Farrie made a sound of sheer awe.
“And you sing,” Judy added, “Christmas carols. The whole tree is singing and people drive by and see that.”
Scarlett looked at her. “Singing?”
“It’s a sort of Christmas concert. There are a lot of people that are still mad about the Best Baby Jesus contest, though.” Her face brightened as she pulled back inside. “You’re going to stay here with the sheriff until after Christmas, aren’t you?”
Scarlett hesitated, aware that Farrie was looking at her pleadingly. “Well,” she said slowly, “unless something changes.”
“Oh, I don’t think anything’s going to change, according to what my mother said. That means you can volunteer for the Living Christmas Tree. All you need to do is stand there and sing.” Judy Heamstead saw the look on Scarlett’s face. “You can sing, can’t you?”
Scarlett was trying to think of something to say.
“Yeah,” she said finally. She was feeling like she was throwing away the last chance they had, and helpless to do anything about it. “
Eight
“Tripped over the dog, did you?” Dr. Halliwell asked. “I bet that’s the first time old Devil Anse got away because a lawman fell over a pet. How’re you with cats?”
“Doc, look,” Buck began.
“That’s a pretty interesting animal.” The doctor looked over his glasses at Demon’s vast length stretched out on his office carpet, her paws crossed over her muzzle. “I’ve never seen one quite like it. ‘Course, as you know, Yorkshire terriers are my passion, the wife’s, too. However, I saw a Neopolitan mastiff one year at the Atlanta Dog Show,” he said, looking reminiscent. “Biggest damned thing I ever did -”
“Doc,” Buck interrupted forcefully, “if you like dogs you can have this thing.” He struggled to his feet, favoring his swollen right arm and hand. “In fact, the way things stand right now, I’ll do pretty nearly anything to get rid of it. It’s developed some sort of obsession about sticking close to me – you won’t believe this but it even follows me into the men’s room and stands there, watching. It’s driving me nuts!”
“Sit back and calm down,” the doctor told him. He reached over and took Buck’s nose between thumb and forefinger and moved it slightly. “I feel a little play in the cartilage there. Want me to stabilize that nose with an adhesive strip?”
Buck pulled back quickly. “Hell no, I don’t need my nose taped up! I’m not exactly looking like a role model for the department as it is.”
Dr. Halliwell raised his eyebrows. “Have it your way. But we’re not fooling around here, Buck. Just because I popped that shoulder back in the socket doesn’t mean you don’t have to take care of it. I want you to keep the arm in a sling for the next ten days.” At Sheriff Grissom’s audible groan he went on: “Except, of course, you can take it off when you go to bed.”
“I can’t keep my arm in a sling,” Buck protested, “not for ten days! Look at me. A banged-up nose, my right arm useless, and I’m busier’n hell this time of the year what with hijackers and the crazy business about no Christmas pageant on the courthouse lawn -”
“If you’d wanted a pet,” the doctor interrupted, “I could have fixed you up with a nice Yorkie male pup. Six weeks old, papers, and all shots. My wife’s little bitch just had a fine litter.”
“Pet?” Buck turned to glare at the dog on the office carpet. “That thing’s no damned pet. It acts like it’s going to tear your throat out if you try to make it do something it doesn’t want to do.”
At the sound of Buck’s voice, Demon lifted her head, wagged her tail, and gave a soft, loving moan.
“Looks pretty friendly to me.” The doctor leaned over and slipped a blue and white canvas sling over Buck’s head. “Don’t turn down a trusting animal’s love,” he advised as he guided Buck’s hand through the opening. “Believe me, the wholehearted devotion of a dog is one of the few genuine gifts a man gets in this corrupt and unhappy world. Nelly and I wouldn’t give a million dollars for our family of Yorkies.”
Buck lurched to his feet. As he did so, Demon got up from the floor and with its huge tail wagging swept a stack of medical magazines from the doctor’s desk.
“You see what I mean?” Buck reached for his wide-brimmed sheriff’s hat with his left hand. “It eats my lunch, I can’t get a sandwich halfway to my mouth before it gulps it down, Saran Wrap and all. Then it leans all over me when I’m trying to drive, and if I try to shove it out of the Blazer it acts like it’s going to take my hand off.” He twisted his elbow unhappily, looking down at the sling. “I don’t know if I can take this for ten days,” he said, turning to go. “I’ve got to take it off sometime. This is my gun arm.”
“Suit yourself, boy,” Dr. Halliwell called after him. “But that shoulder’s not going to get better unless you give it a rest.”
Giving it a rest, Buck found as he made his way out to the clinic parking lot, was easier said than done. And getting into the Blazer with only one hand was a challenge. Once inside the dog hunkered up next to him and rested her big head on his right shoulder, making Buck yelp in sudden pain. The fact that he was backing out as this happened, the steering wheel held only by his usable hand, made the Blazer veer in the same direction. With the result that the vehicle narrowly missed scraping the length of Dr. Halliwell’s Fleetwood Cadillac parked next to it.
Buck sat muttering under his breath, not only from the sharp twinge in his shoulder, but from the disaster that had almost overtaken him. Dr. Jerry Halliwell loved his brand-new 1994 Fleetwood Caddie almost as much as he loved his Yorkies.
Buck slipped his arm out of the blue and white canvas, gritting his teeth against the pain. He had thought to experiment with driving without the sling, but he’d promptly put it back on when he saw his hand, his fingers the color of smoked sausages.
It was going to be some holiday.
“Sit down over
It was beginning to rain as they took the highway back to town, another sleety assault from the mountains to the north that made the road treacherous, especially driving with one hand. Buck had to hook his right elbow against the steering wheel to help turn it.
Both sides of the road were lined with the brightly colored local product: handmade chenille bedspreads now flapping in the wind. Making chenille bedcoverings had been a cottage industry for decades in the Georgia mountains. Most of the families along State Road 12 made money in the summer and fall when the tourists were around. Now it looked as though they were trying for some Christmas money.
In spite of bad weather, the clotheslines were hung with spreads with designs of peacocks, Florida flamingos and palm trees, and in honor of the season, outsized chenille Santa Clauses.
The Last Supper bedspread, Buck was relieved to see, was not as popular as it once had been. The local God-fearing mountain people had never seen anything objectionable in rendering Jesus and his disciples for sale in cotton tufts in primary colors. But the thought of actually sleeping under one of the Last Supper bedspreads, Buck had always felt, was more than a little daunting.
The radio suddenly came on. “Sheriff,” the county police dispatcher said, “can you pick up?”
Buck propped his elbow on the steering wheel to hold it and lifted the receiver. “Yeah, George.”
“Do you,” the dispatcher wanted to know, “care to answer a call from the Committee for the Real Meaning of Christmas? The chairman, Junior Whitford, has been calling you again about the music. He says the committee ain’t approving ‘Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town’ for the Living Christmas Tree to sing as it celebrates a pagan ritual.”
