Happiness Is A Warm Pun
Fat, fluffy snowflakes sashayed softly and silently past the frost-rimmed windows of The Pie Hole. It was just before noon on Christmas Eve and though the diner was cozy inside, and cheerfully, yet tastefully, decorated, it was currently void of customers; other than the barely discernible loop of a holiday tunes CD, the only sound evident was the distinctive clacking of knitting needles...
There were few things that could rattle Emerson Cod while he knitted and someone staring intently at him from across a diner booth as he worked was one of them...
Ned, the Pie Maker, chin resting lightly atop his crossed arms on the tabletop, gazed upwards, fascinated, as Emerson Cod's metal knitting needles rhythmically flew.
"Don't you have something better to do than to scrutinize me as I stockinette this row?" Emerson eventually growled.
"Actually, no. Nothing at all," sighed Ned. "This morning's batch of pies are only half-done baking and the place is spotless. Olive finished cleaning up everything before she and Chuck left for the mall together ... they mentioned something about 'girl-bonding' over some last-minute Christmas shopping."
"Huh," grunted Emerson, "what on earth could a dead girl possibly need to buy?"
"Clothes, no doubt," Ned mused. "She has been borrowing some of Olive's, but she's been concerned that some of the hemlines have a tendency to run a little too short on her."
"Maybe she can find herself a nice shroud for the holiday season," Emerson offered, his face contorting into the visage of a sickeningly sweet smile.
"That would be lovely," Ned agreed. He straightened and leaned his head back to rest against the diner seat, his attention never deviating from Emerson's steady knitting. "Why don't you like Chuck?"
Emerson blinked at the abruptness of the question, nearly missing a stitch but catching himself in time. He took the opportunity to check on his rapidly diminishing yarn length. "Weeeell, let's see," he drawled, rummaging around in his knitting bag for a fresh skein. "How about we start with the fact that she's dead and just leave it at that? I take it you really don't want to hear the whole list, right?"
Ned sighed again and rubbed at a developing kink in the nape of his neck. "Not particularly, no."
"Good," Emerson retorted, once more working his way back up to his normal knitting speed. "Is there anything else in particular you would care to interrogate me concerning?"
Ned smiled. "Now that you mention it, I can't help but wonder..."
"About?"
"Wherever did you learn to knit like that?" Ned whispered, shaking his head in true admiration.
The inquiry froze Emerson Cod's hands in mid-clack, as his brain became overwhelmed in an urgent flood of lapping memories. Which were these: Emerson Cod's father, one Norton Cod, had been a cement worker for his entire adult life. At 31 years, 5 months, 2 weeks, 3 days, 14 hours and 17 minutes of age, he had gotten a little tipsy at his company's annual Christmas party and had accidentally fallen into a vat of freshly brewed concrete and drowned. Whenever folks forever afterwards stated that Emerson's father had gotten plastered and died, they were not far wrong...
Emerson Cod's mother had been, by all accounts, a beautiful woman. Dolores (née Emerson) Cod was a former Miss Chicago and third runner-up for the crown of Miss Illinois. After marrying her childhood sweetheart, Norton, and bearing their only child, Emerson, the whispered comments and otherwise openly snide complaints made by others concerning her lost perfect figure caused her fragile ego to collapse under the sheer weight of years' worth of vicious disdain. It was during Emerson's birthday party celebrating his turning 5 years old that they discovered the newly widowed Dolores -- at age 29 years, 4 months, 1 week, 6 days, 8 hours and 55 minutes -- lying dead from exsanguination on her bathroom's floor, her stomach having dislodged and completely inverted itself due to extreme bulimia compounded with a heretofore undiagnosed case of anorexia nervosa...
After his parents' untimely deaths, Emerson's paternal grandmother had been called upon to raise him. Lulubelle Cod -- who was never to be addressed as "Grandma" by any living soul -- had soon made him fearful of the dark and forever security conscious. There had been an unfortunate incident involving one of her increasingly forgetful, days-long, "time-out" sessions and a washing machine that he forcibly blocked from wending its way further into active thought...
At any rate, it was Lulubelle Cod who had been the one who had taught him how to knit...
'A formidable woman,' Emerson recalled a schoolteacher telling him in one final spasm of involuntarily retrospection, 'She is raising you during your formidable years.'
He clenched his teeth and willed the entire unpleasant memory train to a screeching halt.
Realizing that his usually steady hands were now trembling and feeling the need to fume at a handy scapegoat as to why they were, Emerson directed his umbrage at the closest target: Ned.
"You make me almost lose another stitch and there'll be some serious hell to pay, you can count on that," he snapped, carefully reinspecting his work for any errors.
Ned, mildly startled, leaned forward in sincere concern. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry - "
"Yeah, yeah ... I know, man," Emerson replied and cut off Ned with a quick apologetic wave, his eyes lowered somberly. "Don't mind me, not your fault. Uhh, just the time of year, I guess. Bad time for me. It's not important - "
The sound of muffled, excited giggling and the clang of the diner's door entry bell signaled the timely arrival of Chuck and Olive, both teetering their way through the icy snow, arms over-stacked with shopping bags full of wrapped gifts. The Pie Maker took the opportunity to alleviate Emerson Cod's apparent discomfort with his presence by rushing to help the ladies with their packages. Shaking off clouds from his gloomy past, Emerson Cod happily took the opportunity to renew his efforts to complete his knitting project in the brief time he had left before he would present his present in the present...
...which dawned bright and sunny in a way very nearly as nauseating as Olive Snook's Christmas morning "surprise" for The Pie Hole gang -- her experimental Pistachio-Encrusted Huckleberry Maple Apricot Mint Rhubarb Gingerbread Waffles...
Later that afternoon, after a jointly passed around bottle of bismuth subsalicylate had made life at the diner much more bearable, Emerson Cod reflected that Ned had seemed sincerely pleased with his finally finished gift -- a matching set of twelve, denim-blue-dyed-baby-alpaca-wool, knitted pie bird cozies. His reciprocal gift from Ned had caused him to all but choke due to an unforeseen lump in his throat. 'Say ... these are double-points, made entirely of Argentine rosewood. Are these really for me?!' Emerson Cod had gasped, running his fingers slowly down the unwrapped set of knitting needles and marvelling at their quality as an unexpected tear formed in the corner of one eye. The Pie Maker had assured him that they certainly were his and that, furthermore, they were to be used with his very best wishes for the holiday season...
Emerson Cod concluded that, whatever his past had been and his future held, his present was not bad. Not bad at all...
The End