Moonlight and Mistletoe Read online

  “Mother, I’m not three years old, I know her number.” The first unpleasant shock was waning. Buck was beginning to feel bad about the way he had reacted to what was, after all, a family emergency. His mother was doing the right thing, dropping everything to fly off to Chicago to be with his sister.

  On the other hand, he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do for the next nine or ten days. His stomach clenched just thinking about it.

  “Let me know how Sheila is,” he said, as he closed the Buick’s door.

  “James,” his mother corrected mechanically. She suddenly looked past him and her eyes widened. Scarlett O’Hara had climbed over the driver’s seat and out of the Blazer. A gust of wind took her skimpy skirt, whipping it about incredible bare legs. She clutched the old purple sweater tight about her upper body. “Oh my,” Buck’s mother said.

  Buck turned. “Yes, that’s what I wanted to tell—”

  It was too late. Camilla had already put the Buick in gear. His mother blew a kiss from the open window as the car moved forward.

  The big car rolled down the driveway and turned into the mountain road. Buck heard footsteps behind him.

  “Was that your mother?” Scarlett Scraggs wanted to know. “You don’t look much like her.”

  Buck turned. She stood with her arms wrapped around her body, curls whipping in the wind like a dark flag. Her eyes were rimmed with thick, sooty lashes, a pouty lip lifted over white teeth. Perfect teeth, he saw. When she’d probably never seen a dentist in her whole life.

  “I look like my dad,” he heard himself say.

  He had just realized he wasn’t going to wait for the other Scraggs sister to show up, he was going to have to do something. He could call neighboring county government services, if their offices were still open, and see if he could find a place for the Scraggs females to stay the night. Even down in Gainesville, if that was all he could get.

  “Come on, I’ve got to get to the telephone,” he started to say, when something came through the snow-filled air and hit him hard on one shoulder.

  Buck staggered. There was a snuffling, horrible noise that seemed to conjure up the soundtrack of all the teen slasher movies he’d ever seen. A snarling, slavering force bore him to earth.

  He fell flat on his face in the driveway and hit his nose and mouth. He could feel the first trickle of blood. Buck had only breath enough for a strangled half-shout. Whatever it was, it was strong enough to hold him down so that he could hardly move. Hot breath roared in his ear.

  “Don’t do it!” someone was screaming. “Demon, get off!”

  With an effort, Buck pried himself to his elbows while human hands yanked at his hair, pulling his head back.

  “Don’t move,” another voice was yelling. “She won’t hurt you ifn you just lie still!”

  A face came into view. It was the strangest face Buck had ever seen, all huge eyes and wild hair, the head perched on a neck like a skeletal stalk. He managed to reach under him and drag his gun from the holster.

  As he did so, the apparition leaned down and put her face next to his and yelled, “Scarlett, do something! He’s gonna shoot my dog!”

  Four

  SOME UNSEEN HAND PRIED THE NIGHTMARE thing from Buck’s back. He rolled over and sprang to his feet, gun held out in both hands and aimed at, he found, a strange, stick-thin, goblin child about ten years old wearing a ragged football jacket. She promptly flung herself on Scarlett Scraggs.

  “Oh, lordee,” the ragged child sobbed, “we just nearly didn’t find you, Scarlett! Me’n Demon was watching the police station, and when we saw you get in that Blazer I knew we was goners!” She wrapped her arms around Scarlett’s waist and laid her frizzy head against her breast. “How was anybody gonna find their way following a car up this ole mountain, even with a good tracker like Demon?”

  Carefully, Buck turned to cover the other target, a giant black dog that now sat with its tongue lolling out, regarding him interestedly. Buck immediately recognized the animal as the force that had sprung on him and borne him to the ground a few moments earlier.

  The second thing he saw was that blood from his nose was now pouring steadily down the front of his uniform to mix with mud, snow, and a trace of engine oil from the drive. He removed one hand from his police special .38 long enough to tentatively wipe his nose. A fresh flood of red showed he’d only made it worse.

  Scarlett Scraggs was talking to the ragged child. “Well, you made it, honey, you don’t have to cry,” she was saying in a surprisingly gentle voice. “But you shouldn’t have run off that way when we had that fight with that old witch. You gotta stick close, Farrie, or I’m going to lose you and Demon. Then we’ll never get to Atlanta.”

  Farrie.

  This, then, was the missing little sister. Buck put his gun back in his holster and straightened up.

  “I’m just so glad Demon is such a good tracker,” the child sobbed. “She can find anybody. But we had to stop and look and look and look down all the streets and roads, and I was so scared—I thought we’d never find you!” She twisted her head to look at Buck. “He isn’t going to shoot Demon, is he?” She clutched Scarlett anxiously. “Demon just jumped on him because he’s po-lice. Like the other one. Demon wasn’t going to hurt him!”

  Buck grimly regarded the dog, now lying quietly with its nose between its massive paws. “If that thig attacks me again, ids going to be the last time.” He had trouble talking because his nose was bleeding freely and he had to cover it with one hand. “Cob on, bode of you. I need to teledphone.”

  Scarlett smoothed the child’s snow-flecked hair back from her face. “Farrie, you’ve been out in the cold for hours,” she clucked. “I bet you’re gonna get sick.”

  Her sister clung to her, staring at Buck. “Why are we going inside his house?” she wanted to know. “What’s he going to do with us?”

  “Yeds, house,” Buck ordered, pointing to it. “Got to call off APB now thad your sidster showed up.”

  “Nothing,” Scarlett said to the child, “he’s not going to do anything. We’re supposed to be staying here with his mother.” She bent to take the dog by the collar. “Only his mother left.”

  Buck stepped in between. “That thig’s not going in he house. It stayds outside.”

  At his tone the huge dog rose to its feet, the hair on its back standing up in an unfriendly manner. Buck’s scowl had sent Farrah Fawcett Scraggs scuttling to hide behind Scarlett. “What’s wrog with her?” he demanded. “Ids she hurt?”

  The look from Scarlett’s black eyes was withering. “There’s nothing wrong with my little sister!” She took the child’s hand and started for the house.

  “Somethig’s wrog,” Buck insisted, following. “She limps. She been hurt?”

  “She doesn’t limp!” Scarlett was pulling her sister along rather roughly. “There’s nothing wrong with Farrie. She only limps when she forgets!”

  “Whed she forgets?” Buck opened the front door. A rush of wonderfully warm air reached out to them. “She only limps whed she forgets?”

  Scarlett pushed past him into the hallway. “Oh, it’s so warm,” she gasped. “We nearabout froze out there!”

  The child squeezed past him, the dog in tow.

  “Dammid!” Buck snatched at the animal with his free hand but missed.

  At that moment Buck knew he was going to have to do something about his injured nose and never mind the Scraggs sisters; they were in the house and safe enough for the time being. But he was a bloody mess.

  He started for the kitchen to search for paper towels to stanch his nosebleed. While there, he stopped long enough to ring up a few numbers in the hope of finding the Scraggs sisters a place for the night. The neighboring county’s juvenile office was closed for the day, but he was able to get the Hardee County sheriff on his mobile telephone.

  “Buck, you’re not pulling my leg, are you?” the Hardee sheriff boomed. “Scraggs? Like some of Devil Anse’s crowd? Hey, this is Christmas co
ming up, not Halloween! You want to get my jail dynamited? Our social worker run out of town? Call me back when you’ve sobered up, boy!”

  Buck was too tired to think of a reply. And the Hardee sheriff had a point. He thanked him and hung up. The prospects of placing the Scraggses somewhere, at least for the night, were growing dim.

  Buck came out of the kitchen with a roll of paper towels under his arm. The front hallway was empty, the house suspiciously quiet. Where the devil had they gone to? he wondered.

  The door to the dining room was open. He thought he could hear voices: Scarlett O’Hara’s husky contralto, the gnomish child’s squeaky rasp.

  “Oh, Scarlett, it’s a tree!” As he grew closer he knew this was the little sister. “Isn’t this the most beautiful house you ever saw? And a real Christmas tree, to go with this real house!”

  There were curious rustling noises. “His mother went off and left all these things around,” he heard the other one say. “See, all over the floor.”

  Buck moved into the doorway.

  Like many houses built in the nineteenth century the dining room and parlor were connected by paneled doors, now open to make one big room—a beautiful room with high ceilings, Victorian plasterwork, and parquet floors covered with reproductions of nineteenth-century Brussels carpet.

  The house represented Buck’s mother’s years of hard work and decorating skill. Just as it did the love in his father’s original gift of it to her. The furniture was Victorian reproductions, as were the gilded Venetian mirrors, the green velvet draperies now looped with fancy red and gold Christmas garlands.

  Buck could see Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs was right. Alicia Grissom had dropped everything in her hurry to leave for Chicago. The rooms were strewn with Christmas ornament boxes, partly wrapped gift packages, and ropes of tree tinsel. In the parlor area the blue spruce Christmas tree that Buck had put up towered over everything, half-finished.

  The two girls had their backs to him, bent over the boxes. Buck was suddenly aware that Scarlett wore a sweater with holes in it over a faded dress and was bare-legged, her feet in rubber Japanese sandals, purple with cold. The child had on a frayed magenta football jacket over either a long shirt or a very short dress, it was difficult to tell, and baggy lime-colored tights with snow-stained sneakers.

  Buck winced. This was not just the signs of poverty; the southern Appalachians were full of people who had been poor for generations. This was something worse.

  The child straightened up, a tree ornament in her hand. “When we get to Atlanta,” she said in a dreamy voice, “we’re going to have to work hard and make enough money to find a house like this to live in.” She lurched her way to the tree and fastened the ornament on it.

  “Well, first I gotta get a job.” Scarlett’s voice was less hopeful. “I don’t know how to do much, and I missed my high school diploma.”

  “Oh, you’re going to get a good job, Scarlett,” the child told her, “because you’re so smart. Even ole Devil Anse Grandpa says that. And you’ll make enough money and we’ll be able to buy a car, and go travelin’.”

  Scarlett watched her sister as she dug another ornament out of the box and fixed it to the tree.

  “First we got to get there,” she said softly. “We didn’t do so good today when we missed the bus because your dog was trying to kill that old woman’s cat. It hasn’t done you a bit of good, either, being out in the cold. Come here, Farrie.” She pulled the child to her and laid her hand on her forehead. “You’re turning red. I just know you’re gonna get sick.”

  Buck stepped into the room. “What do you mean, she’s going to be sick?” The little Scraggs was shivering all over, even Buck could see that. “Does she get sick often?”

  Scarlett Scraggs turned to him, her arm protectively around the child. “She’s been out in the cold, that’s all.” She hesitated, then set her jaw. “I’ve got to put her to bed somewhere. You don’t have to do us a favor. We can put up most anywhere.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘anywhere.’“ Buck frowned down at Farrah Fawcett Scraggs. He thought of pneumonia. He wouldn’t put it past her; the kid was like a skeleton, anyway. “My sister’s old room,” he said hurriedly. “Let’s go.”

  Buck dropped the paper towels. Before she could run from him he seized the littler Scraggs and lifted her in his arms. He was startled at how weightless she was, even with the soggy football jacket, which gave out a sour odor.

  “Upstairs,” Buck said tersely. “Turn right.”

  He argued with himself about calling a doctor. Not Dr. Henson who served the county jail, that was too complicated because other agencies were involved, like Susan Huddleston’s. Yet if he called his own family physician Buck had a good idea of the explaining he would have to do.

  Under his breath he groaned.

  As he mounted the stairs with Farrah Fawcett Scraggs in his arms, Scarlett trailing behind, Buck was struck with another thought. It was six o’clock. Dinnertime. No matter how soon or late the doctor got there, or even if he decided to wait to see what happened before calling one, there was one thing certain.

  “Oh hell,” Buck muttered, “we’ve got to eat. Now it looks like I’m going to have to cook.”

  Five

  “SCARLETT, TELL ME ABOUT WHEN I WAS A baby.” Farrie moved the paper plates with the remains of the pizza and baked beans they’d had for dinner to the other side of the bed. “Oh, ain’t this the most beautiful room?” she breathed. “Did you hear the sheriff say it used to belong to his sister before she got married?” She suddenly jerked up in the bed, excited. “Just think about living here all the time in this old house, and sleeping in this bed with posts all around it and curtains hung over the top!”

  “It’s called a tester.” Scarlett got up, collected their plates, and carried them to a safe place on the Victorian bowfront bureau. “You can buy them at K Mart.”

  Farrie shook her head. “This didn’t come from K Mart. And the bathroom’s got a window where you can sit in the bathtub and look out and see trees like there wasn’t nobody else in the world to see you sitting there buck naked except for a whole tub full of good-smelling bubbles!”

  “Anybody else,” Scarlett said, frowning. “We said when we left Catfish Holler we was—were — going to try to talk right, like people on television, remember? And not like a Scraggs.”

  “Anybody, then.” Farrie closed her eyes, blissful. “Oh Scarlett, wouldn’t you like to be lucky enough to live in a house like this?”

  Scarlett sat down on the side of the bed and studied her little sister. Farrie’s freshly shampooed hair stood out around her hair in a wiry bush. She was not a pretty girl, Scarlett always told herself, but Farrie had her own sort of looks. It was true her cheekbones stuck out and her jaw was a little crooked, but she had big, lively eyes that lit up her face. And that grin, Scarlett thought. When Farrie was happy, no one could resist that pixie grin.

  Still, in the last few years Scarlett had begun to wonder if her sister would have a chance when she grew up to find someone who would see something special in her. And want to love her, and marry her. Scarlett worried a lot about it. The Scraggses didn’t have much luck that way. And Farrie had even less.

  She could see Farrie’s cheeks were flushed as though she had a fever. It was due, probably, to what they’d been through, a lot for someone like Farrie, who’d been raised in a broken-down trailer on the side of a mountain in the wildest part of the Blue Ridge. From her look she was so wound up she probably wouldn’t go to sleep until after midnight.

  “Yeah, it’s a nice house,” Scarlett agreed. She pulled the covers up to her sister’s neck and patted them in place. “I thought you wanted me to tell you the story about when you were a baby.”

  The little girl nodded quickly, eyes shining. Scarlett had been telling this story ever since Farrie had been old enough to listen, but she never seemed to tire of it.

  “Well,” Scarlett began, “I never had a doll of my own when I
was your age.” She was thinking that she was so tired herself she could hardly hold her eyes open. In a minute she was going to crawl into that big, soft bed beside Farrie and get some sleep. “No, I forgot, I had a doll once.” She’d pretended not to remember; the story always went this way. And Farrie nodded as she always did. “I was about your age when the Baptists over at Toccoa sent a Sunday-school bus around the mountain hollers at Christmastime for kids who didn’t—”

  She paused, waiting. Farrie said, “Didn’t have any Christmas. Like us.”

  “That’s right. She was a real nice doll.” Scarlett’s voice grew wistful. “She had eyes that would open and close and real eyelashes. You never saw a doll like that one, it was so pretty. They gave me a scarf and mittens somebody had made, and a bag of candy, too. Only that year Bubba Scraggs, he was your daddy’s brother, he took my Baptist church doll almost as soon as I got home and broke it when he was stinking drunk. I hadn’t had it long at all. So when Mamma brought you back from the hospital I thought you looked like my doll. You was just about the same size.”

  “I wasn’t pretty,” Farrie put in. “Not like your doll.”

  Scarlett looked thoughtful, which was part of the game. “Well, no, not at first. You was just a little scrunched-up bundle in a blanket they left laying there on the bed because you were sickly. First thing you know Mamma said she couldn’t stand it no more, she was tired of the Scraggses, and she upped and went off with a guitar player from Nashville.”

  “And I cried.” Farrie was smiling. “I was a puny baby.”

  Scarlett patted her kneecap under the bedspread. “Yes, honey, you cried day and night, I just hated to hear it. But I didn’t give up on you.”

  Never in all the years since then had Scarlett told Farrie the truth. That the reason their mother had run off was that she didn’t want the baby the doctors had said might not live. The little bundle that lay on the bed and cried for hours had skin a dark slate color and it aimlessly jerked its matchstick arms and legs in a way that even Scarlett could see wasn’t normal.