Moonlight and Mistletoe

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.

“After a while I just picked you up and washed you,” Scarlett went on, “and carried you around like a real dollbaby. Nobody said anything, I guess they were just glad you stopped crying. I cleaned out the baby bottles and fed you canned milk and corn syrup like they told Mamma to do in the hospital. And I thought you were the best little doll anybody ever had. You were my very own.”

No matter what happened Scarlett would never tell Farrie of that terrible night when Devil Anse and one of her uncles had come to take the baby, without even saying what they were going to do with it. “It won’t live much longer,” her grandpa had said. “You’re just wasting your time with it, girl.”

Farrie said, “You took care of me and you weren’t much older than me.”

“That’s right, I was about nine.” Scarlett had fought like a tiger when her grandpa and her uncle tried to take the baby away, and finally they’d let it be. “Going to die, anyway,” was what Devil Anse had said.

Thinking of it made Scarlett uneasy. “Look, it’s all well and good for the sheriff to put us up like this,” she said, “but don’t forget we gotta get out of here. Devil Anse is going to find us sooner or later.”

If her grandpa did what he said he would, Farrie would be left to fend for herself in Catfish Hollow. And Scarlett knew how long that would last. They would let Farrie get sick and die, as her grandpa had meant for her to do when she was a baby.

“He’s not going to catch us, Scarlett!” Farrie hauled herself up in bed, eyes blazing. “Listen, we don’t have to go anywheres. We just got the best Christmas present anybody ever had in the whole world, only we just didn’t see it!”

Scarlett made a warning cluck against her teeth. “Farrie, for goodness’ sake, you’re gonna be sick if you don’t slide down in that bed and close your eyes. Go to sleep – I don’t want to be up all night with you, I’m tired and need some rest myself.”

But Farrie seized the sleeve of her sweater in both hands. “Scarlett, we could live right here in this house. Right here in Nancyville. We wouldn’t have to go to a far-off place like Atlanta!”

Scarlett pried her hand away. She brushed the sticky pizza crumbs off her front and stood up. “Don’t talk like that, Farrie. We can’t stay here, this house belongs to the sheriff.”

Her sister got to her knees in the middle of the bed. “Don’t you see it, Scarlett?” she shrilled. “The sheriff’s house is the last place Devil Anse will come looking for us. And if he does – why you know that big tough sheriff won’t let him do anything. No sirree! Scarlett, this here place is safer than Atlanta!”

Scarlett leaned over and pushed her sister back down against the pillows. “Farrie, I swear, I’m getting worried. I don’t think you’ve got that much fever, but you’re talking out of your head.”

“No I’m not! We can have this house and the sheriff can live here, too. All you got to do is marry him!”

“What?”

Scarlett straightened up to stare at her.

“Yes!” Farrie jerked her head up and down violently. “Scarlett, he’s good-looking,” she pleaded, “it wouldn’t be so hard to do. Not like the ones that are always pestering you around Grandpa’s place. And he’s the sheriff, you can’t get no safer than that. Besides, I think he likes you – he’s always looking at you when he thinks you don’t know it.”

“Good Lord.” Scarlett sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed. “When did you start thinking like this?”

Farrie looked at her solemnly. “Didn’t you say if we ever wanted to live like other people we had to run away from Catfish Holler? That if we stayed up there with Devil Anse and the rest we’d end up no better than they was – were? Well, I guess it was while I was taking a bath in that bathroom where you can look out into the woods, and thinking about that big room downstairs with the Christmas tree in it that it came to me. And the way I feel now in this big beautiful bed, all warm with the curtains hanging over me, just like a princess. All of a sudden I had this idea that you’n me could live here if you was married to the sheriff, and nobody could put us out in the cold. And Devil Anse would be too scared to come here, too!”

“Farrie.” Scarlett put her hand to her sister’s forehead. The skin was hot to the touch. “You gotta stop it.”

“And I knew just then,” her little sister went on, determined, “that if dreams could come true, I knew what my dream would be. That we could be a family, Scarlett, like other folks. With a beautiful big house.”

“You’re not making sense,” Scarlett said. “I don’t care how much you dream about it, I can’t make a man like that – sheriff – marry me. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of.”

“It’s not any worse than what Devil Anse was going to make you do,” Farrie cried. “That was why you ran away, remember?”

Scarlett didn’t answer. She stood up, went to the dresser, and gathered up the paper plates.

“That’s what’s so good about my idea, Scarlett.” Farrie hiked her frail body up on the pillows. “This way you can marry the sheriff and get this big house, and we can stay together.”

Scarlett snorted. “Until the sheriff’s mamma comes home. She lives here, too, you know.”