Comes To Norwalk Chrıstmas

The whole town was talking about the big tipper in a business suit

- Carrie Maxwell

WITH JUST A FEW hours left before the evening crowd would arrive that cold December evening in 1979, I swept some peanuts off the bar and tossed them in the trash. It was my first day at the Country Tavern and I wanted to do everything right. I’d been on my feet since getting my son up for school that morning, but I was too grateful for my new job to complain. As I wiped down the countertop, I kept thinking about the sermon I’d heard in church on Sunday. “God is always with us,” the reverend said. “Even when things in life don’t go as planned.”

My life certainly hadn’t gone as planned. After nine years my marriage had ended. I had to leave my home in Kansas and move back to Ohio, where I was raised. The job I’d lined up for when I got here fell through. Christmas was around the corner and I didn’t have the money for my January rent, much less presents for my eight-year-old son, Eric. “It’s okay if we don’t have a tree or anything,” he’d assured me. “We have each other.”

I tried to draw strength from Eric’s generosity. But keeping my head above water as a single mom was hard, even with the paycheck I’d finally have to come. Life can hold good surprises as well as bad, I told myself. Surprises like my brother’s girlfriend leaving her job and recommending me for the position. But how often do things work out that well for me?

I had just finished restocking the supplies when a man walked in. Not a local, I decided. Unlike the blue-collar regulars, he wore a suit.