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Everyone knew that Louie loved his sweatshirt.
His love wasn’t without good reason, either. It was, as far as sweatshirts went, a really nice one; half-sweatshirt and half-sweater, it was made out of quality tight-knit yarn instead of cotton, and therefore was warm, soft, and surprisingly durable. It was also the first “rich person” thing Louie had ever owned; he’d seen it in a high-end store in the Duckburg Mall when he was seven and had begged his uncle for it for Christmas—specifically one size up, so he could wear it as long as possible. It was the only gift he’d gotten that year due to the expense, but Louie hadn’t minded. He’d pulled it on that Christmas morning, loving the way it made even the chilly, poorly-insulated houseboat feel warm and cozy, and had barely taken it off since.
Which was why, when the sweater got caught on a rusty nail during a mine-cart chase in Montana shortly after his thirteenth birthday, everyone knew it was going to be a bad time.
It was a bad hole, too, already the size of a quarter-dollar, jagged and ripped across the front of the pocket. The knitting had torn straight through, little dangling threads hanging out like beheaded snakes from the green and the surrounding area stretched and misshapen. The whole plane ride home, Louie had refused to take the sweatshirt off, obsessively rubbing the frayed edges of the tear and fiddling with it so that by the time the Cloud Chaser landed behind the mansion, the damage had already started to spread.
“Why don’t you let me take a look at it,” Donald offered as they walked inside, despite already knowing there was probably nothing he could do, but Louie shook his head forcefully.
“It’s fine. It’s just a little tear, who cares,” he said, the last part sounding almost aggressive, before he hurried upstairs.
The rest of the family shared concerned looks. “This isn’t going to end well, is it,” Huey said anxiously.
Nobody needed to answer.
The first day Louie wore the ripped shirt downstairs, everyone turned a blind eye. He was probably grieving. He’d get over it eventually.
After a few days, the hole had gotten bigger. The adults began to exchange looks. Louie steadfastly ignored them.
After a few weeks, it was starting to smell because Louie wouldn’t wash it, afraid that the hole would tear even more. The adults began to hint that maybe it was time to move on. Louie pretended not to understand.
After a month, Louie walked into the kitchen one Saturday morning to find his mother, his uncle and Mrs. Beakley all sitting at the table, talking in hushed tones. When they noticed him they stopped, their faces turning mixtures of nervous and grave.
Louie frowned, and then looked to the one figure in the room who was at a distance, confused. His uncle, who was leaning against the counter, shook his head in a “ I told them not to” way and turned to the next page of his paper. Louie looked back to the other adults, now growing suspicious. “What’s going on?”
The trio shared another look. “Llewellyn,” Mrs. Beakely said at last, “Why don’t you come have a seat.”
The teenage boy sat down across from them, now even more guarded. “Okay, now you’re all officially freaking me out. Who died?” At their winces, his own face fell. “Oh man, did someone actually die? I’m sorry, I didn’t kn–”
“No, Louie, nobody died,” Della cut in quickly. “We were just– we’re getting worried about you. We wanted to talk.”
“About me? I’m fine,” he deflected. “Nothing’s wrong with me.” He shoved his hands in his pocket—well, as much as he could shove his hands when the hole was big enough now for his fist to fall out.
“We just think–” Mrs. Beakley glanced at his parents, “–that you might be taking what happened in Montana a little…unhealthily.”
“What happened in Montana?” he repeated, by now completely confused, and then it hit him. “Hold on. Is this about my sweatshirt?”
“We just think it may be time for you to replace it,” Donald offered. Louie dug his fingers into the fabric.
“Why?” he demanded. “It’s fine. So the pocket doesn’t work, so what? It’s still warm.”
“It does look a little scruffy, dear,” Mrs. Beakely pointed out. “And the hole is already getting bigger, it’ll just continue to spread.”
“O-okay, so I’ll get Huey to sew it up! It’s fine, why are you guys making such a big deal out of this!”
“Honey.” He looked over at his mother; Della’s face was sympathetic but unrelenting. “Huey told us you already asked him; you can’t sew up holes in knitted clothing like that.” Louie’s face burned bright red; oh, Huey was so dead for tattling on him. “I know you’re attached to it, but things don’t last forever. We can get you another sweatshirt, one just like it–”
“I don’t want a new one!” He pushed back his chair with a screech and stood up; the adults’ faces fell, but he was too angry to care. “It’s my sweatshirt, I’ve had it for years!” He turned to his uncle and added accusingly: “You were the one who gave it to me, doesn’t that mean anything?!”
“Louie, it’s just a sweatshirt!” Donald exclaimed. “It’s old and it’s falling apart–”
“So what if it’s a little beat up; Mom’s a little beat up, and we’re not throwing her away!”
“Whoa, hey!” Della exclaimed, at the same time that Beakley said sharply: “Llwellyn, that’s out of line; apologize to your mother!” Donald likewise sputtered something unintelligble and upset beside her.
Louie looked desperately for backup to the last adult in the room. Scrooge sighed and closed the paper. “That wasnae kind, lad; yeh owe your mother an apology.”
The boy struggled for a moment, tears burning in his eyes. He met his mother’s shocked and hurt gaze and relented. “Fine. I’m sorry.”
“Louie–”
“But it’s mine! I’m not throwing it away just because it’s not perfect anymore!” He scrubbed a green sleve across his eyes, fuming. “It’s like none of you even care!” And with that he turned and stormed out of the kitchen.
The four of them winced as the door slammed shut. “Well,” Mrs. Beakley sighed. “That could have gone better.”
“He didn’t mean it, Della,” Donald reassured his sister, who still looked hurt and was instinctively rubbing her injured leg.
“I know,” Della sighed. “He was just upset.” She shook her head, nonplussed. “I don’t get it, it’s just a sweatshirt! Why is he so attached to that thing!”
“I told yeh lot it wouldnae work.” The trio looked over as Scrooge approached the table. “Yeh cannae talk to him because not one of you understands his point of view.”
“His point of view?” Donald repeated, confused.
“Aye, a’ course! Donald, you were in the navy; Beakle, you were a spy; and Della—Della dear, no offense, but yeh lost your own leg and yeh dinnae seem to care! Which is a whole other matter to discuss, but not now.” Della frowned, but her uncle persisted: “Louie has a different view of his possessions than all of you do; he’s attached to his belongings. Yeh dinnae have to feel the same way, but yeh do have to understand if you want to talk to the lad.”
“But it’s just a sweatshirt,” Beakley repeated, confused. “You can easily afford to have an identical one made for him. It’s just a thing.”
“But it’s his thing,” Scrooge answered firmly, and with that he followed his nephew out of the kitchen, leaving the other three adults to stare after him, mystified.
Louie hated letting other people see him cry, so it was a fortunate thing his brothers were out for the day. He sat alone in the shared bedroom, sniffling and wiping his eyes as he poked his fingers out the hole. On the one hand, he knew his family was right: the sweatshirt was done for, the hole would only get bigger and there was no way to fix it, and on top of that he felt awful for saying something so heartless about his mother (even if he still thought he’d had a point).
On the other hand…on the other hand, it was his favorite piece of clothing. It had been with him through stressful first days of school, arguments with his family, adventures-gone-wrong and late nights on the houseboat, waiting for Uncle Donald to come home from the night shift. It was more than just a sweatshirt, it was like a second skin to him—a comfy suit of armor that protected him from the outside world whenever things got too tough
It didn’t matter that he could get one just like it. This old sweatshirt had been like a friend to him. That had to mean something, right?
Rap-rap-rap.
He was broken from his thoughts by the sound of a knock on the door, and winced. Maybe if he didn’t say anything they’d think he’d run away and he could put off being in trouble for another few hours.
The knock came again. Rap-rap-rap. “Lad, I know you’re in there.” It was Uncle Scrooge. “Please open the door.”
“Why?” Louie demanded sourly, knowing the jig was up. “So you can give some old-timey lesson on why it’s just a sweatshirt and I should get over it?”
“Eh– actually, no. I was going to fix it.”
Louie paused, then sighed. He walked over to the door and opened it, crossing his arms. His uncle was on the other side with a red tin box in hand. “You’re going to fix it.” His uncle nodded. “Why? Don’t you agree with the rest of them?”
“That you should throw away a perfectly good piece of clothing because it has a tiny wee hole in the pocket?” Scrooge snorted, walking into the room and sitting down on Huey’s empty bed. “Not a chance. Frankly I think they’re all being lunatics, giving up on the poor thing without giving it a fighting shot.”
“It’s not exactly a tiny wee hole,” Louie pointed out, sticking his hand out through the hole in the pocket. Scrooge snorted.
“It’s nae exactly like yeh tore the thing in half, either. Hand it here, lad, let me see what I can do.”
Louie eyed him and the tin box, suspicious, and then shrugged the sweatshirt off and passed it over, feeling strangely underdressed in his white undershirt. Scrooge took the sweatshirt and flipped open the latch of the box. “What is that, some kind of magic sweatshirt-fixing relic?” Louie asked dubiously.
“Not exactly,” Scrooge said, opening the lid. Louie peered inside, blinked, and then blinked again.
“You know how to sew?” Inside the box were a dozen spools of thread of different colors, a pincushion stuck with needles and yellow-knobbed pins, and a small ball of green yarn.
“I’ve been a bachelor all my life, Louie, I’d have been in bad straits if I hadn’t learned to sew.” He selected the largest needle and then took out the yarn and a funny little silver thing that looked like a soda tab with some wire. “But technically this is darning, not sewing.”
“Darning? Like– ‘Granny was darning a pair of socks’ kind of darning?” Louie said, just a little too innocently to be real.
Scrooge, who had been about to do some complicated-looking thing with the wire and the yarn, set them down and gave his nephew an exasperated look. “If you’re going tae take the mickey, lad, then I’m nae going to help you.”
“No, wait!” Louie quickly backpedaled. “I’m sorry, I won’t make fun of you again!”
“Hrmph.” Scrooge picked up the yarn and needle again, and Louie watched in mild fascination as the wire thing was used to pull the thread through the eye of the needle with no effort. “Yeh know, for such an egalitarian generation, you kids dinnae seem to have any problem deciding what is and isn’t women’s work.”
“C’mon, I said I’m sorry.” His uncle harrumphed again, and Louie added meekly: “...Thanks. For real.”
“Dinnae mention it. Besides, someone had to teach you.”
“Teach me?”
“Aye, a’ course. So you can do it next time for yourself.”
“Oh,” Louie grumbled. So, there was a catch. He brightened as he got an idea. “What if I paid you to just do it for–”
“No,” Scrooge said simply. “This is for your own good, lad, now sit down and pay attention.” With a sigh the boy sat down beside him. “Now: first things first, yeh need to understand that darning isnae the same thing as sewing. Sewing attaches two pieces of cloth together, darning fills in a hole by making a new weave.”
“Sounds complicated,” Louie approximated. Scrooge shrugged. “I don’t get why Huey couldn’t help; wouldn’t sewing the hole together be easier?”
“Hm. Aye, technically it would, but sewing a hole back together is usually a bad idea; it jus’ pulls at the fabric around it and makes it tear again a little while later.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out, of all things, an apple. Louie tilted his head but remained uncharacteristically silent as Scrooge tucked the apple under the hole in what seemed to be a makeshift workbench.
“Now.” His uncle held up the needle. “Second thing: warp and weft. Warp is the yarn running up and down, weft is the yarn running side to side. Yeh start by weaving the new yarn into the warp like this with yer needle just outside the hole, see?” He showed Louie, the needle and yarn bobbing in and out of the yarn at the edge of the hole like a tiny silver dolphin in a green sea. “That way the new yarn catches into the old and stays put.”
“Don’t you need to tie a knot first?”
Scrooge shook his head. “The weave will hold it in place, yeh’ll see. Now, as yeh reach the hole–” The needle was coming back the other way, “–yeh want to put the vertical threads just straight across, that’ll create the first part of the weave. When yeh get to the other side needle it into the original yarn a few times again…” He did so, the new yarn almost vanishing into the old yarn of the sweater due to the closeness of the color.
“You can barely see it,” Louie pointed out. “How do you not lose track of it?”
“Hrm. Well, usually yeh’d start off learning this with a different color yarn from the original to make it easier, but I figured yeh wouldnae like that. And back the other way…”
They sat in silence for a few seconds as Scrooge plied the needle, and Louie could steadily see the hole in the fabric filling in. It was strangely meditative to watch—and also just downright strange. He knew his uncle was a tightwad, but Louie had always considered him a tightwad in, well, traditionally masculine ways. Working insane hours, having Launchpad do home repairs instead of hiring a professional, pinching pennies on everything from cars to food (which was why Mrs. Beakley usually forbade him from coming along on grocery trips). Seeing him do something so… domestic, and requiring so much patience, was unusual.
“Alright, now yeh turn the cloth forty-five degrees…” His uncle’s instructions drew him out of his reverie. “And now yeh start to work in the horizontal lines, weaving it in and out of the vertical lines you put down.”
“Like weaving on a loom or something,” his nephew murmured. Scrooge shot him a proud smile.
“Exactly, lad! Yeh see it’s not so hard, jus’ time consuming is all.” He returned to fixing the sweater. The hole was now closing up so neatly that it was hard to tell it had ever been there; it was clear his uncle had been practicing this skill for a long, long time. “There yeh are; now we just finish off here, and snip the threads…” He cut the excess lengths of yarn on either side, and then turned the shirt back inside out. “Yeh see?” he said proudly. “Good as new!”
“Wow.” It really did look good; he could barely see the repair. “Thanks, Uncle Scrooge.”
“Ach, it’s no trouble. Happy to help, especially since it seemed tae mean so much to you.” He put the yarn and needle back into the box as Louie pulled on the sweatshirt.
“Where’d you learn to do that, anyway?” the boy asked, looking downright relieved to be back in his element when he popped his head out of the folds of green cloth. “For real, I thought only girls learned sewing in, y’know, ‘ye olden times.’”
“Och, no. Well– it was mostly girls, yes, but any man who was goin’ tae be on his own for a long while had to learn the skills at some point or another. I learned to sew and darn from my mother before I left for America. And it was a good thing I did, too; I snagged my old red sweater many a time on Uncle Pothole’s steamboat, would never have had the money to pay for someone to fix it…”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Louie said, running his thumbs over the new yarn. Scrooge paused to study him. The boy had a funny look on his face, and not the usual one he got after one of his uncle’s lessons on hard work and perseverance.
“Something on your mind, lad?” he asked gently. Louie hesitated and then looked up.
“Everyone kept telling me it was just a sweatshirt and I should get over it,” he said, face flushing. “That I could just buy a new one.” Scrooge saw his fingers instinctively dug into the fabric. “It’s like they didn’t get it. It’s my sweatshirt, y’know?”
Scrooge softened. It was moments like this that reminded him the boy really was his kin. “I do know, lad, believe me. I’ve had my old broadcloth coat for, och, a hundred and twenty years now!” He straightened the red jacket proudly and Louie saw, almost invisible against the older red yarn, places where the original weave had been replaced by careful darning. “Been repairing it for nearly that whole time, too, as I got it secondhand. I’d probably give the poor thing a funeral if it ever got properly destroyed,” he chuckled. Louie grinned. “Nowadays people just throw things away, but it wasnae like that when I was growing up; back then, well, we didnae have much. We got attached to the stuff we had. –And anyhow we had to find ways to repair it, since we couldnae afford to replace it.”
Louie nodded, looking back at the shirt. “Fixing things that are broken can take time, and effort,” Scrooge said gently. “But the things that matter are worth the work. They take care of us, so we take care of them.”
“...Yeah. You’re right.” The older duck blinked; he hadn’t been expecting that. “Thanks again, Uncle Scrooge, really.”
Scrooge tried not to smile too hard. It was the first time he thought he’d ever properly gotten through to the boy on the value of patience and hard work—trust it to be connected to that old sweatshirt, of all things. “Well,” he said, standing up, “I’ll leave yeh to your day then, lad. If you ever need anything else fixed, yeh know where to find me.”
Louie nodded, looking thoughtful and still compulsively rubbing the repaired spot. Scrooge left—but not before deciding that for Christmas that year, he was going to make sure the boy got a proper sewing kit.