“Oh,” she laughed. “Well, step on it then."
He had already surprised her once today. He insisted on staying at the reception far longer than necessary, and drove at a maddeningly slow pace on the return trip. When they arrived home, Sandra was ready for comfortable clothes, a hotdog and Adam Bede, but not Tim. He insisted that they go to Charlotte for dinner in a swanky restaurant—something they had never done before. Even if they must go out to dinner, she would have preferred McDonalds's or Western Steer. She didn't mind spending money, but she didn't like to waste it. Paying fifty dollars for a two-dollar steak rubbed her the wrong way. Besides, she was afraid she would embarrass Tim by using the wrong fork or something like that.
There was some embarrassment, she recalled with a wry smile, but it was Tim who embarrassed her. As they finished their meal, several waiters appeared bearing a small cake with a single candle. Right there in front of everybody they sang “Happy Birthday” to her. The other diners applauded and some sang with the waiters.
Tim explained that when she had showed him her research on George Eliot he noticed her remark that Eliot's and Sandra's birthdays were on the same day, November 22. He made a note of it on his computer calendar. After blowing out the candle, one waiter cut the cake in half, making two nice servings. Tim presented her with an unwrapped case, which contained a beautiful pearl necklace. She thought the pearls were real, but she didn't dare ask.
All of their house lights were out when they arrived at 7:58. She was certain she had left a couple of them on. Tim ignored her comment about the lights and urged her to hurry to the den and turn the TV set on while he hung up their coats.
When she snapped on the den light switch, both light and a chorus of “Happy Birthday” filled the room. She felt overwhelmed with emotion. She had never had a birthday dinner, a birthday cake, a birthday gift, and certainly, she had never had a surprise birthday party. She thought that everybody she knew in Dot must be there. Even the newlyweds were present.
While the guests were still shaking her hand or giving her a hug, eyes turned to the door and the group launched into another chorus of “Happy Birthday to You.” Dottie Frank made her entrance carrying the beautiful cake she had created, complete with twenty-seven lighted candles. Sandra did not have the heart to tell Tim until the following summer that she was only twenty-six.
Tim urged her to make a wish and, if she blew out all of the candles with a single breath, he promised it would come true. She wished that it would snow on Christmas Eve, and she blew out the candles with almost enough force to blow the icing off the cake.
People stood around eating cake, drinking spiked punch and watching her open the gag gifts they had brought. Tim quietly mingled with the group, thanking everyone for coming and giving special thanks to Dottie Frank for baking the cake and to Victoria White for sending out the invitations. When he saw that Sandra was opening the last gift, he and Bobby slipped out and brought in one final surprise.
Sandra could not imagine what the oddly shaped package might contain. She thought it must have taken a whole roll of wrapping paper to cover it. She ripped away the red foil and beamed with delight.
“I thought it was time the place had a name,” Tim explained as he lifted up the bright green three by four-foot solid pine sign for all to see. Lettering, grooved into both sides and painted white, read:
Double D Acres
Sandra and Tim Dollar
“How clever,” someone said. “Double D for the two Dollars."
“No,” Sandra said as she gave Tim a look that made him want to get rid of the guests in a hurry. “It stands for Dude and Dudette."
* * * *
The following Thursday was Thanksgiving. Sandra enjoyed preparing the meal during the morning as well as the compliments from her guests, who began arriving at noon, although 1:00 o'clock was the scheduled time.
Mack received some good-natured kidding about his long blessing, but Sandra had a different problem with it. She knew there was more to be thankful for than ever before in her life, but Mack was thanking God for all blessings. She thought it more appropriate for her to thank Tim.
Even though everyone was already stuffed with turkey and numerous side dishes, including especially delicious fresh baked yeast rolls, they all topped off the meal with a delicious slice of pumpkin pie, crowned with real whipped cream—a delicacy several had never before experienced. Mack, Vic, Bobby, Carl and Tim retired to the den to watch football on TV. Mary Lou, Susan, Adele and Victoria began cleaning things up, with Sandra supervising.
It was during the cleanup period that Sandra's “renewal of wedding vows” plans were expanded and formalized, and she later relayed them to Tim, who seemed overwhelmed. Everyone in Dot was to be invited. The Thanksgiving Day guests would prepare a buffet style dinner, and serving would start at 6:00 p.m. At eight o'clock the festivities would move to the small pond to the right of the house where the ceremony would take place followed by the singing of Christmas carols. Sandra insisted that everyone should dress for the snow that she so badly wanted.
* * * *
December passed with startling speed. In addition to progress towards their own goals, Tim was nearly overwhelmed with reports from various committees created at the town meeting. Business people agreed to pay for street lighting that would be installed as soon as Duke Power could get to it. The Mecklenburg County Bookmobile would visit Dot weekly on Thursdays, beginning the first of the year. Although not enough, certain funds were available from both the county and the federal governments to apply to the building of a clinic, and it appeared there was the probability of the clinic being located in the old hotel building. Dr. Honneycutt found not only a dentist who was interested in establishing a practice in Dot, but also an optometrist.
Sandra began setting her alarm clock for 5:00 a.m. each day because there was so much she wanted to do. In addition to participating with Tim in their business affairs, she was nearing the completion of the first draft of her novel. She sent letters to thirteen agents who advertised in Writers’ Digest, requesting a copy of their submission guidelines. She allowed herself to believe that there was at least a slight possibility she might actually get her book published.
For the first time in her life, she had money with which to purchase Christmas presents, and people to whom she wanted to give them. While Mary Lou Honneycutt McGee or Victoria White occasionally accompanied them, it was usually Susan and Sandra who made frequent shopping trips to Charlotte.
Additionally, Sandra discovered how difficult it was to decorate a large house for Christmas and she welcomed Susan's excellent taste and assistance. She was pleased with the artificial trees they purchased, placed in the den and living room and carefully decorated. But she was most pleased with the two forty foot cedar trees growing on the house side of the small pond on which they strung outdoor lights with the help of a borrowed Duke Power Company cherry picker. At night, the 2000 lights on each tree adequately illuminated the area and their colorful reflection in the water was visible from Highway 13. The ceremony was to take place between these trees, and the guests would sing carols around them.
* * * *
Weather conditions during December in this part of North Carolina are difficult for even certified meteorologists to predict. There is always the possibility of snow, but the probability, if there is frozen precipitation at all, is sleet and/or freezing rain. Weather conditions during the first part of the month were about average, with lows near forty and highs in the low fifties. However, a change in the jet stream influenced the second half and the weather turned warmer than usual. The temperature actually reached eighty degrees one day. It was so much warmer than normal that on December 24th the forsythia bushes on either end of the house were in full bloom as were the spireas lining the front of the house. The Christmas Eve official weather forecast called for clear skies, a high of sixty-five degrees and a low of forty. Sandra was not pleased.
Sandra prayed her daily prayer ho
urly. The friends occupying her kitchen all day kidded her mercilessly and even suggested that if snow were so important, perhaps she should postpone the ceremony. Even as Bobby worked in a tee shirt stacking wood for a bonfire near the small pond, Sandra angrily replied to Tim's suggestion of dropping confetti on the ceremony from a cherry picker by tartly insisting, “It will snow tonight."
While a few guests arrived at 5:30, most straggled in between 6:00 and 7:30. There never seemed to be long lines at the buffet set up in the dining room. Children played on the lawn. Adults wandered both outside and in, some dressed casually, and some in their Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes. Many of the guests neither Sandra nor Tim knew, but they were genuinely welcome. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves and at one point Tim and Sandra agreed to make this an annual holiday event. As quickly as food disappeared from the buffet table, more appeared. The cooks had anticipated the large turnout.
At one point Sandra slipped away and prayed her “daily” prayer one final time. She added, God, if it doesn't snow tonight, you and I are going to have a long talk tomorrow. She wondered if God appreciated humor.
Shortly before 8:00, Bobby torched the two huge piles of wood on either side of the lighted cedars. The leaping flames called the guest to the pond. Only Sandra slipped on a coat.
Okay God, Sandra silently prayed as she stood, holding Tim's hand while Mack recited the marriage ceremony, Maybe it was wrong of me to try to put you to such a test. It's still the happiest day of my life. It's a beautiful setting on the edge of the pond with the tree lights glowing and the bonfires burning. Marrying a man like Tim and surrounded by so many friends and neighbors is an experience I thought I'd never have. I'll forgive you this time, she concluded.
She smiled and relaxed. It did not bother her that some of the children jumped the gun and were toasting marshmallows and drinking hot chocolate that her friends had provided for the final event of the evening. She was unaware that many of her guests were beginning to shiver.
Meteorologists do not understand the jet stream. They don't really know what it is, what creates it, what causes it to be stationary, what causes it to move slightly at times and sharply at other times. During the early morning hours of this December 24th, the jet stream, which had been running in something of a straight line across Canada, suddenly began to dip sharply into the United States. About 7:00 p.m. it reached and then passed through Dot, North Carolina, bringing with it very cold air out of Canada which collided with the moist warm air that had been stagnant over the Carolinas for two weeks.
Mack came to the final sentence of the ceremony, but suddenly paused and looked up at the starless sky. Sandra began to cry. She was not alone. Mack's voice broke as he said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” The couple embraced, both crying unashamedly as the tiny white flakes accumulated briefly before melting on their hair and shoulders.
The first carol sung was not a carol at all. It was “I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas."
Finis
BOOK 2
The Roads to Dot
By
David O. Dyer, Sr.
Chapter One
Fatty, fatty, two by four,
Can't get through the bathroom door.
Fatty, fatty, two by four,
Can't get through the bathroom door.
Fatty, fatty, two by four,
Can't get through the bathroom door.
Bo shook his head sharply, trying to dislodge the echoing chant from his brain as the chartered bus pulled away from the Reynolds High School parking lot.
“Something wrong, Bo?"
He glanced at his seatmate. “No—felt like a gnat in my ear."
Betty Elizabeth Hensley, he thought. My only companion since grade school. Why? Because she is as ugly as I am and nobody will have anything to do with her either.
He thought about his only friend. He visualized her long, poorly groomed, very thin brown hair. He glanced out of the side of his eyes to see if she managed to comb it better today. It does look better pulled straight back and fastened with a braid, he thought, but her hair is so thin I can still see her scalp. That hairdo also makes her angular face and crooked nose more prominent, poor thing. Who the hell am I to talk? He chuckled out loud.
“What's funny?” she asked.
“Damn gnat is tickling my ear,” he lied. Her brown eyes, spaced a little too closely together, and her front teeth that protruded, often resting on her lower lip, were not a pretty sight. He turned to stare out the bus window.
He breathed deeply, enjoying the smell of the bus exhaust fumes that seeped inside the slowly lumbering vehicle. Thank God I'm no longer fat, he thought, but I'm still short and my head is too small for my body. Talk about her nose. Think of your own huge nostrils inside that flat thing on your face, and those big ol’ floppy elephant ears and hair all over your body like a damn monkey. He shook his head in dismay.
“The weatherman was good to us today,” Betty said, ignoring his obvious desire to avoid conversation. “Do you remember last year's band picnic?"
She does have a pretty voice, though, and talented as hell, he thought as he turned to face her. I wouldn't mind having one of her big boobs in my mouth either, Bo grinned.
“Yeah,” he replied without enthusiasm to her question. “It rained all day."
“Bo, are you okay?"
“Sure. I just wonder why we keep going to these damn things."
More taunts from his childhood invaded his mind. He pictured his friends in years past dancing around him when his Dad called him to come in from playing to eat supper. “Bastard. Bastard. Bastard,” they would chant in unison. “Go on home Bastard. Your daddy's calling you.” Even his preacher slipped one Sunday in church while introducing him to a visiting teenager. “Let me introduce you to Bastard, uh, Bascomb Nading,” the preacher said.
Why in the world did Dad name me Bascomb? he asked himself, as he had done so many times before. Couldn't he see where that would lead? It was Betty who started calling me ‘Bo', short for Bascomb Oliver. Thank goodness it caught on.
“Bo?"
“I'm sorry, Betty. My mind is somewhere else this morning. Must be the gas fumes. Why do we keep coming to these things?"
“I don't know about you, but I have fun."
“You have fun? How can you possibly have fun? When we get to Reynolds Park some of the kids will head to the swimming pool. Do you think they want you to go with them? Some will choose up and play softball. Do you think they will ask you to play? When we eat, will anyone besides me sit with you?"
Her eyes watered briefly. “It's a pretty park. You and I can follow a nature trail, look at the birds and wild flowers, and talk."
“Yeah, like we always do. For my part, I'm glad we will be graduating in a few days and won't have to do this anymore."
“Well, if it makes you so miserable, why didn't you stay at home, Bascomb Oliver Nading?” she pouted.
“Because I knew you were hell bent to come to this thing and I didn't want you to be alone,” he replied.
“Bo, that's sweet,” she cooed. She reached for his hand but he pulled it away.
Not so sweet, you ugly thing, he thought. I don't love you. I feel sorry for you.
* * * *
There were many groups visiting the city park that Saturday morning. As the chartered bus unloaded in the parking lot, a crowd of cigarette puffing youths, all clad in denim jackets, sat or propped on car hoods and trunks watching the bus. They saw the adults and a few students unload boxes and head for a picnic pavilion. They watched as another group headed towards the swimming pool and a larger group move in the direction of the softball field. And they watched a tall ugly girl and a short ugly boy slowly shuffle towards the nature trail.
“That's two ugly ducklings,” one of the onlookers observed as he expertly flicked his filter tipped cigarette towards a passing dog.
“Yeah, but did you see the size of her tits?” a companion replied, grasping his crotch i
n an obscene gesture.
* * * *
“Bo, cheer up,” Betty urged when they had followed the trail a hundred yards. “Granted, we're not popular. Who can blame them? I scare the hell out of myself every time I look in a mirror."
She laughed, but he didn't find her observation humorous.
“Looks are not everything,” she continued. “We're both bright, talented and young. We have long lives ahead of us. It's up to us to minimize our weaknesses and maximize our strengths."
There goes old Sweaty Betty again, spouting her philosophy memorized straight out of some textbook, he thought.
“You're talented all right,” he responded. “Nobody can draw cartoons and caricatures any better than you. I really wish you could have taken that mail-order cartooning course."
“I couldn't afford it."
“Maybe you can after you get a job."
“Yeah, maybe."
They walked on, deeper and deeper into the heavy foliage.
“At least you got a taste of being popular,” he mumbled.
“Say what?"
“Come on, Betty. Back in the seventh grade. You sprouted boobs long before the other girls—big ones at that."
Betty blushed.
“Hell, you suddenly didn't have time for me anymore until the other girls caught up a year or so later. Boys were around you all the time and oh, how you loved to wrestle with them on the playground. You would take on five or six at a time, let them get you down and feel you up. Shit, I remember watching you from our secret place in the bushes. One day you let them take your shirt off and just sat there while everybody looked and pawed and squeezed."
“Bo,” she responded coldly. “I'm trying to forget that. I didn't know much about sex then. All I knew was that I suddenly possessed something the other girls didn't have and the boys liked it."
Sintown Chronicles I: Behind Closed Doors Page 27
