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On Sunday afternoon, Francie called. “Uncle Stan wants to hire a teenager to help him in his carving store during the Christmas season and maybe afterward. I told him you’d be good. What do you think? It would give you some more money for Boston.”
My first thought was, She has an uncle? I’d never heard of him. To Francie, family was so ordinary that she didn’t think to mention it unless something special came up. It was another reason I envied her life. And then I realized that I’d missed the rest of what she said. “What on earth is a carving store?”
She laughed. “Uncle Stan carves totem poles, bears, eagles, and a hundred other things out of cypress wood and sells them in a funky country store a couple of miles from our house. He’s a little quirky, but he’s really nice.”
“What country store? I don’t remember seeing a country store.”
“You might have run right past it without noticing. It’s back from the road a bit. Anyway, I’m not sure how much he sells, but he likes to carve, and he makes ends meet. Kyle worked there when he was in high school. Now Uncle Stan needs to hire another teenager to help out at the cash register. I already have a job, so I suggested you, and he’s fine with it. But you’ll need to come in for an interview. Will tomorrow work?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Working at a real job seemed like a giant step up from working for Mr. Barrett. “Uh, I’m not sixteen yet. Don’t you have to be sixteen to have a real job?”
Francie laughed. “No, no, you’ve got the wrong idea. When you get done for the day, Uncle Stan opens the cash register and takes out a five- or ten-dollar bill and hands it to you. You won’t be on the books at all. And he’d be happy to teach you how to carve, too, if you want. Just because I have absolutely no talent doesn’t mean the same is true about you.”
That got my attention. In elementary school, I had loved carving small animals out of soap. “Okay, yeah. I’d like to do that. I’ll ask my mom.”
* * *
“FRANCIE’S UNCLE MIGHT hire me to help out at his carving store,” I said to Mom as we were cooking supper. “I can make lots more money working there than for Mr. Barrett.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I don’t like how much you’re away from the house already. There’s plenty of work here for you.”
“Please, Mom. If I have a job, I can pay for my lunches out of my salary. It’ll save you money.”
She pulled the meatloaf out of the oven and sliced it. I thought the deep crease between her eyes had more to do with her considering my request than her wondering whether the meatloaf was done, so I waited. After a moment, she said, “All right, I’ll let you interview. And then we’ll see.” She even agreed to drive me to the interview.
On Monday afternoon, we found the store with no trouble. It was in an old log cabin that had belonged to Stan and Laney’s grandparents. Francie was right—I had run past it several times without even noticing it. Stan was quite a bit older than his sister Laney, and his long white hair straggled down his back. But he had a great smile. He was on the phone when we arrived, so he gestured for us to look around.
The store was crammed with wooden creatures, ranging from a six-foot-tall bear with a fish dangling from its mouth to tiny birds that seemed to be on the verge of taking off and flying around the store. There were also dollhouses, complete with tiny beds and rocking chairs. Stan had created a world so fantastical that I wouldn’t have been surprised to find homes for hobbits tucked inside the jumble. I laughed from pure joy. Mom just shook her head, probably imagining having to pack up all that stuff in order to move.
Stan only asked me a few questions in our interview: “Are you reliable? Are you available to work on Saturdays before Christmas and maybe after Christmas, too? Do you want to learn to carve? Can you start this Saturday?”
The answer to every question was yes. Oh, yes. Earning more money would get me out of the house and away from the constant chores. It would also help me pay for the Boston Marathon. The miracle I had wished for had arrived.
The only issue was how to get to and from work. Mom refused to drive me unless it was raining, saying she already had too much to do. It was a long way to walk, but if I ran, I’d be all stinky and sweaty when I got there, and there wasn’t a shower in the store. Stan scrounged around and found a bicycle he was willing to fix up for me so I could get to work. But I started shaking when I thought about riding home by myself after dark. Bad things happened in the dark.
* * *
WHEN I WAS LEAVING for work on Saturday morning, Dad handed me a canister of mace that he’d bought in a sporting goods store. “Here, you might need this. Keep it with you all the time.” It was small enough to fit in my pocket. He showed me how to line up the lever with an arrow and push down the button to make it spray. Dad wouldn’t let me practice with it, because there were only five or six sprays in the canister, and he didn’t want me to waste any of them.
The act of spraying it, he said, was the easy part. “If you’re in danger, shoot first and ask questions later. Hold it as close as you can to a person’s face when you press the button, and hopefully, the guy will be downwind.” He grinned as he handed it to me. “It won’t kill anybody, but it should keep them busy long enough for you to get away.”
I wished I’d had it when Benny had tried to scare me to death. I could have reached right into his car window and sprayed it at him, and he wouldn’t have been laughing when he drove away.
At the store, Stan taught me how to use the cash register, how to deal with difficult customers, and how to carve. He even allowed me to call him Uncle Stan, and I daydreamed about how nice it would be if he were my real uncle. I was in heaven.