by Deborah Smith, Sandra Chastain, Donna Ball, Debra Dixon, Nancy Knight, Virginia Ellis
“Hey, Great Aunt Livvy,” I called this morning, across the cold December yard between our houses.
She opened her kitchen window. “Eh?” she called back, as she ate her breakfast cereal next to the radio at her table.
“Are we still alive?”
She gave me a thumbs up.
“Then let’s start planning lunch.”
The Mossy Creek Gazette
215 Main Street • Mossy Creek, Georgia
From the desk of Katie Bell, Business Manager
Lady Victoria Salter Stanhope
Cornwall, England
Ho, ho, ho, Vick!
Do you want to know what I believe about Isabella and Richard? I believe they ran away to save Mossy Creek. If they’d stayed, the feud would have gone on for years and hurt a lot more people. Isabella knew there was no other way around Bigelow revenge and Mossy Creek pride, so she gave up her home and her family forever. How noble she must have been! How homesick she must have felt for the rest of her life!
I like to think she knows we never forgot her, especially at Christmas, when Mossy Creek celebrates its memories. Christmas is when all of our traditions seem to gang up, draw a line in the dirt—or snow, depending on the weather that year—and dare us to change a one of them.
Mossy Creek Elementary has a Christmas program that nobody misses. Every kid in the school is in it. Forget the three wise men, the three kings, and the three shepherds. The Mossy Creekite kids decided if three was good, a dozen would be better. If our herd of paper mache stage camels ever gets loose, they’ll clean out every fruit stand from the mountains to Atlanta.
Christmas in Mossy Creek is a little over-the-top, but we like it that way.
That’s why it was so sad this year, when we almost lost one of our best traditions. Ever since I can remember, a local farmer named Ed Brady has played Santa and Ho! Hoed! all the way around the square. Mr. Brady has always been the perfect Santa, right down to the white hair and beard. He works magic on the kids. They’re convinced their wishes come true because of him.
But even Santa can’t make every wish happen. And what do you do when Santa himself needs a miracle?
Under the mistletoe,
Katie
Ed
The Ugly Tree
The room is cold. The house is always cold now. And there’s no reason to get out of bed anymore.
Except for Ellie.
And she doesn’t know.
Possum, my hound dog, is getting restless. I can hear his toenails clicking on the bare floor as he moves around. For most of my seventy-eight years, I’ve opened these tired old eyes in this same room in the same farmhouse in Mossy Creek. Never left but once and wouldn’t have left then, except for the Big War. Figured the folks in Washington knew what they were doing when they sent us to France. But I won’t be surprised if one day some smart fella says otherwise. Back then though, I believed.
And I spent enough time fighting on foreign soil to learn that there was no dirt like the dirt my daddy plowed. After the war, I came home, married Ellie and plowed that same dirt. Grew tobacco then, just like my daddy. Never thought to apologize for what we grew. By the time the world decided that tobacco was bad, I’d already quit farming. Now the soil is worn out, and so am I.
Still wearing my socks and winter underwear from the day before, I slid out from under the bedcovers and into my overalls puddled on the floor where I dropped them last night. They were stiff like me, and unforgiving. There were no dying coals of heat in the fireplace. Haven’t been since Ellie left.
Poking my feet into my work boots, I stood, pulled the overalls up to my hips, then reached my arms into the corduroy shirt hanging on the bedpost. As I latched the suspenders on the overalls’ denim bib, it surprised me to see how much the pants gaped, even after I fastened the waist buttons. When had I had lost all that weight? Ellie would fuss, but cooking takes more effort than I’m willing to expend. The only real meal I ate anymore was breakfast with Ellie, and if I was going to get into town in time to feed her, I’d better hurry.
I let Possum out the kitchen door, then filled his bowl with those little chunks of what the commercials say is real meat. If the picture on the box was right, that meat’s been somewhere for longer than I’d want it to be before I chewed it.
I saw myself in an old mirror hanging on a back porch post. Nothing I could do about my ragged beard and mustache. Ought to just shave them off. Never would have let them grow anyhow if it hadn’t been for Ellie coaxing me to play Santa Claus every year. “Nobody else looks like Santa except you,” she’d say every December, and send me to the barbershop to get prettied up for the children in town.
I didn’t look like Santa Claus anymore. To me, the old man in the mirror looked more like Scrooge.
Didn’t much matter. Ellie wouldn’t know. Setting a stained, green John Deere tractor cap on my head, I headed for my truck. My, “Bah Humbug!” sounded like I meant it, and I did.
A blast of December wind almost knocked me down. I went back for a jacket. Ought to get me some glasses, too. I hated the wind now. It made my eyes water. I left the back door unlocked. Nobody’s gonna steal anything. They’d be welcome to whatever they need; none of it matters.
The faded green truck under the shed had once belonged to the National Forest Service. They replaced a fine-running truck with a sports utility vehicle. I bought it back in ninety-one. It was already ten years old then. You can still read the Forestry Service letters on the doors. Ellie fussed some because I bought something already worn out.
This morning the engine grumbled about starting, sputtering before it caught. I patted the dash. “Me and you are a lot alike these days, old buddy. We’re slow to get up and cantankerous about moving.”
Sleep crusted my eyes, leaving a patchy film that made it hard to see. Course, it didn’t matter about the road to town. I could drive it blindfolded. Squinting helped me focus, but the painted centerline seemed even more blurred than usual this morning. The wind, I told myself. But the truth was, it was cataracts. The only good thing about cataracts is they keep me from seeing the run-down condition of the farm, the peeling paint and the way the barn droops at the front corner. I must have a dozen pairs of glasses. They don’t help me see better, just like medicine don’t help my arthritis. Just like the once-a-month call from Ellie’s and my only son, who lives out of town, don’t stop the loneliness.
There was only Ellie, and I was late.
By the time I got to South Bigelow Road, the old Ford was warmed up and purring. Satisfied that nobody was coming from the direction of Bigelow and nobody was headed out of Mossy Creek, I pulled onto the highway. As I drew near the big Hamilton Farm, I glanced up at the corn silo and grinned. One of the few things I could still read were the words at the top: Ain’t going nowhere, and don’t want to.
Mayor Ida was upholding the town real well, I thought. Her and the younger crowd were just flat determined to keep everything the same. I could tell them that wouldn’t work, but they wouldn’t listen. Change came, no matter what. People got sick, and old, and died. New people forgot them. I pulled out my handkerchief and blew my nose. In that second, a horn honked. I didn’t take my eyes off the road, but I realized I’d crossed the centerline.
“Doggoned eighteen-wheelers!” I swore and jerked the wheel of the truck to the right, then when it run off the road, back to the left, hard. Too hard. The old truck shot all the way across the road, bounced into and right back out of a ditch, then plowed through Miss Ida’s white wooden pasture fence. When it was over, the truck’s bumper was resting against the corn silo.
I just sat and waited, cursing the eighteen-wheeler. He didn’t even stop. I heard noises after a while, and a Mossy Creek police car pulled up. Mutt Bottoms jumped out and ran to my open window.
“You hurt, Mr. Brady?”
“No.” Hurt, I thought, hurt was a bullet that cut through your shoulder so quick that you didn’t know you’d been shot until the hole it left tur
ned into fire that burned like the blaze from a fat lighter. But even that kind of hurt ain’t nowhere as bad as the kind that sucks up a man’s life force and makes him wait to die.
I focused on the skinny deputy wearing a police cap bigger than his head. “I’m not hurt, Mutt, but I reckon Miss Ida’s fence might need some fixing. I’ll take care of it. Just stand back and let me get outta here.”
I tried to goose the old truck into moving. The wheels spun in the soft dirt. “Come on, buddy. You got me in here, now you get me out before Miss Ida comes with her shotgun.”
“Mr. Brady,” the deputy said, “I don’t think you’d better back the truck out. You know you’re not supposed to be driving. Chief Royden told you the last time you ran somebody off the road that you weren’t goin’ to be allowed to drive anymore. He’s gonna take your license for sure.”
It’s hard to take a person seriously when his name is Mutt. I had business in town, and his job was to help the citizens of Mossy Creek. “Son, the only person I run off the road is me, and I’m drivin’ in a pasture. Ain’t nobody gonna keep me from havin’ breakfast with Ellie like I do every morning. So you just get in front of this truck and help me shove it away from this silo.”
We both pushed, but the truck refused to move. Half an hour later, a tow truck was hauling the old truck to the barn, and I was being hauled into the police station like a prisoner. Chief Royden took my license and gave me what my daddy would have called a dressing down.
“No more driving, Mr. Brady. I don’t want you to hurt yourself or anybody else.”
I didn’t argue; it wouldn’t have done me any good. Amos Royden wasn’t much like his daddy, Battle, who woulda let me off and come over to take me fishin’, later. “Your daddy is spinnin’ in his grave, boy,” I said. Amos just looked at me, and I felt kinda sorry for my words. But I didn’t take them back.
From the police station, I walked up Main Street and then onto North Bigelow, to the nursing home. Thank God, it was only a little ways. Nobody saw me, but the whole town would know my problem soon enough. When I got to Magnolia Manor, I found Ellie lying in her bed staring at nothing. Like she did most of the time.
“Morning, pretty girl.” I picked up her limp hand and leaned forward to kiss her forehead. Her face was turned away from me so that I couldn’t see the contorted expression that drew the corner of her mouth into a permanent frown, from her last stroke. But then I never saw what was, only what used to be—a smile that had warmed my heart for fifty years.
“Sorry I’m late, hon. Got held up at Miss Ida’s for a while. I’m glad you waited breakfast for me. Let’s see what we got.”
She didn’t respond. I didn’t expect her to. It had been almost a year since she’d recognized me. But that didn’t matter. I knew who she was. She was my wife.
I turned away from her and uncovered the dishes on the breakfast tray. Everything was cold, thanks to my little side trip through Ida’s pasture.
The nurses’ aides didn’t pay any attention to me as I carried Ellie’s tray back to their break room. Squinting at the numbers on a microwave, I punched the pad and waited while the food warmed. Operating a microwave was something I’d learned for Ellie’s sake, so she wouldn’t have to eat cold food. I didn’t have to see the numbers to do that. The numbers didn’t matter anyway. I just had to pay attention to how long it ran before I opened the door.
“Mr. Brady,” one of the nurses’ aides said, “you know you’re not supposed to be in here.”
“Neither is Ellie,” I said. “But she is.”
Back in her room, I raised the bed so I could spoon food into her mouth. Some days, she swallowed obediently. Today, she didn’t. Only once did she move, and that was to look past me and into the hall. I thought at first she was looking for someone, but then I saw the blinking lights in the recreation room.
A Christmas tree. Ellie had always loved Christmas. She used to start cooking fruitcakes right after Thanksgiving. People at Mossy Creek Mt. Gilead Methodist said nobody could make divinity candy like Ellie. And nobody loved decorating more than she did. She’d get on the phone with Hattie Almond over in Yonder, and they’d plan their bows and wreaths and garlands. Then every year she’d send me out to cut down a tree. “The ugliest one you can find,” she’d say. “We’ll make it beautiful for Christmas.” And she would. At least me and Ellie thought the crooked, scrawny trees were special. Once, our boy came home for Christmas when he was in college, took one look at our tree and bought us an artificial one. Ellie smiled and let him put it up. She didn’t want to spoil his pleasure, for he’d meant well. But the minute he left, heading back to the big city and his fancy friends, she took it down.
“Don’t fret, Ed. He just doesn’t understand that love doesn’t need perfection. It makes its own.” She rescued our pitiful little tree from the trash heap and put it back up. “Every living thing becomes beautiful when it’s loved.”
A lump filled my throat. Remembering always made me feel as if I was watching me and Ellie like we used to be. I can still remember the way I felt then. I never was much with words, but I loved my Ellie, and she knew it. The blinking lights on the tree in the recreation room blurred, and I went light-headed with memories.
Love doesn’t need perfection. It makes its own. Ellie believed that. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t’ve of married me. The bullet that brought me home from the war left me as damaged on the inside as she was now.
“You like the tree, Ellie? Wait, I’ll move it, so you can see it better.”
Over the nurses’ objections, I went into the other room, unplugged the artificial tree and moved it closer to the open door.
When I went back to Ellie’s room, I said, “Doesn’t look much like one of ours, Ellie. Too perfect.” I leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Say, I’m thinking, I could bring you a little tree for your room. Your decorations are still in the hall closet. You just say the word, and I’ll go get the ugliest one I can find.”
Ellie didn’t answer. She clamped her mouth shut when I tried to slip one more spoonful of grits between her lips. She didn’t want anymore of her breakfast, so I finished off her food like I usually do, then put the tray in the hall.
When I came back in the room, Ellie’s eyes were closed. There was no point in hanging around. Our day was finished.
I waved at the nurses and went out the door, then remembered that I had no way to get home. Even if I had my truck, I had no license. And Chief Royden would make good on his threat to lock me up if I got in my old truck, again.
I stood on the sidewalk, then headed back toward the square. I walked into the police station with my head high. It came to me that Amos Royden had caused this problem, not me. By George, he could fix it.
“I got to have my truck, Chief,” I said. “Ain’t no other way. I can’t desert Ellie.”
“Mr. Brady, you don’t know how sorry I am about this,” the chief said. “I’m going to try to work out some transportation for you. But for now the only truck I want to see you in is the Mossy Creek volunteer fire truck bringing Santa Claus to the tree lighting in the square.”
“Not this year. Don’t feel much like playing Santa anymore. Find somebody else.”
“You know we can’t do that. You’ve been Santa for thirty years. By appointment of every mayor. It’s official. If you want to resign, you’ll have to take it up with Miss Ida.”
I swore under my breath.
Chief Royden looked at me with a thought in his eyes. “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Brady. You play Santa, and I’ll guarantee that you get to the nursing home every day. But you’re not to drive that truck again. Do you understand?”
I nodded. But what he didn’t understand was that it wasn’t me that didn’t understand. It was him. I’d be at Ellie’s side in the morning for breakfast—one way or another, whether he guaranteed it, or not. I’d think of something.
The chief put a hand on my shoulder as if I was an old man who needed support. “Come on, Mr. Brady. I�
�ll give you a ride home.”
Once I got home, I let Possum in. I usually just sit at the little table in the kitchen by the cook stove, but the kitchen was for remembering. This time, I sat down in the old leather chair in front of the fireplace. Didn’t take long for me to decide a body can’t think when it’s too cold. So I built a fire that night. I can always look into a fire and think up a solution to any problem. Fire talks to people that way. But for the first time in my life, an answer didn’t come.
Turns out I didn’t need one. Old Bart Smith came along the next morning, headed for Mossy Creek.
“Heard you were on foot, Ed.”
“Yep. Back where I started as a boy—on foot. Well, that’s not exactly true. Back then, I had a mule.”
“Get in,” Bart said with a grin that showed the vacant space where his front tooth used to be before he knocked it out chopping firewood.
“I remember that mule,” he said as I climbed into the cab of his truck. “Remember the day you rode it up the front steps of the old high school, down the hall, and out the back door? Said you were through with school, joining the army to save the world.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Your Pa thought different though, didn’t he? Sent you back to school the next day without the mule. As I remember, you spent the rest of the year on foot.”
“I did. But you’ve given me an idea. Maybe I’ll just buy myself a mule. No law says you have to have a driver’s license to ride a mule.”
“True,” Bart agreed. “But the mules you get nowadays are a stubborn bunch. Nobody rides them. You might start out for the nursing home and end up in North Carolina–or you might end up with your head broke before you even get outta the yard.”
“Then I’ll just walk to town.”
The next morning, I was reconsidering the mule when Adele Clearwater’s big blue Caddy came rumbling up the drive.
