The old cowbell was struck so hard that it nearly came off its hanger, such was the haste of the man who pushed his way in through the door. Gus Sanderson peered over the edge of his morning paper with careful interest, wondering who could possibly be in such a rush, thinking perhaps to find the revolver he kept in a shoebox under the counter.

            “Gus, oh Gus, you’ve got to help me. I’ve done it now. I’ve really put my hand in the hog’s mouth this time,” Chalmers McGreaham cried as he wrung his hands fitfully. “Oh Gus, do you hear me?”

Calmly taking a sip from a steaming cup of coffee, Gus asked, “Why Chalmers, what’s the matter, eh? What’s all the excitement about?”

“Oh Gus, now I’ve done it. I need you to tell me how to put it to rights,” Chalmers replied, rushing up to the counter, moping rills of sweat from his brow, though it was cold enough outside to freeze a ghost’s breath.

Thinking over the countless times he had seen people come in after some minor collision in much the same state, Gus lifted the paper and said, “Well cool your jets and tell me what’s got you all riled up.”

“It’s that Mister Munson,” Chalmers said in a hush, looking to see if anyone was listening, as if he expected the named man to have crept into the store behind him. “Oh, I just about knocked him off the road on my way in this morning.”

Gus froze. The paper fell from his hands, spilling the cup of coffee. “Oh jeese,” he said, grabbing for a towel to contain the spill. “Are you sure it was him? It could have been someone else,” Gus said hopefully as he mopped up the coffee. “What, with it being this time of the morning, and as dark as it is. It could have been anyone.”

“No, I’m sure. It was him all right,” Chalmers said miserably. “He was wearing that blue coat of his and carrying a paper sack.”

Gus shut his eyes tight. “Oh, that’s him all right. How fast was ya’ goin’, eh?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Chalmers moaned, shifting the bulk of his heavy frame from one foot to the other and then back again. “Maybe fifty, fifty-five, I dropped some papers and just leaned down to pick them up and then there he was.”

“Goin’ fifty, eh?” Gus pushed out a breath of air and said resignedly, “Did he wave that hat of his at you then?”

Chalmers looked to his feet, saying, “Ah, no.”

“Honk that there horn of yours at him?”

“No.”

“Well then, see. Maybe you got yourself all worked up over nothin’. You pour yourself a cup of coffee and wait here with me. He usually gets here before the end of the mornin’, along by seven thirty or so at the latest. You and me will talk to him, see if you raised his dander up. How far back you say he was?”

“A ways back, maybe two, three miles. It was back there by the old Norway Truck Road.”

“Oh, well, he might not have even seen it was you then, eh?”

“But he’d seen my truck and that’d be enough for someone like him. I tell you what, if all I heard about him is right he wouldn’t even have to know it was me what did it. It’d all come out the same.”

The cowbell rang. Two men entered the store, stomping the snow from their boots. One went to the coffee pot and poured a cup. The other paid for gas. Neither Gus nor Chalmers said a word as the men finished their business and departed.

“But what do I do if he is mad?” Chalmers insisted in a hushed voice when they were alone once again. “Tell me then, how do I make it up to him?”

Gus thought for a moment. Nothing came of that so he peered intently at the end of a ballpoint pen as the clock ticked. Struck by an idea, Gus smacked the counter and said, “He likes a donut every now and then. I’d betcha one of them there bear claws will get you in his good graces.”

“Oh, I’d buy him a whole box of donuts not to hold it against me.”

“No, no can’t do that. He’d know somethin’s up for sure.”

“But what for it then? You gonna help me or not?”

Gus explained with a gleam in his eye that bespoke a wily and brilliant plan, “Oh now, when he comes up to the counter, we’ll tell him that there’s a two for one deal. We’ll call it a two-fer Tuesday. You can say you give the other one to him because you can’t eat but the one donut because of your diet the wife has you on but that you can’t see wasting a good deal, go to waste and good money and all that there kind of thing, eh?”

“But it ain’t Tuesday Gus,” Chalmers said. “He’ll know it was me for sure then, and he’ll put the fix on me as sure as the cock crows at the mornin’ sun.”

“Now, now, hold on. I tell you sometimes he gets them there funny fits of his. Don’t know where or who he is. You and me will just make like it’s Tuesday and give him the free donut and he’ll be all happy like a clam. I guarantee it.”

“I don’t know,” said Chalmers doubtfully.

“Come on now, he’s not as bad an old coot as everyone makes him out to be, can be right sure kind hearted in the right frame of mood an’ all.”

“Oh, I just don’t know.”

“Well then, no skin off my nose. Do you want my help or not?” With that, Gus picked up his newspaper and acted like he was going to start reading again, though it dripped coffee onto his shirt.

“Yes, yes I’m sorry, please.”

Satisfied, Gus said, “Okay then. You just get yourself a cup of coffee and wait.”

Time passed. Customers came and went, filling their tanks with gas and their cups with coffee. By the looks of their boots and shoes, the snow had gotten worse. Then the cowbell rang, a solitary clank breaking the silence. Chalmers and Gus looked up.

In the doorway, barely able to keep the door open as he shuffled inside, was a man, elderly in the extreme, wearing an old, blue polyester jacket. He shook the snow from his shoulders and then removed a matching cap, grubby and worn, and shook it too.

Satisfied, the old man placed the cap back on his head and started unbuttoning his jacket. Fixed protectively under one arm was a paper sack, certainly holding something of some small weight, but what it was inside Chalmers could not guess.

His jacket open, the old man looked up. Gus and Chalmers both turned away, pretending to be about other business. It didn’t matter, because the old man saw nothing, familiar or otherwise, as if he had no idea where he was or why he had come. A moment later he smiled, remembering, and worked his way toward the coffee pot.

Gus cleared his throat. He began to speak but could not. He cleared his throat again and said, “Hello there Mister Munson, sir. Good to see you this morning.”

The old man’s head snapped fiercely to attention. “What? Huh?” Wild, hollow, eyes searched in vain and then admitted defeat. Munson grumbled something that Gus and Chalmers couldn’t understand and didn’t dare ask after, then locked his hands upon the handle of the pot and a foam cup. Without a word, the old man went straight to filling the cup with coffee. The two men at the counter waited anxiously as Mister Munson finished, looking to one another for support and encouragement.

“Good mornin’ Mister Munson, how are you today?” Gus called out cheerfully as the old man approached the counter with coffee in hand.

Munson looked up and smiled, a kind hearted, empty smile. Something had changed. In his face was the dazzling joy of youth, like the coming of spring in field and forest. He carried his legs and meager frame lightly to the register and placed the cup and the sack down onto the counter in front of him.

Carefully, meticulously, Mister Munson opened the paper shopping bag and doled out five aluminum cans, placing each one just so on the counter. “For the coffee,” he explained in a blissful, high-pitched, wizened voice.

There they were again, Gus thought with a queer feeling taking possession of him, the cans. Where the old bugger found such cans Gus couldn’t guess. Not a single market for miles and miles carried those brands. Nevertheless, each day, for the coffee, Mister Munson would appear with the same five cans.

Each day, Gus would dutifully collect the cans, crush each and every one of them himself, just to make sure they couldn’t find their way back to their master under less than mysterious circumstances. But then even so, each day, mystically, the old man would have them back all the same.

“For the coffee,” Mister Munson said again.

Lost in his thoughts for a moment, Gus hurriedly took the cans in payment and nodded in reply. The old man started buttoning his jacket.

Chalmers went into action, readying himself for the performance. “So, you been watchin’ the hockey, Gus?” Chalmers began feebly, his voice trembling.

 Mister Munson showed no sign of interest. Gus choked, but then recovered himself and was able to reply. “Yes, the Wings and Colorado, looks like another rough one, eh? It’s a big game comin’ up.”

The cowbell clanged noisily, frustrating Gus and Chalmers as a mob of young men, teenagers, entered. They came in a rush of noise and activity, pulling the cold inside with them. They had been out there, three carloads of them, and Chalmers had hoped to finish his business before they came in. As it was, he was too befuddled to go on.

Mister Munson looked over his shoulder at the young men, watching them with significant vexation. One of the boys was much bigger than all the others and he pushed his way past them to grab a soda from the cooler first, cuffing a particular one of the smaller young men roughly upside the head, calling him a slew of unkindly names.

At this, the old man set his jaw and squinted his eyes as if to fix the angry young man in his memory. A thin moan escaped his lips. The sound became menacing, spectral, as it died in the cold air.

After picking up a candy bar to go with his morning soda, the big kid made his way to the counter. He pushed past Chalmers and gave Mister Munson a mocking smile as he stepped to the register. Gus rang up the total without a word.

The transaction completed, the big kid turned to see if his friends were ready. They weren’t. He looked down at Mister Munson, snorted with disgust, and started back toward the others.

The old man collected himself as if to leave. Gus shot Chalmers a look. He responded nervously, “Hey Gus, you still got that there deal on today, then?”

“You betcha!” Gus replied. “Two-fer Tuesdays on the donuts. I got two of them there bear claws left for you just the way ya’ like them.”

“No kidding, two for one on donuts?” the big kid blurted out, almost running to the pastry counter to have a look. By then the other young men had finished making their selections and they eagerly followed.

Gus and Chalmers could only watch as the big kid wrapped the pair of bear claws, the other young men finishing off the best of what was left. One by one Gus began to ring them up, certain now that the plan had failed.

Mister Munson hadn’t left yet, however. At the mention of the special offer, he had stopped laboring at the buttons of his coat and become attentive. His face had dropped as he watched the last two bear claws go.

“Two for one, but I can’t but have the one,” Chalmers continued with the rouse, encouraged by the particular interest the old man had paid to the announcement. “You know my wife will kill me for even the one with my diet and all. Oh, but I hate to let a good deal like that go to waste.”

“Well, I don’t mind if you split it with someone,” Gus replied with a wink and a nod. “It’s all the same to me don’t ya’ know.”

“Hey, okay then, good idea.” Seizing upon the opportunity, Chalmers turned to the old man and asked, “Mister Munson, sir, would you like a donut? You can just have it. I figure I pay for mine one way or the other.”

“Two-fer Tuesday special,” Gus suggested. “No bear claws left though, eh.”

“It isn’t Tuesday,” Munson said in curt reply, watching the young men as they made their way out the door.

The big kid stepped outside. Sparks lit in the depths of Mister Munson’s eyes and the faint stench of sulfur clung to the air. A hint of a smile touched the old man’s lips as the big kid slipped, ankles over elbows, landing hard on the ice covered cement. The boy groaned in agony as the others rushed to help him to his feet. The bear claws were crushed beneath him. The old man smiled again, wickedly, and he made a terrible laugh.

“Oh my, thank you,” Mister Munson said suddenly, happily. “That’s very kind of you. I’d like a cream filled. No use letting a good deal go to waste.”

___________________________________________

Mike Phillips grew up on a small farm in west Michigan. In addition to hard work and responsibility, his father gave him a very special gift. Each year during summer vacation, the television, affectionately referred to as “The Idiot Box”, was turned off. This meant that when not tending sheep, mending fences, gardening, building furniture, or chopping wood, Mike’s summers were spent reading. In memory of all the wonderful stories and things he didn’t understand at the time, Mike hopes that through his writing he can, in some small way, share this gift with others.