And then it got worse. The side of his truck was painted with the nameSt. Nicholas farmsin the handwriting you would expect Santa Claus to have. The pickup bed was filled with wrapped pine trees.
Fuck fuck fuck. There was no reasonable explanation for my situation. Maybe if a satanic cult pulled over, I’d be able to talk my way out of it, but this was a Christmas tree farmer.
A young Black man, tall with broad shoulders and a trim beard,stepped out of the pickup dressed for the snow.
He looked from me, to the Happily Ever After hearse, to the coffin. There was no reaction on his face, nothing. Not even surprise. In a voice like butter, he said, “Looks like you got yourself in a bit of a fix.” There was a hint of the South in his voice.
I let out a nervous laugh. “You could say that.”
He took a step closer and I caught the distinctive smell of leather work gloves, pine needles, and freshly cut wood—the kind of smell a designer would die to put in a bottle and sell as the latest scent for men.
“Do you want me to keep driving and pretend like I didn’t see this?”
I nodded. “Kind of.”
He laughed. “You know I can’t leave a damsel in distress on the side of the road.”
Damsel in distress. I could have laughed if I wasn’t so overcome by this pine-scented hero.
“How about I help you load that, er…coffin in your…uh…vehicle?”
Deadpan, I responded, “Some help would be lovely.”
“No one’s in there”—he gestured to the coffin—“right?”
“Oh, no.” I laughed gaily, as if the idea was preposterous. “I’m getting out of the mortician business, but no sense wasting a good moving box.” I laughed again to let him know this was supposed to be funny.
“Seems like an expensive moving box.”
“Oh, it is. Caskets are not cheap.”
“What do they normally run?” he asked like we were talking about the weather. A twentysomething woman dressed for California on the road with an escaped coffin at 3 a.m. in Vermont—either he had a poker face, or no one had ever acted right around him before and he was cool with anything. Maybe he grew up in a traveling circus.
“They run from two thousand to eight thousand, for normal ones,” I said, reciting the cost of moving to Vermont. It’s not like I knew how much a casket cost. I wasn’t Dracula.
“So, the Happily Ever After Funeral Home?” He recited the name on the hearse like a question. “Is that where you worked?”
“It’s important to put a positive spin on death.” I smiled, trying to project normal and well-adjusted, not creepy. “What do you do?” I asked, desperate to change the subject to anything else.
“What it looks like.” The man jerked a thumb at the truck. “I’m a Christmas tree farmer.”
I clasped my hands together. Vermont was delivering on every level, except for the coffin-in-the-road situation.
“I hope this doesn’t bother you…too much.” I gestured to the coffin. “I almost hit a deer and…well, you can see what happened.”
“Practically self-explanatory.”
I could have swooned. A man who didn’t ask questions was my dream.
“Well, let’s get it in the car again. Can’t leave it out on the road like this. Someone else will end up in the river.”
He tested the weight of the coffin, which was substantial. This would be a four-pallbearer situation if I wasn’t a vampire.
“Do you think you can help me lift it?” he asked, eyeing my somewhat petite frame and dainty heeled boots. I still think of myself as tall because back in the day I was, but nowadays everyone is like, “Tiffany is such a cute little thing.”
“Of course.” I’m not one of those vampires with superstrength, but I’m still a vampire and it comes with some perks. The farmer gripped one end of the casket; I gripped the other.
“Lift with your legs,” he advised.
