It was Christmas Eve according to Abraham's calendar watch. Almost as if God was acknowledging the date, large fluffy snowflakes started falling from the sky mid-afternoon and continued throughout the day. Not only the ground but also the nearby trees and the outside picnic tables were soon covered with a pure white coating.
"An actual White Christmas," Rick commented to Carl. They had taken a break from chopping firewood to gaze up at the beautiful lace-like flakes that fell gently from the sky. "We didn't get many of those in Georgia," he added.
"I thought you told me about your cousin being stuck in his car during a snowstorm and having to eat birthday cake?" Carl said.
"Oh yeah, that was in early January one year. But that snowfall wasn't like this snow…. It wasn't snowflakes, it was more like little snow pellets. Freezing rain mixed with snow. The roads iced over, and Georgia didn't have sand trucks or salt trucks like they have Up North. I-85 was like an ice skating rink – cars skidded and slid all over the place and crashed into one another."
"Cool!" Carl remarked, his eyes wide with excitement. "Wish I could've seen that!"
"It might be funny to watch on America's Funniest Home Videos after the fact," his father told him, "but imagine being stuck in your car for 24 hours. No bathroom, no food, and your cell phone runs out of juice after a few hours."
Carl was about to say that they'd all been in many worse situations since The Turn but without the amusement factor of cars sliding on ice, but he sensed that such a comment might upset his dad. Instead he commented, "Yeah, I guess that would suck."
"'Suck'? You've been hanging around Merle and Abraham too much," Rick playfully punched Carl in the shoulder. "I only ask that you don't use that sort of language around your sister. It's bad enough that she can't pronounce 'duck' without cursing… No matter how much the world has changed, I don't want her talking like a sailor before she's three years old."
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"Might as well get the buckets ready," Carol said to the other women in the kitchen. "I mean it's nice that Glenn and Noah have gone to get us some fresh fish for dinner tonight and Christmas dinner tomorrow, but it will still be up to us to gut and scale and clean their catch…"
"Don't forget," Sasha added, "We've still got some geese in cold storage." She didn't sense Carol's melancholy and instead was looking forward to a Christmas feast, such as it was.
"We can have 'surf and turf'!" Tara exclaimed. She paused and then asked, "Geese are on the ground sometimes, right? Y'know, for the 'turf' thing?"
"Call it whatever you want," Rosita said while browsing through the various supplies in the cupboards. "I finally found a use for this canned green chili enchilada sauce…mix it with some canned corn, add some spices and we can make enchiladas with goose instead of chicken and without the tortillas." She smiled as she removed the cans from the cupboard. "It will taste like Christmas at my abuela's house when I was a child…".
Carol set out a few buckets on the floor with a loud "bang" and muttered "Call me when the men get back" as she left the room.
"She needs to get laid," Rosita remarked after the door slammed behind Carol.
Allison followed Carol outside. Carol took a few steps outside of the building, stopped and stared into the sky as snowflakes quickly turned her salt-and-pepper hair white.
"What's wrong?" Allison asked her. She was confused; sure, Carol had done a lot of the food preparation work, in addition to taking turns at watch duty, but so had all of the other members of their group. OK, maybe the food prep had been left mostly to the women, but as far as Allison knew every one of them had contributed to skinning and gutting and carving, etc. Even if the food prep and cooking was a little tilted toward the females, they had all shared those chores equally.
Carol turned around, startled by Allison's voice. "Nothing," she shook her head.
"Something is obviously bothering you," Allison replied, "and in a small group like this we need to know what's wrong and what can be done to make it better. I mean, if you're tired of cleaning fish, just tell us and there are others who will do it. You do so much and never complain…if you need a break, please speak up."
Carol remained still for a few moments and let the cool refreshing snowflakes fall onto her face. She finally turned around and faced Allison.
"It's not the work, I'm used to that," she said. "I guess it's just Christmas…it reminds me of Ed… and how he…" Her voice trailed off.
"But we had Christmas last year – in that storage place…"
"That was different, I guess," Carol said. "Somehow all of us sort of faking the holiday with whatever we found in someone's garage didn't feel 'official'. But when we start talking about having a Christmas dinner with everyone, well, I…" She closed her eyes to try and stop the tears. "It reminds me of Ed and how he hated Christmas. Sophia couldn't watch A Charlie Brown Christmas on the living room TV set without making him angry… he wouldn't allow me to put any decorations up inside the house other than on the tree, because he didn't want tape marks or tacks or anything to 'ruin' his precious walls…" She almost spat out the last part of her sentence.
Allison saw the pain in Carol's eyes and couldn't think of anything comforting to say. Instead she reached out and pulled Carol into an embrace and hugged her for several moments. When she released her she said, "I'm so sorry that this holiday resurrects bad memories. You probably don't want to hear anecdotes but what I can tell you is that you are not the only one. When I was working at Durham Regional I saw many patients who, well, let's say they didn't live in one of those happy households we saw on all those TV special episodes once the Christmas season began."
Carol rested her head on Allison's shoulder for a moment and then stood back and sniffled. "Ed sold cars for a living and relied on commissions, but he was good at it. Still money was always tight in December because who the hell buys cars at Christmas?" She sighed and looked into the distance. "Sophia and I didn't care how many presents were under the tree, or whether we had turkey or macaroni and cheese for Christmas dinner, just as long as we didn't have to walk on eggshells every single day of December so as not to set him off..."
It occurred to Allison that this was the first time she'd heard Carol mention Sophia in a long time. Carol's story also reminded her that neither Daryl nor his brother had any fond memories of Christmases past. She was having second thoughts about their group having the Christmas dinner that was being planned. There was something about this particular holiday that triggered some very serious emotions, more so than Halloween or even Thanksgiving. Carol seemed to be reading her mind because she suddenly collected herself.
"There's no reason for the others not to enjoy Christmas. Especially Carl and Judith. They're children, and hopefully someday, years from now, they'll tell their own kids about the time they had fish for Christmas dinner at an abandoned mountain resort and how it was one of best holidays they ever had."
Allison smiled and nodded. "You make a good point."
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Tara, ever the resourceful explorer, ran into the cafeteria where most of the other women were working, her face absolutely illuminated with a broad smile.
"Look at what I found!" She held what looked like a sheet of red construction paper in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.
"Um, very impressive?" Sasha replied in confusion.
"You don't get it – I found a bunch of art supplies in this building down the west path past the laundry room…."
"Yeah, we all saw it back when we first staked out this place," Sasha said. "Other than all the pairs of scissors, there wasn't really anything of use there."
"Well, maybe not for fighting Walkers, but maybe for our Christmas dinner? Decorations?" Tara's voice faded out as she glanced into the faces of the others staring at her. Suddenly Beth spoke up.
"We could make decorations with the construction paper!" She piped up. "Did you find any glue? If we had glue we could cut up strips of paper and then make paper chains to string around the dining room."
"There were big bottles of something with brushes attached to the lids. Library paste, I think," Tara said.
"We can't cook anything until the men return," Rosita shrugged, "and we've got all the pots and dishes washed… What they hey, it might be a nice surprise to have some decorations when everyone gathers for dinner."
Half an hour later they were all seated at a long table in the cafeteria meticulously cutting paper strips and then making circles out the strips, interlocking one piece with another. They tried to use the red and green paper exclusively at first, but when that ran out they used the other color available in the paper packages – blue, brown, yellow, whatever. "Mmm," Beth commented as she spread paste on the tip of a paper strip. "This smell reminds me of kindergarten…"
"OK," Allison asked the group, "in all honesty, how many of you think that Eugene was the kid in kindergarten who ate paste?"
The others collapsed in laughter. A few minutes later, gasping for breath, Rosita asked "So other than a dinner party, what else are we doing for Christmas? I know we can't y'know, buy presents, but….are we exchanging gifts?" Her question was greeted with silence so she rushed to explain, "It's just that I made a necklace for Abraham, but if everyone is not exchanging gifts, I can give it to him later, in private…"
Everyone was silent for a few minutes as they mulled over her question. Finally Sasha spoke. "My vote is that unless we have enough presents to give to everyone, then we exchange them privately."
"Sort of like Valentine's Day when I was in elementary school," Beth agreed. "The rule was that if you weren't going to give cards to everyone in the class, then you shouldn't give out any at all."
"That's probably the best way to do presents, at least this year," Carol remarked.
"Well, if we're all in agreement," Tara announced, "why don't we start stringing up these beautiful chains?"
"Good idea," Allison said. "Thank goodness there were those rolls of industrial-strength Scotch tape in the Arts and Crafts room!"
