“Of course not.”
“And you do know I’ll always back you up?”
I pulled away from him and propped myself up on one elbow so that I could look him in the eye. “Listen to me, Dwight Bryant. Cal is no Matt or Jason Wentworth and you are certainly no Victor Wentworth, okay? He may answer me back once in a while, but it’s no more disrespectful than when he answers you back. It’s totally normal and I don’t take it any more personally than you take it when I bitch at you.”
He smiled. “You don’t bitch at me.”
“Yes I do,” I told him. “You just don’t notice.”
Next morning, I awoke at dawn to blue skies and a rising temperature. As we feared, some of the new little trees were bent double and pine limbs at the edge of the woods were touching the ground. But the icicles hanging from the eaves of the house were melting fast, and according to the radio, our forecast was for temperatures in the high fifties by Christmas Day.
I put the coffee on, then drove Dwight’s truck down to the mailbox for the newspaper. I should have worn sunglasses. Once the sun hit all that ice, it was eye-dazzling. A warm west wind was blowing and every gust that hit the trees sent a shower of ice tinkling down like slivers of broken crystal. I found myself trying to remember a Navaho chant I once read in a Tony Hillerman book:
Yes!
* * *
Dwight was dressed for work and pouring himself a mug of coffee when I got back, and he poured one for me. “Happy anniversary,” he said. “What’s it like out there?”
“Glorious! Put your jacket on and grab your sunglasses and let’s go for a quick walk.”
“I really need to get moving,” he said, but he followed me outside anyhow.
We keep a selection of hiking sticks propped in a corner between the porch and the house outside, and we each took one to help us keep our footing on the ice. The coffee was strong and hot and steam rose from our mugs as we walked down the drive, following the ruts I’d broken in the ice with the truck. As I might have predicted, Dwight wanted to tap his stick against the young crepe myrtles and dogwoods, and with each gentle blow, so much ice fell that the trees slowly began to right themselves.
Before we’d gone very far, we heard Cal call, “Hey, wait for me!”
He had put boots and a jacket on over his pajamas. With Bandit racing back and forth between us, he grabbed a hiking stick and soon caught up with us. Whacking the trees and watching the ice shower down delighted him.
When we circled back around the house toward the pond, Cal ran along the side of the garage and used his stick to knock down a long line of icicles. At one point, he slipped, fell into a spirea bush, and spooked a rabbit none of us realized was there. Bandit let out an excited yelp and immediately streaked after it. The rabbit beat him to the woods and both animals disappeared into the underbrush.
The pond was frozen all around the edges, but the pier had begun to absorb the sun’s heat and a flip of a stick was enough to send long sheets of ice off the boards and into the water.
Eventually, Dwight looked at his watch and reluctantly turned back to the house.
“Yeah, me, too,” I said.
“Awwww.” Cal looked at us wistfully. “I wish y’all didn’t have to go to work.”
“Sorry, buddy,” Dwight said and whistled for Bandit.
The dog came, but he was dragging his heels, too. I knew how he felt. I wasn’t ready to go get in my crate either.
An hour later, car keys in hand, I was taking my lunch salad out of the refrigerator when the phone rang.
“Deborah?”
“Barbara?” We talk on the phone so seldom, I almost didn’t recognize her voice.
“Oh, good,” she said. “I was afraid you’d already gone, too.”
“Cal and I were just about to walk out the door,” I told her. “What’s up?”
“Has Dwight left for work yet?”
“About forty minutes ago.”
I heard a disappointed sigh. “Is there something I can do?”
“I hate to ask you,” she began, and from the tone of her voice I knew she really did hate having to ask me whatever it was, “but Zach’s already at work and Emma and Lee have gone Christmas shopping in Raleigh. I went out to start my car just now and it won’t turn over, so I’m wondering if I could ride with you to Dobbs this morning.”
“Certainly, but don’t you want to let’s see if we can jump-start it?”
“You know how to do that?”
“Sure,” I said, amused by the surprise in her voice. I mean, what’s so complicated about attaching battery cables?
“That’s all right. I’ll let Zach do it when he comes home. The thing is, I have a meeting with some of the county commissioners in less than an hour and I just can’t take the time to worry with this car.”
