The Christmas Sleigh – Chapter 4

Story posted by Chris Cade | Short Christmas Stories on Dec 4, 2009 in Inspirational Christmas Stories (If known, the original author is listed below)

Special thanks to L. M. McCleland – author and contributor of this story!

I awoke hearing Mom calling everyone to dinner. It took me a few seconds to get my bearings. I shook my head. Was that a dream? It was so real. I lurched out of my room to the top of the stairs and did a double take. There was Dad and Jeff playing Monopoly just like I’d seen them. Dad looked up at me.
“You okay Greg? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Oh,” I said as I staggered into the kitchen.
Later, over dinner, Dad said, “Uncle Howard called and said they can’t make it here by Christmas, with all the snow on the ground. Looks like it’s just us.”
When we were done eating I gave Mom a kiss and thanked her for the grub. Her eyebrows almost shot off her forehead as she gave Dad a what’s-with-him gesture when I began gathering the dishes. I swear Susan almost fainted when I said to Jeff, “Give me a hand here, Jeff, and then we can hunt around for another game to play afterward.”
“Okay!” he answered, and leaped to my side.
The next morning dawned cold and clear, and mostly calm. I was up early and looked out the window at a smooth, white landscape. Every slope was gentle, every curve soft, as if nature sought to hide anything manmade. Jeff padded up next to me, rubbing his eyes.
“Wow! Where’s the van?” he asked.
I realized he was right. “I think it’s that big drift over there,” I said pointing. The wind has sculpted the snow into huge heaps between the house and the barn. It didn’t look less than two feet deep anywhere.
When Dad got a look at the snow, he immediately went for the telephone. After making a call, he said, “All the roads into town are all closed, and the town will be driveable by tomorrow morning, but the plows won’t make it out this far until the day after Christmas.”
“Well, how are we gonna get to the mall to buy presents?” asked Jeff.
“I guess we’ll just celebrate Christmas a couple days late. It’s no big deal,” said Dad.
Mom added, “We’ll have to stretch the food a little, but we’ll make it fine.” That was a mistake. Now Susan got upset.
“Three more days, cooped up in here?” She whined.
Dad shrugged his shoulders and said, “The van can’t go through snow that deep, and it’s five miles to the mall or anything else. We’d need a dogsled or a horse to make it.”
After breakfast, I started putting on my coat and boots.
“Where are you headed?” asked Dad.
“Oh, I just thought I’d poke around in the barn for a while,” I said. “The big door isn’t drifted in. Just something to do.”
Jeff ran up. “Can I come with you?”
I smiled at him. “Sure, we’ll have fun.” Mom and Dad stared at us, gape-mouthed.
We trudged 100 feet across the white wasteland to the barn. We kicked a lot of snow out of the way, and wrestled with the door to get it to slide open enough for us to slip through.
It was dark inside, and smelled of dank, wet hay, sweaty horses, axle grease, and wood. Footstep crunches were swallowed by the black void, and an occasional bird flew from rafter to rafter. I began making out shapes of benches and tools along the walls. There were a couple of square outlines glowing at eye level on the far wall. I went over to them and felt along, until I found a latch. I unhooked it, and the shutter creaked outward, lighting up the room enough for me to open another shutter. I could see well enough now to find and hit the light switch. A couple of bare light bulbs added their dim glow to the interior.
“It’s sorta creepy,” said Jeff.
I spied a tarp covering a familiar shape in the corner, under the hay loft. Heading straight for it, I whispered, “Yeah,” Jeff was right on my heels saying, “What is it Greg?” I pulled the tarp off, and there it was; Grandpa’s old Ford tractor! A classic design. Four big wheels. In-line engine, all exposed. A mechanics dream.
I scouted among the benches, and found a big tool kit and some motor oil. Everything we needed was right here!
“Jeff? How would you like to participate in a resurrection today?”
He looked at me and said, “Huh?”
I had to think back on what I’d read about waking up an engine that had sat around for a long time. As I looked up and down the length of it, I found a hand-crank, and a magneto spark to start it. Good, no battery to worry about. I figured the crankcase oil must be like sludge, so I found the drain plug and got started.
We set a basin to catch the old oil, and I let Jeff finish removing the plug. After all, good mechanics are baptized in dirty oil. “Oh gross,” were his first words as a new convert.
We first put fresh oil in the crankcase, then I yanked out the old spark plugs and showed Jeff how to clean them. While he did that, I squirted a little oil into each cylinder. I tried to give the hand-crank a turn, but it wouldn’t budge, so I climbed into the driver’s seat, which was just a metal fanny pan mounted on a piece of spring steel. After a lot of head scratching, I figured out the controls, and put the thing in neutral.
I was about to learn why they invented electric starters. I huffed and puffed on the hand-crank and managed to get the engine loosened up and oil circulating. We put the spark plugs back in, and checked the radiator. Great! It was full and not frozen!
Jeff and I ran a commando raid on the van, and stole a couple gallons of gas. I got another “Gross!” out of him when he sucked a little gas into his mouth from the siphon hose. Oh, the things we do to anoint the younger generation!
Finally it was time for the magic moment. I set the choke and throttle. The wind was blowing again rattling the shutters, and bits of hay sprinkled down on us. I stood at the crank towering over Jeff. The wind howled again, flickering the lights.
I said, “Now watch a master in his domain!” He looked puzzled as I reached down and gave the crank a couple of hard turns, and said, “A Ha!” The engine clattered and signed, and rolled over back to sleep.
Jeff looked at me expectantly. I gave the crank another hard turn. Again, the engine rattled and hissed, then settled back in slumber.
I muttered and kept at it, working up quite a sweat. Jeff got bored and sat in the driver’s seat. He peered at all the controls while I worked. I was starting to wheeze more than the tractor!
Jeff frowned and looked down as he said, “Hey Greg.” I cut him off.
“Don’t touch anything. I just have to keep cranking to pump some gas into this baby,” I said between pants.
He shrugged and said, “Okay, but…”
“Just leave it alone!” I snapped.
He stayed quiet for several more of my attempts, then said, “But Greg, there’s a…”
I was too tired to care and said, “Oh do anything you want.”
He reached forward and turned something just as I cranked the engine again. It coughed once on its own, raising a little cloud of blue smoke. I got excited and cranked it again.
That old engine sputtered to life with a rattle and shake that almost knocked Jeff right off his perch. I leaped over and gunned the throttle a little to keep the thing running. We whooped and hollered as fumes and smoke filled our corner of the barn. We stood there and watched the old dinosaur belching and groaning back to life after its long hibernation.
The engine smoothed out as it slowly warmed up, so I shoved in the choke. Soon she was giving us a steady, “putt-putt.” Jeff pointed to something and said, “See?” I looked closer.
There on the left side of the steering column was a dingy label and a switch. There were two positions: RUN and STOP. I knew there was a reason I hated that kid! I looked at him and reached up to ruffle his hair and said, “Well, I guess this makes you my official assistant. Good job Jeff!” We felt pretty good, but had to shut it down before we choked on the fumes.
Okay, phase one of Operation Christmas was now complete. Next step had to be in the hay loft, so we climbed the ladder.
We stumbled over hay bales till I spotted another tarp. I peeked under it and saw a dirty piece of gracefully bent wood.
Bingo! I pulled the tarp back and Jeff’s mouth fell open.
“Awesome!” he said.
There it was, right in front of us. I’d unveiled Great Grandpa’s sleigh, just like Grandpa showed me.
“How’d you know it was here?” Jeff asked.
“I got inside information. This thing’s our hot ticket to a real Christmas!” I said with confidence.
“Oh yeah? What are we going to do, sit in it and look at the hay?” asked Jeff, still wide-eyed.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, how are we going to get it down from here?”
I was silent for a bit. After all, the kid had a good point. “Well, they got it up here somehow. We just have to reverse that process,” I offered.
I looked around and noticed a block and tackle up at the peak of the roof-line with a heavy chain threaded through it. Hooking one end of the chain to the sleigh and the other end to the tractor made lowering a snap. Mister Ford seemed happy to be running again, and chugged contentedly across the barn floor as Great Grandpa’s work of art slowly descended. We spent the next couple hours wiping down the sleigh, restoring its luster.
“This thing is cool!” Said Jeff every time we’d reveal another brightly colored piece. I had to admit, when we stepped back to admire our work, the sleigh was even more gorgeous than in my vision. We then hitched it to the Ford with a big tow chain.
It was late in the afternoon by then, so I said to Jeff, “We’d better go in now, but let’s keep this a secret and spring it on them in the morning.”
His eyes lit up. “Yeah. It’ll be awesome!” he said. I clapped him on the shoulder and we walked across the yard to the house.
Dad was at the front door to meet us. “I was thinking of coming out to get you guys. Whoo…You smell like gasoline. What were you doing out there?” he asked.
Jeff and I grinned at each other and Jeff said, “We were just messin’ around. Don’t worry, we’ll clean up before dinner.” He doesn’t lie well, but Dad didn’t press for more, so we walked in past him.

Also read   | Chapter 1  | Chapter 2 |  Chapter 3 |   Chapter 4 |   Chapter 5 |  Chapter 6 |  Chapter 7 |
–by  L. M. McCleland