Bluegrass Christmas

by Allie Pleiter

  He wasn’t kidding. It was as if the woman used every cookie cutter in the bluegrass region. She picked up a gingerbread pig sporting a red and green frosting bow and couldn’t help but laugh. “Only Dinah.”

  “She’s something, that’s for sure. Nothing’s ever ordinary with her.” Mac’s phone rang, and he glanced over to its display. “Rats, I have to answer this, but it’ll only take a second. Have at that pig while you’re waiting. Middleburg’s the only place in America where you can munch on a Christmas gingerbread pig, so enjoy it while you can.”

  She scanned his office while he spoke briefly on the phone and hovered over his fax machine. A collection of certificates and awards took up one wall, along with a few requisite photos of Mac and probably officials holding shovels at groundbreaking ceremonies of one sort or another. A bookshelf hosted a collection of car books—coffee table photograph books about sports cars, a row of tiny toy cars and a pair of parts catalogs. She could picture him zipping down the road in that little convertible on summer days, even though it had hardly been warm enough for a ragtop since she’d moved here.

  Thornton drove a fierce-looking black Italian sports car. It would stand out on Ballad Road twice as much as Mac’s orange one, because while Mac’s car looked fast and fun, Thornton’s car looked like a predator.

  There was another photo—several of them, actually—of Mac on a high mountaintop. The kind taken with a camera timer, showing him tanned and grinning in the middle of vast wildernesses. They’d not really talked about it, but she could easily guess that the reason Mac could be “on” so much—be so public, so talkative, so engaged—was because of the reservoir of private time and space he guarded so closely.

  Thornton, on the other hand, had no wells to tend and didn’t care about depth anyway. While the energy looked similar to Mac’s on the outside, Thornton’s vitality was a get-all-you-can-before-you-die hoarding, a frantic consumption of things and people. Lord, she wondered silently, could I have seen that before You? Does faith give me new wisdom? Will You help me know what to do now?

  Mac scanned the paper, signed it and then fed it back into the machine. As the page hummed its way through the fax, Mac took a deep drink of his own cup. “Dinah says with enough sugar and caffeine you can save the world.” He settled into the chair and pulled a black leather notepad in front of him. “I’m a bit weirded out after last night. I thought maybe we should talk some more. How are you? Okay?”

  “Yes. And no. I mean, I’m calmer than I thought I’d be at the thought of telling people. But I’m still, well, ‘weirded out’ like you said.”

  “Look,” he explained, “I meant what I said. I have no right to tell you what to do. But I do think you’re underestimating Middleburg. No one’s going to slam you for giving their kids a case of Bippo Bear fever.”

  He was awfully sure of her reception for a man in his position. “Well, I’m not as sure as you,” she countered, “after all, your reaction wasn’t exactly rosy.”

  “I’m an idiot. And that was before I knew it was you. I made fun of Drew Downing’s TV show before he moved to Middleburg, too, so don’t take it personally.” He opened the notepad. “I wanted to show you something. A little crisis management tool I invented called the Mac Five. I think this is definitely time to fire it up.”

  “The Mac Five?” It sounded like a music group.

  “Silly name, sound thinking. Watch.” He grabbed a pen and began drawing a diagram of sorts, a circle with five circles around it. “This is the MacCarthy crisis management protocol, affectionately known as the Mac Five. Any situation has a first step to the solution, and most times it involves finding the five people who need to know first. Then, you can get them all together to figure out what to do next. Never thought I’d be using it on such a personal level….” He started to say something else, but bit his tongue.

  Mary didn’t know what to think. This didn’t seem like the kind of situation that boiled itself down to a diagram. She didn’t remember asking him for advice on how to reveal her past. Then again, she couldn’t remember Mac asking before doing anything.

  He raised one tawny eyebrow at her suspicious expression. “No really, hear me out. It applies. Lots of bad news gets delivered in my line of work. Things go wrong all the time. I realized last night—actually about two this morning—that this isn’t much different.” He wrote “Mary” in the center circle, then pushed the pen and pad across to her. “Humor me. Pick five people you think you might be able to tell. Just five.”

  The first person was obvious; Pastor Dave should be told. He knew a little bit about her former job, but certainly not about her particular bear-related achievements. Emily was one of the few people she’d classify as her friend in Middleburg, so she wrote her down. Drew and Janet fell easily into that group as well, especially since Drew’s past as a public figure might give him particular insight into handling her problem. There, she’d filled in more than half the circles. Mac’s crazy method seemed to have some value, for a thin layer of calm really was working its way into her as she wrote down names. Each circle she filled in helped her brain come up with a new idea. “Dinah and Cameron have been so nice to me, I think they’d react okay.” Somehow she’d convinced herself that she didn’t have friends in Middleburg yet, but that was wrong. And while it felt horrible and vulnerable to tell the whole world about her connection with Bippo Bears, she could handle these people knowing. Maybe I could, she realized, sitting up straighter and even reaching for another cookie. Maybe I could tell them and it’d be all right.

  “There’s something about getting it down on paper, isn’t there?” He confirmed, taking the pad from her and tearing off the sheet. “I learned that from my dad my first week in business.”

  Mary looked at the diagram. “I don’t know about the last circle. Sandy maybe?”

  “Could be. I always try to think, ‘Who’s a stakeholder?’ You know, who is or just considers themselves to have a stake in the problem.”

  She cringed at the thought; that reasoning led straight to Howard. He’d considered himself the catalyst that brought her here. And he was not the kind of man who cared to hear news secondhand. As judgmental as she feared he would be, she feared his reaction would be far worse if he wasn’t told. With a heavy sigh, she filled in the last circle with Howard’s name.

  Mac let out a sigh, as well. “I had the same thought, I just didn’t want to tell you what to do.”

  She gave him a doubtful look. “That one feels the worst.”

  “He might surprise you,” Mac theorized, attempting a smile. “He’s a man who appreciates results, and no one can argue you haven’t seen spectacular results with that song.”

  “Spectacular?” That wasn’t the word she’d have chosen.

  “Well, maybe just ‘big.’ Plus, Howard’s been known to play the indulgent grandfather a time or two. He may have even been a customer.”

  Mary shut her eyes against the vision of Howard glaring down a young mother over a store’s last Bippo Bear. She found it disturbing to think of people she knew buying the toy. That was one of the things that had let her know it was time to leave. She used to love the idea of friends eating Jones Bars or Paulie’s Pizza. She was proud of that work. She could never find it in herself to be proud of the Bippo Bear campaign. Mac, however, had not only succumbed to the campaign, he’d been a prime result—indulgent uncle shelling out far above the retail price to score a Bippo Bear. “What about you?” she asked, her pen hovering over the paper. “Since you already know, where do you go?”

  He paused for a long, cumbersome moment, then slid Mary’s page in front of him. Pulling another pen out of his shirt pocket, he drew a little line, sectioning off a bottom slice of the circle that held her name, so that it was sitting on the line. Under the line he wrote “Mac” in large, wide letters. “Right underneath you.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Same as always.”

  He held her gaze for a moment, and she felt something deep down inside slide
into place. Sure, his design was a useful crisis management tool, but that wasn’t why she felt stronger. A quintet of circles didn’t suddenly undergird her confidence. It was this man, this baffling, full-of-surprises man who dared to stick his neck out right alongside her. And, truth be told, had a far bigger secret with far darker consequences than the one she hid. “I still don’t get why you’re doing this,” she remarked softly.

  “Maybe it’s just time I really be a leader instead of just acting like one.” He kept his eyes on her. “But sometimes, God shows you something you don’t want to see and somehow you know down deep what it is you need to do. It’s the whole point of faith.”

  “It’s terrifying,” she confessed, wishing she could borrow some of the confidence in his eyes.

  “It never stops being terrifying, you just get a little more used to it.”

  “You look so calm.”

  “I fake it well. I’m petrified on the inside.”

  Mary didn’t think he looked it. Unnerved, maybe, just by the way he fidgeted with the pen or the way his easy smile wasn’t quite as easy. But not the deer-in-headlights panic she was fighting. “Who’s on your chart?” she asked before she realized what a personal question that was.

  Mac leaned over and pulled out a folded piece of paper from his jeans pocket. “Funny that. It might look a bit familiar….” He unfolded the paper to reveal five circles around his name.

  With the exact same names as hers.

  Without a word, Mary took the paper from him and drew a line over the top bit of the circle with his name on it. She wrote “Mary” above the line, so that his center circle matched hers. “I got your back, Mac,” she volunteered, managing a small laugh.

  “Technically,” he corrected and chuckled, “you’ve got my head.”

  She threw him a teasing look. “Don’t get technical.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mary made an “appointment” to talk with Pastor Dave for the following morning, and he met her with a cup of coffee as she returned the baby Jesus doll to the manger on the set. She’d stayed up late to sew the right arm back onto the doll. Last night Tommy Lee Lockwood, determined to buck his angel-role status when it didn’t entail as much high flying as he’d hoped, had flung the poor Savior clear across the sanctuary in a fit of anger. It was one of those moments where the entire room fell silent, aghast that anyone—even an angry eight-year-old—would consider catapulting the baby Jesus into the choir loft. Mac tried to lighten the moment with a joke about next year’s softball team. Howard pinned Tommy Lee’s already-embarrassed mother with a disgusted stare. Emily gave out an exasperated sigh loud enough to be heard in Louisville.

  While surprised, Mary tried to remember all the appalling things soprano divas had done during her musical career and calmly sent Tommy Lee up into the choir loft to fetch back the Christ child. Things deteriorated when “fetching back” simply meant flinging the doll back down from the choir loft, resulting in a physical separation that gave new meaning to “the right hand of God.” Even though they still had two more scenes to get through, Mary had declared the rehearsal over. It didn’t exactly do wonders for her confidence regarding this meeting.

  “Tough crowd last night,” Pastor Dave said as he eased himself down on the edge of the stage. “You’re not here to tell me you’re quitting, are you?”

  It hadn’t even occurred to her that he might interpret her request to meet that way. “Oh, no. We might not open on Broadway, but things’ll pull together in the next two nights. Although, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t really looking forward to the potluck.”

  “Because it means your job will be over? Well, the harder part of your job?”

  “A bit,” she admitted. “But I also don’t think I can skip town without tasting Howard’s award-winning yuletide chili.”

  Pastor Dave leaned in. “His wife makes it, but we’ll keep that little secret between ourselves, shall we?”

  Secret between ourselves? God had handed her a blatant opening for the conversation she had in mind. “Funny you should mention secrets.” She took a sip of coffee, shooting up a prayer for courage. This was so ridiculously hard. It didn’t help that this morning’s television news had broadcast a story of some poor Texas family putting their son’s Bippo Bear up for sale on the Internet because the dad had been laid off this week. She was ready to turn off the television until New Year’s—facing another Bippo Bear news story felt beyond her strength. “I…I have something to tell you,” she began weakly.

  “I gathered that,” he said without a hint of judgment or worry in his voice.

  Mary tried to take courage in his gentle demeanor. If the man hadn’t excommunicated Tommy Lee for dismembering baby Jesus, maybe he’d take it better than she feared. “You need to know some things about my job before I came here.” Mary took a deep, shaky breath. “And the man I used to work for.”

  “You already told me you worked for an advertising agency. I’ve never met anyone before you who made television commercials. Sounds rather exciting.”

  Thornton Maxwell wasn’t exciting, he was frightening. “Well, yes, but it’s more complicated than that.”

  “Why don’t you tell me how?” She was hedging and he knew it.

  “Well, Thornton Maxwell—my former boss—is a powerful man.”

  Pastor Dave gave an encouraging smile and glanced upward. “My boss is powerful, too. I think we can handle Mr. Maxwell. Has he done something to you?”

  He looked so kind, so calm, Mary told herself to spit it out. Just say it. It’s not as bad as you think, just blurt it out. Her mouth felt like it was full of cotton; words refused to form.

  Dave put down his own mug. “Mary, would it help if I told you last night isn’t the worst behavior I’ve seen out of this feisty little flock? I’m hard to shock anymore. But by the look on your face, you’re about to admit to me that you’re a government spy or a jewel thief.”

  He was trying humor, trying to make her comfortable. It made it all the worse. This looked so easy on Mac’s diagram. She rolled her eyes, disgusted with her own ridiculous fear. “I wish.”

  Pastor Dave stared at her. “You wish?”

  “Those sound less embarrassing. I think you’ll find this crime a bit more…well…odd.”

  “Crime? What’s going on, Mary? Just tell me.”

  “I did very particular work for Maxwell. It’s musical. Sort of.”

  “So it’s a…a musical crime?”

  “Yes, and no. Well, you might find a few parents looking to lynch me—especially this week.”

  He shot her a look that let her know she wasn’t making any sense. Of course she wasn’t making any sense. All of this defied any sense whatsoever. Mary wiped her hands down her jeans and took a deep breath. “You see, I’m really, really good at writing advertising music.” She had to say the J word. This should be like a bandage—just rip it off fast and get the worst pain over. “Jingles.” She blurted it out. “I write ad jingles for kids. I…I wrote the Bippo Bear jingle. Those brawling parents? I did that. Those black-market Bippo Bears going for hundreds of dollars? I did that. It’s me.”

  There was an enormous, awful silence. “You’re telling me,” Pastor Dave restated slowly, “that your crime against humanity is the Bippo Bear jingle?”

  “Yep. Everything bad about Christmas wrapped up into one highly effective forty-second ditty. Mine. Miserable parents and disappointed kids everywhere? My doing. They’ll be flinging me headfirst into the choir loft when people find out.”

  “You think people will blame you for what’s going on over these bears?”

  “I am responsible. I created the craze.” Once the admission was out, Mary felt words tumble from her mouth in a nervous gush. “Just because it was my job doesn’t mean it was right. My job was to fire up a frenzy with an annoying song kids could instantly memorize and endlessly sing to their parents. Get it? My job description was to give kids the tools to make their parents miserable and desperate.
And I did it really well. So well I’ll probably never live it down.”

  Pastor Dave took a long drink of coffee. “So, you’re public enemy number one this week, hm? Hated by parents around the globe? A virtual catalyst for bad behavior and everything that’s wrong about Christmas?”

  Weren’t pastors supposed to make people feel better? She hadn’t expected him to welcome the news with open arms, but Mary expected something a little more understanding than this. “Um, yeah.” A lump rose up in the back of her throat. She couldn’t even look him in the eye.

  He’s going to fire me right here, Mary realized. Two days before Christmas and I’m going to get the boot.

  “You can’t have this job.”

  Oh, Lord, You can’t let him fire me. “I know. I’m sorry about everything.”

  “The job of taking on the sins of the world is already filled. You can’t have it.”

  She looked at him.

  “I can’t vouch for how well everyone in Middleburg will take the news—I did hear someone griping at Gina Deacon’s diner just the other day—but I don’t think your life is in danger. And I think you’ve let yourself whip up a whole lot of worry over something that doesn’t warrant it.”

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t the torment she had imagined. But he was a pastor, he was bound by certain codes of loving-kindness, wasn’t he? “I don’t think everyone will see it your way. I heard one of those women on the television. She was calling ‘those advertising lowlifes’ a couple of names I won’t repeat in this sanctuary.”

  Pastor Dave sighed. “You won’t be everyone’s favorite. But no one is. You opened the door to a lot of bad behavior in your former job, but it’s not that different. Part of my job is to hold up a mirror to folks’ bad behavior. And while I admit I get an occasional dose of ‘shoot the messenger,’ it happens less than you think.” He leaned back against a set wall. “Would you say that Bippo Bear campaign was a wake-up call for you?”