Mistletoe, Turnips, and the Off-Ramp

At six o’clock on Christmas Eve, near Exit 18 and several moral failures past sensible travel planning, the rear left tire of my rental car gives up.

It does not merely go flat. It detonates with theatrical conviction, a wet bang followed by a juddering series of impacts that make the steering wheel argue with me. I ease the car onto the shoulder beneath a sign announcing BRINDLE NOTCH: 3 MILES, which feels less like municipal information and more like a threat.

Snow occupies every available surface: road, field, windshield, my increasingly doomed itinerary. Chicago wants an answer by December 26, which is charming. Corporations adore deadlines during holidays because apparently festivity is just capitalism wearing a novelty sweater.

My phone has eight percent battery, roadside assistance has a recorded message about “exceptional weather conditions,” and the rental-car spare is missing because the universe enjoys themed comedy.

A wooden sign half-buried beside the road points toward PRUITT SPRUCE WORKS. Under it, in smaller letters: HOLIDAY POP-UP TONIGHT.

Normally I would rather eat a paper napkin than enter a business advertising holiday cheer. But dry socks, cellular service, and a tow-truck number form a persuasive little trinity. I limp the car down a narrow lane, each rotation of the ruined tire making a noise like a filing cabinet being thrown down stairs.

The farm appears through the white blur all at once: low buildings, strings of colored bulbs, rows of clipped evergreens marching up a hill in ceremonial formation. A converted barn spills light onto the snow. Through its front windows, adults in wool hats and sequined sweaters crowd around tables with paper plates, talking loudly enough to suggest either excellent food or a small tax revolt.

I push inside and am met by heat, roasting vegetables, frying potato, and the resinous bite of freshly cut spruce. It is awful, obviously. The room has garlands. It has paper snowflakes. It has a hand-painted menu featuring a menorah wearing mittens.

Behind the counter, a man in a flour-marked black shirt arranges hand pies on a platter. They are bronzed, crimped, and shaped like small fir trees. His dark hair has escaped whatever sensible arrangement it began with, and he moves through the packed kitchen with the brisk assurance of a person who knows where every ladle, extension cord, and emotional crisis belongs.

“Please tell me you have a tow number,” I say.

He looks up. His face changes quickly from concentration to concern, then to something brighter that I immediately distrust on principle.

“Car trouble?”

“An interpretive disaster involving a tire.”

His attention slides toward the window, where my rental car sits crooked beside the porch. “Exit 18?”

“Is there a support group?”

“There should be.” He sets down a hand pie. “I’m Jonah. Jonah Pruitt. This is, regrettably, my circus.”

“Corbin Vale. I’m only here to acquire a phone number and leave before anyone puts antlers on me.”

Jonah studies my damp coat, my snow-streaked trousers, and the phone in my hand, which chooses that moment to display seven percent battery with the smugness of a tiny executioner.

“You’re freezing.”

“I’m inconvenienced.”

“Same family of problem.” He reaches beneath the counter and produces a dry wool coat, forest-green and several degrees too earnest. “Put this on. There’s a charged phone in the office. I’ll call the towing company, though I should warn you the roads are closing.”

“I have a deadline.”

“Tonight?”

“December 26.”

“That’s still alarming.” He says it with such plain sympathy that I nearly resent him for it.

Around us, someone cheers when a tray of latkes emerges from the kitchen. Jonah smiles at the sound—actually smiles, as if snowbound strangers demanding fried food is a reasonable basis for happiness.

I take the coat because I am not an idiot, merely a man with standards about decorative greenery.

“Dry coat,” Jonah says, steering me toward a door marked OFFICE, “charged phone, somewhere warm until we know what’s possible.”

Outside, snow keeps coming down in huge cheerful flakes.

I have never trusted anyone who looks pleased about that.

By seven, the towing company has confirmed the obvious in apologetic Vermont vowels: no truck reaches Exit 18 tonight, no repair happens before the roads reopen, and every motel within forty miles is full of stranded skiers and cousins.

Jonah returns from the office with my phone on its charger and an enamel mug. “I have good news.”

“I find that phrase usually precedes lodging at an airport chapel.”

“You’re not sleeping in the car.” He gives me cider, aggressively spiced. “The apartment over the kitchen is empty. You can have it.”

I wait. There is always an asterisk; I make my living locating them.

Jonah notices. “There is one favor.”

“Of course there is.”

“My three uncles are due at eight for dinner. Neil, Walter, and Jody. All adults. All kind. All convinced my single status is a civic emergency.”

“You need me to file a permit?”

“I need you to be my date.”

The cider nearly loses containment. “Your date.”

“A temporary, snowstorm-issued date. We eat dinner, we are charming but not alarming, and afterward you get a bed, a shower, and first call if the road crew announces anything useful.”

“Why me?”

“Because you arrived from Manhattan wearing a coat that costs more than my first car, you can form sentences under duress, and you look like someone who owns a calendar.” His mouth goes sideways in an unapologetic grin. “Also, I told them I wasn’t coming alone before I had a person in mind. My lapse in judgment involves butter.”

This is absurd. So are the weather, the tire, and my December 26 ultimatum blinking from my inbox. Cinnamon, clove, apple: the cider’s little conspiracy insists on optimism.

“What are the rules?”

Jonah’s surprise makes his face more interesting, which is inconvenient. “No invented ex-spouses, no traumatic backstory, no claims that you enjoy carols.”

“No shared-bed implications.”

“Agreed. I may be desperate, but I am not running an ambush.”

“And no asking me to praise turnips.”

“Then we have our first authentic incompatibility.”

“Temporary date,” I say.

“Temporary date.” He offers his hand across the prep counter.

His palm is floury, his grip firm and brief. I have signed stranger agreements in worse circumstances, although none involved faux courtship and root vegetables.

“Excellent,” Jonah says. “You’re on latke duty.”

The kitchen behind the barn is all steel tables, hanging pans, and competent chaos. Someone calls for more tree-shaped hand pies; Jonah answers without looking up, then ties an apron around my waist as if I have accidentally applied for employment.

“Grate these,” he says, pushing potatoes toward me. “Not your knuckles. I’m fond of all staff appendages, including borrowed ones.”

“I am a consultant.”

“Tonight you are a consultant who can operate a box grater.”

I can, because kitchens have rules even when people deny it: clear stations, sharp tools, no heroic improvisation around hot oil. I shred potatoes while Jonah folds roasted squash, sage, and caramelized onion into pastry rounds. He presses a tiny tree cutter through each lid, producing a forest of edible geometry.

Beside the flour bin lies an oil-stained index card. In blocky blue ink it reads, “Parsnips—six; potatoes—enough; fry until...” The instructions stop there, as if the author suffered a visionary event involving a skillet.

“Your recipe ends mid-crisis,” I say.

“Uncle Neil began it when he was twenty-six. He says the rest is instinct.”

“Instinct is what people call a process they cannot document.”

Jonah laughs. “You and Neil are going to be magnificent enemies.”

Oil snaps in the skillet. He shows me the proper amount of batter—“about this much, unless the potato looks emotionally overcommitted”—and the first latkes emerge crisp at their lacy edges. We salt them while hot. Flour gathers on my sleeves. Beyond the swinging door, customers applaud a fresh tray, which I find suspicious but, against my better judgment, infectious.

At seven fifty-eight, Jonah trades his apron for a dark green sweater.

“How do I look?” he asks.

“Like a man who persuaded a stranded operations fixer to pretend affection in exchange for indoor plumbing.”

“Perfect. Walter loves transparency.”

A car door closes outside. Jonah looks at me, suddenly less certain.

“Neil, Walter, Jody,” he says. “Ready?”

No, obviously. But the road is closed, the apartment is warm, and Jonah has entrusted me with a skillet and a ridiculous problem.

“I have survived restaurant openings,” I tell him. “Three uncles cannot be worse.”

His laugh follows me toward the dining room.

At eight o’clock, the three uncles arrive with snow on their coats and expensive opinions. Neil carries a ceramic dish in a tea towel; Walter wears a cardigan embroidered with tiny menorahs; Jody removes his boots and studies me with the composed interest of a man who has waited years for this specific piece of gossip.

“So this is Corbin.”

“This is Corbin,” Jonah says, his hand briefly at my back.

“Temporary,” I add.