[Listen]
I want to make one thing perfectly clear: this show is not about lumberjacks…
My name is Christopher Gronlund, and this is where I share my stories. Sometimes the stories contain truths, but most of the time, they’re made up. Sometimes the stories are funny—other times they’re serious. But you have my word about one thing: I will never—EVER—share a story about lumberjacks.
This time, it’s the annual batch of shorter-than-usual short stories in honor of Christmas and other holidays occurring this time of year. Be sure to listen to the end for more information about the wonderful narrators for this episode: Dr. Michelle Booze (yes, for real: she is a doctor, and her name is Dr. Booze!), Art Kedzierski, and Jennifer Moss.
For those wanting a content advisory: These stories contain occasional swearing, discussions about family loss, and…well, maybe even human sacrifice. Okay, so there’s no maybe about that…but it’s at least a humorous human sacrifice, I guess? Maybe? Up to you.
All right—let’s get to work…
My Grandmother Wrestled Bears…
[Piano music plays…]
I told my grandmother I’d get my shit together before she died, but I didn’t. I’ve promised a lot of people things over the years I’ve never done. It’s what I’m known for.
Because my parents only knew each other for a night, and because my mother took off shortly after I was born, I was raised out of time by my grandmother. Every bit of advice she gave me seemed forty years too late, like it was still The Great Depression and not the early 90s. So, on my eighteenth birthday, I did what my parents did before me: I ran away from home and straight into trouble.
Sometimes it was men, and other times it was drugs. Sometimes it was hitchhiking across the country or meeting someone who let me crash on their floor until they could tolerate me no more. And always, there was alcohol.
As much as I ran, though, I always came home for Christmas. It was my grandmother’s favorite time of the year, and the only time her old-fashioned way of looking at the world seemed okay to me. I still don’t know how someone so tiny always found the biggest tree and hoisted it up on her own. And nothing beat reading a book in front of the fire on Christmas morning while my grandmother read on the couch.
This Christmas, I stand in the house where I was raised, wondering where to begin. My grandmother was a quiet woman, but I’m still amazed by how silent this place is without her. Instead of filing cabinets, she kept everything she deemed important in an old cedar chest. So I start there.
I find the title to the house, medical records, and birth certificates before losing myself to photos. It’s frightening how much I look like my mother and how much she looked like my grandmother. I dig through loose moments frozen in time until finding an old diary at the bottom.
It seems like something my mother might have kept when younger, so I’m surprised to discover it belonged to my grandmother. Even more surprising is flipping through and discovering my grandmother was once as wild as the two women who followed her. Bookmarking the racier entries are photos: my grandmother drinking beer on a beach while surrounded by men; my grandmother sitting on a motorcycle and smoking a cigar; my grandmother wrestling a bear in some north woods bar! (And even more: she appears to be winning.)
I look at the empty spot where the Christmas tree usually stands. I fight back tears until I think about my grandmother wrestling a bear; then, I can’t stop laughing. There is so much to get in order, but it can wait. I start a fire, tending to kindling and logs until its roar properly echoes up the chimney. And on my stomach before its glow, I open my grandmother’s final gift and begin reading…
* * *
The Beast in the Back
[Three Tones Sound]
BigBoxMart
[A film projector starts; old instructional music plays]
Narrator:
Congratulations, BigBoxMart manager! You have worked hard, putting the company mission first. Your efforts have paid off! Welcome to the Benevolent Order of the Circle of Thirteen.
What is the Benevolent Circle of Thirteen I hear you say? Well, I’m glad you asked…
Have you ever wondered what makes BigBoxMart so successful? It’s not just happy employees and the greatest managers in the business that make our 13,666 stores the best in the business. We owe all our successes to the Ancient One, Himself: The Beast in the Back.
The Beast in the what, I hear you ask.
The Beast in the Back.
Let me explain…
By now, the tale of Sam Walters is the stuff of legend. Buying a general store in Hometown, Arkansas and expanding to other states in just six short years, the face of BigBoxMart is the face of the American Dream. But there’s more to Sam’s story than meets the eye…
There was so much more than common sundries tucked away in that dusty store Sam purchased in 1962. Now that you are an official member of the Benevolent Order of the Circle of Thirteen, you can know the truth. While assessing that old building, Sam Walters discovered a trap door. The cellar below contained an ancient tome instructing him how to assemble the Circle and summon Pah-a’-Finzhu, the Dark Demon of Commerce better known as the Beast in the Back.
As a new initiate, you get to choose this year’s sacrifice. It’s quite the responsibility, but don’t fret! Here’s Store number 1313’s manager, Susan Grimm, with what to look for in a candidate.
Susan:
“Oh, it is such a blessed fortune that has smiled upon you today, and I am honored to help you with what to look for in this year’s candidate. Seek a man whose loneliness is apparent during what he believes is a normal job interview, a person so desperate to talk with someone that they linger when the interview is over. The kind of man who reveals they have no one at home—not even a pet.
“But you also want someone who is rebounding from a good-enough job that when they stop showing up for their shift and coworkers ask where they are, you can say, ‘This was a stepping stone back to their career for them,’ and it’s believable. Remember: while most companies look for enthusiastic go-getters, timid and weak is ideal for this position. It’s not too hard to find a man who’s been destroyed by a job in a cubicle—someone so down about life that it’s almost charitable to put them out of their misery. We’re not cruel, after all…we’re just trying to hit our numbers like everyone else out there.
“Should you still feel bad, though, remember all you’re doing for the local economy. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and we all have bills to pay and food to put on the table. Sacrificing one person a year means the 333 people employed in each BigBoxMart can make ends meet. And think of all the gifts purchased here. Some might say we’re the beast, but I like to think we’re in the business of happiness—especially this time of the year. Think of all those happy children on Christmas morning opening gifts made by thousands of workers in manufacturing. Truckers and delivery drivers earning their pay. Our troops coming home to make new holiday memories. When you look at it like that, one human sacrifice hardly seems bad, right?”
Narrator:
No, it sure doesn’t, Susan. It sure doesn’t.
So, there you have it, newest initiate: a quick history about The Beast in the Back.
Now that you know what to look for, get out there and make this holiday season the best one yet!
* * *
Lost and Found
[Piano music plays]
I grew up in a house so large that most of the rooms would have gathered dust were it not for maids. Our family’s start was humble, but along the way—at just the right time—my father’s efforts at work blossomed beyond the American Dream. He believed our fortune made amends for all the years we went without, and he punctuated that notion with a twelve-thousand square foot labyrinth of a house at the end of a gated street. Even as a teenager, it all seemed rather excessive.
The parties my parents held in that house were lavish affairs that put the me-generation of the 80s on loud display. New money acted as though the houses in our neighborhood were always there, instead of fabricated mansions rising up in a town previously known for its pastures and a quiet highway cutting through it all, leading to even more desolate places. I’m not kidding when I say the entirety of our first house could fit in the great room where, in the evenings, my father sat before a colossal stone fireplace like a king before his court.
But sooner or later, even kings die…
With my brother and I grown and long-gone from my father’s palace, it left my mother with too much house to handle. (Even with the four of us and hired help, it was always too much house to handle.) Our father died in December, which meant my brother and I—workaholics following family habits—finally used year-end paid time off from work to return home and help our mother sort things out. Most of the house, down to the furniture, was to be sold as though it were an estate handed down for generations. We were there to help Mom sort through personal items that actually mattered to us.
It was not the way any of us intended to spend Christmas. My brother and I planned to fly into Texas on the weekend, exchange gifts, and get back to work before losing any time. Instead, we spent a week roaming rooms I’d almost forgotten existed, assessing what would stay and what we’d take away.
While sorting through one of four guest rooms in a wing of the house I’d not seen in years—a room I never once saw used by visitors—my brother found a wrapped Christmas gift in a drawer in the closet dressing room. The label read To: Patrick. From: Dad. There was no mistaking what was hidden within: a cassette tape. We looked at each other and laughed, knowing how it got there and why it had stayed hidden for so long…
Patrick and I were never bad kids, but where Christmas was involved, we were at least mischievous. When my father found out the two of us dug through our parents’ closet where he hid gifts, he started hiding them in the attic. When he caught us up there, he threatened to cancel Christmas that year. Of course, he didn’t, but it scared us enough to stop searching for what would await us beneath the tree on Christmas morning.
It didn’t prevent my father from hiding things, though; in fact, knowing we were prone to snooping, he took even greater lengths to ensure if we tried searching for gifts, we wouldn’t find them. After that, it was not uncommon for him to forget where he hid some of the smaller presents. Sometimes he’d later remember, and a week into the new year one of us would finally get the overlooked gift. He was kind of like an absent-minded squirrel, but instead of forgetting where he hid nuts, he’d forget where he stashed gifts. We always joked that one day we’d find things years later. Apparently, we were prophets.
Patrick unwrapped the gift. From the paper, he pulled out the cassette, revealing a cover featuring three red spheres floating against a red background.
“Rush’s Hold Your Fire,” he said. “I ended up buying it with the Christmas money that year because Dad forgot about it…except, clearly, he didn’t. He just didn’t remember where he hid it.”
In another guest room, we found a gift from my father to me: a perfect four-inch cube of a box wrapped in paper featuring little scarf-wearing penguins. I looked at Dad’s wrapping job on the gift—all the skewed pieces of tape and mismatched folds. It looked more like something wrapped by a kid, rather than a grown man with a wife and two children…a man who took our family from nothing to millions. Inside every gift was a display of new wealth, but also the reminder that for much of his life, giving gifts was not within his means. He never got the hang of how to wrap them neatly. He could have easily paid someone to shop and wrap presents for us, but it meant so much to him to stop his hurried pace of life and put time into doing it himself.
I ran my thumb across a crinkled piece of tape he’d obviously struggled with before being pulled apart and affixed to the wrapping paper. I had no idea how long the gift sat hidden. He never got the hang of wrapping presents in all his years, so there was no difference in the quality from when he was at the height of his career to the time when his mind was so far gone that he looked at us all like shadows. I could at least tell by the handwriting on the label that it was from before he got sick.
Patrick said, “Open it,” but my eyes had already filled with tears.
“I can’t.”
I set the gift down and ran like a kid to the other side of the house, to my old bedroom. I wanted to get far away from the memory of my father, but the house had become a 12,000 square foot prison of the past from which there was no escape.
[Christmas music plays]
Before we had money, we spent Christmas Eves at my grandparents’ house. Dad always seemed shamed when the family exchanged gifts, even though no one minded that we came with next to nothing every year. We left loaded up on gifts at the end of the night, including several wrapped presents my grandparents always gave us to open on Christmas morning at home. I always wanted to spend the night at my grandparents’ house—not head back to our tiny apartment in that beat-up Ford Pinto. When we were done opening the gifts my grandparents sent home with us, my father would survey the room, clap his hands together, and say, “All right, let’s go eat some breakfast!” It was a habit he continued until he forgot everything.
[Christmas music stops]
[Knocking sounds]
My brother knocked on the door frame and said, “You okay?”
I wiped my eyes with the corner of the comforter of my old bed. “Yeah. It was that damn wrapping job that got me. Just how he never got things to line up no matter how hard he tried. How we could hear him in the other room, swearing and fighting with tape.”
My brother and I spent the rest of that day searching the house for presents. If it was a room with a closet, cabinet, or drawer, old gifts were hidden somewhere within. By the end of the day, we discovered enough small boxes to celebrate on Christmas morning, but we decided it would be best to leave the holiday on hold that year. I loaded up one of Dad’s dozen cars—the Escalade—and drove home to Chicago.
[Wind sounds]
A year later, I drove the Escalade back to Texas, to Mom’s much more sensible house. I pulled all the gifts from the Cadillac, and my mother, my brother, and I unwrapped the past on Christmas morning. My brother’s earlier tastes in music and play were soon on the ground before him—progressive rock gave way to stranger bands and so much ska; toy trucks and rudimentary robots stepped aside for Dungeons and Dragons modules and computer games.
When I was done, my pile of gifts had become a timeline of what I once deemed important as well: seemingly every Barbie doll and accessory, intricate coloring books with marker sets containing more colors than I knew existed, a butterfly Duncan yo-yo that was all the rage one year, and a charm bracelet with more charms than my wrist could hold.
For my mother, there was jewelry. Her haul looked like a tiny pirate treasure spilled from a small chest and onto the coffee table. Later, my brother and I speculated how much lost money my father had misplaced for years in those gifts to her.
The final gift was the one I couldn’t bring myself to open the year before. I looked down at the penguins and twisted tape and thought about my father.
“I don’t want to open this one. Maybe one day I’ll change my mind, but as long as this one stays wrapped, it’s full of potential. In a way, like he’s still around.”
None of us said a word for a full minute.
[Uplifting music plays]
Patrick broke the silence when he surveyed the room, clapped his hands together, and said, “All right, let’s go eat some breakfast.”
And that’s exactly what we did, while still talking about memories of times long past, brought on by the gifts my father lost along the way.
* * *
A big thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks. And an even bigger thank you to this year’s Christmas episode narrators: Dr. Michelle Booze, Art Kedzierski, and Jennifer Moss.
A little bit about them all…
Dr. Michelle Booze (and yes, that’s her real name, and she has the PhD to prove it) is an avid Audio Drama fan. You can catch her Twitter reviews by following her @DrMLBooze. You can also check out her Audio Fiction merchandise at https://www.teepublic.com/user/houseonalakecreations. And that’s like, “Hey, I have a house that’s on a lake and I create things, so…HouseOnALakeCreations.” And if you’re sitting there going, “I kind of recognize her voice,” you may have heard her on several audio fiction podcasts you love, such as Aethuran, Slumberland, and Magic King Dom.
Art Kedzierski is a cool guy, and I’m not just saying that because I guess I’ve known him for over thirty years. But Art has a BFA in Theatre Performance & Management from UT-Arlington, he interned at Theatre Three, and he served as Managing Director of Pegasus Theatre in Dallas. He’s acted in a lot of things. Here’s just a bit of a list:
Rover Dramawerks’ Chemical Imbalance as Xavier Utterson; ITC’s How to Succeed in Business as Toynbee (and my wife and I saw him in that one, and it was an absolute friggin’ blast); Uptown Players’ Take Me Out as Mason Marzac and The Producers as Mr. Marks (and ten other roles); and he was in the Lyric Stage production of 1776 as Andrew McNair; Pegasus Theatre’s XSR:Die! as Douglas Malory and Full Moon Murders! as John Creighton. He was also in Garland Summer Musical’s The Producers as Leo Bloom. Besides acting and directing, he is also the developer and operator of DFWAuditions.com.
Jennifer Moss is a published author, web developer, and photographer. She was born and raised in Evanston, Illinois and is a graduate of Northwestern University. (And just so you know: I was born a little bit south of Evanston, in Edgewater Hospital on the north side of Chicago. But I get along with Jennifer for a lot of other reasons than just that.) Jennifer’s works include a series of mysteries with a metaphysical twist. Those books: Town Red, Way to Go, Taking the Rap, and Friend of the Family. Her non-fiction titles include The Baby Names Workbook and Yosemite Home Companion. More information can be found on her website, JenniferMoss.com.
Theme music, as always, by Ergo Phizmiz. Story music this time is by Infinity Ripple, Cody High, Johannes Bornloff, and Heath Cantu, all licensed through Epidemic Sound. And the background soundtrack for “The Beast if the Back?” That’s a Public Domain piece from an old Coronet instructional film.
Sound effects, as always, are made in-house or found at freesound.org. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the show, the voice talent, and music.
In one month, it’s back to the very strange father/son story I’ve mentioned in the past and then…well…we’ll see. I have a long mystery I can go with and other stories in the works, but I also need to get back to a novel. So I guess if you want more right away, share this with some friends — because word-of-mouth matters more than reviews and other things. And there definitely will be a lot more stories in 2020, but I really do need to get back to that novel.
Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
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