Christmas Mourning Read online

  “Deal,” she said.

  CHAPTER 11

  I do not know a grander effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear the full choir and the pealing organ performing a Christmas anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony.

  —The Sketch Book, Washington Irving

  Most Sundays, if we get moving early enough to go to church, it’s to nearby Sweetwater Missionary Baptist, the church I grew up in. The minister is earnest and not too hard-shelled, and the choir does the best it can with the talent available.

  When I lived with Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash and was still in private practice, though, I moved my membership to the First Baptist Church of Dobbs for purely pragmatic reasons. Not only was it easier to get to on Sunday mornings after a late Saturday night, but this was also where many of Colleton County’s movers and shakers went, and one never knew when sharing a hymnal to sing “Bringing in the Sheaves” might lead to bringing in a new client.

  (What? I’m the only one who ever chose a church for other than purely religious reasons?)

  The minister, Dr. Carlyle Yelvington, is a progressive liberal whose sermons don’t insult one’s intellect and who exhorts us to live the words, not just mouth them. But he’s not the only reason I rousted Dwight out of bed to go fetch Cal early enough that both could put on white shirts and ties in time to make the eleven o’clock service. I wanted some Christmas spirit, and the late-nineteenth-century stateliness of First Baptist was my provider of choice with its carved oak pews, its stained glass windows, the ribbed vaulting overhead, the richly embroidered altar cloths and choir robes, the massed greenery around the pulpit, the tall white candles, the polished brass crosses. Add in an organist and a choir who are all trained musicians, and by the time the final amen is sung I’m ready to hang up a stocking or stuff a goose.

  Cal was still hopped up about the festival of bright lights he and his cousins had seen last night, especially the animated displays, and as we were getting into the car, he turned and gave the house a long consideration. “We ought to put up some more lights, Dad. Wouldn’t it be really cool to have some of those tube strips like at the RBC Center, only in red and green? Or how ’bout we get one of those reindeer that the legs flash on and off like it’s prancing on the roof?”

  “Nothing on the roof,” I said. “I don’t want y’all falling off.”

  Cal laughed and settled into the backseat with his Game Boy and iPod, but my offhand remark must have triggered something because Dwight said, “Last night was the first time I ever saw Charlie Johnson to know who I was looking at. He really favors Jeff, doesn’t he?”

  “I really don’t remember Jeff very well,” I said, fastening my seat belt. “Anyhow, it’s not Charlie Johnson anymore. He changed his name back to Barefoot.”

  “Yeah? When?”

  “Last spring, I think. Portland handled the paperwork for him.”

  “She say why?”

  I shrugged. “All the usual, I gather, plus he thought Malcolm made it clear which was his true child. Mallory tried to talk him out of it, so I don’t think the resentment went both ways.”

  “All the same, maybe I’ll have a talk with Charlie,” Dwight said. “See if he was one of the older kids at that party.”

  Congregants were streaming into the church when we arrived, and Portland, Avery, and Carolyn were among them. The baby wore the lace-trimmed red plaid dress I’d given her and looked as adorable as I’d expected.

  “I’ll probably have to take her out before the first prayer,” Portland said, “but it wouldn’t be Christmas without this, would it?”

  We followed them into a pew and Carolyn immediately put out her arms to me. I was flattered until I realized that she was doing it to get nearer to Cal, who was sitting on my other side between Dwight and me. Babies always home in on the children and she was no exception.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered when the baby indicated that she wanted Cal to hold her. He’s had a year of practical experience with Kate and Rob’s baby and he let her balance on his knees as the rest of us stood to sing the opening hymn, “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

  She was quiet while the choir sang an arrangement of “Adeste Fideles” in glorious harmony, but began to squirm and fuss a little when Dr. Yelvington took the pulpit. We passed her back to Portland, who calmed her with a bottle; ten minutes later, she was sound asleep.

  Cal started to take out his Game Boy, but Dwight gave a negative headshake and he put it away again and tried to look interested in what Dr. Yelvington was saying about the true spirit of Christmas.

  Afterward, we sought out Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash to wish them a merry Christmas and to thank her for the fruitcake. Portland and Avery and Portland’s parents were going to have Sunday dinner with them to celebrate the baby’s birthday, and Aunt Zell assured me that there was enough for three more, but I had left a ham in the oven with a sweet potato casserole and we needed to get back before everything turned to charcoal.

  As soon as lunch was cleared away, though, Cal began to pester Dwight to go for the mistletoe.

  Mistletoe’s a parasite on deciduous trees. It’s spread by birds who eat the gummy white berries and then perch in the twigs at the end of a branch to clean their beaks, so it’s not easy to harvest. You can’t just shinny up a tree and break some off because it’s usually growing out at the tips of branches too thin to support even a boy’s weight. But if you have a good eye and a steady aim, you can shoot through the thick green stems and bring home enough to kiss half the county.

  We’re not particularly gun-crazy in my family. You’ll never see an AK-47 in our houses, but most of my friends and I did grow up with utility guns. Farmers liked to keep a loaded rifle hanging on pegs over their bedroom doors where they could easily grab it if needed in the middle of the night. If any child ever touched his father’s gun without permission, I never heard about it.

  Daddy gave each of the boys a simple bolt-action .22 as soon as he thought they could handle the responsibility. Seth got his at ten; Will was fifteen. He taught us to respect both the gun’s danger and the life of whatever animal we killed. That last was rammed home to me the day Adam and Zach shot a couple of brown thrashers down at the edge of the woods when they were eleven.

  “I ain’t gonna give you the licking you deserve,” Daddy told them when he found the little corpses and brought them up to the house. “Not this time. But you boys ever kill another songbird, you’re gonna clean it and cook it and eat every last bite of it. You hear me?”

  All through my teen years, I enjoyed trailing along behind my brothers and their dogs on a frosty moonlit night to hunt for coons and possums with my own little single-shot .22, and I got pretty good at plinking cans and shooting the paper targets the boys pinned onto hay bales, but when Dwight unlocked the gun case in our bedroom that afternoon, I had to admit that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fired it. My brothers don’t hunt much anymore and their children don’t seem very interested either. Reese is about the only one in the next generation who wants to bag a couple of deer every fall.

  Dwight and Cal had changed their suits and ties for jeans and flannel shirts as soon as we got home. Even though I was going out again, I hadn’t wanted to get ham grease on my red wool suit, so I had changed into a long blue zip-up robe. Now I sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed to watch as Dwight tucked a box of cartridges in his jacket pocket and took out his .22 Remington with its 3x scope. Although Cal had lived with us for almost a full year, this was the first time he had seen the gun case unlocked and he was surprised to learn that the second, smaller .22 belonged to me. I gathered that Jonna hadn’t approved of guns and wouldn’t have them in the house. He hadn’t even been allowed cap pistols or a BB gun. As so often happens when something is forbidden, his fingers clearly itched to hold one.

  “If you want to start teaching him how to shoot,” I told Dwight, “take mine. It’ll fit him better.”

  Cal’s
eyes widened with excitement. “Can we, Dad? Please. Can we?”

  “You sure?” Dwight asked, and I knew he was asking about more than the use of my gun.

  “Nine’s about when Daddy started you boys, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, “I guess it was.”

  I reached over and took Cal’s arm and turned him to me until we were face-to-face and our eyes were level. With my hands on his shoulder, I said, “This is serious, Cal. A gun is not a toy. You’ve got to listen to your dad, pay attention to what he tells you, and do exactly what he says, okay?”

  Instead of pulling away from me, he nodded solemnly. “Yes, ma’am. I will. I promise.”

  “Good. If you keep that promise, then when Dad says you’re ready, you can have my gun to keep.”

  “Honest?” In his sudden excitement, he gave me such an exuberant hug that I fell back on the bed and he fell on top of me, which struck us both as hilariously funny. Especially when Bandit jumped up on the bed and started licking our faces.

  As we untangled ourselves, I realized that for once, he wasn’t self-conscious about having hugged me in broad open daylight, and I doubted that I’d get a better present this whole Christmas season.

  Laughing and chattering in anticipation, he ran to get his own jacket, Bandit dancing at his heels.

  Dwight shook his head at me. “I hope you’re right about him being old enough.”

  I lay back on the pillows. “It’s like the birds and the bees,” I teased him. “If you don’t teach him at home, he’s going to pick it up on the school bus or on the street.”

  He leaned down to kiss me just as Cal reappeared in the doorway.

  “Oh, jeez,” he said. “Y’all aren’t going to get mushy now, are you?”

  Dwight gave him a scowl that didn’t fool either of us. “Aren’t you supposed to knock first?”

  “Not if the door’s open. She said only if it’s closed.”

  So I was back to being “she”?

  Perplexed, I kicked them both out so I could get dressed for Mallory Johnson’s funeral.

  CHAPTER 12

  The grasp, though gentle as a woman’s hand, was not to be resisted.

  —A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  Although attendance was considerably less than at the funeral home the night before, the church in Cotton Grove was standing room only by the time services started. Fortunately, Miss Emily and I had arrived early enough to get seats on the aisle.

  The front left pew was occupied by the honorary pallbearers, the school’s cheerleading squad dressed in their red-and-gold winter uniforms—long-sleeved jerseys, short skirts, and flesh-colored tights. Joy Medlin led them in on crutches, her pretty face so pinched with pain that I found myself thinking that this is what she would look like at forty when the first flush of youth was gone for good. Her face was a reminder of how narrowly she herself had escaped death only two months ago.

  “Lucky to be alive,” everyone said of the four teens who had not died in that car wreck. I wondered if the parents of the brain-damaged child still in a coma felt that way.

  At three o’clock precisely, Duck Aldcroft and his assistant entered and closed the lid on Mallory’s coffin. There were audible sniffs and sobs from the girls.

  Moments later, the minister gave us the signal and we all rose as her parents and family were escorted down the aisle and seated in the right front pews. They were still somber-faced and grieving, but time had begun to do its work. Sarah looked resigned today and Malcolm’s shoulders were straight as he sat down beside her and put his arm around her. Of the three of them, Charlie was now the one who seemed to be suffering most, as if it had only just fully sunk in that his sister was gone for good. I noticed that he left a small space between himself and Malcolm. No comfort for him there.

  Mercifully, the service was short and formal. No tearful tributes from her friends, no failed attempts to make us smile by recounting humorous things Mallory once said or did, no popular songs to make her parents remember how she sang along with them.

  A final prayer, then the coffin began its sad journey back down the aisle to the cemetery on the edge of Cotton Grove. The cheerleaders walked two by two out to the waiting cars, and then the family, followed by a general exodus of the rest of us.

  When we got outside, we did not linger to talk. A chill rain had begun to fall, a rain that froze as soon as it hit the concrete walkways. I hadn’t brought an umbrella and neither had Miss Emily.

  “Do you want to go to the cemetery?” I asked.

  She shook her small head decisively. “No, let’s go home.”

  Once in the car with the heater running, though, we had to wait to get out of the parking lot because precedence went to those cars that would follow the slow-moving hearse out to the cemetery.

  Like me, Dwight’s mother had noticed the lack of warmth between Charlie and Malcolm and she commented on it while we waited. “I wonder if it’s not because he looks so much like Jeff. There was always such a rivalry between those two boys when they were in school—over basketball, over Sarah.”

  “Before my time,” I said, watching my wipers push wet ice granules off the windshield. “Dwight says that he had more natural ability than Malcolm but that Malcolm worked harder.”

  “True. Malcolm was always more focused, while it was easy come, easy go with Jeff. He had a sweet personality, though, and could charm his way out of trouble, whereas poor Malcolm never got away with anything, especially with that father of his. Shelton Johnson was a bully when we were in school together and he bullied Malcolm until Malcolm finally stood up to him about marrying Sarah. Malcolm had to struggle to make Bs. Jeff could have made straight As, but Cs were enough to let him play ball. Even then, he wouldn’t work hard enough to make the starting lineup. I wasn’t one bit surprised when I heard he’d fallen off that roof and killed himself. Everything came so easy for him, I’m sure he didn’t think twice about the possible consequences of stringing lights in the dark on a steep roof. Sometimes I used to think that the only reason he went after Sarah was because he knew Malcolm wanted her so badly and he was jealous.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Only human if you think about it. Malcolm’s family was solid middle class. Jeff’s daddy was a roofer. Malcolm was bound for Carolina and a white-collar life; Jeff was going to have his own truck and a hammer.”

  “But if they were best friends—?”

  “Best friends? Certainly they hung out together, but looking back on it, I have to wonder if it wasn’t a case of ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ They may have liked each other at the start, but once Sarah came into it…”

  “And she chose Jeff,” I said. “That had to’ve hurt Malcolm.”

  Miss Emily shook her head. “I don’t know if it was a matter of choosing Jeff or just that he was here and Malcolm was in Chapel Hill and Jeff sure could charm a smile out of a stone statue. Couldn’t charm his way out of marriage, though, once Sarah came up pregnant.”

  “Did he want to?”

  “Not really. To do him credit, I think he liked being married and he was certainly proud as a peacock when Charlie was born.” She smiled. “He even gave me a cigar.”

  I laughed and put the car in gear as the last of the funeral procession left the parking lot. “I bet you smoked it, too.”

  She cut her bright eyes at me. “I didn’t inhale, though.”

  Once out of the church parking lot, I drove a few blocks, then turned onto a street that was a shortcut over to the road home. I cornered just a little too sharply and felt the car fishtail. Luckily, there were no other cars near.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “It’s slicker than I realized.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” she said mildly.

  Considering that she’s gotten more than one speeding ticket the way she floors her old trademark TR, I bit back the remark I could have made and said, “Tell me about Mallory. I keep hearing how perfect she was, and yet she
could have spiked her own drink or stolen the Vicodin as easily as any other kid at the party, couldn’t she?”

  “In theory, I suppose,” Miss Emily said, “but I never heard that she did drugs or touched alcohol, and I do hear things, Deborah.”

  If there was a touch of pride in her tone, she had earned it. From all I’ve heard from my nieces and nephews, very little goes on at West Colleton that Emily Bryant doesn’t know about in time to do something if something needs doing.

  “Did you hear whether Charlie was one of the older kids at the party?”

  She shook her head. “Was he?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. Or rather that’s what Dwight’s going to be asking. Somebody had to have slipped something in her drink can.”

  “Surely not her own brother,” Miss Emily protested.

  “He was jealous of her, wasn’t he? Sounds like she came first in that family. Jessica told me that she was set to go to Carolina in the fall and that Malcolm planned a trip to Spain as her graduation gift. Charlie goes to Colleton Community College. Wonder what his graduation gift was?”

  “Not a trip to Spain,” she agreed.

  “So there’s at least one person who didn’t think she was as perfect as everyone says.”

  “Two persons,” my mother-in-law said quietly.

  “You?”

  “It sounds so awful to say this when right this very minute they’re getting ready to lower her into the grave. It’s like I’m throwing a shovelful of dirt on her coffin myself.”

  “But?”

  “But no, Mallory Johnson didn’t actually walk on water. She was everything you’ve heard—pretty, talented, intelligent, good student, a friendly word for everyone. Sweet and thoughtful. Polite to her elders—”

  “Didn’t kick small animals or pull wings off flies?” I added cynically.

  “Actually, she may have done a little bit of wing-pulling, but so subtly the poor fly didn’t realize it was happening till it dawned on her that she could no longer fly.”