Stumpy tried to make himself as comfortable as he could in the tollbooth given the circumstances. He used to think that being a toll collector was the worst possible job anyone could have. He takes the money, smiles and waves at every car full of people heading somewhere to do something. But he remains in the same spot, frozen in place. He never goes anywhere.
On this particular Christmas Eve at the dead center of the twentieth century, Stumpy found himself in a job that he now considered worse than a toll collector -- he was the toll collector on a turnpike that hadn’t even opened yet.
Recently, there’d been some vandalism to the construction equipment they were using to build the Denver-Boulder Turnpike -- something that never happened in Broomfield when he was growing up. So the construction company hired a night watchman. Enter John “Stumpy” Pepys, son of Broomfield, World War II veteran, jazz drummer, and soon-to-be the first tollbooth attendant on the Denver-Boulder Turnpike. The service building wasn’t finished, yet. But the toll booths had electricity and heat, and the east-bound booth had a telephone. So that’s where Stumpy would drop his lunchbox and newspaper five nights a week.
A few years ago, Stumpy was fighting to keep democracy safe for the world. Now he was keeping bulldozers safe from bored teenagers. It wasn’t exciting work, but it was steady. And the truth be told, he needed that since he got out of the Army in ‘46. There was the promise to be hired as a full-time attendant when the turnpike finally opened, and maybe that’s not such a bad job after all. He’d seen combat during the war, and a bit more combat since coming home. After all, there are worse things for a guy than a steady paycheck and some peace and quiet.
By 9 p.m. on that Christmas Eve in 1950, the whole town smelled like manure, which has always been a sure sign that we were about to get a snowstorm. As the wind blew from the east it brought the moisture and the smells of the pastures in Greeley up to the foothills. Both were starting to fall on Stumpy a few minutes later as he started the Sunday crossword puzzle.
“Perfect,” Stumpy said aloud to no one in particular..
As a child growing up in Broomfield, snow always meant adventure of one kind or another. And all that snow when he was growing up seemed just perfect for sledding and snowball fights and rolling up into snowmen. The snow was different back then, he thought to himself.
Stumpy put down the newspaper and listened intently as the fluffy snowflakes began to fall. This type of snow always came in near silence, creating a natural sound-proofing that muted everything. He always loved how quiet and peaceful the world became when this particular type of snow started falling.
Stepping outside the tollbooth, Stumpy caught some of the fluffy snow in his gloved hand and marveled at the patterns in the giant, overstuffed snowflakes. He blew the flakes from his hands and made a quick inventory of the equipment that was parked below the brand new underpass they had built for the turnpike.
Convinced that the bulldozers remained secure, Stumpy returned to the warmth of the tollbooth and brushed the snow from his coat. Before resuming the crossword puzzle, he looked down the road toward Boulder. The concrete on this stretch was finished, and the snow accumulated evenly on the smooth road surface. It was an unbroken white ribbon that ran from his tollbooth to the crest of a small hill about half a mile in the distance.
These days, snow like this reminded him of the army, the 45th Infantry, and serving in Europe towards the end of the war. There wasn’t any snow at Anzio, but Bavaria was a different story. It must have snowed every day in April and most of May there in 1945.
It was snowing that day in late April when Sarge lead them them outside of Munich to liberate a German prison.
“People in town say there’s a jail out there that the Germans abandoned,” Sarge said. “Just another one of Adolf’s messes that we gotta clean up. Docs say these folks are hungry, but they don’t want us to give them any of our food on account of it might make them sick. The medics got a plan to feed them slowly.”
“More proof that C-rations are against the Geneva Convention,” one of the soldiers shot back at him.
“Our job, you knuckleheads, is to secure the place. Capture any krauts leftover, and make it safe for the docs and MPs to come in and sort this mess out,” Sarge continued, clearly not thrilled by the fact that looking after a bunch of common criminals was now the responsibility of the 22nd Regiment.
The march to the prison was short, and it was snowing those big, fat, quiet snowflakes that Stumpy liked. The men’s boots crunched a sharp rhythm in the snow, and they quickly created a hard-packed path leading through the forest toward the prison.
Then the stench hit them like a wave. Stumpy saw the men in front of him break formation while they clutched their noses and stumbled for a few steps. Their march cadence quickly broke down, and the line of men nearly halted in the snow. Stumpy was a farm boy, and he knew what death smelled like. He’d smelled it too many times since landing at Anzio, but this was more intense. This was something he didn’t know existed.
As they came out of the forest, they saw a great railyard. And behind it a camp the size of Camp Barkeley where they’d trained in Texas. They were marching toward a line of rail cars. Behind those, stood a guard tower, and then the endless rows of barracks lined out into the distance behind the barbed wire walls.
“This ain’t no jail,” Sarge said from the front of the column. “This is something else,”
Stumpy hated that station. And he couldn’t wait to move on. The clean up work there was some of the most gruesome he’d seen in the war. He tried not to think about it, and he never spoke about it. It was odd that those memories came flooding back so vividly this evening.
“It must be the snow,” Stumpy said out loud. “Merry Christmas to me.”
The days after the war were a blur. Stumpy was unhappy in the army, and unhappy after he got out. He gigged on drums in jazz clubs in New York for a while. But not much came of that. And now, after more years spent out of the Army than in it, he found he’d drifted back to his hometown. But it wasn’t the same. They were putting a strip of concrete right down the middle of town, for starters. And there was talk of building a new Levittown in the fields he used to play in as a boy. They’d be tearing down the grain silos before long, and then would anything be left?
A sound outside the tollbooth jolted Stumpy from his memories.
He looked around through the glass of the tollbooth windows. The snow was heavy now, and visibility was diminishing. The smell of Greeley was stronger than ever, but there was something else. A smell that was at the same time much worse, but also somehow comforting. It was a smell that Stumpy fondly remembered from his youth. And as soon as it registered in his brain, Stumpy ran out of the tollbooth and searched up and down the snow-covered highway.
He found a line of giant footprints in the snow passing right next to the tollbooth and traveling toward Boulder. How had he missed him? Stumpy followed them at a full sprint, but quickly lost the trail about 150 feet from the tollbooth. Stumpy knew exactly who this was. And furthermore, he knew that if this guy didn’t want to be found, there was nothing he could do about it. So he turned around and trekked back to the tollbooth.
As he reached the underpass, he saw that a bundle had been left upon the concrete barrier in front of the tollbooth. It looked like an old Army blanket rolled into a ball. When he reached it, he found a black and white puppy wrapped up against the cold in a stinky, old blanket. Stumpy scooped the entire bundled up in his arms lugged it into the warmth of the toll booth.
Once inside, he uncovered a shivering, half-starved pup wrapped the blanket. The dog was groggy, as if he’d been asleep in the blanket. Stumpy sat on the floor next to the heater and pulled the pup into his lap. The dog gave him a cold lick on his chin. Stumpy smiled and wrapped the stinky old blanket around both of them to share his warmth with this pup. Stumpy could feel the sharp outline of the dog’s ribs -- he barely had any meat on his bones at all.
As Stumpy spread out the blanket, three flattened, rusty Coors Banquet Beer bottle caps fell out and clanged to the floor. They’d been completely flattened and looked like coins at first glance. Stumpy smiled and set them on the counter by the toll window.
“I guess he was our first paying customer,” Stumpy said to the dog.
After a few minutes, the pup stopped shivering and Stumpy smoothed the old blanket out in front of the heater to make a bed for the dog, who quickly laid down to bask in the warmth. Stumpy reached over for his lunch box, unscrewed the cup from the top of his thermos, and filled it with water for the pup.
“Let’s start slowly, buddy, OK?” Stumpy to the dog. “You’re safe now.”
The dog quickly drank a full cup of water and half of a second cup before he stopped to look back up at Stumpy. This was the first time Stumpy noticed his tail wagging.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Stumpy said, and he gave the dog a quick pat on the head.
Reaching into his lunchbox, Stumpy scooped some cooked rice into the thermos lid and then tore up some small pieces from the chicken that he’d brought for dinner. The dog licked his chops, but waited patiently for Stumpy to finish preparing the meal. Once Stumpy set the cup back in front of the pup, he quickly devoured the meal, not stopping until he’d licked every grain of rice from the cup and the floor of the tollbooth.
“That’s good for now,” Stumpy said. “We don’t want to overdo it and get you sick.”
The pup seemed to understand, and he returned a grateful, if still hungry, look back. Stumpy scooped the dog up and pulled him to his lap. Despite being thin as a rail, the pup was now full of energy and playfully licking at Stumpy’s face while Stumpy patted and stroked the dog’s thick, black fur.
Sitting in the tollbooth with his new friend, Stumpy noticed a light down the highway towards Boulder -- the same direction that the footprints led. About a half a mile away, Stumpy could make a set of car headlights traveling down the closed highway.
“What now?” Stumpy said to the dog, thinking that this was the busiest closed highway he’d ever seen.
Stumpy and the pup watched patiently while the headlights slowly grew larger as the vehicle crept slowly toward them from the west.
When the car reached the underpass it pulled to a stop next to the tollbooth. The driver’s window rolled down to reveal a woman about Stumpy’s age. Stumpy slid the tollbooth window open. They just looked at each other for a moment.
“Is this the lane to cross the Golden Gate Bridge?” The woman asked in a mock serious voice. “How much is the toll?”
“Lady, what are you doing here?” Stumpy hollered back. “This highway’s not open yet.”
“Well, that would explain the terrible road maintenance,” she replied.
Stumpy bit his lip to stifle a laugh. This was serious business. “This is serious business!” he said. “You’re trespassing.”
“I’m not trespassing,” the woman replied. “I’m here to pay my toll. How much is it?”
“We’re not open yet!” Stumpy responded.
“But if you’re not open yet, why are you sitting here collecting tolls on Christmas eve? Are you planning on charging Santa a toll for his sleigh this year?” She asked. Then she tilted her head sideways and looked at Stumpy. The pup tilted his head sideways, as well.
“I’m not a toll attendant,” Stumpy responded. “I’m the night watchman.” This woman was clearly putting him on. But who sent her, he thought.
“Right.” she continued. “You’re the night watchman who sits tollbooth in the middle of the night collecting change?” she asked, pointing at the three bottle caps sitting on the counter between them.
“Oh, this isn’t money,” Stumpy said, picking up the bottle caps. “These are beer bottle caps that my friend left.”
“Oh, so I get it,” the woman said. “You’re supposed to be taking tolls, but you’ve closed the highway on Christmas even in order to have a private highway booze party with your friends. I should think the Colorado Department of Transportation would be very interested in learning what goes on here,” the woman continued. She quickly stifled a smile. “I’ve read warnings about these shenanigans in the Saturday Evening Post, but I never thought I’d see them so close to home.”
“Lady…” Stumpy started, but he could no longer contain his laughter. He let out a big smile and said, “What the heck are you doing here?”
No longer indignant, the woman smiled back at him and laughed. “I don’t know, myself, quite honestly. I was driving back to Arvada from a rather boring Christmas party in Louisville, and some guy directed me this way. When I realized I was on the new highway, it seemed easier to follow this down the hill to the exit than to turn around and risk getting stuck in the snow. I was praying that the road was finished down to here. I think it might have been a college prank. The guy was wearing an oversized fur coat.”
“A big guy?” Stumpy asked.
“Yeah, probably a football player,” she replied. “You know him?”
“Yes, I do. But I haven’t seen him in a long, long while,” Stumpy said, a bit wistfully.
“Well, you should keep better track of your friends.”
“We’ll get you back to Arvada in a jiffy. What you want to do is take this clover leaf around to the overpass. That’ll get you out to 120th Avenue. You can catch Wadsworth about a half a mile down.”
“Thank you,” the woman replied. “Nice dog. What’s his name?”
“I don’t know,” Stumpy said. “I just found him tonight. He needed a warm spot and some food, and I had both.”
“Lucky dog,” the woman reached her arm out of her car and scratched the pup under his chin. The dog liked this very much. “He looks like some kind of a shepherd mix. You should just call him Shep,” she said. “It’s simple and to the point. It seems to fit him.”
“Shep,” Stumpy said. “That does kind of fit. What do you think, Shep?” Stumpy asked, at which Shep buried his face into Stumpy’s chest in approval. “Then Shep it is!” Stumpy said.
“And you,” the woman asked. “Do you have a name, yet? Or do I need to name you, as well?”
“Honestly, I’d be a little afraid of what you’d call me,” Stumpy replied. “The name is John Pepys. My friends call me Stumpy.”
“Your friends call you Stumpy, and you’d be afraid of what I’d call you?” The woman replied. “I will call you John.”
“Do you have a name?” Stumpy asked.
“Yes,” the woman replied. And then stared at him blankly.
“And it is?”
“Sarah.”
“Do you have a last name, Sarah?” Stumpy asked.
“I do. But we’ll just stick with Sarah for now, if that’s OK with you, Stumpy,” Sarah responded.
Stumpy laughed again at this whole madcap conversation. “Be careful on these roads, Sarah. Nothing around here is plowed until you get to 120th Avenue. And there’s no guarantee that will be plowed when you get there.”
“Thank you, Stumpy.” She said. I’ll take it slow. It’s not far, now.”
“Here,” Stumpy said. And he wrote down a phone number in the margin of a newspaper page, tore it out, and handed it to Sarah. “Here’s the number for the tollbooth. Give me a call so I know you made it home OK. If you don’t call in half an hour, I’ll radio for a snow plow to go looking for you.”
Sarah accepted the slip of paper and grabbed the pencil from Stumpy’s hand. Above the number she wrote “Shep & Stumpy.”
“I’ll take this,” she said. “And I’ll call you when I get home. I will let it ring once and hang up. That way you’ll know I’ve made it safely, and you can call off your search party.”
“It’s a deal,” Stumpy said. “Merry Christmas.”
“Thank you, John,” Sarah said. “And Merry Christmas to you. And you, too, Shep!”
And with that, Sarah rolled up her window, drove up the snowy cloverleaf and circled over to 120th Avenue. Stumpy followed her tail lights as far as he could and determined that she was making slow but steady progress home.
About 25 minutes later the phone rang loudly. Both Stumpy and Shep had drifted off to sleep, and the ringing startled both of them. After the first ring, Stumpy reach down and patted Shep on the head. “It’s OK, buddy. That’s just Sarah letting us know that she made it home alright.”
After the second ring Shep gave a short bark at Stumpy that seemed to say, “Well pick it up, stupid.”
After the third ring, Stumpy finally picked up the receiver.