Down Home Carolina Christmas

by Pamela Browning

  “And his family?”

  “We don’t know much about them other than what we’ve found in the Allentown Church records. Isaiah had five children, and two of them survived to maturity, a boy and a girl. Amadea Smith married a Ganey, and I have a lot of Ganey cousins. Voncille was a Ganey before she married Skeeter. And then there’re the Beckeys, and the Finsters, and some Granthums, of course, though I don’t claim kin to all of them. Hoyt Granthum and I aren’t any relation unless it was way back so far that neither of us could trace the connection.”

  Carrie guided Luke down the rows, Shasta trotting alongside as she pointed out the graves of her great-grandmother’s twin sons, who died when they were only a year old. And her aunt Sissy’s grave, newly planted with a rosebush because she’d loved roses so much. Her parents’ graves were there, tucked away in a far corner, the shiny granite marker carved with entwined hearts.

  “And that’s Miss Alma on the other side of Daddy. She was his first wife, who died ten years after they married, and he mourned her all his life. He always said he wanted to be buried between the two best women he ever knew.”

  Carrie wiped away a tear, and Luke curved his arm around her shoulders. “That’s nice, Carrie. That he would feel that way.”

  “Mama always said she understood. Miss Alma was her sixth-grade teacher.”

  “Everyone in your family calls your daddy’s first wife Miss Alma?”

  “Daddy called her that the whole time he was married to her, and everyone else started doing it, including Mama and us kids after we were born, even though she was dead by that time. Except for my brother, of course. He was Miss Alma’s son, and he called her Mama, despite the fact that my mom tried her best to be his mother.”

  “Tell me about this brother.”

  “I hardly remember him. Rabun left home really young and never came back. He didn’t have any intention of keeping in touch, though Mama and Daddy tried. It broke Daddy’s heart that his only son did him that way. Last time he heard from him, Daddy got the idea that Rabun was unhappy. I don’t know why exactly. That’s all Daddy would tell us.”

  They had been moving slowly along the path, and Carrie sat on the bench that her grandfather had built to circle the oak tree. Luke joined her, taking her hand and tracing her fingers thoughtfully with one of his.

  “If I’d been your brother, I wouldn’t have left this family for anything in the world,” he said, serious now. “To throw away what all of you have together—never.”

  “Well, Rabun was different, that’s all. A rebel from the time he was born. A hell-raiser who was never satisfied with anything in his life. I hate to think of his wandering somewhere all alone, but that’s how he wanted it.”

  “I wish I had your roots,” Luke said impulsively. “Your sense of being connected to the land, the town, the people.”

  “You’re a famous movie star, Luke. You have no need of—of those trappings,” Carrie said. “Trappings that really do trap you. Tie you down.” She’d never questioned how she lived before these movie people had arrived, but now she sometimes speculated on what the rest of the world might be like. When Tiffany spoke so blithely about jetting off to Paris with her boyfriend or traveling to Bangkok on her honeymoon, it did cause a person to think.

  Luke sighed and settled down with his head in Carrie’s lap. Leaves rustled overhead, and a curious squirrel ran down the tree trunk and sniffed the air. Shasta barked once and the squirrel retreated to a branch above them, where he scolded them mercilessly for their intrusion into his space. In the distance, the sun was sinking low, setting the treetops on fire.

  “It’s so peaceful here,” Luke said.

  Carrie had to restrain her laughter. “If you’re aiming for peaceful, I guess a graveyard is the right place,” she said with a straight face.

  “You’re a calm person, Carrie.”

  “Some say I’m downright boring.”

  “Who?” Luke demanded. “I’ll tell them otherwise.”

  She remembered last night, when Luke had chased her around the house while she was wearing nothing but a bath towel, when even Killer had run for cover under the old claw-foot bathtub, and how Luke had caught her out on the back porch and made love to her on the swing, which had bounced, wobbled and creaked in protest. Their sexual escapades were anything but monotonous.

  He sat up. “Let’s go back to your house,” he said.

  That familiar ache was beginning somewhere below her stomach, and desire curled upward as she studied Luke’s solemn face. “We are alone,” she said, her sweeping gesture embracing the gravestones, the artesian well, the silent trees. “The dog doesn’t count.”

  “Not alone enough,” he said, and she read something in his expression that gave her pause. It was a depth of emotion that she had never divined in any of her other suitors, and even though her heart leaped at the thought of what he might be feeling, her brain cautioned her not to get her hopes up.

  She was an ordinary woman from an ordinary town. No matter how much she might wish otherwise, Luke would be leaving when his work here was done. Leaving Yewville. Leaving her.

  Leaving her with nothing more than her memories, which might be more burdensome than she could bear.

  “Shasta!” she called, and the dog came running. “Time to head back.” She snapped the leash on Shasta’s collar and turned away from Luke, shivering in the cool breeze.

  IN BED THAT NIGHT, Carrie rested in Luke’s arms after making love with him with the full harvest moon shining in the window. Carrie had brought the feather comforter down from the attic and air-fluffed it in the dryer with a bag of homegrown lemon verbena to freshen it, and the scent drifted up from the folds of bed linens, tickling her nose.

  The radio next to the bed played classical music from the PBS station in Columbia. Killer slept with his long ears draped across his face, his nose wriggling from time to time in bunny dreams.

  “What’s wrong?” Luke asked when he woke and found her staring into the moonlight.

  She turned over and slid a leg across his. “Can’t sleep.”

  He stroked her hair, something she always liked him to do. It soothed her, made her feel warm and wanted and welcome.

  “You can tell me,” he coaxed. “Is it about Tiffany? About our filming at the garage taking so long?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “I keep thinking about when you’ll have to leave, Luke.”

  He stiffened, and she chided herself for being so forthright. It would have been better to brush aside his questions rather than to appear clinging or overly needy. Nothing annoyed men more from what she could tell.

  “I know,” was all he said.

  I know what? I know you’re thinking about it? I know because I’m worried about it, too? What?

  He rolled over on his side, his eyes luminous in the moonlight. “I haven’t told you yet that I’m going away during the hiatus. I should have mentioned it before this.”

  Her heart felt as if it had stopped in her chest, and all the breath left her lungs. “I—well, this is a surprise. I knew Tiffany and Peyton were going off together, but I expected that you’d be here.” She’d planned it all out in her head: Luke would stay with her every night. Most days they’d drive somewhere interesting, like the state park, where they could rent a rowboat and head out on the lake; or they’d watch a bunch of videos on the TV while Luke commented on acting technique and she persuaded him to make slow sweet love to her in between films.

  “I’d like to see my parents, Carrie,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “It’s been a long time, and being with your family has made me realize how precious our time together is. Mom and Dad are getting older, and I’m worried about both of them.”

  Carrie swallowed. She understood. Of course she did. But she would miss Luke unbearably if she couldn’t be with him every day.

  A tear trickled from beneath her eyelid and fell on Luke’s arm. “Carrie,” he said in a tone of complete surprise.

  “It’
s only that I’ll miss you,” she said brokenly, feeling like a fool and hating herself for showing him this weakness. He’d think she was a basket case, no more stable than Tiffany. He might get the idea that she was trying to work her tenterhooks into him, tying him down. He’d hate her for it.

  However, hating her was the last thing he seemed to be doing at the moment. His hand worked its way lower until it curved over her abdomen, and his leg slid farther between hers.

  “I don’t have to leave quite yet,” he whispered.

  For an answer, because she couldn’t speak with tears welling up behind her eyes, tears that she could not stop, she guided him to the place where she wanted him to be. Their union should have been commonplace now that they’d made love so many times, but every instance was infused with a different meaning. Every time completed her in a way that she didn’t understand and perhaps never would.

  In those moments, a new sensibility crept into her consciousness, but she did not dare to dream that it was really true. She had fallen in love with Luke Mason. And she had no idea what she should do about it other than what she was doing that very moment.

  Maybe in the end, that was enough. Maybe it would have to be.

  Chapter Eleven

  Carrie customarily exercised Shasta in Memorial Park a couple of times a week, striking up conversations with anyone who might be a possible prospect for adopting a cute little black-and-white dog. Sometimes Dixie accompanied them when she was due a break at the real estate office.

  One day Carrie, Dixie and Shasta stood near the park’s statue of a Confederate soldier and observed the movie people as they set up a scene involving Yancey Goforth and his friends. All Carrie knew from discussing the script with Luke and Tiffany was that it was an important one, in which Yancey debated whether to accept a sponsorship offer from a company that made flour or one that manufactured motor oil. Later there was to be an intense scene, one between Mary-Lutie and Yancey, but Carrie had not been present during rehearsals for that one.

  Whip’s people had attempted to replicate a band shell that had stood on the banks of the pond but had been torn down a good ten years ago. It wasn’t much like the band shell that Carrie remembered, being painted white instead of green inside, and apparently she wasn’t the only one who was disappointed in it. A hot-tempered woman named Paola, all decked out in a paisley turban worn with what resembled silk pajamas in a depressing eggplant hue, was loudly bossing everyone around in accented English and complaining volubly that someone had ruined her plans.

  “Is not what I expected,” she said huffily to everyone in general, complete with flowery hand gestures. “Is a damn shame. Have to tear down and start over.” She puffed on an enormously long cigarette and exhaled explosively through her nostrils. It was not a pretty sight.

  “This woman is too much,” Dixie said flatly. “She’s acting like a horse’s behind.”

  Carrie waved away a curtain of acrid smoke, nearly choking on it. “Let’s walk over to the gazebo,” she suggested in the interest of self-preservation.

  Near the gazebo they were sheltered from the breeze, which was whipping out of the north at a brisk pace. After a few moments, Dixie assessed Carrie speculatively out of the corner of her eye. “Memaw Frances said she carried a sweet-potato pie over to Luke Mason’s house the other day, and since she was making apple pies yesterday, she took him another one. And guess what—the sweet-potato pie was still on the back steps. Some animal had gotten to it—a possum or some such—so there wasn’t much pie left, and the plastic wrap was all torn into pieces.”

  “That’s too bad,” Carrie replied without much expression. Luke hadn’t been home all week because he’d been living at her house. He’d even moved some clothes into her closet, causing her to open the closet door every now and then and peek just to make sure she hadn’t dreamed them.

  “Memaw said she didn’t even bother to leave that apple pie. She packed it back up in the basket she’d brought it in and took it right home.”

  “Hmm,” Carrie said. She knew Memaw liked Luke a lot, but she hadn’t anticipated her taking him food. This was a circumstance to be reckoned with, and the reckoning was barreling straight at her.

  Dixie regarded her with outright curiosity. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Luke’s been all that time, would you, Carrie? His plane’s still parked on the airport tarmac.”

  “I, um,” Carrie began, instinctively prepared to make a mess of this. She bent over to pet Shasta, playing for time.

  “Oh, so you do know where he’s staying?”

  Carrie heaved a giant sigh. “All right, Dixie, I’ll level. Luke’s been at my house a good bit lately. Over and above Sunday dinner, I mean.”

  Dixie’s jaw dropped and her eyes bugged nearly clear out of their sockets. “Luke Mason is spending a lot of time with you,” her sister corroborated. “At your house.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Carrie cringed as she waited for the next salvo.

  “You and Luke are seeing each other?” This came out all strangulated and yelpy, as if Dixie could hardly bear to spit the words out nice and proper.

  “Um, well, yes. We are.”

  Dixie sank onto the top gazebo step and appeared as if she might faint.

  “You and Luke.”

  This time, Carrie merely nodded. She couldn’t say it any plainer.

  “I suspected something was up when you didn’t call me after he drove you to Florence for dinner with Tiffany and them.”

  “A lot was up,” Carrie couldn’t resist saying, earning her an elaborate roll of the eyes from her sister.

  Dixie didn’t speak for a long time, but then she grinned. “You little sneak. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Carrie sat beside her and brushed at an imaginary piece of lint on her navy slacks. “I guess I wanted to keep it to myself. Anyway, why twist everyone’s knickers in a knot over it? Why not just let things be?”

  “How long, Carrie?”

  Shasta nosed into Carrie’s hand, and Carrie focused on the high white steeple of the First Baptist Church rising majestically above a bank of trees. “Since we went to Pothier’s the night of the Chicken Bog Slog,” she said.

  “You slept together afterward?” Dixie was smiling with glee, and Carrie had to remind herself that her sister meant well.

  “I’m not telling,” Carrie said with dignity.

  “You did! Oh, wait till Joyanne hears this.”

  “You’re not going to announce anything to anybody,” Carrie said firmly. “It’s private.”

  “Nothing about Luke Mason is private,” Dixie informed her. “Have you read the Enquirer this week? They’ve printed pictures of him on the way into a convalescent home for cosmetic surgery patients. The implication is that he’s had a few nips and tucks.”

  Carrie laughed at this. “That’s very doubtful.”

  “What else do you know about him?”

  “That he misses his parents.”

  “No kidding. That’s what you talk about?”

  “And other things.” Carrie stood and tugged on Shasta’s leash. “Let’s leave, Dixie. They won’t be filming this scene until this Paola person gives the go-ahead, and that isn’t happening any time soon.”

  “Obviously you’re not going to tell me much. That’s kind of sweet.”

  Carrie smiled. “It’s self-protection.”

  “Well, be like that if you must. I love you anyway. Say, I’ll walk you as far as the office. How about stopping to get a chocolate banana at the Confectionery?”

  “I’ve got a whole freezerful at home, so I’ll pass.”

  As they left the park, Dixie resumed her line of questioning. “Does Luke snore? Sleep with his mouth open? Does he favor boxers or briefs?”

  Carrie, though amused, refused to answer any questions, and soon they arrived at the door of Yewville Real Estate, where, right beside the window, Mayzelle and her poodle were holding forth to a couple of associates standing around her desk.

  “Would you
like to come in for a minute?” Dixie asked.

  Carrie shook her head. “Not right now.”

  “Okay. Catch you later.”

  Carrie continued toward Smitty’s. As Dixie opened the door to the office, Carrie turned around.

  “Oh, one thing I can tell you,” she said with a twinkle.

  “What’s that?” Dixie was all ears.

  “Luke Mason takes his pants off like any other man. One leg at a time.”

  They were both still laughing as Carrie hurried on her way.

  “I’M SO SICK AND TIRED of this—this love you have for racing,” Tiffany said, staring into Luke’s eyes.

  “Honey, I don’t love racing nearly as much as I love you,” Luke told her earnestly. He removed his hands from her shoulders and leaned on a dilapidated old car. He gazed upward, as if he saw a vision that only he could see. “It’s—it’s my destiny.” He whirled, faced Tiffany, whose bottom lip was tremulous. “Don’t you understand, Mary-Lutie? I’m doing this for us. For our children. I’m going to make something of myself, but not for me. It’s for you, all of you.”

  “Cut!” called the director, beside himself with delight. “That was wonderful, Tiffany. You, too, Luke. We’ll do a couple more takes when we resume here day after tomorrow.”

  Carrie, who was standing nearby, beside a pile of ropes and cables, unclasped her hands and let herself breathe again. Tiffany had finally captured the accent, and Luke was doing an incredible job of portraying Yancey Goforth with a depth and understanding that he’d never displayed in his earlier films. In fact, there was a synergy between him and Tiffany, an interaction that really clicked. It was all Carrie could do not to applaud.

  The technicians switched off the bright lights, and Luke, a towel draped around his shoulders, approached Carrie. His eyes held a triumphant gleam. “Tiff’s getting it, finally. Thanks, Carrie. You’ve been a lot of help.”