An Easter Tale, Emery L. Campbell [short books to read txt] 📗

the carpet.
“Here, pull up a chair,” she said. Then she almost jumped out of her skin, for there on the table lay the cookbook still open to page 106! She snatched it away as fast as she could and put it on top of the fridge with a guilty glance in Vince’s direction. Thank goodness, he hadn’t noticed it. He was drying his eyes with a Kleenex to which he had helped himself from the box sitting on the table. She sighed with relief.
Taking the juicer out of the cupboard, she threw in a handful of carrots and filled two glasses with their juice, placing one in front of Vince.
“Hey, I’m beginning to feel better,” he said with a dab at his eye. “I’ve seen them gadgets before, but there’s no use gettin’ one ‘cause I ain’t got around to having our place wired up yet. There’s always so much to do. Lately I been trying to get the storeroom in shape. The shipments of Easter stuff keep coming in by the truckload, and you gotta have some place to put it all.”
Karen didn’t know what to say. She tried to visualize shelves laden with cases, the floor strewn with opened boxes, wrapping paper, and those little plastic curly-cues.
“Do you do all the work yourself?”
“Heavens, no!” said Vince. “That’s one advantage of having a big family. Fifteen of my eldest offspring are on the payroll. Rodney and Sid operate the forklifts. A crew keeps track of all the goods coming in and going out, unpacking, filling delivery bags, and doing the paperwork. Russ, my oldest, is in charge. My wife, Livia, prepares meals for the whole bunch. It’s a family deal. But the home deliveries are my job ‘cause I’m the only one in the family who can read a map. I majored in geography at Lapin College. Oh, I’m more than just a pretty face.” He gave her a sidelong smirk.
It was a constant struggle for Karen to get her own household organized, and she envied Vince’s apparent ability to marshal all his familial forces to such good effect. She tried to imagine her husband helping to keep the house in order. And, of course, Joey was hopeless; anything he dropped lay right where it fell until Karen picked up after him.
The more she thought about it the more morose she became.
“I need a stronger drink,” she said.
The refrigerator overflowed with leftovers, but in the back stood a bottle half full of Kroger’s cranberry-apple fruit drink. She poured herself a stiff slug in a water tumbler and downed it in one swallow. She saw Vince observing her over the rim of his glass of carrot juice.
“You got troubles, lady? You wanna tell me about it?” He glanced at his Bugs Bunny watch. “You gotta understand, though; I’m getting jumpy. All this chit-chat has made me late, and I’ve still got a lot of miles to cover.”
“Don’t get me started, pal.” But then she realized with a start how ridiculous this was and came to her senses just in time. Had she really been on the verge of unloading her woes on this…this…bedraggled, furry stranger? Talk about bad hare days!
Faced with her indecision, Vince drained his drink and rose from the table. “You’re gonna have to excuse me, but I got work to do.”
Then he remembered the big knot in his bag still sitting in front of the fireplace. “You got a knife or a scissors I can use to get into that bag?”
She opened a drawer and handed him a paring knife, admonishing him again not to lay a paw on her carpet. He edged along the wall back to the den and attacked the knot. Predictably, when he had slashed through it the bag fell open, and most of its contents spilled onto the floor.
“This is all I needed!” Karen could see that Vince was hopping mad. He tried stuffing the gifts back into the bag, but it was hopeless. With the top torn there was no way to hold it shut. He turned and glowered at Karen who was watching from the kitchen doorway.
“I suppose you ain’t got a bag I can borrow,” he said in a surly voice. The veneer of civility he had assumed was wearing thin.
“Nothing that big,” she said. “I can give you one of my plastic garbage can liners, but it won’t hold half of all that stuff.”
He snatched the proffered item and started to sort what to leave and what to repack. Karen had been right; the garbage bag was nowhere near big enough.
“I really gotta get out of here,” said Vince through gritted teeth. “I’m just gonna have to drop off a lot more here than I should. I don’t see any way around it. I’ll have to go back home for another load before the night is over. What a disaster!”
He crammed as much as he could into the bag, taking whatever was nearest to hand.
“For God’s sake, don’t let the kid eat too much of this candy all at once, or he’s gonna be sick.”
He hoisted the bulging bag onto his shoulder with a grunt. “I hope to God this doesn’t bust on me. I don’t believe in working with flimsy material. Just have to make the best of a bad job.”
Muttering to himself, he lurched through the kitchen door that Karen held open. She raised the garage door. “Thanks for the juice, missus,” he said with a grudging wave, then staggered out into the night and disappeared.


Daylight had just begun to slant through the windows when Joey’s footsteps awoke his mother. A light was still on in the kitchen, and a table lamp burned in the den. Karen had been fast asleep in the recliner by the fireplace. Good Morning America flickered on a soundless TV.
Joey’s eyes grew wide with wonder, for there on the floor was a small mountain of baskets out of which spilled chocolate bunnies and chicks, jelly beans, and every imaginable kind of Easter goodies. He squealed with delight.
“Mama! Mama! Look! Look what the Easter bunny brought!”
Karen sat up, rubbed her eyes, and surveyed the room. Sure enough, a great pile of Easter gifts lay on the hearth, but she looked in vain for the dirty newspapers that she knew she had spread on the floor the night before. She checked the tools in the garage; the tilling rake was right there in the corner where her husband always left it after working in the garden on weekends. She took another long look at the heap of candies on the floor in the den.
“I don’t get this at all,” she said under her breath. She shook her head and pinched herself on the arm to make sure she was fully awake. “Come on, Joey, let’s get some breakfast. Don’t stuff yourself with chocolate.”
Joey followed his mother into the kitchen with great reluctance, his fingers and lips already stained brown. He smeared fingerprints on the door frame.
“Did you see him, Mama? Did you? What did he look like, Mama?”
Then she heard heavier steps on the stairs, and her husband, Walt, appeared in the doorway.
“Hi hon. I finished up in Cincinnati last evening earlier than I thought and was able to catch the last flight to Atlanta. I got home just after midnight. I saw you asleep on the chair and didn’t have the heart to wake you. I sure missed you, sweetie.”
Grabbing Joey under the arms, he hoisted the smiling boy high in the air and hugged him. “I missed you, too, little Joe.”
“Daddy, did you see what’s on the floor in the den?”
His father winked at Karen and chuckled. “It must have been the Easter rabbit, son.”
Karen joined in the hugging. “I’m so glad you’re home, Walt. You have no idea what a night I had.” He gave her a quick, puzzled glance, but she looked down. “I’ll tell you about it later. First I’ve got to get washed up, and then I have some shopping to do for Easter dinner.”
She had made up her mind: she would never again even think of eating rabbit. Instead she would roast a leg of lamb with all the trimmings. She could live with that. After all, it wasn’t as if she knew any lambs personally…

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Publication Date: 03-16-2010

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