The impending snow didn’t seem to have daunted the tourists. They were out in force, and with them the locals who were pitching in to make Christmas in Caerphilly a success. Parties of carolers and small groups of musicians, all in Victorian costume, were stationed every few blocks in the central part of town. Most of the churches had set up food stands in or around the town square, with costumed parishioners doing a brisk business in coffee, hot tea, hot chocolate, hot spiced cider, brownies, gingerbread men and women, shortbread, sugar cookies, rock candy, funnel cakes, cotton candy, taffy, fruitcake slices, roast chestnuts, miniature apple or pumpkin pies, and tiny plum puddings. As long as you weren’t trying too hard to watch your diet, you could fill up on these, which was a good thing, since every restaurant that took reservations had been booked up weeks in advance, and those that didn’t had lines out the door.
Of course, as long as the weather didn’t get too cold, most tourists didn’t mind the wait. In addition to the omnipresent musicians and carolers, Michael had convinced the town to hire several dozen of his perennially impoverished drama students to provide what he called “street theater.” Students small enough to pass as urchins picked the pockets of portly Victorian gentlemen, only to be apprehended by kindly bobbies in mutton chops. Apple-cheeked nannies in outfits reminiscent of Mary Poppins gossiped loudly and amusingly as they wheeled prams along the sidewalks. A tall figure in a deerstalker hat prowled the streets, occasionally whipping out a magnifying glass to study a boot print or a bit of trash and then muttering, “Aha! The game is afoot!” before striding off purposefully, with his stout companion trailing along behind him. And an elderly gentleman in a shabby greatcoat and tall hat stalked the streets, dismissing beggars, carolers, and the occasional bold tourist with a grating “Bah, humbug!” Although the whole thing had started off as simply a random series of vignettes, the drama students had been gradually improvising an overall plot, so anyone who spent enough time in town would ultimately figure out that the urchins were actually in league with Professor Moriarty, who was planning to kidnap Scrooge, but would be foiled late in the day by Holmes and his secret allies, the nannies. At least, that was what was going on a few days ago, when I’d had time to roam the town and observe. Knowing the drama students, by now the whole thing could have mutated into something completely different. No matter—it kept the tourists happy. And happy tourists meant happy restaurant owners and shopkeepers.
I managed to make it to the shelter first, and entered my pass code in the digital lock on the gate. I smiled up at where I had deduced the security camera was hidden. Just then Robyn pulled up to drop off Dad.
“Should we wait for her?” Dad asked, as he joined me in the front yard.
I glanced across the door of the house—a three-story white-frame Victorian with soaring ceilings, several cupolas or turrets, and, most important, enough rooms to easily handle fifteen or twenty residents. The door now bore a festive wreath trimmed with a red flocked bow. Beside the door was a small curtained window. Opening the gate set off a chime in the house, so by the time you made it into the yard and approached the door, someone was almost always at the window, peering out. When I visited, I usually saw anxious faces, until they confirmed that I wasn’t whoever they were hiding from. Then the anxious looks disappeared, maybe even replaced by a smile if it was someone who’d met me before and knew I was coming to fix things up.
The curtain was pulled back wider than usual, and I could see three faces. A young woman and two children, girl and boy, both around five or six. The children’s faces were wide with wonder. For that matter, the young woman, who looked as if she might still be in her teens, seemed a little awestruck.
“I think we should go on in,” I said. “Your public is waiting.”
Dad snapped into character. Although come to think of it, he was almost always in a jovial mood, especially this close to Christmas. So he was mostly just being Dad, only a little noisier. And without his usual tendency to announce that anything out of the ordinary must be a clue to an as-yet undetected murder.
“Ho, ho, ho!” he boomed as he shouldered his present sack. “What a heavy bag! Let’s go deliver some presents and make it easier to carry.”
The door swung open, and we could see a cluster of eager faces in the entry.
Dad was always a hit as Santa. He’d made his debut appearance in the role about a decade earlier, when someone had knocked off the rather unpleasant local who’d traditionally played the role in the annual town Christmas parade. Lately Dad had expanded his holiday-time Santa mission, making appearances at a staggering number of children’s hospitals and pediatric wards in addition to the annual parade.
But the shelter children probably wouldn’t have had a chance to see him in the parade—it didn’t pass down this quiet residential street, and Robyn tried to limit the residents’ time outside the shelter, for safety reasons. A good thing the shelter’s backyard was much larger than the front, filled with trees, and surrounded by an eight-foot privacy fence, so the kids weren’t stuck indoors all the time.
Josefina, a fifty-something Mexican-American woman who’d arrived at the shelter as a resident a decade ago and stayed on to become its cook, housekeeper, and den mother, took an immediate fancy to Lark, and kept her occupied while Dad distributed the presents and Robyn and I circulated with juice and cookies.
“Your mother has outdone herself again,” Robyn murmured. “The new decorations are fabulous.”
The new decorations weren’t actually new. Quite a few of them were ones Mother had been using for the last few years at our house or at what she and Dad called their farmhouse. Perfectly lovely decorations, of course, that she’d merely grown tired of seeing. I’d successfully protested the extravagance of buying new decorations until this year, when Robyn had sent out word that the shelter could use something better than the sparse collection of shabby hand-me-down decorations they’d been making do with.
Technically, the shelter’s new decorations were still hand-me-downs, but no one could have guessed it. Mother had done a fabulous job of taking the very random-looking collection of decorations donated by at least a dozen families and figuring out a way to use all of them in a well-coordinated design. Well, most of them. A couple of families had donated items she considered bland, too cutesy, or downright tasteless, like the blown-glass skunk ornament, the yodeling pickle, the twerking Naughty Reindeer, and the plush Pull My Finger Farting Santa doll. After opening the box that had contained the last two items, Mother had been forced to retire to her bed with a cool cloth over her forehead for several hours. Fortunately she’d found a way to not use them.
“Wonderful news!” she’d subsequently announced at a meeting of St. Clotilda’s Guild, Trinity’s organization for ladies who wanted to do good works, which had taken on the shelter Christmas decoration project. “We had so many donations that I was able to sell some of the more coveted items to buy a stand for the Christmas tree!”
Luckily, she’d managed to pull it off, so anyone who didn’t see her donations festooning the shelter would assume they were among the “coveted items” whose sale had helped fund the tree stand. Actually, she’d bought the spurned donations herself for an extravagant price, and sent them to a cousin in California with orders to donate them to a thrift shop there, just to make sure the donors didn’t run across their items. Except for the twerking reindeer and the farting Santa. She’d sworn me to secrecy and enlisted my help to burn those.
Although I didn’t break my word and reveal how Santa and the naughty reindeer had met their demise, I did take pictures of all the worst ornaments so Michael could see them. I was a little worried that he might be planning to give Mother a few tasteless ornaments as a gag gift. Although surely anything he came up with would be tame beside what we’d already seen—wouldn’t it?
I shoved the farting Santa and the twerking reindeer out of my mind and concentrated on the lovely decorations that had found their way to the shelter. Battery-operated c
andles graced all the windows, the kind whose bulbs flickered slightly to increase the illusion that they were real. The tree that brushed the ceiling and the yards and yards of evergreen garlands had been provided by some of the Shiffley woodsmen. The tree was thick with ornaments—Mother had wisely resisted doing anything artsy, like a theme or a restricted color scheme, and just gone in for a good old-fashioned eclectic tree. I recognized some of the ornaments—the tiny gold musicians that had once decorated a small tree in our house. I think Mother had replaced them with glitter-dusted red and purple velvet fruit. A large flock of brightly colored felt elves that Mother had found adorable, until it became clear that Thurston and Bruce-Partington, Mother and Dad’s cats, found them both irresistible and indigestible. Presumably the elves were safe here, since Robyn kept the shelter itself pet-free in case of allergies—with Clarence Rutledge, the local vet, providing a temporary refuge for any livestock the residents might bring with them. Yes, the tree was a hit; all the decorations were.
“It’s like living at the North Pole,” one of the children had said when we’d finished decking the shelter’s halls.
And today it was even more like the North Pole, with Santa Dad distributing presents. I could see Josefina’s broad face beaming as the women and children opened their gifts—she’d been our secret weapon, our spy who reported back what each of them wanted or needed most. Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time.
Well, almost everyone.
I noticed one girl, a little older than the rest, who didn’t seem to be enjoying Santa’s visit. In fact, she seemed to be leaning against the wall that was farthest away from Dad and peering suspiciously at him.
I went over and offered her a cup of hot cider.
“You okay?” I leaned against the wall beside her.
She nodded and looked up at me over the top of the cup, studying me coolly, as if assessing my suitability for some important mission.
“He looks familiar,” she said finally, nodding in Dad’s direction.
“You mean Santa?” I asked.
“He looks like the doctor who visits here sometimes.”
“Dr. Langslow?”
She nodded.
Clearly she was approaching the Age of Doubt, as Dad used to call it.
“You know who Clark Kent and Superman are?” I asked.
She frowned and nodded.
“Batman and Bruce Wayne?”
Another nod.
I put my finger to my lips and gave her a sidelong look, as if letting her in on a secret.
She studied me for a few more moments. Then she turned those very alert eyes on Dad for a while.
“Hmm.”
I wasn’t sure whether she’d bought the theory that Santa whiled away the time between sleigh rides as a small-town general practitioner, or if she’d just decided to humor me. But she sipped her cider and seemed to relax a little.
I found myself liking her. I could think of some kids who would have rushed to spill the beans and spoiled everyone’s fun.
When all the presents had been distributed, Robyn slipped away to fetch her car. A few minutes later Dad glanced at the wall clock and pretended to be startled.
“Look at the time!” he exclaimed. “I must fly! I’m due in Tokyo in half an hour!”
He made his exit, tossing handfuls of wrapped candies after him. The residents followed him out into the yard and waved good-bye as he hopped into Robyn’s car. I think the children might have tried to follow him down the street, but at just the right moment, Josefina distracted them.
“Who’s ready for cake and ice cream?” she asked.
While the children swarmed the dining room, Josefina collected Lark and returned her to me.
“Preciosa,” she cooed. “Any time you want a break, you drop her off here. We haven’t had nearly enough babies around here lately.”
“I just may take you up on that,” I said. “Especially if she’s still with us when all my visiting relatives go home and Michael’s new semester starts. And—sorry. I should get this.”
My phone was ringing, and I could see that it was Dad.
“Could you pick up your grandfather?” he asked. “Robyn and I are going over to the hospital to cheer up the kids there, but he’s getting impatient.”
“No problem.” It wasn’t as if any part of my day was going to turn out the way I’d planned, thanks to Lark’s arrival. Spending time with Grandfather might be nice.
Chapter 9
I bid farewell to Josefina and headed back to Trinity. When I got there, I found Grandfather pacing up and down in the vestibule, occasionally stopping to glare through the doorway into the sanctuary.
“I thought a church would be a nice peaceful place to do a little reading,” he said in lieu of hello. “But then they started in on that infernal caterwauling. There they go again.”
The choir had begun a rousing chorus of “Joy to the World.”
“Not a moment of peace,” he fretted. “Can you give me a ride to your house?”
“Sure.” Although I wondered why he wanted to go to our house instead of Mother and Dad’s farm, where he was staying. Still, I didn’t want to ask in case he found the question inhospitable. So I waited while he called Dad to fuss about being left behind and arranged to be picked up later in the evening. Then I hoisted Lark’s carrier again and we headed for home.
Part of Grandfather’s reason for accompanying me became clear about halfway through our journey.
“Speaking of obligate brood parasites,” he began.
We hadn’t been, but I knew it would make him cranky if I pointed that out.
“Do you want to know the most fascinating thing about them?” Grandfather asked.
I sensed that answering “no” wouldn’t be good for family harmony so I put on my polite face.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You’d think the host birds would figure out what was happening and retaliate, wouldn’t you? Break the unfamiliar eggs. Kill the alien fledglings, or at least evict them from the nest.”
“Do the host birds even notice?” I asked. “I mean, the term ‘bird brain’ does apply here.”
“Well, in some cases it’s hard for them to notice. Over time, the cuckoo, for example, has evolved to lay eggs that are remarkably similar to the host birds’. Meadow buntings lay white eggs with black speckles, so the cuckoos that prey on them lay white eggs with black speckles. The streaked laughing thrush lays a pale blue egg, and so does the cuckoo that targets them. Ornithologists sometimes have to use genetic markers to tell the eggs apart. Really a fascinating adaptation!”
“I’m starting to get the idea that cuckoos are really creepy birds,” I said.
“They’re positively diabolical.” From Grandfather’s tone, I got the feeling he rather admired the cuckoos’ ingenious if underhanded tactics. It figured. While in theory he loved all of nature, he had a sneaking fondness for anything fierce or dangerous. Brood parasitism probably put cuckoos and cowbirds into this category. “And there’s a growing body of research that suggests both cuckoos and cowbirds engage in retaliatory mafia behavior.”
“Retaliatory mafia behavior?” I tried to picture it. Fedora-clad cuckoos with miniature sawed-off shotguns under their wings. A stout cowbird with a Don Corleone wheeze making the host birds an offer they couldn’t refuse.
“It seems that after laying their eggs, the parasite birds hang around to observe the behavior of the host birds,” Grandfather explained. “If the host birds destroy the cuckoo’s eggs, the cuckoo will come back and destroy the hosts’ eggs. Once the eggs hatch, if the host birds kill or evict the fledglings, the cuckoos retaliate by killing the hosts’ fledglings. Same with cowbirds. So detecting and expelling intruder eggs actually has a negative effect on the host birds’ ability to pass on their genes. Because of the cuckoo or cowbird predation, host birds who try to get rid of the intruders raise fifty to sixty percent fewer of their own offspring.”
“So instead
of being too stupid to tell their own eggs from a cuckoo’s, the host birds are actually smart enough to realize that the cuckoos have them over a barrel, and the safest thing to do is suck it up and raise the alien offspring.”
“Precisely!”
“If that’s true,” I said, “then cuckoos are quite possibly the creepiest birds on the planet. They make vultures seem cuddly. And what’s this ‘host bird’ nonsense, anyway? Let’s call it what it is—they’re victims!”
“An accurate statement. But after all, ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw,’ you know.” It was one of Grandfather’s favorite quotes. Had it ever occurred to him that Tennyson wasn’t paying Nature a compliment? “Interestingly, while there’s considerable evidence of egg mimicry in the old world Cuculus canorus, from what I’ve read, our new world equivalents, the various cowbirds, show no signs of developing this tactic. Of course, there’s a lot of work going on in this area, and I’m still catching up with the literature—mind if I use your library for a while? I need some peace and quiet.”
He brandished an inch-thick wad of paper—a portion of the literature, I assumed, that the choir practice had distracted him from.
“Be my guest,” I said as I pulled my car to a stop in our driveway. Frankly I was relieved to know he was seeking peace and quiet. I was more than half afraid he’d been planning to while away the afternoon making scientific observations of Lark and getting in the way of anything I needed to do to take care of her. “It should be quiet—school’s out, so the boys won’t be in there doing homework. In fact, they’re off Christmas shopping with Michael.”
“Maybe I’ll take them on a nature walk when they get back,” Grandfather said as he strode off toward the library. “Let me know when dinner’s ready.”
Yet another reason for his decision to accompany me.
I felt a small surge of envy. I’d have loved to spend the afternoon in our library. It had started life as a ballroom, built by a socially ambitious previous owner a century ago. For a while, when Caerphilly had lost access to its Carnegie library building, we’d housed much of the town’s book collection. Now that the real library was open again, we still had the two-story-high Mission-style shelving, built by the Shiffley Construction Company at less than cost in return for our putting up with the public library for the duration. And in place of the library tables that had gone back to their original home, we had a few sturdy Mission-style oak tables that had become the boys’ favorite place for doing homework, along with quite a few superbly comfortable easy chairs. Grandfather had long since claimed a particularly well-placed chair as his own. I’d have liked to park myself in a nearby chair and lose myself in the book I was reading, even at the risk of having him regale me at frequent intervals with odd bits of ornithological lore.
Lark! the Herald Angels Sing Page 5