Hallmark on the back and then a white envelope addressed to Shelly’s Dream Bean. The return address was a street in Dallas.
“Need a cup to go?” she asked Harry, noticing that he was lingering in his usual nosey fashion.
“Oh, uh, no, I better keep moving. Wanna finish my route before the rain comes in.”
“See you tomorrow then,” Shelly said as if to verbally lead him to the door and out onto the plank deck that ran the full length of the shop.
“Now, let’s see,” she said to herself as she used a pastry knife to open the top of the white envelope. Inside she found a piece of lined paper wrapped around a smaller envelope. She unfolded the paper and read the hand-written note:
Dear Shelly,
You may not remember me but I visited your shop in July with your friend Sam. We had an interesting visit while I was there, and I thought maybe he could use a little help. I don’t know his address, or even his full name, but I got your address off my receipt from that day and so I’m sending this to Sam by way of you. Please give him the envelope next time you see him.
Sincerely,
Dave
Shelly thought about it for a moment and then it all came back to her. Sam had come in with a stranger from out of town early one morning in late July. The man, Dave as she now knew him, bought two cups of coffee – one for himself and one for Sam – and then the two of them sat out on the deck and talked for a while before getting in Dave’s car and driving away. She had asked Sam about it when he stopped in the shop a week later but he didn’t say much about it – just that he had met Dave on the beach at sunrise that morning. Nothing more.
Shelly tucked the envelope into the pocket of her navy blue apron and then business picked up a little and she didn’t think about it again until late that afternoon when it was time to close. Knowing that it must be something important if it had been mailed by a stranger from Dallas, she decided to drive down the highway and see if she could find Sam. When they worked together at the Crab Cake – she waiting tables and he busing and washing dishes – they’d talked a little and one of the few things she learned about Sam was that he lived in a trailer just south of town next to a hotel. She’d lived on the island all her life and knew there was just one trailer park that fit that description.
A mile south of town Shelly turned her Volkswagon Beetle off the highway and into the sandy lot that was the trailer park. She got out and walked around, but finding just address numbers and no names on the row of mailboxes near the entrance, she realized she’d never find Sam this way. She certainly wasn’t about to go door to door and bother people.
Shelly was walking back to her car when she remembered Sam telling her once that he tried to see every sunrise and sunset that he could on the beach. Hearing the breakers just beyond the dunes, she changed directions and walked the short distance to where the hard asphalt gave way to the hard-packed sand. Looking up and down the beach, she saw just a handful of people walking in the hazy light of dusk, but then she noticed the silhouette of a man sitting on the ground with his legs crossed.
Sam’s mind was empty, his thoughts as invisible as the wind, when the sound of someone calling his name startled him and he kicked his legs forward by pure impulse. He stood up quickly and turned to see Shelly, and then, embarrassed by his appearance – ragged shorts and a well-worn long-sleeve shirt – he dusted the sand off his legs and tried to straighten his hair in the wind. He couldn’t imagine why Shelly was there, but she was very direct and didn’t keep him waiting to find out.
“It’s from that man, Dave, who was here last summer,” Shelly said as she pulled the envelope from her back pocket and thrust it toward Sam. “He asked me to forward it to you.”
Sam took the envelope and without looking at it he pushed it into his own pocket and quietly said “thanks.”
Then Sam began to turn back toward the water, and sensing his discomfort at this invasion of privacy, Shelly turned and walked back to her car.
Sam lingered as he always did to watch the last light of day kiss the top of the breakers, and then he walked back to his trailer. Inside, he switched on the light and slid onto the built-in bench under the little built-in table. With nervous, unsteady hands he opened the first envelope and read the note that Dave had written to Shelly. Then he opened the smaller envelope and watched as a bank check slid out onto the table. Without touching it, Sam tried to read it from an angle. His eyes fixed first on the name of the account holder – David Burnett – and then the figure hand-written into the amount box. It didn’t look right and he questioned his vision as he reached out and squared the piece of paper on the table in front of him. He read the line that contained his name – simply written as “Sam” – and then the line below, which confirmed the numbers he had seen: “One-hundred and no/100ths dollars.”
The next morning Shelly was waiting on a customer when Sam came in, waited for the transaction to be completed, and then slid the check onto the counter in front of her. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he whispered nervously.
“Well, Sam, I think you’re supposed to do anything you want to with it,” Shelly said, and then she caught her breath as she saw the amount. “That’s certainly a very generous gift.”
“Gift? I don’t even know this man,” Sam said as he scraped the check up off the counter with an energy and emotion that Shelly had never seen from this otherwise quiet, gentle man. She watched him pace a little in front of the counter before walking over to a table, sitting down, and staring out the window at the line of boat masts bobbing above the pier.
The shop was empty now, and witnessing Sam’s discomfort and confusion, Shelly stepped around the counter and quietly sat down next to him. His weathered hands lay flat on the table with just the pale green corners of the check peaking out. She started to reach out and put her hand on top of his but stopped herself, instead putting a hand on his shoulder just briefly.
“Listen, Sam, I don’t know anything about this Dave fellow, and I don’t know much about you except for the little you’ve told me, but it seems to me that you’ve been given a wonderful gift, pure and simple, and that’s the way you should look at it. You can do anything you want to with the check, or you can do nothing at all. It’s your choice. Although if you did nothing at all with it, that’d tell me something new about you: that you’re a fool. But to be honest, I really don’t think that’s true at all. Anyway, a check is good for a year, maybe longer, so you can take your time and think about it. I’m sure there’s plenty that you need, but that’s for you to decide.”
Having said all she knew to say, Shelly followed her heart this time and reached down and placed her hand on top of Sam’s and gave it a squeeze. She got up to walk back to the counter and heard Sam moving behind her. The opening and closing of the door confirmed that he had left.
Christmas Eve was an especially quiet day at the Dream Bean and that was not unexpected. Even Bo was absent for his early morning brew, and there was very little activity down on the pier. Still, Shelly knew that dependable, predictable hours were a key to winning a regular clientele, so if the bank and the post office were going to be open, then so was the Dream Bean. She always had the option of closing early, but she had just enough people coming in and out through the day to justify keeping the doors open.
Sometime late in the afternoon Shelly noticed that change in the air that people often feel on Christmas Eve – that deep-down sensation that says it’s time to leave the work behind and draw near to family and loved ones. Shelly was alone in town, but even so she had that same feeling that she knew as a girl growing up on the island – when her mother would take off her apron and her father would come home early from the hardware store and the world would seem to get quiet and watchful.
With thick gray clouds rolling in to hasten the dusk, Shelly began to close down the Dream Bean. She wiped down the tables, swept the floor, and rinsed out the coffee carafes. She soaped and rinsed the last of the utensils from the day’s work. She was in the process of emptying the cash register and stuffing the contents in a bank bag when she saw a flicker of light out of the corner of her eye. She looked up to see a glow coming from somewhere outside – somewhere up above the store.
Shelly stuffed the bank bag deep under the counter and closed the cash drawer before cautiously walking around the counter and across the room to the door. The glow got brighter the closer she got, and leaning forward, she peered upward as she turned the sign to the Closed position. She still couldn’t see anything, so she opened the door slowly and stepped out into the moist evening air where she was bathed in a magnificent glow. She backed out across the deck and looked up to see the roofline of her shop perfectly outlined in red, orange, green and blue Christmas lights. With her mouth hanging open, she backed down the steps to get a better look and saw movement through the railing. She looked closer to see a man kneeling on the deck, tucking a loose electrical cord out of the way. He stood up and turned to face her.
“Sam?! What’s this . . . ,” but before she could complete her question Bo came bounding into view.
“Well now, Shelly, this is what Christmas is supposed to look like!” He grabbed her by the hands, spun her once around, and then pulled her back up the steps. “Come on in, sweetie, and let me buy you a cup of coffee!”
Shelly tried to give Sam a wave of “thank you” but Bo pulled her off the porch and into the shop before she could finish the gesture.
Others soon followed, drawn by the glow of the lights, until the Dream Bean was packed full for the first time since it opened. Shelly kept the coffee perking, and from the oven she brought forth warm cookies and anything else she could find to bake. One of the ladies from a souvenir shop down the block jumped in to help Shelly behind the counter, but nobody took orders or collected cash. Instead, Shelly’s tip jar overflowed and then someone put a galvanized bucket on the counter and it filled up too.
Sam kept to himself, letting the others enjoy the party inside while he sat at a table beneath the lights that he had bought and quietly strung the night before. It was cool but not cold outside, and Sam was comfortable in a new pair of khaki trousers and a long-sleeve shirt. But mostly he was warmed by the glow of the lights and the tall cup of hot coffee that Shelly made sure was never less than half full.
THE END
Copyright © 2013 by Jeff Hampton