"Yo, Santy Claus!" called one of the town crew, who was sliding along Main Street, trying to dump salt.
"Bring me a dolly!" hollered another. "Blonde hair, blue eyes—and a red pickup with a CD player!"
"Merry Christmas, Father! Merry Christmas, Dooley!" The crew boss grinned and waved. "A package of fifties will suit me just fine, thanks."
"We'll get right on it, boys. Clean your chimneys."
All the reports were in.
Miss Sadie's bedroom had stayed warm as toast with a kerosene stove. Louella slept on the sofa at the foot of Miss Sadie's bed, and they had lived off Nabs, Cheerwine, white bread, Vienna sausages, and cereal. Keeping the gallon of milk cold had been easy—Louella merely raised the window and set it outside on the roof. For recreation, they had looked through Miss Sadie's picture albums and scrapbooks, read the Bible aloud, and sung Christmas carols, seeing who could remember the most words.
"The only thing missing was a hot bath!" said Miss Sadie, "but we're making up for it."
Miss Rose and Uncle Billy had spent a good deal of time in bed. "Th' only trouble, don't you know, is Rose sometimes pees in th' bed, it bein' too cold t' git up an' all. I wouldn't want you to tell that, Preacher."
"Absolutely not."
"We had a big fight about a box of crackers. Rose wanted th' whole thing. Boys howdy, that was a predicament. But I'd saved back a can of sardines, don't you know, and pretty soon we got t' talkin' about it and turned out we split what we each had right down th' middle, so I cain't complain. You don't want t' git low on food with Rose around, no sir."
"I hear you."
"Boys, that basket you delivered over here saved th' day. There it was, ablowin' like jack outside, and us settin' in bed eatin' honeybaked ham and soppin' th' sauce with yeast rolls. But I'm glad it's over."
"Amen. Stay warm, and don't go out. It's still slick as hog grease on the streets."
"An' bring th' boy back, anytime. Rose likes 'im, wants t' bake 'im a pan of cinnamon stickies."
Since Homeless Hobbes had no phone, he couldn't inquire. But then, he supposed he didn't need to. The richest man in town was probably faring better than anybody, with a wood stove that kept the place like the inside of a toaster and cooking skills that could turn a creekbed rock and a cup of snow into a banquet.
And how had Evie Adams pushed along with Miss Pattie, and Betty Craig with Russell Jacks?
According to Evie, the snow had done wonders for her mother, who bundled up in a rummagesale ski suit and sat by the window for days counting snowflakes. "One hundred thousand and fortythree!" she announced proudly, showing Evie the totals in her dead husband's sales ledger. "It was like a vacation," said Evie. "I kept a fire going and got to read a detective story all the way through!"
The report on Russell Jacks was not so good. Just when he was considering whether Russell should return in the spring to his house in the junkyard, the sexton had gone out in the snow against Betty Craig's wishes and fallen down while fetching in wood.
"He must have laid out there close to twenty minutes before I missed him!" said his distressed nurse. "I could just kill the old soandso!"
He felt immeasurably relieved. Keeping Russell at Betty's was costing Ron Malcolm and himself four hundred dollars a month, but every time he thought of the old man going back to that ramshackle house on the edge of town, he knew Dooley would have to go with him. That would not be good, for more reasons than he cared to consider. He prayed for Russell's recovery and Bettys sanity.
"The storm of the century," as the media called it, had traveled along the East Coast to New York, where snow accumulation was up' to five feet and still piling on. All circuits, he discovered again, were busy.
"Merry Christmas, Timothy!"
Could it be? It was Edith Mallory sounding different somehow. "I'm sending Ed down with a little something for you and the boy tonight after the five o'clock. Two services on Christmas Eve can be exhausting, and you surely won't want to cook."
"Oh, no, please, we..."
"Do let me have this little Christmas joy," she said pleasantly. "I'll be sending baskets around to others down your way, as well."
"It's too good of you, Edith. Why don't you let someone else have ours, someone..."
"Less fortunate? Well, perhaps next year! Actually, I'd like to talk with you about the less fortunate. I think I'm ready, Timothy, to do what you recommended!"
"And what's that?"
"I want to help the Children's Hospital in Wesley. I know it's your pride and joy. But we'll talk about it soon. Since the storm, I've been just deluded with calls, people wishing me happy holidays..."
"Yes, and let me be one of them. Happy holidays, Edith!"
He felt queasy when he hung up. Was she undergoing some odd conversion? Did he sense she may be willing to back off and leave him in peace?
He had never minded a few empty pews if the people were filled with the Spirit. The faithful remnant that attended on the eve of the Christ child's birth celebrated with joy.
The great joy commingled freely with the smaller joys. A warming trend is predicted! The sun will come back! The roof didn't leak, the pipes didn't burst, we made it through!
He had seldom seen such hugging and kissing, and over it all, the green wreaths adorned with white gypsophila and the candles flickering on the windowsills lent rapt hosannas of their own.
"Joy to the world, the Lord is come..."
He prayed that the earth might truly receive her King.
Ed Coffey passed them on their way home from the five o'clock and insisted they get in. With the tire chains lashing the street, Ed drove to the rectory, then walked them to the door, carrying the basket.
As he and Dooley unpacked it on the kitchen counter, he felt compelled to say something positive. Here was a woman, after all, who had sent food still warm from the oven to feed two hungry men on a cold night.
"Mrs. Mallory is...very thoughtful to do this," he said, unwrapping a steaming plum pudding.
Dooley looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. "She's a dern witch."
"Is that so?"
"I hate 'er ol' butt."
"Please rephrase that," he said, meaning it.
"I don't like 'er. She seems two-faced t' me, sayin' one thing, doin' another."
"Really?" Roast beef, done to perfection.
"Said she'd give th' Sunday school a barbecue—ain't done it. Said she'd send us t' Grandfather Mountain—ain't done it."
"Hasn't done it."
"Somebody said she was after you. Said she'd like t' git you in th' bed."
"Who said that?"
"I don't know. Somebody. Is 'at right?"
"Let's just say that I have no intention of going to bed—or anywhere else—with Mrs. Mallory."
"Gittin' ahold of her'd be like gittin' ahold of a spider."
"Please. Forget what you heard. And no matter what you think, be respectful when you see her, regardless. Understand?"
He must have understood, for he said something the rector rarely heard: "Yes, sir."
"If this is what it's like to go steady," he muttered, "no wonder I waited so long to do it."
He dialed her number again. The circuits were still busy, as the storm raged through New York state and headed out to the Atlantic.
People thronged to the midnight service, as if the manger were the last way station on earth. Though patches of ice still gleamed lethally throughout the village, Ron Malcolm's son had doused the church walks with salt and sand, giving many the first sure footing they'd had in days.
Deprived of their preChristmas concert, the Youth Choir sang with such gleeful energy it fairly rocked the nave.
"Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born..."
"Go tell it on this mountain—every day, in every way," he said at the close of the service, "and go in peace, to love and serve the Lord."
"Amen!" said the congregation, revive
d and wideawake, though it was hours past their bedtime.
Several parishioners had pressed envelopes into his hand. Others had brought cookies, cranberry bread, and a can of his known favorite, mixed nuts, so that he walked home carrying a full paper sack. Not a few had said what his parish was never too shy to say, "We love you!"
In other years, he had often felt a great fatigue after the midnight service. Tonight, he could have shouted through the streets, blown a trumpet, waved a banner. His Christmas adrenaline was up and pumping, and so was Dooley's.
"Well done, old fellow!" he said as they headed toward the rectory. "I heard you hang those high notes in 'Once in Royal David's City'" He put his arm around the boy's shoulders. Here was another miracle, walking right beside him. "Why don't we open just one present tonight?"
"You ain't goin' t' like what I'm givin' you."
"That's what you said last year, and haven't I carried that glasses case with me everywhere, even to Ireland and back?" When would this boy stop shooting himself in the foot? "I'll tell you one thing—you'll jolly well like what I'm giving you."
Dooley looked up and grinned.
Sitting on the floor in the study, the winking tree lights reflected in every window, he unwrapped the book on veterinary medicine. It was true. He didn't like what Dooley gave him.
"Now you can doctor Barnabas if he gits sick."
"Aha."
"You can doctor ol' Vi'let if she's tryin' t' puke up a mouse."
"I'll let you handle that."
"Looky here. It tells how you can fix up Jack if he gits worms or mange."
"You're the doctor in the house, not me."
"Yeah, but I might not always be here."
"Not always be here? And where might you be?"
"When Grandpa gits well, I guess we'll be goin' back t' 'at ol' house, if it ain't fell in."
He could tell this had been on Dooley's mind for some time, but he hadn't been wise enough to sense it. "We're going to do something about that, but I don't know what exactly. I want you to stay here, for things to stay the way they are."
"Good," said Dooley. "Where's my present?"
He was sitting on the side of the bed, taking his shoes off, when the phone rang. It would be Walter, who often phoned after the late service: "Merry Christmas, potato head."
"Timothy?"
"Cynthia!"
There was an awkward pause.
"Are you all right?" she said. Her voice sounded new to him somehow.
"Yes! Yes, we're fine. A rough go in some places, but fine. I turned your faucets on to drip and put the thermostat at sixtytwo...shouldn't be any problem. I think the worst is behind us."
"Thank you. I appreciate it."
"I thought you were Walter. That was...ah, what I used to call him. He could tell the conversation was having trouble pushing off, like a sled poised at the top of a hill but snared on a rock.
"I hope you're not disappointed that it isn't Walter."
"Why, no. Certainly not! And you—are you all right?"
"I haven't had any spills on icy sidewalks, or power outages, or empty cupboards, if that's what you mean. But my heart is not all right— not in the least," she said coolly.
He felt his own heart pound as the sled pushed off. He sensed that this would be Olympic tobogganing, as opposed to a playful dash down Old Church Lane on a biscuit pan.
"Why don't we start where we ended, all those days ago?" she said. "You were asking me a question."
That question, once so alive in his thoughts, was now a fossil. He was embarrassed even to think how peevish it would sound.
"Yes, well. It's really not worth asking again."
"It must have been worth something—it cost days of trying to figure out the answer.
"The answer, Timothy, is that the man you spoke with on the phone was my editor and friend, James McNeely. He came back from Europe on business in New York, where he rang the bell of his own apartment, only to find me in a bathrobe, with my face set like papier-mache in a green mud pack. He needed something in his desk and said that if I'd consider washing my face, he'd take me to dinner.
"It was terribly late, but I was wild to be out of here and have the lovely privilege of talking about my work to somebody who not only understands it but is vastly interested."
"Of course," he said, barely able to speak.
"I didn't even hear the phone ring while I was getting dressed. I had my head stuck so far in the sink trying to dissolve that mask! Days later, I called him in France, wondering if he'd answered my phone, and he said he'd asked whoever it was to leave a message." There was a pause. "So, why didn't you leave a message?"
"I don't know."
He felt as if he had committed a schoolboy crime, like smoking on the bus or putting a frog in the girls' toilet. He fairly squirmed with the agony of having made so much ado about nothing.
He knew he would have to hold on tight and steer. "If I had it to do over, of course, I would insist on speaking with you. 'Haul that woman out of the shower or wherever she is, and put her on the line—at once! This is her neighbor calling!'"
She laughed the breathless, throaty laugh he loved.
"Your laughter is the Christmas music I've been longing to hear. I'm sorry, terribly sorry to have been so petty. Please forgive me."
"Oh, Timothy! How awful it's been, not being able to get home, not hearing from you, getting that dreadful little frozen note that I stuffed in the incinerator, and wondering what was wrong. And all the circuits busy for days, and no way to talk...to make contact. And your Christmas present sitting here on the sofa...I've felt so alone, so isolated from you..."
"I miss you," he said. Without meaning to, he said, "I need you..."
"Can you imagine how I love hearing you say that? That is the Christmas music I've longed to hear."
"I have no photograph of you. Sometimes I can't remember what you look like—do you mind my saying it? I want so much to see your face."
"I'll pop into one of those little booths and make dozens of funny faces and send them out as soon as the snow melts."
"Wonderful! And when will you come home? Soon?"
"Not until March. If I could get home now, I wouldn't have but three days. And the ice and rain have begun here, and the work is pressing me so..." She sounded anguished.
"What can I do for you. How can I help?"
"Love me! Long for me! Yearn for me! Oh, Timothy, you were jealous, weren't you?"
"Yes. Terribly. It was churning around in me for days, and when you answered the phone, it just popped out. I didn't mean for it to come out that way at all."
"How lovely that you can still surprise yourself. I couldn't love you if you were completely buttoned up. It's that little place you can never quite manage to get closed that makes me love you."
"But it's such a small place. Wouldn't you rather it was a bigger place?"
"Infinitely rather, my dearest."
He felt a kind of thaw, a snow melt. Something was being released and healed, and he sank back on the pillows.
"I love you, Timothy."
"I love you, Cynthia. Truly I do. You are a godsend."
"Do you think God would have me batter through your locked doors?"
"I think that you and only you could do it. I read something the other day—'What is asked of us in our time,' the writer said, 'is that we break open our blocked caves and find each other. Nothing less will heal the anguished spirit, nor release the heart to act in love.' Locked doors, blocked caves, it's all the same. It is so hard to..."
"To be real."
"Yes. Terribly hard. Frightening. But there's no other way."
"Ah, you talk tough now, you big galoot, but wait 'til I come home and fling myself into your arms...will you run?"
"The very thought takes my breath away," he said, meaning it. "And I don't know if I'll run. I don't want to. But..."
"But it could happen?"
"The odd thing is, I don't trust myself wi
th you—yet I trust you. I trust you to be real with me, but I'm afraid that I can't give that back..."
"You're giving it back right now."
"Yes. But it's...frightening."
"Hold me, Timothy. Just be still with me. Where are you, dearest?"
"Lying on my bed. Can you hear Barnabas snoring?"
"No, but I should like to. I should like to be there with you, only holding you and you holding me."
All the tension of the past weeks, the angry weather, the increased duties of church, the luncheon speeches and invocations, the conflicts of his heart—all had concentrated to feel, somehow, like an inpouring of cement. Now, at last, came the outpouring.
"I need you," he said again, warmed and happy.
"Let's burn 'em ol' tables!" Dooley shouted over the music on his jam box.
"Let's burn 'at oP jam box!" he shouted back.
Actually, the folding tables made one of the finest fires they'd had all winter.
With the Christmas Day service behind him, he did something he'd nearly forgotten how to do. He undressed and put on his pajamas and robe and made a pot of Darjeeling. He at last sent Dooley to his room, where all he could hear of the music was boom, boom, boom.
There was only one thing for it.
He put the disc on his player in the cabinet and, smiling, fell sound asleep listening to the rhumba—or was it the tango?
Jena Ivey of Mitford Blossoms didn't have the faintest idea which florists in New York would be certain to send roses that didn't drop their heads, but he remembered a magazine article he'd read in the dentist's office that said the RitzCarleton was known for its stunning flower arrangements. So he called the hotel manager in New York, was given the name of a florist, and proceeded to order a dozen red roses and a bouquet of fresh lavender, at a price he at first thought was a joke, to be delivered in a box tied with a satin ribbon—and step on it.
•CHAPTER SEVEN•