Down Home Carolina Christmas

by Pamela Browning

  Luke and Carrie were together almost every night, unbeknownst to Dixie or anyone else in her family. Mostly they whiled away the evening watching TV with Killer on the couch beside them, though he still attacked Luke’s feet whenever he spotted a bare one.

  “I never thought I’d have to wear socks to bed,” Luke said ruefully one night as the rabbit burrowed under the sheet and curled up between them.

  “I never thought I’d wear my birthday suit to bed,” Carrie retorted, snuggling up. Killer never attacked her bare feet, only Luke’s.

  Carrie lived far enough out in the country that people didn’t see Luke’s Ferrari in her driveway, but as time went on, he began to park it in the old tractor shed so that his presence would be undetected if someone dropped in. That usually only happened in the morning when Dixie would drive out to enjoy a cup of coffee with Carrie before they both went on to their jobs. By then, Luke was long gone.

  Carrie soaked up Luke’s attention. She’d missed having a man in her life ever since she and Mert had split up, though she hadn’t realized exactly how much she’d yearned for male companionship until Luke had come along with his hot breathless kisses, his penchant for clever, amusing recreational sex and the libido to pursue it. She now spent her days and nights walking around in a haze of afterglow, ripe as one of her tomatoes ready to be plucked from the vine, pendulous with constant longing. Which Luke took care to satisfy regularly, by the way.

  But when filming commenced, Carrie, of necessity, steeled herself for more time away from Luke. He had to rehearse, he had to shore up Tiffany’s precarious emotions and, most of all, he had to show up promptly when scenes were filmed. He could spend nights with Carrie, but he couldn’t linger in bed of a morning, loving away the hours until the sun no longer slanted through the lace curtains but hung high in the sky.

  Anyway, by the date the movie company was ready to film the first scenes at Smitty’s, Carrie had other things on her mind besides Luke.

  Dixie asked her one day how the preparations at Smitty’s were going and got an earful from Carrie. “Those technicians are snaking cables all over the place, and they push my equipment around as if it’s of no importance to anyone,” she grumbled in annoyance.

  Dixie cautioned her to get a grip. “The movie company is also paying you more than you expected. Thirty thousand dollars! I’d say that’s more than enough.”

  “You don’t have to go through what I do,” Carrie reminded her heatedly. “Shasta is beside herself with all those people around her, and no matter how many sausage biscuits they feed her, she doesn’t understand why she’s shut up in my office all day.”

  “Haven’t you found that dog a home yet?” Dixie asked, surprised.

  “I’ve been busy” was all Carrie said, neglecting to enlighten her sister as to what she’d been busy doing.

  “By the way, Carrie, the new roof on the home place looks awesome,” Dixie said. “Norm did a great job.”

  “Thanks. I chose shingles as close to the original as possible. It sure is great not to have to worry about leaks these days.”

  Once he started working full-time, Luke became increasingly preoccupied, informing Carrie one evening that Tiffany had gained weight while out with bronchitis and had to be sewn into her costumes so they’d still fit. Not that it mattered much, Carrie observed. Mary-Lutie Goforth had hardly been a fashion plate.

  Filming commenced on a Monday, the set closed to all but interested parties, of whom Carrie was one. Carrie had insisted that she be allowed on set. She wanted to protect her equipment and make sure that any customers who stopped by understood what was going on and why they couldn’t buy gas until filming had finished.

  But by the second day of filming, during which Carrie stood to one side out of everyone’s way while Yancey and Mary-Lutie argued about Yancey’s preference for racing over repairing cars, Carrie was practically in hysterics.

  The script called for Mary-Lutie to berate Yancey about his neglect of her and their children. “I’m sick and tired of this—this love you have for racing! Why, if you had a choice, Yancey Goforth, you’d make love to a carburetor instead of me. As for our children, they might as well have no father!”

  The way Tiffany spoke her lines was so far from the real Mary-Lutie’s flat South Carolina Midlands accent that it was laughable. Every single take they did, when Tiffany would say, “Ah’m so sick and tarred of this—this luv eyew have for racing,” Carrie would retreat to the ladies’ room to quell her laughter.

  Despite the weeks Tiffany had spent in town talking to people, mingling with them as Luke had, she hadn’t figured out that the proper accent didn’t derive only from the way in which South Carolinians enunciated their words. Intonation counted almost as much. Not only that, but Charlestonians had a different accent from people who lived in the Midlands, where Yewville was located, and those who hailed from the Upcountry around Greenville and Spartanburg had their own way of speaking. The trouble was that the words that came out of Tiffany’s mouth sounded like none of them.

  Carrie didn’t want to cause trouble. Really, she didn’t. But when Luke finally tracked her down throwing a ball for Shasta behind the garage and asked her where she’d been when they’d filmed that particular scene, she told him.

  “I was laughing my head off,” Carrie said. “In the restroom.”

  She’d startled him; that was evident. He bent to pet Shasta, tossing her a dog biscuit, as had become his habit lately. “Exactly why were you laughing, do you mind telling me?”

  Carrie dried the damp tennis ball off on her jeans. “Every time Tiffany opens her mouth, she sounds like she’s channeling Dolly Parton. That’s not a South Carolina accent of any kind, much less from Yewville.”

  “Tiffany’s had the best vocal coaches. She’s studied this stuff.” Luke appeared bewildered.

  “She needs to unlearn most of it. I tell you, Luke, if I were in a movie theater, I’d walk out before I even finished the first box of popcorn. Her accent is not believable.”

  Luke was clearly taken aback. “It’s important that everything be authentic. This is my breakout movie, the one that is supposed to head my career and Tiffany’s in a new and more serious direction. You’d better have a talk with Jules.”

  “That’s not my job,” she said flatly. She eyed the director, who was barking into a cell phone over by the air pump.

  “Do you mind if I tell him what you said? Jules will want your impressions.”

  She shook her head and he hurried off in Jules’s direction, beckoning to Carrie immediately. Carrie reluctantly walked over and repeated what she’d told Luke. Jules heaved a giant sigh and made more phone calls. Carrie heard him demanding, cursing and finally pleading, for all the good it did, though from the way Jules was carrying on, it was probably not much.

  Nevertheless, the next afternoon a vocal coach named Emil, from Long Island, New York, showed up on the set. As soon as he arrived, Jules called a recess while Emil earnestly advised Tiffany, who then returned to the set to mangle her lines worse than ever. This time Carrie had to adjourn to the Eat Right and share a banana split with Dixie so as not to speak her mind about Emil’s lack of suitability for the job.

  Emil lasted only a few days and was dismissed when Tiffany ran sobbing from the set. That was when Whip, Jules and Luke paid Carrie a visit at the home place and begged her to help out.

  “All you have to do is talk with Tiffany and give her a few pointers,” Whip argued persuasively as the three of them rocked on her front porch.

  “I talk with her every day,” Carrie said. “I don’t understand what good this would do.”

  “We need you, Carrie,” Luke said, and she melted. She couldn’t resist anything where Luke was involved.

  The upshot was that the next day, Carrie and Tiffany went to the Eat Right for a long lunch, where they sat in a booth and Tiffany listened to what she had to say.

  “If you wish to come across like a South Carolinian, you’ll have to talk like
one,” Carrie instructed over the blue-plate special. “You’ve got to pull syllables out of the back of your nose and down into your voice box. And when you’re saying, ‘Ah’m so sick and tarred of this—this luv eyew have for racing,’ forget the ah’m. A real South Carolinian would say ‘I am’ instead of using the contraction, in this instance.”

  “Why?”

  Carrie drew a blank. “I don’t know, but the am would be spoken in a slightly lower tone than the I. And the so would have its own emphasis. As for love, the vowel can be pronounced like a short U, but the tone should be flattened up under your sinuses before it comes out of your mouth.”

  “Like this? Lu-u-ve.” Tiffany then repeated the whole sentence.

  “You’ve almost got it,” Carrie said encouragingly as Kathy Lou gawked from behind the counter, where she could hear every tortured syllable. “You’re still not saying the word tired right, though. ‘Tarred’ is what I hear, but you need to thread a bit of the long I through the ‘tar.’”

  At this, Tiffany started to laugh. “I’m sorry, Carrie, I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing with you. How ignorant I must seem!”

  Carrie shook her head. “No, no, no! We grew up learning how to talk the way we do, and you’ve only been here a few weeks.”

  “I believed I could do a Southern accent,” Tiffany said. “I even went to the Chicken Bog Slog to immerse myself in the culture the way Luke does. I listened to people. I really did.”

  “Those of us who were reared in the South don’t all talk alike. What your teacher taught you might have been a perfectly fine Mississippi accent or a Texas accent, but it won’t work here.”

  Tiffany sighed. “Okay, let me try again,” she said. “Tarred.”

  “You’re saying ty-errd. Try it like this.” Carrie demonstrated.

  “Ti-ahrd,” Tiffany said.

  “Ti- arrd,” Carrie shot back, and this time Tiffany got it right.

  Kathy Lou rolled her eyes and murmured to the cook behind the grill, “If that don’t beat all. Are you hearing what I’m hearing?”

  “You’re doing great, Tiffany,” Carrie said warmly. “And FYI, those of us who live here can spot an outsider as soon as he says Yewville. We pronounce it ‘Yewvull.’ Heavier emphasis on the first syllable.”

  “Uh-oh, I’ve been saying that all wrong, too.”

  “Don’t worry. You wouldn’t know.” She eyed Tiffany’s plate, with half the chicken salad remaining, and realized that she should hustle her out of the Eat Right before she noticed she’d only eaten part of her lunch. Now that Liz, Tiffany’s personal trainer, had turned up, Tiffany rarely swallowed so much as a carrot curl without her approval.

  “What do you say we get back to Smitty’s,” Carrie suggested. “You and Luke can practice your lines together before resuming filming.”

  “Good idea,” Tiffany said, sliding across the red vinyl seat.

  As they left the restaurant, Tiffany curved her arm around Carrie’s waist. At such times Carrie couldn’t help but like her. “I want you to be my new vocal coach,” Tiffany announced grandly. “I simply can’t make this movie without you.”

  “I don’t know anything about coaching,” Carrie replied in dismay.

  “You know how to talk like someone from Yewville, and that’s what counts. I’m sure everyone will agree that you’re exactly what we need. Your help will make all the difference in this film.”

  Carrie figured she could wiggle her way out of the assignment, but that afternoon in her office, she sat scratching Shasta behind her ears as Whip, Jules and Luke insisted that she was important to the film and that they would pay her munificently for her work in addition to what she’d already received from renting the garage. In the face of their persuasion, Carrie buckled. With the extra money, she could have the home place painted and the sagging porch shored up. She could help Memaw purchase a new car to replace her rusty Plymouth, and she could buy Voncille a brand-new, extracapacity dishwasher. And maybe she’d even take a trip to the Caribbean with Glenda, who had invited her to go along. Plus, working so closely with Tiffany would keep her near Luke, and even though they were together almost every night, it wasn’t enough. She desired to be with him all the time, which was a switch for her. She’d mostly been a loner since Mert had left town.

  But as a self-appointed expert in the art of lonerism, she had to admit that being by herself got tiresome after a while. It was lots more fun to be half of a couple.

  LUKE AND CARRIE pushed back and forth on the porch swing on a Saturday afternoon, eye-feasting on the spectacle of the fall leaves, which had finally begun to turn. The air was crisp and cool, making a jacket a necessity, and Carrie sat with her head pillowed on Luke’s shoulder, giving the swing a gentle push every now and then with her toe. Shasta, visiting for the afternoon so they could take her for a run in the woods, dozed nearby.

  “I can’t tell you the difference in Tiffany since you started coaching her,” Luke said enthusiastically. “She’s in a hundred percent better mood.”

  “I’m glad. I feel sorry for Tiffany. She seems so upset about everything and everybody.”

  “Especially herself,” Luke agreed.

  “I expect she’d feel better if she was with Peyton more often.”

  “They’ll get together during the hiatus coming up next month. I’m afraid he’s going to hit the roof when he notices how much weight she’s gained.”

  This riled Carrie so much that she sat up straight. “If Peyton Kirk can’t comprehend what a sweet person Tiffany is, he doesn’t deserve her.”

  “I agree, Carrie,” Luke said, pulling her back down beside him. “It’s just that I don’t want Tiffany to be hurt, that’s all.”

  “Of course you don’t. Neither do I.” She hesitated for a moment before posing a question. “Is that how people in Hollywood think, Luke? Only paying attention to superficial things about a person?”

  “Not everyone,” he said quietly. He appeared thoughtful. “Now you, Miss Carrie. You’re anything but superficial.”

  “Well, I’m not from Hollywood,” she reminded him.

  “I’m really glad of that.” He stood. “What do you say we take a walk. You’ve promised to show me the Smith family cemetery.”

  She shrugged. “Okay. It’s yonder down the highway a bit, toward Memaw’s.”

  At the prospect of a walk, Shasta woke up. She danced ahead of them on her leash, down the alley of pecan trees as they set out. “When are you going to tell your sister about us?” Luke asked as they ambled alongside the road.

  “You do ask impertinent questions, don’t you, Luke Mason?” Carrie couldn’t really excuse her reticence, since it wasn’t as if she and Dixie never saw each other. In fact, two days ago when Dixie had asked her what was new, Carrie had merely shrugged and changed the subject.

  “Isn’t it time to go public?” Luke said, smiling down at her.

  The truth was that Carrie wanted to hug their relationship close before it became common knowledge.

  “Dixie will insist on hearing all about our first date,” she said. “She’ll be all over me like a pit bull on a poodle. She’ll demand to know what you said, what I said, and she won’t be satisfied until I tell her—well, everything.”

  Luke laughed. “You mean you’ll have to come clean about our scandalous romp in the attic.”

  “I hope not,” Carrie said with the utmost shuddering sincerity.

  “Are you embarrassed that we have a wonderful sex life?” Luke asked, all innocence. For emphasis he slid his hand down and pinched her bottom.

  She darted out of reach, walking backward so she faced him. “I’m not embarrassed about anything we do,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t relish being the anxious subject of a third-degree from my sister or anyone else.”

  “You don’t have to spill everything,” Luke said. “Like how you’re insatiable.”

  “Or how you are,” she said, keeping out of his arm’s reach.

  “Like how you
really get going the second time or so, all that moaning and writhing around so that the sheets get in a tangle.”

  “Luke,” she said warningly, but the gates of the small private cemetery were straight ahead, and when he made a grab for her, she bent and unhooked Shasta’s leash. “Beat you to Isaiah’s monument!” Carrie shouted as she and the dog raced for the open gate.

  Luke was right behind her. “I don’t know Isaiah’s monument,” he said, picking up speed.

  She didn’t answer but swerved between the graves, past the big magnolia tree, between the hedges and across a small open artesian well trickling into a stone trough.

  She tagged the obelisk in the center of the cemetery as she had so many times before when she and Dixie used to play games here while their parents weeded and watered and trimmed.

  “I win,” she said as Luke stopped just short of her and balanced his hands on his hips. “You’re beautiful, Carrie,” he said, the compliment unexpected. “Beautiful as well as kind and good.”

  “I feel beautiful when I’m with you,” she said helplessly, gazing deep into his eyes and seeing her own reflection in their blue depths.

  He moved closer and kissed her, a heartfelt and tender kiss, and her pulse surged for all the world like the current just before the lights went out during an electric storm. He had that effect on her even after so many nights together; her stage of arousal always seemed to hover around READY, and one touch, one kiss could bounce it into high alert.

  After he kissed her, he let her go. “I’d like you to introduce me to all these people,” he said, his gesture passing the graves so neatly lined up inside the fenced enclosure.

  “Well,” she said with difficulty, straightening her jacket and smoothing her hair even though her heart was still doing a drumroll. “The obelisk was erected for Isaiah Smith, my ancestor who moved here before the American Revolution. We’ve never figured out where he’s buried because the graveyard wasn’t started until some years later.”