One Christmas Knight

near anybody that talks with a Southern accent, right?” He shook his head, making a “Shame on you” sound with his mouth. “That’s prejudice, you know that? You Northerners think anybody talks with a Southern accent has got to be ignorant, otherwise we’d a’ learned to talk ‘right.’”

“I do not,” said Mirabella stiffly. But she’d already begun to perk up, stimulated by the promise of a good argument, by which was about anything that didn’t touch her on a personal level.

“Sure you do. Take ‘ain’t.’ You Northerners think sayin’ ’ain‘t’ is bad grammar, but I’ll tell you somethin’ I bet you didn’t know. ’Ain‘t’ was considered perfectly fine grammar in Shakespeare’s time. That’s right. That’s the thing about Southern grammar-you Northeners might think it’s bad grammar, but that’s not necessarily true, see? What it is, it’s just Southern, is all.”

Mirabella could never, but never pass up a chance to be right. So she couldn’t resist reminding him, “You don’t say ain’t.”

Jimmy Joe let her see his grin before he shifted gears and turned to face the front again. “Yeah, but that’s because my mama was a schoolteacher. She’d skin me alive if I ever did.”

“Aha!”

“Aha, nothin’. She never did let me take the Lord’s name in vain, either, and lots of educated folks do that- includin’ Northerners.”

“Including me,” she had to admit.

Jimmy Joe was plainly on a roll. “You want to know what’s ignorant?” he said, smacking the steering wheel with an open palm. “I’ll tell you what, you get these people tryin’ to talk like Southerners, sayin’ ‘y’all’ when they’re only talkin’ to one person-now that’s ignorant.”

Mirabella suddenly realized that she was smiling. And that she wasn’t afraid anymore. And that she no longer knew whether this discussion had a point to be made, or cared whether she won or lost it. It was just…fun. Fun to be with him. Fun to listen to him. Arguing with him was less a matter of winning than stoking a fire, just so she could bask in the stimulating warmth of his voice. It was a totally new experience for her, and one that for the moment, at least, seemed to have taken her mind completely off the other new experience she was caught up in.

“Hey-I’ll tell you what a redneck is, if you want me to.” Jimmy Joe’s accent was suddenly thick as molasses. He.looked back at her and she saw that although his face was perfectly straight, his eyes were liquid with laughter. She held her breath, keeping back her own.

“Now, you know, what rednecks enjoy doin’ more’n anything in this world is to lay around in the woods amongst a bunch a’ hounddawgs, old washin’ machines and cars that don’t run, and drink Red Dog beer and shoot at things… occasionally one another.”

Mirabella let out a snort of laughter. Jimmy Joe held up a finger, paused as if to give it some thought, then continued in a nasal singsong. “Then, one step up from there you got yer good ol’ boys. Now a good ol’ boy reveres his dogs. In his esteem, his dog ranks above his wife and kids, but probably somewheres below a good huntin’ rifle and his pickup truck, which he likes to decorate with replicas of the Confederate battle flag. Don’t laugh-” Mirabella, who was trying not to wet herself more than she already was, made a strangled sound. “Miss Marybell, I swear to you-” he solemnly made a crisscross on his chest and held up his right hand in a “Scout’s honor” sign “-I am not a redneck. Never in my life have I used an old tire for a planter or called anybody ’bubba’-oh, well, except for Bubba Johnson back in junior high school, but you can’t hardly count that, bein’s how Bubba was his given name.”

I know what he’s doing, she thought. Somehow, in spite of her desperate snorts and giggles, he must know about the quivery, achy, tear-filled reservoir inside her that was ready to overflow without warning. And obviously he was no more eager than she was to have that happen-although whether it was a matter of gallantry on his part, or whether like most men he was simply chickenhearted when it came to a woman’s tears, she couldn’t decide.

Either way, she was grateful to him. Grateful for the arguing and the laughter, grateful for the distraction, for the opportunity to recover some of the dignity she’d left back in that snowdrift. Grateful for the chance to forget, for a little while at least, what lay ahead of her, and how grave her situation was. It wasn’t easy to do under the circumstances, but since he seemed to be trying so hard to help her, she did her best.

“Speaking of given names,” she said after the laughter had run its course, making a poor job of smothering a yawn as she curled on her side on the sleeper’s wide bed and snuggled the quilt around her-discovering that through the curtain of her lashes the back of his head and neck looked surprisingly mature, the spread of his shoulders broad and powerful. “Jimmy Joe-is that really yours? Or is it a nickname, like…short for James Joseph?”

His chuckle seemed to stroke her auditory nerves, soothing as a caress. “Just Jimmy Joe-that’s it.”

“Huh. Nobody ever calls you Jim?”

“Jim was my daddy’s name. His daddy was James, and I think the Joseph came from another granddaddy-that’d be Joe Doyle. To avoid confusion, I got Jimmy Joe. Does beat the heck out of Junior. Hey,” he said with another of those caressing chuckles, “it was good enough for the president of the United States.”

She murmured, “Jimmy just seems-” Right. That came to her balanced on the edge of sleep, and she felt an odd little flare of surprise. And then a flutter near her heart.

“Hey, you know, you can call me anything you want to.” For some reason his voice had grown husky. “Shoot, call me Jim if you want to.”

She smiled and murmured, “Too late-I’ve gotten used to Jimmy Joe, now.” She would have a hard time calling him anything else. Jimmy Joe. What a sweet, gentle sound…

“How ’bout Mirabella? How’d you ever get a name like that? Especially with a last name like-”

“Waskowitz? Yeah, I know-awful, isn’t it? My dad’s family was Polish-I think they shortened the name somewhere along the line. My mom-she was a teacher, too, by the way-she’s just kind of this unique person-part English, part Irish, but I think she picked our names based on whatever her kick happened to be at the time. My sisters are Sommer and Eve. Don’t ask me how I got Mirabella.” She yawned unbashedly. “I looked it up one time. It means-”

The word evaporated in a puff of air that blew every last vestige of sleep fog from her brain and left her senses blasted and cringing. The nagging ache in her back, which up to now she’d been able to ignore, sort of like a radio turned down low, had suddenly intensified as if someone had given the volume knob marked Pain a wrenching twist to the right.

“Mirabella…that’s a mouthful. Everybody always call you that? Your family… friends?”

When he didn’t get an answer, the first thing Jimmy Joe thought was maybe she’d finally dozed off. He wasn’t sure what made him look back, but when he did he could see that even though she had her eyes shut, she definitely wasn’t sleeping.

“Focus,” he barked, which was the first thing that popped into his head as his heart gave another one of those bad leaps, banging against the wall of his chest. “Breathe.”

Damnation, he thought. Damn. He could hear her begin to whimper, making a sound like a hurt puppy that had to be about the worst thing he’d ever heard in his life.

He just did remember to check his watch. “Nine minutes,” he yelled. Was that a good thing? He wasn’t sure, but he thought it must be good, because didn’t the pains have to be a whole lot closer together before things really got serious? Maybe they had more time than he’d thought. Maybe the road would improve. What he ought to do was get back on the radio again and find out what was going on up ahead. Maybe they would make it to Amarillo, after all.

But then, he thought, what if they didn’t? It was almost dark now. At the rate they were going, it was still a good many hours to Amarillo. And then, what if somebody jackknifed and blocked the road? Meanwhile, Mirabella was back there all by herself, having those pains, which were only going to get worse. She needed somebody to be with her; somebody to make her do those breathing things she was supposed to do. Dammit, he couldn’t very well help her and drive at the same time!

What should he do? If he was going to help her, he was going to have to pull off somewhere. But if he did that… Everything inside him went cold and quiet. Because he knew that if he did get off, he wasn’t going to get back on again. He would be committed. Unless by some miracle help did arrive in time, whatever happened, it was going to be just him and Mirabella. Him, Mirabella, and a baby that was bound and determined to show up four weeks ahead of schedule.