by Peggy Webb
When I step outside the curtain I do a double take. In his coat and boots and faux white beard, Uncle Charlie looks like the real deal. Of course, in their red, fur-trimmed suits, all Santas look alike.
“Ho ho ho,” he says, and I applaud. He’s headed toward the door when I spot the rest of his costume lying on a metal chair.
“Wait. Your gloves.” When I pick them up, I notice they’re even wetter than my skirt. “These are damp, Uncle Charlie.”
“Probably a leak from the air conditioner or something. There’s construction going on all over the mall.”
“I wonder why they didn’t wait till after Christmas.”
“Who knows? The mall’s old. Maybe they had an emergency situation.” He offers his arm. “Ready, dear heart?”
By the time Uncle Charlie and I get to Santa’s Court, I’m tickled pink to see people lined up two-deep in front of the Hair.Net booth to sample Darlene’s free jingle bell nail art. Mama’s Fa La La La Farewell booth has attracted a crowd, too. And Fayrene is knee deep in people who’ll soon find out that pickled pigs’ lips are not an exotic new delicacy but taste as much like the barnyard as they sound.
Over at Uncle Charlie’s Eternal Rest Funeral Home booth, poor Bobby has no one itching to talk about kicking the bucket and receiving a free jazz funeral. My first thought is to call Jack to drop by the mall so Bobby will have somebody to talk to. Then I remember that Jack can’t drive yet. Maybe I’ll call Champ.
The star of the center mall, of course, is Lovie. Her griddle is smoking, her deep-fry cooker is sizzling, and you can’t stir her crowd with a peppermint stick. Everybody wants a taste of Lovie’s Luscious Eats.
I drop by her booth to pick up Elvis, then proceed to the back entrance of Santa’s Court. It’s a roped-off area with two security guards in elf costumes up front trying to keep order among the screaming kids and their tired-looking mothers. Somebody ought to tell those two guards that disgruntled is not the proper demeanor for Santa’s elves.
The centerpiece of the court is Santa’s throne, an elaborate metal structure spray-painted gold and adorned with faux jewels, plush, red-velvet cushions, and a string of Christmas bulbs that will light up when the opening ceremonies begin.
When Uncle Charlie takes a seat and says, “Ho, ho, ho,” you’d think Elvis himself had risen from the dead. The kids go into a screaming frenzy. Of course, with this age (two to six), they could be screaming for no reason at all.
Walking carefully so I won’t open the show with a flyaway skirt, I make my way through fake snow, plastic reindeer, faux trees hung with Christmas ornaments, and cardboard-cut-out elves. I’d make three of these little inanimate Santa’s helpers.
The kids waiting for a turn on Santa’s lap don’t notice. Partially because I head into the crowd to hand out candy canes but mostly because I have Santa Paws on a leash. (Let me tell you, Elvis is hamming it up.) With two Santas in the building, the screaming has reached near-hysteria, even if one of the Santas is canine.
A man with a face as wrinkled as a peach pit struts my way. In jeans and leather jacket, he’d look like an ordinary mall shopper except for his size. His head comes up barely past my elbow.
He makes no bones about looking me up and down, and Elvis makes no bones about his disapproval. Hearing that low grumbling growl, I lean over and try to soothe my dog’s ruffled feelings.
“Be nice, or I’ll call Champ to take you home.” Elvis gets the picture. When I straighten up, he’s a model of canine decorum. Translated, that means he’s not drooling and using my legs as a salt lick.
“You’re some tall elf.” The strange little man holds out his hand. “Hi, I’m Corky Kelly. I just dropped by to wish you luck.”
I take an educated guess. “Former elf?”
He doesn’t laugh; he giggles. I know the difference. Lovie and I have spent hours down on Mama’s farm or sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed or mine eating popcorn and giggling.
“Retired elf.” A look of longing crosses his face. “I miss it, though.”
“Stick around, Mr. Kelly. I’d love for you to give me some pointers.””
“Wish I could, but I’m meeting my nephew across town at Danver’s. One of the perks of being retired. Leisurely lunches with family and friends.”
I don’t notice Elvis is missing until Corky strolls off. It’s just like my dog to pay me back for a public chastisement by slipping his collar and leaving me holding an empty leash. Panicked, I’m about to start calling his name when I hear him. Front and center in Santa’s Court, head thrown back, his throat working on a series of long howls.
Good grief. My dog is onstage, probably thinking he’s singing “Blue Christmas.” Listen, I know you think I’m crazy, but this basset acts like he’s a world-famous entertainer. He grabs every opportunity to perform.
The kids are laughing and clapping, which only encourages him. Elvis spins in a little circle, shows his audience a curled-up lip and a bit of teeth, then keeps on howling.
“Somebody grab that dog!” The screech comes from Mayor Earl Getty’s wife, Junie Mae.
Mayor Getty himself, who is standing in Santa’s Court fiddling with the microphone, tries to grab my dog, but I’m too fast for him. I leap into action and have Elvis back on his leash before he can pee on Junie Mae’s snakeskin pumps.
He hates being called a dog. I remind him that Junie Mae is one of my best customers. She drives all the way from Tupelo to Hair.Net and has a standing request for me to make up her up like Marilyn Monroe when she’s ready to pass on to Glory Land. When she delivered postmortem instructions, she said, “For once, I want to take the spotlight from Robert Earl.”
I have Elvis back under control before anybody has time to think our shenanigans are anything except part of the act. The kids start clapping, and Mayor Getty, who knows opportunity when it mows him down, is quick to take the credit.
“A little added attraction,” he says.
“Behave yourself,” I tell my dog; then I make sure his collar is a notch tighter, too tight to slip out of but not tight enough to be uncomfortable.
Meanwhile the mall’s PA system is blasting “Jingle Bells,” the crowd is getting restless, and Mayor Getty is tapping away at the microphone the way he always does.
At the front of the crowd, Junie Mae looks like an Easter marshmallow in her too-tight pink suit with the faux-fur collar and little matching pillbox hat. And I mean that in the best of ways. I like marshmallows.
“It’s working, hon,” Junie Mae calls out.
The crowd laughs. Every time the mayor makes a public appearance, he taps and she yells the same thing. Theirs is almost a George Burns and Gracie Allen routine.
With Elvis firmly on his leash, I station myself beside a Christmas tree in the corner of Santa’s Court. Mayor Getty glances at Uncle Charlie and me to mouth, Ready?
We both nod, and he says, “La-dies and gent-le-men.”
“Wait!” Somebody in the crowd yells. “Stop!”
It’s the mall’s manager, Cleveland White, his long legs pumping toward Santa’s Court, his wild red hair sticking up, his florid face redder than Santa Claus’ suit.
What now? I’m holding my breath, right along with the crowd, when Cleveland announces, “Rudolph is not here yet.”
On a collective exhale, we all turn to see a half reindeer, half man loping in our direction. The only way we know he is Steve Boone, owner of Tupelo Hardware, where Elvis bought his first guitar, is that he’s carrying his head. It has pointy antlers and a bright red nose.
Junie Mae grabs his furry left flank as he lopes by. “Psst. Put your head on.”
Steve heaves the big shaggy costume head over his, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer steps into Santa’s Court.
Mayor Getty clears his throat to start over. “Welcome to the North Pole! On behalf of the city of Tupelo and the Barnes Crossing Mall, I give you Santa Claus and his court!”
Elvis barks while Rudolph grabs Uncle Charlie�
�s gloved hand and leans over to whisper something to him. Suddenly the throne lights up, Rudolph’s nose starts flashing, and he flies through the air with the greatest of ease. Meanwhile, Uncle Charlie starts to “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”
Something is horribly wrong. While I’m frozen in fear, the crowd goes wild. Am I the only one who knows this is not part of the show? When Uncle Charlie topples from the throne, I shake off my paralysis and race his way. The clapping now becomes cheering.
Holy cow! Everybody still thinks they’re being entertained. Everybody, that is, except Lovie, who is shoving her way through the crowd.
An overwrought mother with rambunctious twin boys says, “You can’t cut this line.” Lovie would have ignored her if she hadn’t added, “You hog.”
“Kiss my grits, heifer.” Lovie keeps on trucking. Thank goodness.
Uncle Charlie and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer are lying on the floor, and they are not moving.
Chapter 3
Unexpected Christmas Show, Final Curtain, and Ruldoph the Red-Nosed Deer-ly Departed
Frantic, I kneel beside Uncle Charlie and start CPR. Where is the manager? Can’t the guards trying to restore order see that nobody is attending to Rudolph? Is there no doctor in this crowd?
Plowing her way through the bedlam, Lovie screams, “Daddy! Daddy!” When there is no response, she says a word that would strip paint.
“Lovie, get down here and take over.”
Poor Rudolph is still lying unattended a few feet away. I race to him and try to find a pulse on the side of his neck, an impossible task through his reindeer costume. There’s only one thing to do: jerk off his head.
Seeing Rudolph beheaded, little kids start screaming and overwrought mothers start trying to drag them away from Santa’s Court. Harried security guards hustle to remove the mothers and children from the center mall, but the manager is nowhere to be seen.
With two fingers against Rudolph’s neck, I’m praying for signs of life when Mama barrels into Santa’s Court. She takes one look and yells, “Ruldolph is dead!”
The already distraught kids start crying while now-crazed mothers send looks our way that could kill. They act as if Lovie and I have personally knocked off the red-nosed reindeer.
I try CPR on him, but I think Mama’s right. Poor old Steve Boone, a.k.a. Rudolph, has caught the first Christmas sleigh to Glory Land. There’s nothing more I can do.
Terrified now, I race over to kneel beside Lovie. I don’t care if my short skirt causes everybody in the mall to see Christmas. For those of you who don’t know, that was Grandmother Valentine’s name for private parts that shouldn’t be seen in public.
Mama is cradling Uncle Charlie’s head in her lap, patting his face. “Charlie? Charlie?” It’s the most forlorn voice I’ve ever heard.
I haven’t seen Mama lose her pizzazz since Daddy died. A parallel I don’t even want to think about.
“Lovie, do you want me to take over?”
“I think he’s coming around.”
Uncle Charlie draws a hitching breath, and Mama starts crying.
“Thank God, Charlie. We thought you were gone.”
“What happened?” he asks.
Lovie’s too shaken to speak, and so am I. But I’m not so addled I don’t remember the sequence of events. Elvis’ frantic barking. A warning. Dogs smell disaster a mile away.
Ruldolph taking hold of Uncle Charlie’s glove. His wet glove.
Electric power lighting up Santa’s throne. Ruldolph flying and Santa jiving.
Suddenly I’m inspecting Uncle Charlie’s gloves. The right one where he grabbed Rudolph’s hand is seared. It looks like power passed through him and grounded in the poor unfortunate reindeer.
“Lovie.” I point to the blackened glove. “Look.”
She bends closer and takes a sniff. “Steve Boone got fried like a sausage.”
Bound for her to equate dying with food. Lovie equates everything with food. Fun. Music. Sex. You name it.
In the distance I hear sirens. Present circumstances considered, it’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.
By mid-afternoon Uncle Charlie’s lying in a hospital bed, his skin white as a bar of Ivory soap, his eyes shut, and his face showing lines I didn’t even know he had. Mama, Lovie, and I are hovering around him like he might grow wings at any minute and be raptured right on up to Glory Land. If you’re Southern Baptist, which we are, the idea of being raptured is supposed to send you down the hall rejoicing.
“If I could get my hands on whoever did this,” Lovie says, “I’d beat the tar out of him with a baseball bat.”
So much for rejoicing. And my cousin didn’t say tar, either. She said a word I wouldn’t want my future children to hear. If I had any prospects of them. Which I don’t.
“I’d tie him up behind my tractor and drag him through a briar patch.”
This from Mama, who looks so fierce I don’t doubt her for a minute. And for your information, she can still drive the John Deere tractor on her farm.
“I’d like to take my steel-toed boot and kick somebody to Kingdom Come over this,” Lovie adds.
With the mood she’s been in since her kidnapping in the jungle and her disappointment that Rocky wasn’t the one to rescue her, just about anybody would do.
“I’m right there with you, Lovie. I’d give him a whack with the stiletto heel of my Jimmy Choos.”
That’s tough language coming from me. I’m so nonviolent I catch spiders in the house with tissue paper and release them in the back yard. And I don’t even like spiders. I can’t abide the thought of little hairy arachnid legs crawling all over me.
If anything could rouse Uncle Charlie, it would be our wild-eyed plans for revenge. For once, though, he doesn’t tell us, “Now, now, dear hearts” or sit up to quote Shakespeare. Maybe he’s in too much pain, but we’ll never know. With his burned hand swathed in bandages and whatever magic potion the nurses rigged dripping into his veins, he’s probably not himself. And even if he was, he wouldn’t worry us by complaining.
A hatchet-faced nurse comes in and tries to shoo us all into the hall, but not before she gives my jingle bell elf costume the once-over. I can’t tell if she’s trying to decide to have somebody haul me off to jail for indecent exposure or to the loony bin.
“I’m an elf.”
“Yeah, well, I’m Frosty the Snowman. Jingle yourself out of here.”
It could have been worse. I could have told her Elvis was waiting for me in the parking lot.
I jerk Lovie out into the hall before she can say a word she didn’t learn in church. We lean our weary selves against the wall. Thank goodness, the nurse pays us no more attention. She has her hands full with Mama, who is refusing to leave Uncle Charlie.
“Nurse Ratched can argue till Kingdom Come and Aunt Ruby Nell won’t budge.”
“I’m glad I’m not as stubborn as Mama.”
“Who says?”
I don’t want to think of all the reasons Lovie could be right. Instead, I dig in my purse for a pack of peanuts, rip into the bag, and share it with Lovie. We’ve had no lunch, and this is a poor substitute, but it will have to do. Nobody is willing to leave Uncle Charlie to go in search of a vending machine, let alone the hospital cafeteria.
When the nurse leaves, we barrel back inside. Mama looks mad enough to spit nails.
“What made that witch think I’d leave Charlie? Somebody murdered Ruldoph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Plain and simple.”
“The victim’s not a reindeer, Mama. And you don’t know it was murder. The cops are treating it like an accident.”
We had talked to them briefly at the mall, then later in the hospital waiting room while doctors were running tests on Uncle Charlie. Mama knows this as well as I do.
“Flitter, I know murder when I see it. I’m an expert.”
For your information, she’s certainly no expert. She just happens to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time on more occasions than I care to re
call. But when she makes up her mind, it takes an act of God to get her to budge. Or Uncle Charlie.
“Whether it’s murder or an accident, I can guarantee you the wretch will pay for it.” Only Lovie didn’t say wretch. She said a word that would grow hair on Santa’s beard.
“This talk of murder is ridiculous.” I hope I’m right. “Who would want to kill Steve Boone? Everybody liked him.”
I picture the mild-mannered owner of Tupelo Hardware greeting customers with a smile and a handshake, never getting flustered, even if you ask for a thingamajig he has to climb that big, tall library ladder to find. Poor Steve.
“Maybe they were after Charlie.” Mama moves closer to the bed and grabs his good hand.
“Nobody’s after me. It was an accident.” Uncle Charlie sounds so much like himself I nearly wet my pants in relief. “Ruby Nell, you can quit crying now.”
“Do you think I’d cry over you, you old fart? I’m allergic to this new mascara. That’s all.”
For all Mama’s bravado, she bunches with us around Uncle Charlie like baby chicks trying to hide under the wings of a mother hen. When I think how close we came to losing him, I want to curl up in a corner and cry.
All Lovie can say is “Daddy,” over and over. I finally pull myself together long enough to ask, “How do you feel?”
“I’ve been better, but don’t anybody start getting ideas about replacing me as the family boss.”
“Dream on, Charlie.” Mama’s trying to sound tough, but she’s just as scared for him as the rest of us. “Nobody’s the boss of me.”
He grins, a very good sign. “Callie, you and Lovie have to find somebody to replace me. We can’t disappoint the children.”
“You just concentrate on getting well, Uncle Charlie. We’ll handle everything.”
“You bet your sweet patootie we will.” This time Lovie really did say sweet patootie. When she thinks the occasion calls for it, she moderates her language around Uncle Charlie.
