A Small Miracle Happened by Mari Donne

the earth purifies. That’s not as common a theme as burning, but I can see that becoming a ritual.”
    Hmm. It wasn’t the first time Chris had surprised Dan this way, quickly accepting and even interpreting something that most gentiles found incomprehensible. “Yeah. So he’s outside in the dark with a flashlight and this knife he used to cut roast beef, and he’s digging a hole with a trowel. And then he sees a pair of shoes. Someone is standing over him.”
    “Not the wife, I’m guessing.” Chris slid his hands down from the now wonderfully relaxed calf back to Dan’s foot.
    “Nope. It’s an Irish cop checking out what’s going on out there in the dark. So the husband, still holding the knife, says, ‘It’s okay, Officer; I live here. And my wife made me do this.’”
    Chris laughed. “I bet the cop took that well!”
    “According to my grandmother, the cop’s wife was a friend of the Jewish guy’s family, and all was explained without any arrests.”
    “Nice ending, but I agree with you it probably never happened. It sounds more like a joke that someone turned into a fable.” Chris slipped Dan’s foot back onto the couch and then began attending to his other leg.
    Dan sighed in bliss before replying. “There are too many things wrong with the story. For one, I don’t think you actually bury a knife to make it kosher again. You just stab it in the dirt a bunch of times.”
    But Chris’s eyes were alight. “That’s not the point. The point is it’s a good story with a funny punch line, so people keep telling it. And all the misunderstandings are sorted out, although maybe the wife trying to keep the kosher kitchen is still pissed off. But the moral is about accepting each other’s cultures, even when their rituals seem weird. You may laugh at the strange things your neighbors do, but it’s in a friendly way, so it’s a comforting story too.”
    “Does my ritual strike you as weird?” Dan looked at the menorah on Chris’s windowsill.
    “Lighting the candles? No! I like it. The little miracle of one light that grows to eight over a week until on the last day it’s a great miracle? It’s charming.”
    “That’s a really poetic way to put it. Where did you read that?”
    Chris just blushed. He was so fair his skin reddened easily and often, and Dan knew that flush spread over his whole torso when he was aroused. But why would he be embarrassed because he’d said something Dan found poetic?
    Dan’s gaze moved to the bookcase. He’d taken time earlier to look at some of the titles, and he’d discovered Chris was one of those people who not only read the classic literature assigned in high school and college, but kept some of the books. And likely bought others. “How come you didn’t get a degree in literature?”
    Chris was beet red now, trying to sink down into the sofa cushions. “It wasn’t practical.”
    “Hmm.” Dan remembered how Chris moved around a kitchen, tasting the food, deciding to add an ingredient not in the recipe, or make a substitution. He seemed so happy when he cooked, and everything he’d produced so far had been delicious. Dan wondered if there were other outlets to Chris’s creativity. He hoped that tech job he never spoke about allowed a few.
    He wanted to learn more, but didn’t want to make Chris uncomfortable. So he tried another topic. However, he thought the one he picked might be related, because a guy didn’t learn to be ashamed of his artistic bent without help. “Why didn’t you go home for Thanksgiving? Does your family live far away too?”
    “No. Just under an hour’s drive. But there’s too much…tension if I show up when the extended family is there. Instead my parents have me over for dinner a couple of times a month.”
    “But if your parents are accepting…”
    There was a long pause while Chris’s hands pressed hard on the sole of Dan’s foot. It wasn’t painful, but Dan was sure Chris didn’t realize how much pressure he