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The Path to Piney Meadows

By Gail Sattler

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Chad Jones stared into the bottom of his empty mug.
Since noon, peals of drunken laughter echoed down from the office Christmas party of the business on the floor above him.
Chad sat alone, on Christmas Eve, working. Without coffee. But he could smell the dregs from what was left in the bottom of the near-empty pot. Everyone else had gone home.
Chad glanced around his private office, not much bigger than a closet. He had barely enough square footage for his desk and chair, one filing cabinet, and one guest chair. Not that he had many guests. It was embarrassing. The building
looked passable from the outside, but there was a reason the rent was cheaper than other buildings in the same area.
Gary, however, had spared no expense in renovating his own office, which was nearly the size of Chad’s living room.
Upstairs, someone turned up the volume of “Jingle Bell Rock.”
Chad gritted his teeth and tilted his head up. “I hate ‘Jingle
Bell Rock’!” he called up, even though they couldn’t hear him. “Can’t you pick something else?”
With every thump of the bass, the tape dispenser on Chad’s desk vibrated.
He stared at the pile of paper Gary had plunked on his desk before he’d walked out. Gary had left early to be with his family. Chad didn’t have anywhere to go, and Gary knew it, but that wasn’t the point.
After all this time, he could finally admit that his boss had no intention of making him a partner. Everything had been a ploy to get more work out of him. The only thing that would shake greedy Gary into really making him partner was if Gary actually had to do all his own work.
Chad peeled off a sticky note and started writing.
I quit!
Chad
He smiled and pressed the paper to the center of his monitor. As he pulled his hand away, the note fell.
Chad’s smile also fell.
Mr. Cheapskate couldn’t even buy decent quality sticky notes.
Chad sunk his teeth into his lower lip, picked up a push-pin, poked it through the note, and aimed it at the monitor.
Testing the screen, Chad poked it with his thumb. His monitor at home was a plasma screen—hard, with a glass front—but this was an LCD and was . . . pliant.
Even though he had no intention of really doing it, he speculated what would happen if he pushed the pin into the soft surface. Would the screen go blank? Would it blow up? Would there be a spark? It gave him a small degree of satisfaction to imagine Gary’s expression when he saw a hole in his precious
bargain-basement monitor.
Slowly, Chad pressed the pin against it, just enough to make an indentation but not enough to cause actual damage.
Someone turned up the volume on “Jingle Bell Rock.” Again.
A sharp bang resounded above him. The rickety overhead light rattled. Keeping his hand pressed against the screen, Chad looked up at the same time as something about the size of a quarter fell down from the ballast and landed on his head.
Chad pushed his chair back and jumped to his feet, swiping the top of his head with both hands until he knocked something off. He stilled and stared down at a huge, dust-covered dead spider in the center of his desktop. Then he looked at
his monitor, his note pinned irmly in the center of the screen.
The area around the pin distorted and a black oozy liquid leaked out.
Now he knew.
He sank back into his chair, licked the dead spider into the wastebasket, and watched the yellow note soak up the black goo.
Either Gary would make him pay for a new monitor, or he’d fire Chad for willful destruction of company property.
Chad sighed.
Gary wouldn’t fire him. Chad worked too hard and too long for too little pay and zero appreciation.
As he continued to stare at his note, he crossed his arms over his chest. Nothing was ever going to change if he continued to put up with the way Gary treated him.
Not only had he not taken a vacation in two years, he was stuck working on Christmas Eve when everyone else had gone home. Scrooge had even locked up the coffee supplies.
Chad squeezed his eyes shut. He’d finally had enough.
He turned his head to the door, in the direction of Gary’s office, and called out, “Gary, even though you can’t hear me, I’m telling you right now, I quit.” Out of habit, he reached to turn off the damaged monitor. “Oh, and Merry Christmas,” he muttered as he pressed the button.
When he pushed himself away from the desk, as usual, the broken wheel of his crappy chair locked. He squirmed out of the seat, stood, spun around, and gave
it a hefty shove. The chair banged against the wall with enough force that
his framed college diploma shook then hung crooked.
Gently, Chad removed it from the wall. “For all the good all my years of college did,” he mumbled as he pulled the tail of his shirt out of his pants and wiped the dust off the top of the frame. Cradling his hard-earned diploma beneath his arm, he picked up the small plaque with his name on it from the desk, retrieved his coffee mug, grabbed his coat off the coat rack,
tossed his small cache of personal effects into an empty box, and headed for the door of what had once been his dream job.
“Attention everyone,” he said to the empty chairs as he walked past them for the last time, “Elvis has left the building.” Except Elvis would have had an entourage to carry his stuff to his car.
After setting the box on the passenger seat and starting the engine, Chad got out of the car to unplug the block heater. As he wound the cord it occurred to him that he didn’t know what he was going to do. He had nowhere to go. Everyone he knew was busy getting ready for friends and family on Christmas day. He couldn’t intrude. Especially not in his current mood.
Rather than go home to an empty apartment, Chad simply headed north. Maybe if he drove far enough, he would find Santa. Maybe he would even make it as far as the Canadian border, which had to be close to the North Pole.
As he drove through the city, the more decorations he saw, the worse he felt.
When he approached the city limits, rather than turning around and driving past the depressing sights again, he followed the sign pointing to the entrance for Highway 10 North and kept going.
The recent snowfall left a stark white covering on the fields beside the highway, almost sterile, unlike the brown slush and Minneapolis muck created from the mix of ever-increasing volumes of salt and sand that kept the roads clear, deiced, and safe for thousands of frantic rush-hour drivers every day.
As he drove away from the city, his stress levels melted, without the necessity of industrial grade salt.
Instead of turning on the radio, since he didn’t want to hear Christmas music, Chad simply let the hum of the tires and the monotony of the bumps when he hit the expansion seams on the concrete highway soothe his shattered nerves.
From inside his pocket, his cell phone beeped. “Whoever you are, leave me alone,” he grumbled as he reached into his pocket and hit the mute button without checking the call display. He didn’t want to explain his actions to anyone, especially when he couldn’t explain them to himself.
Because there was no traffic, Chad took the turn to go onto route 371, which turned into route 200.
He passed a sign that read Manhattan Beach, although he wondered what kind of beach would be up here and how big such a place could be, but the only Manhattan he could think of was New York City.
Which was the last thing he wanted. More crowds.
Chad kept driving until the sun had almost set. He flipped on the lights and started to think about turning around to go back and which highway he’d come off when a beep sounded and the gas light came on.
Chad winced. He had no idea how far he could go before he ran out of gas.
He didn’t want to take the chance of becoming stranded in the middle of nowhere on a cold winter night, but he had no idea where he was and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d passed a gas station. He’d declined the option when the car salesman had asked if he wanted a GPS, and now he was sorry he’d been so cheap.
A sign pointing down a country road directing him to a town called Piney Meadows nearly made him shout for joy. He hadn’t heard of the town before, but if Piney Meadows had a sign, it had to have a gas station. He turned onto the dark, narrow road.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to go too far until he saw the glow of lights in the distance. Not only did he need gas, he also had to use the facilities.
The main drag was only a few blocks long but he could see the sign for one gas station.
It was dark.
Chad smacked the steering wheel with his fist. It was closed.
Everything was closed.
He pulled to the side of the road, turned the car off, and reached into his pocket for his cell phone. Despite it being Christmas Eve, he could call his best friend for help. Brad would google the town of Piney Meadows and be here in a few hours with a can of gas. Even though Chad knew he’d never hear the end of it, another blow to his already damaged pride wasn’t as bad as freezing to death in the metropolis of Piney Meadows, home of one closed gas station.
Chad flipped open the phone and hit the unlock button, only to see the warning note for a low battery appear for three seconds before the display went blank.
Chad stared at the phone then looked up at the glow of lights in the distance that had guided him this far.
The building was bigger than a house and smaller than a mall, but whatever it was, if it meant people, it was where he was going.
Instead of using the auto start and hoping a manual start might save a few drops of gas, Chad turned the key. The engine whined, chugged a few times then died. He dropped his head to the steering wheel, muttered a phrase he hadn’t said for a number of years, and then looked up. Ahead of him at the end of the block, two people walked on the street toward the lit area. Behind him, the headlights of another car appeared in the distance, conirming that something was indeed going on at the source of light.
He got out of the car, hit the button to lock the doors, pulled up his collar as best he could against the biting wind, and walked toward the light, hoping he made it before his nose turned white with frostbite. Above the building in the distance, beaming with a golden glow, was a cross.
He nearly groaned out loud.
A church.
He didn’t know whether to laugh with relief or smack himself for his own sarcastic attitude. This town was so small it didn’t have what he really wanted, which was a mall bustling with people before it closed for the holiday. Instead, the hub of activity was a church.
Just like the other buildings he’d passed, it was also old and exactly what he imagined a picturesque little country church to be, although, it really wasn’t so little. It was about the same size as the church his parents dragged him to every Sunday, when he’d believed in such things. But God obviously had a
sense of humor, because the church was the only place open that was warm and sheltered, and he was almost at the point of desperation.
If this were the same as where he’d grown up, on Christmas Eve there would be free coffee and refreshments. And a men’s room.
Just the thought of food, even stale cookies and weak coffee, caused his stomach to grumble painfully. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and he was so hungry he was starting to feel sick. If his queasy stomach wasn’t bad enough, his teeth chattered so hard he hoped he wouldn’t shake a filling loose. His
leather jacket looked good, but it didn’t protect him from the wind. Here, in the roaring metropolis—no sarcasm intended, at least not much—of Piney Meadows, he wouldn’t have to wait overnight in his car to freeze to death.
He’d never experienced wind like this in his life. In the city, when he ran from his car to the office building, the leather protected him. But here the buildings were too far apart and too small to offer protection. He’d heard the terminology on the radio, that the temperature was minus 5 but felt like minus
20. Now he knew what that felt like—the hard way.
Chad quickened his pace.

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