Maggie Shayne - An Enchanted Season

Grinning, Bella twisted open the door as soon as the way was mostly clear, and gestured Steve into the warmth of the building. “There you go! Mind you, I want to enjoy fresh milk and eggs for my breakfast when you are through. Come along, boys. Unless you want to muck stalls and pitch hay while you’re at it?”

Muttering their refusals as politely and quickly as they could pant, the two youths followed her, taking the shovels back with them. Amazed at how the odd, black-clad woman could get such honest work out of the local pack of troublemakers, Steve shook his head and stepped inside. It was only a couple minutes after five, and he could hear the lowing of the ladies in their byres. Or rather, not in their byres, he noted with satisfaction. Pete was already leading what looked like the second cow out of her stall, taking her to the dairy room for food and milking, just like he had the previous afternoon. It was a relief for Steve to see that their girls would’ve been fine without him.

Shedding a layer as the heat of the barn seeped into him, Steve headed for Ellen’s stall; she needed to be hand-milked for the colostrum, rather than put on the machine that would send her first-milk into the same pails as the rest. But when he got to her, he found she’d already been milked. When Pete came back, he grinned shyly at Steve, who was straightening from checking the now slack udder.

“Already done it, Mr. Bethel; she gave it up easy, too. Of course, I was smart enough to wash my hands in hot water so they’d still be warm when they touched her. It’s in the fridge with the rest, in the processing room. I wasn’t sure you’d make it out here in less than three hours, given how deep th’ snow got overnight; then I heard Miz Bella yelling at Dave an’ Joey, making ’em clear a path to the barn. Made me right glad, too,” he added, taking Eliza’s halter and backing the lowing cow out of her stall. “I mean, you showed me the microwave and the frozen stuff in the deep-freeze, but I ain’t so good at cookin’, even with prepackaged stuff. Miz Rutherford’s cookin’ beats my own hands-down, any day.”

“It also beats my own,” Steve agreed, entering the last stall and taking the halter of the remaining cow. “And she loves doing it, too, which is the important part. We’re having chicken gravy on homemade buttermilk biscuits once we’re done cleaning, milking, and cleaning again in here.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here; that machine ain’t too familiar,” Pete admitted. “You did show me, and I could figure out whatever I couldn’t remember, but I’d rather trade you; I’ll muck out the stalls as clean an’ fresh as can be, while you take care of these ladies in the dairy. Deal?”

“Deal,” Steve agreed. Nearly ten minutes of shoveling had been more than enough for him; not having to change out the bedding in the stalls was a very welcome offer. “Don’t forget, we’ll need to gather the eggs in the henhouse, which is through that door over there…”

“AND THE YEAR AFTER THAT, WE WERE TRAVELING IN THEBahamas,” Bella related as the others finished laughing, “so those lavi-lavi turned out quite useful as makeshift sarongs, but I’ll never stop teasing Mike about having to wear what we think of as a skirt over his trousers!”

“It’s a good thing I can enjoy a laugh at my own expense,” Mike warned her, passing along the bowl of fried potatoes they were sharing at the dinner table, “or I’d have to retaliate with the tale of you and the fresh coconut halves you wore for a hula dancer’s top at that costume party that one Christmas Eve two years ago. It turns out she’s allergic to fresh coconut milk,” he confided to the others. “But only when it’s allowed to dry on her skin.”

“That was me,” Cassie interjected, lifting her finger while Joey and Pete eyed her speculatively. “Not Bella. And that is too painful a subject to discuss at the dinner ta—”

The lights went out, stopping the chatter around the long oak table. With the cessation of speech came an awareness of the cessation of the furnace that had been blowing its heat in a subtle background whoosh, easily missed until it went missing. They could hear the wind still blowing outside, and the hiss of snow on the upper half of the windows, since it had drifted and covered the lower half already. It was a poignant moment, dark and quiet. Then Steve scraped back his chair, clearing his throat.

“If everyone will stay here, I’ll go get a flashlight and some candles, then start up the generator once we can see.”

Bella’s voice broke the quiet following the footsteps of his cautious exit. “Well. At least we finished our supper first. And with the snow halfway up the house, it should help to insulate us against some of the cold outside.”

“Coconut halves, huh?” Dave’s voice asked archly. Something whapped a moment later, making him yelp. “You tossed a bun at me!”

“You’re still in your seat, and I have a very long memory,” Cassie quipped back. She giggled after a moment. “This is turning out to be a very special holiday, that’s for sure!”

Steve came back with the glowing beam of a flashlight in one hand, a pair of candelabras in the other, and a plastic sack swinging from his arm. “Well, I suppose candlelit meals could be considered ‘ambience.’ We’ll have you lit in a jiffy so you don’t bump around; then I’ll get the generator going. Rachel, if you can get the votive holders off the sideboard there, in case they need to get to the bathroom before the lights are back on; I’ve got the candles for ’em here.”

It didn’t take long to set up the candles in their holders, nor to light them. Steve waited long enough for Rachel to get started on illuminating the room, then took himself and a jacket upstairs. The exhaust chimney for the generator was hooked up to a long, tall stovepipe with a sharp, conical peak for a roof. It was designed to take several feet of snow on the lean-to roof and still be able to vent, but with the snow still coming down, Steve didn’t quite trust it to remain clear.

Grabbing a broom from the upstairs closet, he made his way to the covered balcony, which overlooked the mudroom and lean-to below. Snow had stacked up at a fairly steep angle to the balcony railing. More snow fell, glittering as it swirled into the glow of the flashlight he set on the wrought-iron chair in the corner, pointing it out into the snow. As beautiful as the flakes were to watch, they were interfering with his employment; he had guests to keep warm.

Balancing carefully, he climbed high enough to check the snow on the lower roof. It was within a foot or two of the top of the pipe. Poking at the snow with his broom, Steve tried to dislodge it. For a moment, nothing moved, then a good chunk of it broke off and slithered down the sloped surface, taking more and more snow with it. It splattered somewhere below, falling from most of the roof in a rough wedge shape, warning him that he would probably have to shovel the chunks out of the trench to the barn, but it did clear the lean-to roof nicely around the exhaust pipe.

The last thing they needed was to asphyxiate on diesel fumes, after all. Sweeping the snow from his feet, he picked up the flashlight again, returned inside, hung the broom in the closet again, and headed back downstairs, dusting the snow from his short locks. Inside the dining room, he could hear the others playing some sort of game, and paused to check on them. Mike was explaining that the book-sized box in his hands, wrapped in something white printed with golden bells and ribbons on its paper, was a Guessing Box game; they could shake the box, tilt it, turn it, even weigh it, and each person would write down on a piece of paper what they thought was inside the box. Whoever guessed right would win a bar of Swiss chocolate.