The Wolf Came on Christmas (Johanna and Alexander) novel Chapter 8

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I stopped at the station on the way out of town and asked the boy in charge of the pumps to put half a tank of fuel in the jeep. The cashier at the gas station was an Indian man named Ajay, very friendly, and I remembered his name well because some ways he reminded me of Apu, the convenience store owner from The Simpsons. He always had this gesture of giving you a blessing when you paid, a gesture that made me smile and more than once had made me feel better on a particularly difficult day. And that day I was very nervous; I thought maybe one of Ajay’s blessings would help calm me down-but when I went into the convenience store, it turned out there were two men at the register talking to him.

Frustrated, I walked around between the displays, took a bag of chips and another can of Red Bull from one of the coolers for later. There wasn’t much to do while they filled the gas, so I flipped through a magazine distractedly, and as I scanned the shelf with my eyes, I saw one about motherhood. On the cover there was a very smiling baby and in large red letters a featured article about first-time mothers. For a moment I felt tempted to take it for whatever useful information it might contain, but the next second I told myself I was overreacting. Besides, I had read tons of those magazines when I was pregnant; I assumed could manage a small child even with my poor practical knowledge of the subject.

Annoyed with myself, I put all the magazines back in place and took my purchases to the register. As soon as they saw me approach, the two men who were talking to Ajay stepped aside and turned their backs to me, pretending to look at a cigarette display.

“Hi, Ajay. Good morning.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Johanna. Thank you for coming. Fuel for the brain?”

He gestured at the Red Bull and the chips.

“Yeah, well… you know. Just stopping to get the essentials.” I smiled, with an ironic gesture. I glanced sideways at the two men behind me, then back at Ajay as he rang everything up on the register. “Could you also give me a bag of those milk candies? And Jamie is putting half a tank in my jeep.”

“Sure, here you go.”

Ajay set the bag on the counter and avoided looking at me the whole time. That was strange- usually he was a very friendly, smiling man-but he looked nervous. He was tall and broad-shouldered, probably not over forty. A chill ran down my spine, especially when he looked somewhere behind me and cleared his throat. I feared I had walked into the convenience store right in the middle of a robbery, and my heart started racing.

I looked Ajay in the eyes and he looked back at me, suddenly forcing what seemed like a strained

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smile. The register printed the receipt and money changed hands. I put my purchases into a small paper bag, calmly.

“…Bad day, Ajay?” I asked casually.

“The Mets lost,” he replied, shrugging. “And you? How’s the writing job going?”

“It has its days too. Can I get the blessing?”

He sounded a little more animated then, and raised his hand to place his thumb on my forehead (right on that spot where, according to his culture, the mythical “third eye” is), his other hand on my

right shoulder, and recited something in his native language that sounded quite nice. I gathered

the small bag against my chest and instinctively tightened my grip on my wallet with my free hand. Once again I looked over my shoulder at the two guys behind me, and I caught one of them-blond, with long hair-also watching me out of the corner of his eye. He was very tall. I only saw one side of his face; his profile was angular and very masculine, his eyes an interesting pale blue. He looked foreign. The one with him still had his back turned; he also had long hair, but jet black, and he was very thin though shorter than his friend. It seemed to me that this last one had something violet hanging from his waist, but I didn’t stare for long-if they were a pair of thieves, I didn’t want them to remember my face so they could come rob me later.

I took a few minutes to calm myself while I followed the two men as they walked away, up the road toward town, through the rearview mirror. Yes-definitely one of them had something violet on him, the dark-haired one, but he was too far away for me to tell what it was. And why did I suddenly

care about that?

I needed sleep. It was more than obvious I was becoming paranoid.

However, going back home meant returning to face a reality that was quite unreal and for which I

didn’t feel prepared, once again. So when I entered my property, I parked the jeep near the porch.

Running away wasn’t the solution.

And meanwhile, there were two children who needed me.

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