A Dixie Christmas

by Sandra Hill

  There were enough calories and fat grams on this table to fatten up the entire nation of Bosnia. Yet, amazingly, everyone here was whip-thin. Either they’d all inherited good genetic metabolisms, or they engaged in a massive amount of physical labor. He suspected it was a combination of both.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea to eat so much red meat and dairy?” Clay made the mistake of inquiring.

  “Bite your tongue,” everyone declared at once.

  For a moment, Clay had forgotten that these were dairy farmers whose livelihood depended on milk products. Plus, they had about a hundred thousand pounds of beef on the hoof in their own backyard.

  Clay rubbed a forefinger over his upper lip, pondering all that had happened to him so far this day. In the midst of the conversations swirling around him now, he felt as if he was having a personal epiphany. Not just the monumental discovery that, for the first time in his life, he was falling in love. It was much more than that. He never realized till this moment how much he’d missed having a family. He never would have described himself as a lonely man—loner, perhaps, but not lonely. Now, he knew that he’d been lonely for a long time.

  And that wacky bellhop had been right this morning about his coldness. Over the years, he must have built up an icy crust around his heart. Just like my father. Little by little, it was melting now. Every time he came within a few feet of Annie, the strange fever enveloped him, and his chest tightened with emotions too new to understand. He yearned so much. For what exactly, he didn’t know.

  In a daze, he reached for a biscuit, but Chet coughed meaningfully and Aunt Liza glared stonily at him. Once he sheepishly put the roll back, Annie took his hand on the one side, and Jerry Lee on the other. All around the table, everyone bowed their heads and joined hands, including Aunt Liza and Chet who sat in the end chairs, on either side. Then Annie said softly, “Lord, bless this food and all the poor people in the world who have less than we do, even the rich people who have less than we do. For this bounty, we give you thanks. Amen.”

  Everyone dug in heartily then, passing the bowls and platters around the table as they chattered away. Clay soon found himself with an unbelievable amount of high cholesterol food on his plate, and enjoying it immensely. He practically sighed at the almost sinful flavor of melt-in-your-mouth potatoes mixing on his palate with rich beef gravy.

  “Frankie Wilks called when you were in the barn.” Jerry Lee bobbed his eyebrows at Annie. “Said something about wantin’ you to go to the Christmas Eve candlelight service with him.”

  “Oooooh! Oooooh!” several of her brothers taunted, meanwhile shoveling down food like monks after a Lent-long fast.

  “Who’s Frankie Wilks?” Clay’s voice rose with more consternation than he had any right to exhibit. Yet.

  “The milkman,” Annie said, scowling at Jerry Lee. She had a hearty appetite, too, Clay noticed, though you wouldn’t know it from her thin frame. Probably came from riding herd on her cows.

  Did they ride herd on cows?

  Then Annie’s words sank in. The milkman? The milkman? I have a fifty million dollar portfolio, I’m not a bad looking guy, attracting women has never been a problem for me, and my competition is . . . a milkman?

  Competition? Whoa! Slow down this runaway testosterone train.

  “Don’t you be sittin’ there, gloatin’ like a pig in heat, Chet,” Aunt Liza interjected as she put another slab of beef onto Clay’s plate, despite his raised hand of protest. His mouth was too full to speak. “You got a phone call today, too, Chet.”

  Everyone at the table turned in tandem to stare at Chet.

  “Emmy Lou? Right?” Chet didn’t appear very happy as he asked the question.

  “Yep. She was callin’ from London. Said she won’t be home before Christmas to pick up the baby, after all.”

  “Stupid damn girl,” Annie cursed under her breath. Clay suspected damn was not a word she used lightly.

  “You drove her away, if you ask me,” Hank accused, reaching for his dessert, which Aunt Liza shoved out of the way, pushing more salad his way first.”

  “Who asked you, mush-for-brains?” Chet snapped.

  “All you had to do was tell her you love her,” Roy teased. He waved a forkful of potatoes in the air as he spoke.

  “I offered to marry her, didn’t I?”

  “Offered? Sometimes, Chet, you are dumber than pig spit,” Annie remarked. “Have some pickled beets,” she added as an aside to Clay.

  Chet’s face, which was solemn to begin with, went rigid with anger, but he said nothing.

  “Is this Lilith?” Annie addressed Aunt Liza as she chewed on a bite of pot roast.

  “Yep. Nice and tender, ain’t she?” Aunt Liza answered. “Thank God we got rid of the last of Alicia in the stew Friday night. She was tough as cow hide.”

  They name the cows they eat? Will they eat those two sheep that were in the Nativity scene, too? Or . . . God forbid . . . the donkey? Bile rose in Clay’s throat, and he discreetly pushed the remainder of his pot roast to the side of the plate.

  “Speaking of cows, I noticed this morning that Mirabelle’s vulva is swollen and red,” Johnny interjected. “We better breed her soon.”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow night,” Annie said.

  Clay choked on the pot roast still remaining in his mouth. A thirteen-year-old kid was discussing vulvae at the dinner table, and no one blinked an eye. Even worse, Annie . . . his Annie . . . was going to breed a cow. “Can I watch?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure,” she said and resumed eating. Clay liked to watch Annie eat. Her full lips moved sensuously as she relished each morsel, no matter if it was a beet or the chocolate cake. He about lost it when her tongue darted out to lick a speck of chocolate icing off the edge of her bottom lip. “If you’re sure you want to. Some people get kind of squeamish.”

  “I can handle it,” he asserted. Heck, he’d probably seen worse in Grand Central Station. But, hot damn, Annie had just-like-that agreed to let him observe her breeding a cow. And she wasn’t even embarrassed.

  “Are you rich?” Roy asked.

  “Roy!” Annie and Aunt Liza chastised.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?” Everyone at the table put down their eating utensils and gaped at him. Except Annie. Her face fell in disappointment. Was she falling in love with him, too? He didn’t have time to ponder for long why his being rich was a disadvantage. He just kicked into damage control. “Well, not rich-rich.”

  “How rich?” Annie demanded to know.

  Before he could respond, Hank commented, “Betcha draw a bunch of chicks, having heaps of money and all.”

  “At least a bunch,” Clay said dryly.

  Annie flashed Hank a glower that the kid ignored, smiling widely. “Man, if I had a little extra cash, and a hot car, I would be the biggest chick magnet in the whole U-ni-ted States. I’m already the best in the South.”

  His brothers hooted their opinion of his high self-opinion.

  “If you’d get your mind off the girls once in a while,” Aunt Liza reprimanded, “maybe you’d pass that Cow-cue-lust.”

  Everyone laughed at her mispronunciation of the word calculus, except Annie. “And, by the way, where is your second term report card, Mr. I-Am-The-Stud?”

  “Uh-oh,” Johnny and Jerry Lee groaned at the same time. “You had to remind her.”

  Clay’s lips twitched with suppressed mirth. Being in a family was kind of fun.

  But Jerry Lee was back on his case again. “Do you have a chauffeur?”

  Clay felt his face turn red. “Benson . . .George Benson . . . doubles as my driver and gardener. His wife Doris is my cook and housekeeper.”

  “You have a gardener!” Annie wailed. You’d think he had told her he employed an ax murderer. “And a housekeeper!”

  “Do you live in a mansion?” Johnny’s young face was rapt with interest.

  “No, he lives in a trailer, you dweeb,” Hank remarked, nudging Johnny in the ribs with an elbow.
>
  “No. Definitely not. Uh-uh. I do not live in a mansion.” This was the most incredible conversation Clay had ever experienced. Why was he trying to downplay his lifestyle?

  To make Annie more comfortable, that was why.

  Annie’s eyes narrowed. “How big is this non-mansion?”

  “Tweytfllrms,” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Twenty-two rooms. But it’s not a mansion.”

  “Twenty-two rooms! And you live there alone?” She appeared as if she might cry. “You probably have caviar for breakfast.”

  He shook his head quickly. “Toast, fresh squeezed orange juice and black coffee, that’s what I have. Every day. I don’t even like caviar.”

  “—gold faucets in your bathrooms and—”

  “They’re only gold-plated. Cheap gold-plating. And brass. I’m pretty sure some of them are brass.”

  “—and date movie stars—”

  “The only movie star I ever dated was Natalie Portman, and that was before she was famous, when we were both students at Harvard. Her name was Natalie Hershlag. And it wasn’t really a date, just brunch at—”

  “Natalie Portman!” five males at the table exclaimed.

  Annie honed in on another irrelevant fact. “He eats brunch. Brunch. Oh, God! He must think he’s landed on Welfare Row. Better Homes and Slums.”

  “Who’s Natalie Portman?” Aunt Liza wanted to know. “Is she one of those “Desperate Housewives” hussies Roy watches all the time?”

  Before anyone could explain, Annie sighed loudly and declared, “Maybe I better take you back to your hotel tonight.”

  “An-nie!” Johnny whined. “You promised we would put up the Christmas tree tonight.”

  “Yeah, Annie,” Jerry Lee chimed in. “We would have had it up by now if it wasn’t for your dumb Nativity scene idea.”

  “Well, actually . . . uh, I’m not feeling so good,” Clay surprised himself by saying. He was in a sudden panic. If he went back to the hotel, he’d have no opportunity to study this fever thing with Annie . . . or this falling in . . . uh, whatever. He could easily conduct business on his cell phone and iPad from the farm, for a day or two anyhow.

  “You aren’t?” Annie was immediately concerned.

  “Maybe coming downstairs was too much for you.” Aunt Liza got up and walked to his end of the table, then put a hand to his forehead to check his temperature. “Yep, he’s got a fever.”

  No kidding! What else is new?

  “I’ll help you back up the steps,” Chet offered.

  “No, that’s all right. I think I could sit in a chair and watch you put up your tree.” I am shameless. Pathetic, even. Then, before he had a chance to bite his tongue, he blurted out, “I’ve never had a Christmas tree.”

  Everyone stared at him as if he’d just arrived from Mars. Or New Jersey.

  “My father didn’t believe in commercial holidays,” he disclosed, a defensive edge to his voice. Put a zipper on it, Jessup. You don’t want pity. You want . . . well, something else.

  “That settles it, then,” Aunt Liza said, tears welling in her eyes.

  Yep, pity.

  Annie reached under the table and took his hand in hers.

  On the other hand, I can stomach a little pity. Immediately, a warm feeling of absolute rightness filled him almost to overflowing. He knew then that he’d made the right decision forestalling his return to the city. Besides, he’d just remembered something important.

  He hadn’t checked out the hayloft yet.

  Getting into the Christmas spirit…

  Annie had thought she was drowning in troubles this morning before she ever left for Memphis. Little had she known that her troubles would quadruple by nightfall.

  In fact, she’d brought trouble home with her, willingly, and it sat big as you please right now on her living room sofa, with one extended leg propped up on an ottoman, gazing at her with smoldering eyes that promised . . . well, trouble.

  Clayton Jessup, III had looked handsome this morning when Annie had seen him for the first time in his cashmere overcoat and custom-made suit. But now, sporting a nighttime shadow of whiskers, dressed in tight, faded jeans, a white tee shirt and an unbuttoned blue plaid flannel shirt that brought out the midnight blue of his eyes, the man was drop-dead gorgeous, testosterone-oozing, hot-hot-hot trouble-on-the-hoof, with a capitol T.

  “I need to talk with you . . . alone,” he whispered when Annie stepped close to get the popcorn and cranberry strings he’d been working on for the past two hours. When Aunt Liza had first suggested that he help make the homemade decorations, he’d revealed with an endearing bashfulness, “My father would have been appalled to see me performing this mundane chore. ‘Time is money,’ was his favorite motto. Over and over he used to tell me, ‘You’re wasting time, boy. Delegate, delegate, delegate.’” Then, Clay had ruined the effect of his shy revelation by asking Aunt Liza the crass question, “Don’t you think it would be cheaper, time wise, to buy these garlands, already strung?”

  Clucking with disapproval, Aunt Liza had shoved the darning needle, a ball of string and bowls of popcorn and cranberries in his lap. “You can’t put a price tag on tradition, boy.”

  Along the same line, he’d observed, “I never realized Christmas trees could be so messy.” Her brothers had just dragged in the seven-foot Blue Spruce from the porch, leaving a trail of fresh needles on the hardwood floors. “Wouldn’t an artificial tree be a better investment in the long run?”

  They’d all looked at him as if he’d committed some great sacrilege. Which he had, of course. An artificial tree? Never! Couldn’t he smell the rich Tennessee forest in the pine scent that permeated the air? Couldn’t he understand that bringing a live tree into the house was like bringing a bit of God’s bounty inside, a direct link between the upcoming celebration of Christ’s birth and the world’s ongoing rejuvenation of life?

  “Think with your heart, not your brain, sonny,” Aunt Liza had urged.

  Now the tree decorating was almost complete, except for the star that had been in the family for three generations, the garlands, and the last of the handcrafted ornaments made by Fallon children for the past twenty-five or so years. And all Annie could think about was the fact that the man had said he wanted to talk with her, alone. About two thousand red flags of warning went up in Annie’s already muddled senses. “If it’s about your threat to sue, well, you can see we don’t have much.” The Fallons were a proud family, but her brothers were trusting souls, and in the course of the evening they’d casually divulged the dire need for a new barn roof, the money crunch caused by lower milk prices, and Roy’s tuition woes. They’d even discussed in length how every year at Christmastime the Fallons performed one good deed, no matter how tight they were for money. One year it had been a contribution to a local farm family whose house had burned down. Another year, they made up two dozen baskets for a food bank in Memphis, complete with fresh turkeys, home-canned fruits, vegetables and preserves, crisp apples and pure maple syrup. Still another year, when the till was bone dry, they’d donated ten hours each to Habitat for Humanity. This year, they hadn’t yet come up with any ideas. But they would before Christmas Eve. Tradition demanded it.

  “You can sue us if you want, but it’s obvious that we barely have two dimes to spare. I’ll fight you to the death if you try to take our farm.”

  “What in God’s name gave you the idea that I want your farm?” he snapped. Then his voice lowered. “It’s not your farm I’m interested in, Annie.”

  Annie loved the way he said her name, soft and special. But there was no way in the world she would ask what he meant by that enigmatic remark. “Perhaps we could pay for your medical expenses over a period of time.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I’m insured.”

  Okay, he’s insured, but he didn’t say he wouldn’t sue us. Should I ask, or assume that he won’t. Hmmm. Better to let sleeping dogs lie. “I hope you’re not going to stop us from doing our N
ativity scene for the rest of the week. You’ve got to know it’s our last chance to earn some extra cash. And—”

  He put up a halting hand. “I’d rather you didn’t go back to that sideshow again, but that’s not why I want to talk with you.”

  “It’s not?” Annie’s heart was beating so fast she was afraid he might hear it.

  “It’s not.”

  “What do you want from us, then?”

  “From your family . . . ,” he shrugged, “ . . . nothing.”

  She reflected on his words. “From me?” she squeaked out.

  A slow grin crept across his lips causing those incredible dimples to emerge. Annie had to clench her fists against the compulsion to touch each of the tiny indentations, to trace the outline of those kiss-me lips, to—