Christmas Mourning

by Margaret Maron

  It was an amazing evening—the blaring horns and the eye-blinding lights that chased themselves around the rims of the upper levels whenever the Canes scored, the enthusiasm of the crowd, the sheer grace of the skaters, and the clash of hockey sticks almost put me in sensory overload. I discovered that I could actually follow the puck, and by the time the Canes played the whole game, went into overtime, then won in a shootout, I had yelled myself hoarse and was thoroughly hooked.

  This year, we had squeezed tickets for twelve games out of our budget, and tonight the Carolina Hurricanes were going up against the Florida Panthers. As soon as our most pressing chores were done, Cal put on his own red sweatshirt with the autographs on the shoulder, and the three of us headed back out to the truck. Dwight does not wear any shirts or sweaters with messages—“I got enough of that in the Army,” he says—and he only allows one tiny Hurricanes bumper sticker on his truck. As a concession to us, though, he did let Cal clamp our red flags to the windows and we flapped our way over to Raleigh.

  At the RBC Center, we munched on burgers and fries and watched the Storm Squad—skimpily dressed cheerleaders in fur-trimmed red Santa hats—pump up the crowd.

  I couldn’t help flashing on Mallory Johnson, who would never again cheer a team to victory. Dead at eighteen. At least Joy Medlin had limped away from the crash that killed her boyfriend. Even if she couldn’t do the moves, she could still be part of the squad, contribute choreography and moral support.

  While the Storm Squad urged the crowd to roars of welcome as the players skated onto the ice, I said a prayer to whoever might be listening to please, please keep my nieces and nephews safe in their cars; then I too was swept up in the excitement.

  The game was another nail-biter. Our team scored in the first period and fended off the Panthers till the third period, when they got off a strong shot that goalie Cam Ward stopped. Unfortunately, he then slid back into the net with the puck, and the score was tied 1–1 at the end of regulation play. After an agonizing four minutes into overtime, Joe Corvo slapped a high backhander over their goalie and into the net.

  Hurricanes 2, Panthers 1!

  All evening, Dwight and I had avoided talking about Mallory Johnson’s death in front of Cal, but when Cal fell asleep against my shoulder on the way home, I kept my voice low and asked, “Were you and Malcolm Johnson in the same class?”

  “No, he was a year behind me. Jeff, too.”

  “I’d almost forgotten about Jeff Barefoot,” I admitted. “What was he like?”

  Dwight shrugged. “Nice guy. Good free-throw shooter.”

  “Y’all played ball together?”

  “Yeah. Or rather Malcolm and I did. Jeff was second-string.” He flashed the oncoming driver a reminder to dim the lights as he looked for words to describe the two friends. “The thing was, Malcolm worked harder, but Jeff probably had more natural talent. Easygoing. Better-looking, too. Guess that’s how he wound up getting Sarah.”

  “Isabel said it was because he got her pregnant.”

  “Yeah, I did hear that.”

  “Were you surprised when she married Malcolm so quickly after Jeff died?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Isabel told me that Jeff died the Christmas after they were married and that Sarah remarried only eight months later. You don’t remember?”

  “I was in the Army then,” he reminded me. “Down in Panama. Waiting for you to grow up. And it wasn’t like I was real close to them. Mama or somebody probably mentioned it the next time I was home on leave, but by then it was old news and I guess I wasn’t paying much attention. Besides, the way she played those two boys against each other all through school? Once Malcolm went off to college, Jeff probably had the inside track with her. She was a cheerleader, too, you know.”

  “Yeah, I was a freshman then and there was a lot of talk before she finally admitted she was pregnant and had to quit the squad.”

  He turned off the paved road onto our long dirt and gravel driveway and eased the truck wheels over the low dikes so as not to wake Cal. “I do remember thinking it was ironic that a roofer would break his neck falling off his own roof.”

  “Not his neck,” I said, as we parked by the back door and I gently unbuckled Cal’s seat belt. “His head. He hit his head on a rock when he fell.”

  “Whatever,” Dwight said and carried our sleeping boy into the house.

  CHAPTER 5

  It fell to Puritan Reformers to put a stop to the unholy merriment.

  —Christmas in America, Penne L. Restad

  Friday dawned cold and dreary with a raw, bone-chilling dampness in the air. The sky was gray and heavy with wet clouds. Instead of depressing our spirits, though, the weather seemed to heighten the holiday mood.

  “Maybe it’ll snow,” Cal said hopefully when he and Dwight left to meet the school bus.

  Up in Shaysville, at the edge of the Virginia mountains, there had been snow on the ground for most of his Christmases. I myself could remember only two or three late December snowfalls here in eastern North Carolina, so he wasn’t likely to get his wish, but at least it was cold enough to keep the seasonal pictures of icicles and reindeer and fur-wrapped elves from looking too totally illogical.

  Not that Cal was the true believer he’d been last year. More wink-wink/nudge-nudgers in third grade than second, not to mention what he must hear on the bus. Ever since Thanksgiving, he had made so many elliptical remarks about the Santa myth that I was not surprised when he looked up from his breakfast cereal this morning and came out with it bluntly.

  “Mary Pat says you guys are Santa Claus.”

  “Me?” Dwight managed to look astonished. “You see any reindeer out back? You think my truck can fly?”

  “C’mon, Dad. You know what I mean.” He looked at me. “It’s you and Dad, isn’t it?”

  I immediately hopped up to get the coffee pot, unsure whether he wanted confirmation or denial. “What do you think?” I asked him.

  “I think she’s probably right. That it’s everybody’s parents. There’s no way one guy—even if he is magic—could get to that many houses in one night.” He finished his cereal and took a final swallow of milk. “Besides, a lot of houses don’t even have chimneys.”

  “He’s got a point,” Dwight told me, holding out his mug for a refill.

  “True,” I agreed. “If it was me, though, I’d still hang up my stocking.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Mary Pat said.”

  “Just in case?” Dwight teased.

  “And ’cause Jake’ll notice if we don’t and it might spoil his Christmas ’cause he’s too little to understand. Besides, Mary Pat said we’d probably—”

  He broke off, his brown eyes dancing with mischief.

  “Probably what?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Probably get more presents if we have stockings.”

  * * *

  Driving over to the Dobbs courthouse an hour or so later with the radio belting out an uptempo country version of “Up on the Housetop,” I was still smiling. Mary Pat certainly had Kate and Rob pegged. No way could they let it appear that Santa had brought her less than he brought Jake and R.W. But she was sweet to enlist Cal in a conspiracy to keep the younger boys from catching on too soon.

  Up on the housetop, click-click-click!

  Down through the chimney with a good Saint Nick!

  I’ve heard that there are people who were so traumatized by learning the truth about Santa Claus that they would never allow their own kids to believe in him. My friends and I figured it out about Cal’s age and none of us were bothered by it any more than Cal seemed to be. Like Mary Pat, we had also agreed that it might be to our material advantage to keep up the fiction since the grown-ups seemed to enjoy it so much.

  As I topped the last small hill before the highway leveled off for the straight run into Dobbs, my smile was erased by another of those sad roadside memorials. A fresh new wreath of shiny green plastic holly, decorated with miniature toys an
d tied with a bright red bow, had replaced the orange pumpkins and yellow chrysanthemums of Thanksgiving. Come February, there would be valentines and red roses, then white lilies and purple ribbons for Easter.

  Five or six years ago, a young woman and her two children had died here in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. She had been an only child, her children the family’s only grandchildren. No wonder the grieving grandmother kept their memory green by placing new wreaths here every holiday of the year. I drove on past, wondering if Sarah Johnson would soon be doing the same for Mallory.

  At the courthouse, I parked in my reserved space and hoisted a tote bag full of canned goods from the backseat. Ellis Glover, our clerk of court, had placed two large, brightly decorated barrels next to the tree in the atrium lobby, one for donations to the county food bank and the other for needy children. Adding my cans to the overflow gave me a brief glow of feel-good sanctity, a feeling that was immediately replaced by guilt that it wasn’t more considering how much I am lucky enough to have—the old push/pull of conscience.

  (And yeah, everyone agrees that a Christmas tree in a courthouse atrium is totally non-PC, but all the ornaments are secular and Ellis calls them Yule bushes. He says he’s going to keep putting them up until people start objecting. So far, no one has.)

  As I headed toward the marble steps, I saw my childhood friend Portland Brewer on her way down. “You’re still coming for lunch, right?” she called.

  “Right, but it might be closer to one than noon,” I warned her.

  “Sounds like you’re hoping to be done for the day by then,” she said as she drew nearer.

  “If the prosecution’s prepared,” I said. “Only five cases on the calendar.”

  She rolled her eyes in sympathy, knowing exactly what I was talking about. I never thought I would miss Doug Woodall, our DA who ran for governor (and lost), but in retrospect the current DA makes him seem like a combination of Clarence Darrow and that efficiency expert in Cheaper by the Dozen. The only reason Chester Nance, a tubby little mediocre attorney from Black Creek, got the Democratic nomination was because no one expected the Democratic coattails to reach all the way down to the district level, especially when the Republican candidate was a well-respected and competent attorney.

  As DA, Doug prosecuted most of the major crime cases in superior court himself, and he had made sure that no backlog of cases built up in district court. “Trust ’em or bust ’em” was his philosophy, and his staff worked a full eight-hour day to keep up with the work. Cases were efficiently calendared and defendants who didn’t come to court when they were scheduled had to show him a compelling reason for missing their court date or there would be warrants for their arrest. As a result, add-ons were kept to a minimum.

  Chester Nance is way more laissez-faire. His staff is poorly prepared, he gets a half day’s work out of them at best, and he himself hasn’t prosecuted a single case since he was sworn in.

  Judges and lawyers both were grumbling over the backlog. “Who knew there was such a steep learning curve?”

  Today was no different. In the old Doug Woodall days, I could count on finishing five calendared cases in ninety minutes tops, fifty if they all pled guilty. As soon as I took my place on the bench, though, I was handed up a list of twelve add-ons by the day’s ADA, a newly minted attorney who looked too young to shave, much less pass the bar exam.

  Even then we were not ready to go. He spent another twenty minutes thumbing through the shucks, getting facts straight with the officers who were to testify, and even working out a couple of plea bargains—things that should have been taken care of earlier.

  I tried not to drum my fingers or look impatient. The defendants and their companions, mostly black or Latino, seemed equally bored. They unzipped their heavy jackets or pushed back the hoods on their dark sweatshirts and waited stoically to be called. Off to one side was a middle-aged white woman with early flecks of silver at the temples of her lacquered black hair. She wore a cream-colored turtleneck jersey beneath a red boiled wool jacket appliquéd at the hem and cuffs with Christmas ornaments and crisp silver braid. Sharp-pointed silver snowflakes dangled from her earlobes and I caught an icy flash of diamonds when she picked a stray piece of lint from the jacket, examined it between her fingertips, then flicked it to the floor.

  Ellen Englert Hamilton. She gave me a frosty half-smile when our eyes met, a smile I returned with exaggerated (and equally hypocritical) warmth. Englerts and Hamiltons have been intermarrying for so many generations that it’s a wonder they aren’t all congenital idiots. As a rule, both families are fanatically opposed to alcohol in any form except as an antiseptic; but every rule has an exception and every Englert/Hamilton generation throws up at least one drunkard, which is enough to fan the flames of righteousness in the rest of the clan.

  I had once dated Ellen’s younger brother Rudolph until their mother decreed that a bootlegger’s daughter was no fit consort for an Englert. Once I got over my indignation, I had to admit that Mrs. Englert had cause. Her late husband had evidently been one of my daddy’s good customers; and when a sheriff’s deputy found a jar of white lightning in the basement after Mr. Englert died, it was Mrs. Englert who was charged with possession of untaxed liquor. Ironically, Rudolph has turned into this generation’s lush and I’ve heard that it’s all my fault for dumping him.

  Go figure.

  There was no way Ellen would be in this DWI court as a defendant, and I couldn’t see her there as a character witness for any of the others, so what—?

  And then it dawned on me.

  Of course.

  Ellen is president of Colleton County’s MADD chapter. Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I had heard that they were going to start monitoring judges so that they could point well-publicized fingers if any DWI charges were dismissed.

  Yes, there are judges who drink and drive and who base their judgments on the old there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I principle, but I’m not one of them. Nevertheless, the state has to prove its case before I’ll take someone’s license or give them active jail time and no MADD watchdog could make me rule differently.

  The ADA finally rose to say that he was ready to begin with the State versus Salvador Garcia, an illegal alien who had started the day with five DWIs pending against him. The ADA explained that he had dismissed two of them as part of a plea bargain, which was not what I would have done, but I could understand his reasoning.

  Immigration had put a hold on Garcia and he was going to be deported to Honduras anyway, so the ADA wanted to clear up all his outstanding cases here in Colleton County. Garcia seemed to speak and understand English fairly well, but because he had pled guilty to the three remaining charges and because I would be imposing jail time, I appointed an interpreter so that he couldn’t later appeal on the grounds that he hadn’t understood.

  I could have ordered probation of the first charge, but I knew he’d be getting active time on the other two because of several aggravating factors—he had blown a .22 on one and a .21 on the other, and he had a prior conviction. Therefore I ordered five-to-sixty days for the first charge, six months on the second, and twelve months on the third. I also ordered alcohol treatment while he was incarcerated here.

  When he and his court-appointed attorney stood to hear me pass sentence, I added, “Mr. Garcia, I’m going to remain silent on these convictions, which means that they will run concurrent with each other. Had you not been subject to deportation, I would have let them run consecutively, but I’m sure ICE is very likely to send you back to your home within a couple of months.”

  I leaned forward until his brown eyes met mine and I was sure I had his attention. “As we all know, drinking is not a crime.”

  Ellen Hamilton gave an audible sniff and a flounce of her head at that comment, a reminder that if it were up to Hamiltons and Englerts, Prohibition would still be on the books.

  “Drinking is not a crime,” I repeated, “and being an alcoholic is not a crime. But driving dr
unk is a crime. You have a serious alcohol problem, Mr. Garcia, and whether you’re here in the United States or Honduras or any other country on this planet, you need to address that before you kill yourself or someone else, which is why I’ve ordered alcohol treatment while you’re still here.”

  When the interpreter finished his flow of Spanish, Garcia gave a disheartened “Gracias” before the bailiff led him away. I couldn’t tell if he was down because he would soon be deported or because he knew he was in for a long dry month at least.

  Next up was a very remorseful black man who had been stopped after a few drinks at a sports bar. He had a spotless driving record and no prior convictions. He also had a wife sitting two rows back who had made it clear that she would leave him if it ever happened again.

  Because he barely registered a .09 on the Breathalyzer and there were no grossly aggravating factors, I sentenced him to a Level Five: sixty days in the custody of our county jail. I then suspended the sentence and placed him on supervised probation for six months on condition that he pay a hundred-dollar fine and court costs, obtain a substance abuse assessment, do community service, and surrender his license until he qualified for limited driving privileges.

  I had a feeling he would not be back in court again, a feeling I did not have with the next eight defendants—three Hispanic males, one white female, and four black males—even though they were all Level Fives, too.

  They were followed by several Level Ones, the highest level for misdemeanor DWI, and all received active time along with my hope that they would take advantage of the alcohol treatments and change their ways. One of them—Jackson Dwayne McHenry, white, twenty-six—gave me the finger as he was being led away. I could have found him in contempt and given him more time, but I let it pass.