Christmas Short Stories

Xmas at Abby’s Diner

Abby Kent parked her Cherokee by feel, pulling into the parking space through a fog she could not see through, and wondered why in the hell she had even gotten out of bed on this ugly Christmas morning. She had never opened her place on Christmas before, but truth was she had nowhere else to go. It seemed like a better option than spending Christmas day creeping about her big old house listening to the ghosts of Christmases past.

She pushed her way through the fog, taking its closeness as a personal afront, to the front door of ABBY’S, a small cafe, a diner really. The building sat at the end of Center Street close to the bay. She had originally thought to name it Abby’s by the Bay, but there was a parking lot and a railroad tack between her and the bay and besides a book store had already claimed that name, calling themselves Book by the Bay although they were no closer to the water than she was. ABBY’S looked cold and dismal in the fog with only a yellow night light revealing the chairs stacked for the night on the eight tables beside the three booths and small counter. She preferred to enter by the front door, avoiding the garbage cans turned over during the night by stray does or urban raccoons. Hanging her coat and purse in the back room, she braced herself for the daily battle with the coffee urn. She could make fair coffee in it, not Starbucks but drinkable, but only with growing iritation. The damned thing squalled. It gurgled and snorted and gargled and squalled. It went on all day long and she could not get used to it. Her husband Al had bought it used a a restaurant supply house and while he was alive she hadn’t minded the noises so much. After his death in a hunting accident, she’d begun to notice the noises more and more. Nonetheless she kept it and fought with it.

“I wonder,” she thought, “if I’ll ever hear it again after today. Oh, well, take today as it is and forget about tomorrow.”

She was pulling the skins from a kettle of steamed potatoes she had prepared the day before to make hash browns when the door opened and Perce Colling came in.

“You open, Abby?”

“Does it look like I’m open, Perce?”

“No, you ain’t got no open sign on.”

“Oh, hell, I guess I just forgot that.”

“Beside, you ain’t never been open on Christmas before.”

“This year it’s different.”

Perce paused, decided the bantering was enough for the moment and agreed that yeah it was different, and sniffed the air. He plugged in the open sign and said, “Smells like the coffee’s ready.”

“I guess it’s about a yodel and growl away.”

The machine cooperated by yodelling and growling. Abby poured them both a cup. “What are you doing out this early on Christmas morning, Perce? Couldn’t sleep on that old, creaky couch of yours?”

“Fog’s so thick it squeaked around the davits,” he said.

“You’re so full of it, Perce, I ain’t got a whole lot of patience for it today.”

“Well, Abby, I get up early most mornings and have coffee on the boat, but it was so damned lonesome today I just had to get out of there.”

“Me, too. Of course, there’s been no one home for several years, what with Eddie being in New York, but at least I knew that he was there. Now there’s no one anywhere and it just makes it seem like. . .” Her voice trailed off as her eyes filled with tears. Perce stirred two creamers into his coffee and slurped from the cup as Abby turned away to hide her crying.

Finally he said, “I’m awful sorry, Abby. I don’t know what to say.”

“If only,” she said in a little voice, “ they could have found the body.”

The heavy silence lasted for a few seconds and the door was opened by a slender woman in a camouflage jacket and a girl of about thirteen wearing a blue sweatshirt with a hood. Both were shivering with cold and looked to have been sleeping on the street. The woman clutched some coins in her hand as she asked, “How much is coffee and a cup of cocoa?”

“It’s free,” Abby said.

“Free?”

“Yes,” Abby said firmly, “it’s free on Christmas morning. I’m Abby and I run this place and free coffee and cocoa is an old tradition that I just established. So sit down.”

She set two chairs down from a table for them and the girl quickly set down the other two. The woman and the girl settled into seats as Abby brought their cups.

“Here,” Abby said, “drink.” She went back to the kitchen and returned with a large cinnamon roll for everybody. “These are another part of the tradition--cinnamon rolls. I made them last night because I didn’t have anything else to do.”

They ate in silence for a time. Finally Perce asked, “You folks local?”

“No,” the girl said. “We’re going to Tillamook to visit my aunt for Christmas but we ran out of gas.”

“We couldn’t find a station open late last night so we slept in our car.”

“It got kind of cold,” the girl added.

“Would you like another one?” Abby asked, noticing they’d quickly finished the rolls.

“We’re not asking for charity,” the woman said.

“Well, bless your heart, I’m not offering charity. It’s just that I’m looking at a surplus of cinnamon rolls if I don’t have any more business than I think I’m gonna have.”

Just then, as if to refute what she had said, the door opened and a bearded young man with long hair and a wild look in his eyes stepped in and crossed to the counter by the cash register. Suddenly he turned and raised his arm revealing a hunting knife. “Gimme the money in that cash box,” he said, “or I’ll cut ya!”

Everyone stared at him and there was quiet except for the groaning and hissing of the coffee urn.

“Now don’t get yerself all excited!” Perce said. The young man turned on him, menacing with the knife. Abby stepped to the back room.

“You shut up, old man, if you know what’s good for you,” the younger man said and started to step behind the counter to open the cash register when Abby came through the doorway, jacking a cartridge into poor dead Al’s 30-06. She leveled the rifle at the intruder and in a quiet, steady voice said, “Put the knife on the counter or I’m going to have to repaint that wall behind your head.”

The kid looked at the hole in the barrel of Al’s old hunting rifle and started to cry. “Don’t shoot!” he said, dropping the knife and sinking to his knees. “I’m just real strung out. I don’t think I can make it.”

Just then the door opened and Purley Morton came through it, carrying a yellow Lab puppy. “Look what I got, Abby,” he said as he turned to close the door behind him. “I’m taking him up to Hillsborough for my kid. . .” He saw the gun, he saw the frozen figures, and then he saw the figure on the floor sobbing. “What in God’s name?”

“Fella here thought he’d rob Abby,” Perce said. “It didn’t work out for him.”

“For a minute there I thought my ex-wife had found out I’m bringing a puppy for Devin and put a contract on me.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Abby said. “How about you and Perce set the kid in a chair while I call the police.”

It was done and by the time they arrived it had been revealed that the kid had been on a week-long drug binge, lived out at Green Acres, and had called his brother and his dad who were coming to get him. Abby explained to the two policemen who came that there had been a misunderstanding. The kid had wanted to sell his knife and she had over-reacted. That satisfied them and everyone was having more coffee and cinnamon rolls by the time the brother and father arrived. There was a heart-warming scene where the father beat on the kid’s head with his hat and the brother said he’d take care of getting him into rehab as they left.

After that, they all just looked at each other until Abby went back to skinning potatoes. Perce said, “I didn’t know you were such a shooter, Abby. You had that gun long?”

“Well,” she said, “not too long. It was Al’s and I never shot a gun in my life. I just kept it because--well, you know.”

“Where’d you get that line about repainting the wall?”

“That was a good one, wasn’t it? I heard it on TV, I think.”

“You know,” Purley said, “how Andy Warhol said everyone gets fifteen minutes of fame? You shot that kid, and that would have been yours, Abby.”

“I suspect that by the time you two tell the story two or three times, I’ll have all the fifteen minutes of fame I can tolerate.”

“You know what my fifteen minutes of fame was?”

Perce asked.

“I guess we’re gonna hear,” Abby said.

“I’d like to hear,” the girl said.

“Well, sir, I won a music contest for playing the harmonica.”

Abby snorted and the coffee urn echoed her. “You play the harmonica? I’ll have to hear that.”

Perce pulled a well worn harmonica case from his pocket, took out the instrument, tapped it on his hand as if to clear the reeds, and said, “O.K., what do you want to hear?”

“How about ‘Jingle Bells’ to cheer everyone up?” the mother said.

And he did. It wasn’t like any ‘Jingle Bells’ anyone had ever heard, but it was and soon they were all singing, including the coffee urn. Purley leaned over and said to Abby, “That coffee urn sure makes some noise, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it does,” she answered. “Kind of comforting, isn’t it?”

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