Great Jehoshaphat and Gully Dirt! Part 30

She leaned closer and whispered a short rhyme to me. "Can you remember that?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, sure you can. Whisper it back to me."

I said it for her.

"Good! Now, tonight after you say it, I want you to walk through the church with your papa's hat, and everybody will put in money. That will be for poor people. Then you come back to me, and I'll get some of the little presents off the tree and pin them on you. Then you'll walk up and down the aisle so that folks can take off their gifts. What do you think of that? Can you do it?"

"Oh, yes Ma'am! I can do it!"

On our way home I thought I'd absolutely pop wide open with excitement. But I never did. At supper I gulped down a whole big gla.s.s of b.u.t.termilk with corn bread crumbled in it, and not a drop leaked out of me! Even after we got our stockings hung up and our Sunday clothes on, I was still in good shape.

I kept whispering my Aunt Vic piece over and over to myself.

But as we were going back toward the church, Mierd and Wiley talked so long about how many nuts and apples and oranges we might get in our stockings that I forgot every word Aunt Vic wanted me to recite!

"Don't cry, for goodness sakes!" Mama told me. "Aunt Vic will tell you again what to say."

It was dusk before we got within sight of the grist mill and cotton gin. Mierd and Wiley were quiet. Mama wasn't saying much either.

When we were about halfway between the gin and Papa's new store, three men on horseback streaked past our wagon, their horses running neck and neck!

"I wonder," Mama said, "who's in such an all-fired hurry to get to the Christmas entertainment."

"That's just them Bailey boys," Wiley said.

"How do you know it's them dumb clucks?" Mierd asked.

"I'd know their bays day or night. They're the prettiest horses in Drake Eye Springs, and them boys are the meanest."

"Y'all mustn't talk so about them wild, mischievous Bailey boys. 'Course it's true they sorta took after their ma's folks, and to my knowledge none of Lida Belle's kin-or Wes's-ever killed many snakes. But at the same time, I figure Addie Mae and the three boys do the best they can."

"But, Mama, they-"

"Anyhow, Wiley, I thought you told us the other night that the schoolteacher goes over to the Bailey place on Sat.u.r.days to hunt squirrels with the boys and learn them how to read."

"He does. But, Mama, they're still the worst boys in the whole school. Don't n.o.body like 'em."

As we rode by the store, we saw Papa standing at the back door. Mama pulled up on the reins to make Belle and Puddin' Foot slow down and called to Papa, "You coming on now?"

"Yeah! I'll be up there in a few minutes! Soon's I can blow out the lights and lock up."

It took Papa more than a few minutes to get to the church.

When the house was getting filled up with folks and the tree was sagging with presents and I was already in my Christmas tree costume and it was almost time for the Christmas Eve program to begin, he still hadn't come. I was afraid he wouldn't get to see me being a tree or hear me say my Aunt Vic piece.

"When's Papa gonna get here, Mama?"

"Pretty soon. He'll be in before we start singing. Let's me and you sit on the front bench. That way, you can see good."

The mourners' bench?"

"Sugar, it's not the mourner's bench, except during protracted Meeting time."

Mama and I sat down and waited-and waited.

All the school kids, ganged up in the corner behind the stage curtain, were getting noisy. It sounded like fun, but we heard Aunt Vic ask them to please be quiet.

Mama wanted me to be still. "Quit twisting around, Bandershanks!" she said. "You'll tear up your costume!"

I hadn't been doing any twisting, except when I slid down to the far end of the bench to watch the folks hang gifts on the tree, or when I looked back to find out who else was coming in the door, or when I turned so I could see everybody sitting behind us. Mama should have known that bit of twisting around wouldn't hurt my walking-tree dress.

Mama turned sideways herself to see what Ginger was gonna do, as he kept trotting up and down the aisle. She said he was trying to find Aunt Vic.

Instead of looking behind the curtain, Ginger kept going down to the bench where he sat by Aunt Vic on Sundays. Finally he gave up his looking and his trotting and lay down by the wood box.

I stretched both my arms out straight.

"Mama, how come y'all wound this green paper 'round my arms?"

"They're tree limbs. And your pointed hat is the tip top of the tree. See?" Mama reached over and set my paper hat farther back on my head. "It's got to sit straight up to look right."

I smoothed out the wrinkles at my elbows and fluffed the leaves across my shoulders. Aunt Vic had told me I looked pretty.

I thought so too.

Papa didn't know what to think when he finally walked in and saw me sitting there in my s.h.a.ggy dress. Mama told me to stand up and turn around so he could take a look at me.

"Good gracious, Bandershanks, you're all diked out here tonight!"

"I'm a Christmas tree, Papa!"

"I believe you are!"

Papa sat down on the front bench by us instead of going over to his Sunday place in the corner, where he always sat with Captain Jones and Uncle Dan and the other men.

I noticed Captain Jones wasn't in the men's corner either. He was standing near the organ talking with the schoolteacher and my big sister Bess. As they talked, Captain Jones kept waving his walking stick toward the stage and the curtain. Every time he spoke, his chin jiggled his beard up and down. His beard, I decided, was even longer and whiter than Grandpa Thad's.

The three stood talking only a minute longer. Then Bess sat down on the organ stool and started looking through her hymnbook.

Captain Jones leaned on the teacher as they went slowly up the platform steps. Mister Shepherd had to help Captain Jones get seated in the high-backed chair Brother Milligan used on Preaching Sundays.

"My, Nannie, what a crowd!" Papa had turned to look over the church.

"Seems like everybody in the settlement is here, yet I see folks are still coming in."

"I'm afraid Doctor Elton won't make it. He said when he pa.s.sed the store that there's a regular outbreak of influenza down below the State Line Road."

"I hope and pray it don't spread up here!" Mama pulled her cape closer around her shoulders. "Wind must be rising. Every time that front door opens, I feel it."

"Yeah," Papa told her, "the wind has come up. A pretty night, though. Stars out. The moon full. Perfect for Christmas Eve."