People waved as they headed out of town on Baltimore Street. Their first audience was Mrs. Abel, called Hardly Abel by Juts. Her son, a single, unsavory specimen, was called Un. They stopped at the slovenly frame house, sang “The First Noel,” and gave Mrs. Abel a turkey. She thanked them and shut the door promptly, for the temperature was plunging.
Juts opened a small flask, enjoying a sip. She offered a swig to Louise.
“No, and you shouldn’t, either.”
“Just a nip. Wards off the cold.”
Five turkey drops later a light snow kicked up. Juts had turned down a side lane to pick up a road west to the Mundis house. They circled around Runnymede, the ground getting higher as they moved west.
Finally they came to Mrs. Mundis’s driveway; her new house sat on a ridge. Gorgeous hickory trees stood like silent sentinels against the sky. Harry had had the presence of mind to build on an old house site so the trees and shrubs were mature. Big elms dotted the pastures, and massive oaks and walnuts shone like tarnished silver against the snow.
Every window of the house flickered with golden light. Mary Miles Mundis didn’t need a turkey, but she was giving her traditional Christmas party and the Hunsenmeirs agreed to make this their last stop. They were glad to reach the house if for no other reason than that Juts could warm up the hot-water bottle.
“Julia, don’t sing with such tremolo—and don’t drink any more.”
The huge polished door with brass handles flew open. Mrs. Mundis appeared in the doorway. “Merry Christmas.”
Timmy Kleindienst led Minnie and Monza to the stable. He and a groom threw blankets over them after unhitching them. Timmy and O.B. were the best stablemen around.
Once inside Mary Miles’s house, Juts, Wheezie, and Nicky admired the fragrant garlands entwined with oranges, apples, grapes, pinecones, holly sprigs, and sprayed-silver oak leaves. Twists of gold ribbon were placed here and there and a big plaid ribbon snaked through the garlands from end to end.
The towering tree, pure white, sported only shiny red balls. Green velvet ribbons tied on the edges of the branches, gold garlands circling the tree, and a star of Bethlehem topped off the decorating.
Louise, after stuffing herself and moaning about every calorie, sat down at the Steinway. She played “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” “Adeste Fideles,” “We Three Kings,” and “It Came upon a Midnight Clear.”
Juts liberally sampled the eggnog, declaring it the most delicious she had ever drunk in her entire life. Age jokes followed that, then the talk turned to the lawsuit an insurance company was bringing against the Rife family for setting fire to the meatpacking plant to collect insurance. The investigation by the insurance company was snail slow, but they’d gathered enough evidence to strike.
The snow thickened outside. Juts peered out the window. Louise joined her. “I’m having such a good time, I hate to go.”
“We’d better leave.” Juts didn’t want to either.
Harry called down to the stable. Tim Kleindienst said he’d have the horses ready in fifteen minutes and he’d bring them straight up to the house.
This gave Juts time for another eggnog.
Once in the sleigh, Juts realized more snow had fallen than she’d thought. Nickel, riding on top of Lillian Russell rather than in the sleigh, thought everything was beautiful. Her eyelashes blinked off snow and it tickled.
“Juts, how many eggnogs did you have?”
“Not enough.”
“Perhaps I should drive.”
“I’m fine.” Juts liked having the reins in her hands.
“I had an eggnog,” Nickel called out.
“Oh?” Louise’s eyebrows arched in disbelief.
“Momma gave me one.”
“Julia, how could you?”
“Half an eggnog is not going to turn my child into a raving dipsomaniac. Keep your shirt on, Louise. You’re always jumping to conclusions.”
“Forcing alcohol down a child’s throat is no laughing matter.”
“I didn’t laugh,” Nickel forthrightly said.
“You have a tendency toward these things,” Louise warned. “You drank punch at my birthday party.” She turned to Juts. “You’d better watch that kid.”
“She’ll never leave my sight.” The sleigh swayed a bit.
“Don’t mock me. It only takes a drop if one is so inclined. Yes, it does. Remember when old Uncle Franz, after years of not drinking, sipped a glass of champagne at your wedding? Went on a bender for a week.” Wheezie’s voice carried that important tone.
Juts hummed.
“Nicky, you promise your aunt Louise you won’t drink.”
“Yes, Aunt Louise.”
“And don’t start smoking, either. If God had wanted us to smoke he’d have put a chimney in our heads.”
“Yes, Aunt Louise,” lied Nickel, who couldn’t wait to be old enough to smoke. She thought it was glamorous.
“Where’s Maizie tonight?” Juts couldn’t bear a harangue on clean living, not when that eggnog tasted so good.
“Out with Vaughn. They went out with their gang. Vaughn keeps close with his Army buddies.”
“Maybe she’ll marry Vaughn.”
“Maybe she won’t.”
“They’d be happy.”
“You think any two people mooning over each other will share a life of bliss.”
“You should have had some eggnog. Improve your mood.”
“My mood is fine except it’s colder than a witch’s bosom.”
“Tit.”
“Bosom.” Nicky giggled.
“Tit, Louise, tit. ‘Bosom’ takes the laugh out of it.”
“I won’t talk that way.”
“Old age is making you lose your sense of humor, you know that, Wheezie? You’re becoming an old fart.”
“You’re older than I am.”
“What?”
Louise jammed her hands in her muff. “Thirty-nine.”
“Fine.” Juts lifted the reins and gently slapped them against the horses’ backs. They picked up a trot.
“Don’t go so fast.”
“I’m not, but it’s getting colder, it’s snowing harder, and I want to get home.”
“Slow down.”
“Louise, close your eyes if you’re scared.”
“If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a drunk driver.” Louise whacked her with her astrakhan muff.
To spite her, Juts asked for more trot and got it.
Lillian, broad-backed, trotted, too. Nicky’s short legs barely reached the gray mare’s sides. Nicky bounced like a jack-in-the-box.
Juts sang her own words to the tune of “Winter Wonder-land.”“Fifty years, are you listening? Fifty years, and she’s listing. To port I can vow, she looks like a cow, wrinkles—”
“Shut up.”
The bays swept their ears back and forward, reaching out with those magnificent forelegs, two trotters in unison. A nasty curve loomed ahead and from there it was a straight shot into Runnymede.
“Momma, I’m gonna fall off.”
“You’re not a rider until you fall off seven times.”
“I did that already. Slow down, Momma.” Nicky couldn’t get a grip anyway with those flannel-lined jeans.
“Don’t take her side, Nicky. I can’t stand it when you and Louise are in cahoots.”
By now, Nickel lay facedown, holding on to Lillian’s mane. Her canter was ponderous but it was a canter nonetheless.
“Grab mane,” Juts ordered.
“I am!”
“You’ll get us killed,” Louise screamed. “We’ll be a holiday statistic. We’ll be the last people in the state of Maryland killed driving a sleigh.”
“Chicken.” Juts swung around the curve too fast, hitting the black ice underneath. The sleigh bells jingled wildly.
“I’m gonna die!” Louise bellowed.
“Only the good die young.” Juts laughed as the sleigh tipped over to one side and Louise flew into a snowdrift by
the roadbank. Juts righted the sleigh by shifting her weight to the other side.
Excited, Lillian decided to take the shortcut home through the Barnharts’ field. A strong creek bordered the property. It glittered like a dark mirror. Lillian launched herself over the creek but Nickel dropped like a dead moth from a porch light. She crashed through the ice.
Juts’s shoulders ached as she brought Minnie and Monza to a halt about a hundred yards from where Louise had fallen out. The horses’ heads bobbed up and down, flecks of foam mingling with snowflakes around their mouths.
The chilling water stopped at Nickel’s waist, but she smashed through the ice with such force that the water splashed all over her. Her boots weighed her down as she tried to crawl out. Lillian’s hoofbeats faded away as she galloped across the frozen ground.
Nickel wiggled out of her sodden coat and grabbed a gnarled tree root, pulling herself out.
“You all right, Nick?”
“Momma, I’ll never catch Lillian. O.B. will kill me.”
“Come on.” Juts urged her to hurry up as Minnie and Monza were prancing around. She had her hands full.
“Isn’t anyone going to ask about me? What if my hip’s broken? What if I’m suffering a concussion?”
“You’re complaining, Louise, that means you’re fine.”
“You know, Juts, even black magic can’t change a chicken!” Louise sputtered in pure-D rage, leaving her sister and niece to ponder the deep meaning of this statement. She dusted herself off from the snowbank and then, perceiving that Juts might not wait since the horses were restive, sprinted to the sleigh.
Nickel, sodden, hoisted herself up as Juts allowed the horses to walk out.
“Honey, take off your clothes. Wheezie, help her.”
“I’ve twisted my ankle.”
“Will you help Nicky?”
Louise removed her expensive gloves and peeled the already-freezing layers off the child’s body. Nicky shivered and her skin was cherry red.
“Here.” Louise wrapped her in a blanket and put the hot-water bottle on her chest.
The child’s teeth chattered.
They rode in silence for half a mile, then Louise giggled. Juts followed. Finally Nickel, shivering uncontrollably, giggled too, but it sounded like a gurgle.
“‘Sleigh bells ring, are you listening—’” Juts started.
“‘In the lane, snow is glistening—’”
The three of them sang at the top of their lungs.
O.B. heard them and pushed open the big doors. Lillian pounding up the lane had alerted him to trouble ahead. Peepbean had joined him.
“Did you girls get in some trouble?”
“Just a tad.” Louise waved her muff as he took Monza’s bridle.
Peepbean watched as Louise lifted down Nicky to O.B. He put her on the ground.
“Fell off. Fell off,” Peepbean chanted.
“Shut up, Kirk, let her warm herself in front of the stove,” O.B. instructed his son.
“Go on, honey, I’ll be there in a minute. I’ve got to get your wet clothes out of the sleigh. Louise, don’t forget your purse.” Juts handed Louise her bag, then plucked out her own. She wanted to give O.B. a Christmas tip, realized she had no cash, reached in and pulled out her checkbook.
Peepbean placed Nickel by the stove. He pulled back the edges of the blanket, which she grabbed and wrapped around herself tightly.
“I won’t tell.”
“Peepbean, leave me alone.”
“I know you’ve got no clothes on. Come on, let me look.”
“No.”
He yanked at the blanket and she stood up. “If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll tell.”
He glowered. “I got something to tell you, snot. Your real momma is Rillma Ryan. Little bastard.”
“I don’t care.” Nickel absorbed the news but wasn’t about to react in front of him. She remembered Rillma Ryan. She was that nice lady who had come by to see them one day. “Doesn’t matter who my momma is—I’m still a better rider than you.”
“Fell off.”
“Yeah, but I’m not afraid to get back on. Chicken! Chicken! Chicken!”
He grabbed the blanket and fought with her. Louise walked in.
“That’s enough!”
Peepbean looked at her like a puppy caught stealing food off the table.
“We were just playing.”
“I’ve got no clothes on. He wants to see me.” Nickel told the plain, unvarnished truth.
“She’s crazy,” Peepbean lied.
“It’s Christmas. Do you want me to tell your father so he can give you a licking?”
“No.” Fear flickered on his face.
“Then my Christmas present to you is silence.” Louise pointed her finger at him. “But if you torment Nickel one more time you won’t sit down for a week because not only will your father hide you, I will, too!”
“Nickel!” Juts hollered.
“Yes, Momma.”
“Get out here this minute.”
Nickel shrugged and waddled out where her mother held open her crayon-enhanced checkbook. “Did you do this?”
“I’m gonna be rich,” Nickel declared.
“You’re going to be something, anyway. Did you write in my checkbook?”
“Yes.”
Louise peeked at the checkbook and burst out laughing.
“Don’t encourage her.” But Juts laughed, too.
Nickel grinned sheepishly but she was wondering about Rillma. If Rillma was really her mother, what was so bad about her that her mother had left her?
77
A fearful apprehension seized Nicky. As each day edged her closer to Christmas she worried that Santa would put her presents under Rillma Ryan’s tree out in Portland, Oregon—that is, if Rillma Ryan was her mother.
She stared in the gilt-framed mirror in her bedroom. Did she look like Juts? What about Chessy?
Juts didn’t notice that Nicky was quieter than usual. Christmas turned Juts into a whirling dervish and besides, Juts wasn’t particularly sensitive to other people. Since most of her attention centered on herself she often missed what was going on with others.
Juts’s tree, a big Douglas fir, was festooned with huge, shiny balls of solid colors, tinsel, metallic gold garlands, and the occasional hand-carved wooden decoration from the old country. Since the war was so recent in memory, no one identified which old country.
Spreading out the white sheet around the tree, Juts tugged this way and that but couldn’t satisfy her artistic impulses. The “snow” wouldn’t lie correctly. Irritated, she crawled under the tree, followed by Yoyo.
“Don’t you dare bat a ball off this tree.”
Yoyo rested on her haunches, watching Juts grunt and groan. Then Juts backed out. Still not right. She crawled under again. Flat on her belly, she wrinkled the sheet, forming hills and valleys. Then she again backed out and, tired, rested her head on her hands.
Yoyo stayed under the tree. Juts dozed for fifteen minutes, and when she opened her eyes she stared into the fireplace. A small downdraft had created a flutter. She rose, walked over, and leaned into the fireplace to close the flue. She had intended to leave the flue open but she got so busy she forgot to start a fire. When she reached into the fireplace she saw a tiny scrap of paper taped to the interior wall.
She removed it, careful to keep her sooty hand from her clothes.
In a childish scrawl the note read: “Santa I lif here. Nicky.” Ignoring the spelling and punctuation errors, she frowned and crumpled the note up, tossing it into the fireplace just as Nickel came down the stairs followed by Buster, who made more noise than she did.
“Momma!” Nickel raced for the fireplace to retrieve her note.
“What if I had started a fire?”
Nickel uncrumpled the paper.
Furious, Juts snatched it from her hand. “You don’t need a goddamned note! Santa knows where you live.”
“Just in case,” Nickel replied in a smal
l voice. “He might get confused.”
“He’s not confused, you are.”
“I really want him to leave me a Roy Rogers holster.”
“Stop worrying about your presents. Christmas is more than presents.”
But not to a six-year-old. Had Juts been less upset she would have remembered that.
“I’ve been good and—”
“Oh, Nickel, Santa Claus is a white lie. Don’t worry about your presents. You’ll get your presents.”
Nickel stepped back, ashen-faced. “Mom, you told me Santa would find me.”
“There is no Santa Claus, goddammit. It’s a story people tell kids to shut them up. I’m Santa Claus, Daddy’s Santa Claus. There’s no one up there in the sky driving reindeer. Forget it.”
Nicky’s eyes misted over. “What about the Easter Bunny?”
“Have you ever seen a bunny bigger than a breadbasket? Another whopper. Don’t start bawling, Nicky. For God’s sake, they’re stories. You’ll get your presents. That’s all you care about.”
“That’s not all I care about!” Nickel screamed, surprising both Julia Ellen and herself.
Yoyo prudently climbed up the tree. Buster barked.
“I haven’t got time for this foolishness.” Juts turned and headed for the kitchen.
“You lied to me!” Nickel pointed her finger at Juts like an avenging angel.
Juts spun around. “Don’t talk to me like that, you spoiled brat. I’m your mother.”
“No, you’re not.”
That stopped Juts cold in her tracks. Even Buster closed his mouth.
“Rillma Ryan is my mother.” Nickel lowered her voice.
Shaking, Juts whispered, “Who told you that?”
“Peepbean Huffstetler.”
A long silence followed. Juts put her fingers to her temples. “Rillma Ryan gave you birth. She got in a jam and you were the result. I wanted a baby so I took you. Why I wanted this grief, I don’t know. I should have had my head examined.” This casual cruelty slid right out of her lipsticked mouth. In fact, she was so mad and upset she didn’t even think about the effect on Nickel.
“If you’re not my mother you can’t tell me what to do.” Nickel put her hands on her hips as the tears rolled down her perfectly smooth face.
“Listen, brat. You’d be dead if I hadn’t gotten you out of that orphanage.” She conveniently neglected to mention Wheezie and Chessy had made the frozen trip to Pittsburgh. “I fed you, clothed you, and saw that you got to church on time. As long as you’re under my roof you’ll do as I say.”
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