Moonlight and Mistletoe Read online

  “You shut up,” Scarlett said. She kept her eyes on Buck’s battered face. “Buck, I—you want to listen,” she said, “because I have an idea.”

  They couldn’t stand there all day. But Buck couldn’t stop watching her dimples, that lovely mouth. “Go right ahead, sweetheart,” he said huskily, “if you’ve got an idea, let’s have it.”

  After all, he told himself, whatever she had in mind, it couldn’t make things much worse than they were.

  Seventeen

  BYRON TURNIPSEED WRAPPED ONE OF Kevin Black Badger’s camp blankets around him and drew it over his head with some difficulty, as he was crowded on one side by Farrie and Demon, and on the other by Scarlett, who was holding the shotgun to the back of Devil Anse’s head as he rode in front with Buck.

  “There now,” the state CID man said, his eyeglasses twinkling in the rapidly deepening dusk, “think I’ll pass as a shepherd?”

  Farrie regarded him solemnly. “You need another piece of rope for your head. That’s the way shepherds look on TV.”

  “Absolutely right,” he agreed. He reached into the back of the Blazer where Scarlett had cut several small lengths of Black Badger’s tent cord and selected a piece. He wrapped it around his head to hold the blanket in place, Middle Eastern-style.

  “I have to tell you, Sheriff,” Turnipseed said, raising his voice as the Blazer turned off the highway and careened onto Main Street and headed for the courthouse, “I never expected to find such innovative law-enforcement procedures up here. But I’m really impressed. In my experience and, I might say, most of us in the state CID, the majority of your little mountain counties up here seem unable to approach law-enforcement work with any—uh, creativity.”

  “Oh, we’re creative, all right,” Buck said grimly. He shot a glance at Devil Anse, also wrapped vaguely Arabian-style in a camp blanket. “I only hope this damned thing works.”

  Farrie bounced up and down in her seat in suppressed excitement. She’d watched, big-eyed, as Scarlett had put a piece of paper towel in Devil Anse’s mouth, tied it in place with Kevin Black Badger’s bandana, then pulled the blanket around him. “Oh, it will work. Buck,” she squeaked, “I know it will! Tonight nothing’s going to go wrong!”

  Buck knew all too well that plenty could still go wrong. It was a good thing Byron Turnipseed had agreed to do what he was doing and give them enough time to go first to the courthouse with their prisoner. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been any plan at all.

  “Demon looks nice, too.” Farrie looked fondly at the big dog beside her, who promptly snaked out a gigantic red tongue to lick her face. “It’s not just any dog,” she said proudly, “that’d let you wrap it up in somebody’s sheepskin. Now you got to be careful,” she told the animal, “and not let it fall off, y’hear? You’re supposed to be a shepherd’s sheep.”

  The courthouse was in sight. Buck stepped on the gas in spite of the fact that the area was filled with large crowds and a number of illegally parked vehicles, including not one but several TV news vans. Buck swore when he saw a television van from a station in Chattanooga.

  He turned the Blazer down a side street, looking for a parking space. The Living Christmas Tree was already singing. They could hear the faint refrain of “Deck the Halls” wafting toward them on the cold night air.

  Farrie heard it, too. “Scarlett,” she shrieked. “You gotta let me out!”

  “Well,” Buck said, raising his voice, “we’re not making a direct reference to religion with two shepherds and a dog playing a sheep. That could be anything. But on the other hand somebody might pick up on it.”

  There was a chorus of protests behind him.

  “Nonsense, shepherds and sheep are as innocuous as Christmas angels, reindeer, and—uh, elves,” Byron Turnipseed said.

  “We can’t stop now,” Scarlett cried. “Not after all this.”

  “Well,” Buck responded doggedly, “I still think it would be better if I let Byron hang around the back of the crowd discreetly keeping the drop on Scraggs with the shotgun.”

  “Holding a gun on Scraggs out in the open?” the CID man said. “Now that would really attract attention!” Surprisingly, he chuckled. “Myself, I’ve always liked the wonderful spy-story twists where if you want to hide something, you put it right out where everybody can see it. This one’s a classic.”

  “It won’t be but for a few minutes, anyway,” Scarlett put in. “Just as long as it takes for Buck to help me get Farrie up in the tree.”

  “Now they’re singing again!” Farrie screamed. Demon, the sheepskin wobbling precariously, joined her with deep barks. Farrie clawed at the Blazer’s door. “Oh, Scarlett, I’m going to miss my solo!”

  Buck bellowed, “Stay where you are!” Nevertheless, he shot the Blazer into the only space available between two television news vans.

  At that moment, to the stunned amazement of everyone inside the van except Devil Anse, who was trying to dislodge his gag, the air was ripped by a series of explosions. This was followed by tremendous flashes of green, red, yellow, and white that lit up the sky. Farrie, her mouth open, couldn’t even scream.

  “They went ahead and did it,” Buck sputtered, getting out and opening the door. “Fireworks! The city council and their damned fireworks! That’s all we need!”

  All around them crowds massed in the square and over the courthouse lawn ooh’d and aah’d as the next brilliant concussion shook the skies. Buck looked around, but none of his deputies was in sight.

  “Stay together,” he shouted as they hurried toward the Christmas tree.

  “Sheriff?” A figure loomed in front of him, carrying a TV camera on its shoulder. “You are the Jackson County sheriff, aren’t you? Are you expecting a demonstration here tonight by the—”

  “Out of my way,” Buck snarled, pushing past him.

  Whoooouum, roared a rocket. Closely followed by the BLAM of a hundred tiny golden fish wriggling across the night sky. Several babies in the crowd started to cry.

  “Not bad, not bad,” Byron Turnipseed shouted as he stumbled along in his blanket behind Buck, who held the shotgun firmly but unobtrusively pressed to the small of Devil Anse’s back. “You’ve got to admit the noise of the fireworks is great cover. Hitchcock himself couldn’t have done any better!”

  As they approached the tree a figure dashed up to them and grabbed Farrie’s arm. “Where have you been? You’ve given me a nervous breakdown, kid,” the band teacher screamed over the mind-altering explosions of several percussive rockets overhead. “We’ve already started! How’re you going to get up in the tree now?” he demanded at the top of his lungs.

  Farrie looked at Buck, her lip quivering. Her hand in his tightened. She said, so low he could hardly hear her, “I don’t climb so good.”

  Scarlett said, “Farrie, you don’t—”

  “Wait a minute!” Buck bent over and looked down into the pinched little face. For a moment the fireworks were so noisy he couldn’t speak. Then he said loudly to Farrie, “Don’t worry about a thing, babe. I’ll get you up in the Living Christmas Tree before I do anything else.”

  He took her hand again. “I’ll take Farrie up,” he told the music teacher. Their faces turned green and red in a shower of rocket light. “Just make sure somebody’s waiting for her when she gets up there.”

  Another television cameraman hurried up followed by a young woman with a script in her hand. The TV newswoman promptly stepped beside Buck and Farrie and said to the bank of portable lights the technician turned on, “This is Jennifer James live from Nancyville, Georgia, with some of the performers in the town’s controversial Living Christmas Tree.”

  “He’s not a performer,” Mr. Ravenwood yelled, pushing her out of the way, “he’s the sheriff!”

  “Are you really the Jackson County sheriff?” Jennifer James followed them, microphone extended. “Your face seems rather battered, Sheriff. Is this the result of some violence that has already taken place because of the controversy up here?”r />
  Buck pushed the mike away, shaking his head. “C’mon, kid,” he said to Farrie. He took her hand and started for the back of the Living Christmas Tree. He had already seen the blanketed figures of Byron Turnipseed and Devil Anse and a hybrid fleecy-canine figure take a position down front. Thank goodness they seemed to be in semidarkness.

  At the foot of the tree’s ladderlike stairs, Farrie pulled back, screaming every time a rocket went off.

  Scarlett tried to soothe her. “We never seen fireworks but once,” she yelled. “I don’t think she was big enough to remember.”

  “I don’t wanna go up there,” Farrie screamed, “they’ll hit me!”

  It wasn’t just the fireworks, Buck knew. He remembered the desolate look in those black eyes when she’d whispered to him she didn’t climb so good.

  And didn’t walk too good, he told himself. And all the other things, including being a Scraggs.

  He lifted Farrie in his arms, wincing with the stab of pain in his shoulder. “Farrie?” He knew she heard because she gulped, then shuddered. “You’ve done nothing but yell the past hour about how much you wanted to get here. Now,” Buck said, his mouth at her ear, “I want you to go up there and sing. You can sing better than anybody else and you know it. Let’s see you do it!”

  The little pixie face lifted to him, tear-stained and surprised. She said something, but fireworks noise drowned it out.

  “Sing!” Buck told her. “I know you can do it, kid. Just stop bawling.”

  Farrie’s arms went around his neck suddenly and she clung to him. Finally she nodded. In spite of himself, Buck smiled.

  “You take me,” he heard her say. “Only you!”

  “You got it,” he assured her.

  They went up the first stairs into the tree and hands reached out to them. “Go get ‘em, Farrie,” the Bells yelled over the thunder of rockets.

  “I’ll take her,” Judy Heamstead said when they reached the Angels. “It’s only a few steps more.”

  Buck shook his head. He needed to be down on the courthouse grounds, but, like his dad, he never broke his word. “I told her I’d carry her all the way. Wouldn’t let her down now. That right, kid?”

  Eyes shining, Farrie grinned at him.

  Two men in the robes of the Presbyterian church choir were waiting on the last level. They reached out and took her from Buck’s arms. “Glad to see you got here,” one of them said as he set Farrie on her feet. “You ready to sing, honey?”

  Farrie was telling them she was when Buck turned to go. He was looking forward to hustling Byron Turnipseed, old man Scraggs, and the dog to a safer, less public place. He was on the tree’s bottom level when a roar from hundreds of throats went up, then he heard the unmistakable sound of a plane swooping low.

  “Santa Claus,” the crowd was yelling.

  Buck jumped the remaining feet to the ground. The plane, with a big Night Sun spotlight playing over the courthouse lawn, was getting ready to release the city council’s freebie Santa.

  Buck struggled to get through what seemed like a wall of bodies with faces all turned to the sky. The fireworks were over, but their problems weren’t. The courthouse environs were no shopping mall parking lot; a jump there was hazardous, as any fool should know. Especially after dark.

  Deputy Kevin Black Badger materialized at Buck’s elbow, dark circles under his eyes. “Sheriff,” Kevin said belligerently, planting himself so Buck could not pass him, “is that a dog over there by the tree wearing my best imported Australian sheepskin rug that was in my camping equipment?” He stopped, abruptly, to peer into Bucks face. “Good Lord, who beat you up?”

  “Later,” Buck told him brusquely.

  A cheer had gone up as Santa, carrying a big black bag, jumped out of the low-flying Cessna and did a lengthy free-fall before opening his parachute. Buck swore under his breath. “Go get the ambulance and fire rescue on the radio,” he told Black Badger.

  The deputy looked up and calculated the drift of Santa’s chute over them. “Yes, sir!” Black Badger left at a run.

  The circling plane’s searchlight, sweeping over the crowd, now picked out what seemed to be a budget version of two shepherds and a strangely extraterrestrial sheep, the latter now snarling viciously at one of the shepherds.

  Another roar went up as the light illuminated the trio. People stood up and pointed. One shepherd hitched closer to the crowd as if trying to disappear into it. The sheep promptly dragged him back, teeth clamped in his robes.

  A voice in the crowd cried, “Sheep and shepherds? Are we going to have the manger scene after all?”

  There was a ragged cheer.

  Buck had spotted a familiar figure. “Mose,” he shouted to his deputy. The noise was too great; Mose hadn’t heard him. Beyond Mose a line of men and women approached from the courthouse parking lot carrying signs that read: restore the real meaning of christmas, no separation of church and state, and abandon paganism now!

  But no Holy Family, Buck saw, straining his eyes to read the placards. Maybe Junior had given them a fighting chance after all.

  He got halfway across the lawn before he tripped over a stroller and almost fell on familiar saffron-robed figures. The Hare Krishnas, too, were seemingly headed in the direction of Junior’s committee. As Buck staggered to his feet the nearest one chanted bare ram at him quite hostilely, and pushed him away.

  Buck pried the stroller loose from his leg as the viewers around him yelled for him to get down, they couldn’t see Santa Claus. But above them Santa was having his own troubles as he drifted inexorably toward the courthouse trees.

  “Go on, go on!” In front of the Living Christmas Tree, Mr. Ravenwood, arms lifted, was shouting to his chorus, “Don’t look at the plane, look at me! Let’s have the last number!”

  While most of the crowd watched, enthralled, Santa Claus floated into one of the oldest oak trees on the courthouse property, struck, and hung there, swinging gently. His black Christmas bag dropped to the ground. As one, the crowd groaned.

  At that moment the Living Christmas Tree struck up their rendition of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” The sign-carrying group of the Committee for the Real Meaning of Christmas had reached the shepherd and sheep tableau at the foot of the Christmas tree. Before they could plant their signs, there were the distinct sounds of snarls and growls, followed by loud screams. Those who were not watching the dangling Santa in the oak tree were treated to the spectacle of Junior’s militant committee members throwing their signs away and scattering, apparently pursued by a vicious, slavering sheep.

  Television reporters promptly raced past Buck to cover the Real Meaning of Christmas Committee being assaulted at the foot of the Living Christmas Tree. In the distance the howl of sirens forecast the arrival of the Nancyville fire rescue unit.

  “Scarlett!” Buck shouted. He couldn’t find her anywhere. He hoped to hell she wasn’t caught in the melee down by Devil Anse and the CID man.

  He finally reached Moses Holt at the jam-packed courthouse steps. In a few seconds, with Mose’s walkie-talkie in hand, Buck had rounded up his deputies and assigned them to crowd, television crew, and Santa-hanging-in-the-tree control. He saw Kevin Black Badger had already separated Junior’s committee from the perils of a maddened sheep and a shepherd apparently trying to tear off his robes hampered by a pair of handcuffs. The fire rescue was moving to put a ladder under the gently swinging figure of Santa Claus.

  Scarlett, he thought. Where the devil was she?

  Suddenly it began to snow.

  No one noticed it at first, there was too much happening all at once. But thick, white, starry shapes began falling rapidly out of a dark sky, swirling gently over Nancyville’s valley.

  As the snowfall became noticeable the crowd quieted somewhat. Translucent clouds of snow, hushed and peaceful, drifted down on the courthouse lawn, the singers assembled in the wooden Living Christmas Tree, on the deputies moving the Hare Krishnas to a quieter place.

  Scarlett
, standing under the wooden struts of the Living Christmas Tree, looked up and saw Farrie move forward, answering Mr. Ravenwood’s hoarse call.

  At the same time, Buck was at the back of the crowd. “Brrraarckkk, Sheriff?” the radio in his hand said. “Are you there?” But Buck stood unmoving, not answering, as the flashlight “candles” on the tree came on. The structure rapidly blossomed with lights, gently veiled in the snow, illuminating “Bells” and the “Angels.” Who had their eyes on Cyrus Ravenwood, waiting for their cues.

  A murmuring silence settled over the crowd except for a few small babies wailing and the subdued noises from the fire rescue team hauling a precautionary stretcher up into the oak tree.

  Gradually the snowy night, the silence of the mountains around them settled on the crowd as the words of the last Christmas song began. Farrie Scraggs’s big, unchildlike voice drifted out from the top of the tree.

  “I heard the bells on Christmas Day,

  Their old familiar carols play,

  And wild and sweet, the words repeat—”

  Fifty-odd voices on the tree joined in: “Of peace on earth, Goodwill to men!”

  During the chorus Buck managed to catch Kevin Black Badger’s eye and signal that he wanted him. His deputy started through the crowd. Farrie took the solo again:

  “And in despair, I bowed my head

  There is no peace on earth, I said,

  For hate is strong, and mocks the song—”

  Now some in the crowd were singing. “Of peace on earth, Goodwill to men!”

  Scarlett was helping Byron Turnipseed haul Devil Anse to his feet when Buck and Kevin Black Badger appeared.

  “That’s about it,” Buck whispered, as the deputy took the shotgun from the CID man’s hands and marched Ancil Scraggs away. Byron Turnipseed was beaming behind his glasses.

  “Wonderful operation, Sheriff,” he said, pumping Buck’s hand. “You set a bang-up example up here! I’m going to write this up, not just for state law-enforcement publications, but national, too.”