670 Main Street | Saco, ME | 207-283-1811 Under New Ownership | www.Heartwood.biz Kitchen & Bath Cabinetry Counters Design & Installation D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 8 9 3 Mouse King By jason Brown T is the season,” Bridget’s grand- father said as he held up his box of individually wrapped Honey- bell oranges. The family was not allowed to give presents to each other for Christmas, except in secret. Instead, her grandfather gave everyone an orange from a specialty shop in Portland on the opening night of his Nutcracker performance at The Choco- late Church Arts Center in Bath. In recent years of the production he’d freely adapted from the ballet, he had played Herr Stahl- baum. Tonight he was already costumed in his black tails. As he made his way around the room, handing out oranges, he reminded his fam- ily that in the absence of any evidence for Christ’s birthday, the holiday had started with a papal whim tailored to the nouveau vin and the yearly slaughtering of cattle. Voilà! Christmas. When her grandfather came to Bridg- et, he tilted the orange box so she could see: aside from crumpled paper, it was empty. Everyone else was holding an orange, not counting the one next to her grandfather’s chair. Eight oranges for nine family mem- “This is easily solved,” her grandfather said. “We’ll split my orange.” He opened the pocket knife he used to clean out his pipes and ran the blade over the circumfer- ence of the rind. When he was finished bi- secting his offering, he set his half on top of his tobacco pouch and cupped hers in his upturned hand. From the woodpile, to cleaning out the ash from the woodstove, to the kitchen, to the bathroom, her grand- father rarely washed his hands because he was afraid of the well going dry. He crossed the room to where Bridget sat, lowered to one knee, and turned the palm full of drip- ping pulp upside down. She had no choice but to catch it in two hands to keep it from landing on her dress. Back in his chair, her grandfather looked over the family. A bit of orange stuck to his upper lip. “This is my last year as Herr Stahlbaum,” he announced. Bridget wasn’t surprised. He was quit- ting the Chocolate Church Theater, just as he had quit everything else over the last few years—the volunteer fire department, the vestry of St. Cuthbert. He had continued coaching the baseball team after he stopped teaching, but this year he had quit that, too. “All because of Peter Reynolds?” Aunt Sandra said. “Because he didn’t get the role he wanted?” According to Bridget’s grandfather, Petey’s recent acceptance to Bowdoin Col- lege had failed to blunt the considerable disappointment of his failure to get the role of the Prince, played this year by a boy from bers gathered in the parlor. At thirteen, Bridget was the youngest of the cousins and used to being last. She didn’t want an orange anyway. What she wanted—more, she suspected, than anyone else in the family—was not to sit through another premier of her grandfather’s Nut- cracker play. Fiction