A Redbird Christmas (4 page)

As time went on, Roy saw how smart the bird was and began to teach him tricks. Pretty soon he had Jack riding around on his finger and eating sunflower seeds out of his hand. His favorite game was when Roy would hide a sunflower seed in someone’s pocket and Jack would go inside the pocket of the surprised person and come back out with it and fly over and hand it to Roy. Then Roy would give him ten more.

Jack clearly loved all the attention he was getting. When he saw himself in the mirror for the first time, he hunched down and bobbed his head at his reflection and tried to attack it, so Roy had to get rid of all the mirrors. Jack had made it known that as far as he was concerned the store was his territory, and he did not want another bird around. When the bird in the mirror had disappeared so quickly, Jack was convinced that he and he alone had run the intruder off, so he puffed up and strutted around and became bolder and bolder. Most of the time he rode on Roy’s shoulder or on his hat, but he pretty much went where he pleased. Eventually that turned out to be dangerous.

One day, the postmistress Dottie Nivens’s big fat orange cat named Henry sat outside the store all day, looking in the window at Jack fluttering around the cash register, just waiting with his tail swishing back and forth, his eyes never losing sight of the bird. He was determined to catch it one way or another. Around three-thirty, when the kids from Lost River got off the school bus from Lillian and started coming in for candy and cold drinks, the cat saw his chance. He lunged through the open screen door, and before anyone saw him he had leaped up on the counter and made a grab for Jack. Jack shot straight up in the air, just barely managing to escape Henry’s claws, and landed on top of a shelf. Not to be deterred, Henry went tearing through the store right behind him, knocking racks of potato chips, cigarette cartons, cans and bottles on the floor as he chased Jack all around the room. And then everybody was running through the store chasing the cat and yelling. What a racket! It sounded like an earthquake. Poor Jack with his feathers flying and his crest standing straight up on his head, was hopping and leaping as fast and high as he could, with the cat continuing to miss him by mere inches. Jack somehow flapped and hopped his way all the way to the back of the store and landed on top of the meat counter, and the cat immediately sprang up after him and slid on all four feet all the way down the other end, knocking off bottles of ketchup, barbecue sauce, and horseradish in his wake. In the meantime, Jack, in one herculean effort, took a tremendous leap from the counter and flapped his wings long enough to land on the deer head, just out of the cat’s reach. Roy was finally able to shoo the frustrated Henry out the back door with a broom while Jack, with his feathers still all fluffed up, sat on his safe perch and fussed at the cat as he slunk out of the store.

Jack did not come down for the rest of the day and continued to fuss at Roy for letting the cat inside in the first place. The next day a new sign was added to the screen door:

DON’T LET THE BIRD OUT!

DON’T LET THE CAT IN!

River Route

B
ACK IN CHICAGO,
Oswald Campbell met with his insurance agent and signed over his death benefits and anything that might be left from his pension after he died to Helen, stipulating that she spend it on herself and not let those kids get ahold of it. He knew they would anyway, and it galled him, but there was nothing he could do about it. He closed out his bank account and had only a little money left. The train was the cheapest way to go, so he made his reservations. The next morning he phoned Mrs. Cleverdon to tell her when he would arrive and find out the new address to have his pension forwarded.

Frances said, “Send it in care of Miss Betty Kitchen, River Route Forty-eight.”

“River Route? Is that the name of the street?”

“No, that’s the river,” she said.

“Oh. Well, I need a street address.”

“That
is
the address, Mr. Campbell. We get our mail by boat.”

Oswald was confused. “By boat? I don’t have a boat.”

She laughed. “You don’t need a boat, the mailman brings it by boat.”

“Where does he bring it?”

“Right to your dock.”

He was still confused. “Don’t I need a zip code or anything?”

“No, you don’t need to fool with that, Mr. Campbell. Our mailman knows where everybody lives.”

“I see . . . so it’s just River Route Forty-eight?”

“That’s right, I’m River Route Forty-six. My sister Mildred is Fifty-four.” She wanted to mention Mildred to him as much as possible.

Oswald hung up and wondered what kind of place he was headed to. She had not mentioned they got their mail by boat, for God’s sake. He was starting to have second thoughts but he had already given up his room and said goodbye to Helen on the phone, so he guessed he’d just go on as planned. After all, he had not told Mrs. Cleverdon he was a walking time bomb and would probably die on them. Besides, it was too late now. He couldn’t afford to go anywhere else at this point. He only hoped the grocery store down there sold beer at least. There was no reason to stay sober too long. Not when you had nothing to look forward to anyway.

The moment Frances had hung up, she realized that she had forgotten to at least
warn
him about Betty Kitchen’s mother, Miss Alma. She thought about calling him back but changed her mind. Maybe it was for the best; after all, she didn’t want to scare him off before he even arrived. Besides, she had to run over to Mildred’s house and help get ready for the meeting of the Mystic Order of the Royal Polka Dots Secret Society. Christmas was just around the corner and they had to make arrangements for the Mystery Tree. Every year in the dead of night, all the club members would get together and decorate the large cedar tree standing in front of the community hall. The Polka Dots did a lot of good works and they did all their good works in secret. The club motto was “To Toot One’s Own Horn Is Unattractive.” The only honorary male member of the Polka Dots was Butch Mannich, whom everybody called Stick, because he was six-four and weighed 128 pounds. He was Sybil Underwood’s twenty-six-year-old nephew and a good soul who did anything the ladies needed. He supplied the ladder and was the only one tall enough to hang the lights on the top of the tree each year.

When Frances walked in the house for the meeting, Mildred was lounging on the couch in the living room wearing a bright floral Hawaiian muumuu and reading the new book she had just borrowed from the bookmobile entitled
Romance on the Bayou: A Steamy Story of Forbidden Love Deep in the Bayou Country of Louisiana.
When Frances saw what her sister was reading, she said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Mildred, when are you going to stop reading all that trash?” Mildred closed the book, laid it on the coffee table, and answered, “When are you going to stop eating all that candy?”

Frances never could get the best of Mildred. As girls they had both attended one of the finest finishing schools in Chattanooga, but even then Mildred had always been somewhat of a maverick. She had been the first girl in town to ever wear a pants suit inside the Chattanooga Country Club: too independent, long before it was fashionable. Frances thought it was probably the reason that the boy Mildred had been engaged to ran off and married someone else. It could also account for the fact that you never knew what color Mildred’s hair was going to be the next time you saw her. She dyed her hair on a whim and according to how she felt from day to day. Today it was some sort of plaid. Frances hoped that by the time Mr. Campbell arrived it would be at least close to the color of something natural. But she did not say anything. If Mildred knew she was trying to fix her up with a man she would do something crazy for sure. Frances worried about her sister. Mildred had retired after twenty-five years of work, had good insurance, owned her own home, and had plenty of friends, but she did not seem happy. Frances worried that Mildred was getting bitter as she aged and turning into an old curmudgeon right before her eyes. It was one of the many reasons that Frances was holding such high hopes for Mr. Campbell. Mildred needed to get over that boy who had left her, and move on with her life before it was too late.

Dreamy Alabama

A
S THE DOCTOR
had suggested, Oswald tied up all loose ends and settled his estate, a task that took him no more than five minutes. It consisted of throwing away three pairs of old shoes and giving away one of his two overcoats. He packed the one baseball he had caught at a game and all his other belongings into a single suitcase. That night a few of his friends from AA took him out for a farewell cup of coffee. He told them he would most probably be back in the spring. No point in getting anyone upset.

The next morning he took a cab to the L&N railroad station at LaSalle Street. He found his seat, and the train pulled out of the station at 12:45
P.M.
As the familiar buildings passed by his window, he knew he was seeing Chicago for the last time and he thought about going to the club car for a drink right then and there, but the “One Day at a Time” chip his friends had given him last night was still in his pocket. He felt he should probably wait until they got farther away from Chicago and his AA group, so he just sat and looked out the window and soon became preoccupied with the scenery passing by. As they traveled south, through Cincinnati and Louisville to Nashville, the landscape slowly began to change. The deeper south they went, the more the brown land started to turn a different color, and by the time he woke up the next morning the barren black trees that lined the tracks the day before had been replaced with thick evergreens and tall pines. He had gone to sleep in one world and awakened in another. Overnight, the gray gloomy winter sky had turned a bright blue with huge white cumulus clouds so big that Oswald’s first thought was, You’ve got to be kidding!

When they reached Mobile late that afternoon, the moment he stepped off the train, a tall thin man with a small head, who looked to Oswald exactly like a praying mantis wearing a baseball cap, stepped up. “Are you Mr. Campbell?” He said he was, and the man took his bag and said, “Welcome to Alabama! I’m Butch Mannich, but you can call me Stick; everybody else does.” As they walked along he added, “Yeah, I’m so skinny that when I was a child my parents wouldn’t let me have a dog because it would keep burying me in the yard.” Then he laughed uproariously at his own joke.

When they came out of the station, the warm air of Mobile was moist and fragrant and a surprise to Oswald. To see it from the train was one thing; to feel it and smell it was another. Their mode of transportation was a truck that Butch apologized for. “It ain’t pretty, but it’ll get us there.” Butch was a cheery soul and talked the entire hour and a half it took them to drive down to Lost River. He handed Mr. Campbell his business card, which had a drawing of a big eye in the middle. Underneath was printed:

BUTCH
(
STICK
)
MANNICH
PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
AND PROCESS SERVER

Oswald was surprised. “Is there a lot of call for private detective work here?”

“No, not yet,” said Butch, a little disappointed. “But I’m available, ready, willing, and able, just in case.” It was just getting dark as they went over the long Mobile Bay causeway, and they were able to see the last of the sunset. There was nothing but miles of water on both sides and the sun that was now dipping into the bay was so large and orange it almost scared Oswald.

“Is that normal?” he asked Butch.

Butch glanced out the window. “Yeah, we get a nice sunset most of the time.”

By the time they turned off the highway to Lost River it was pitch-black outside. “There’s the store,” said Butch, as they whizzed by. Oswald looked out but saw nothing. They drove about a block and stopped in front of a large house. “Here we are, safe and sound.”

Oswald took out his wallet. “What do I owe you?”

Butch’s reaction was one of genuine surprise. “Why, you don’t owe me a thing, Mr. Campbell.”

Just as Oswald reached out to knock on the door, it was flung open by a huge woman, standing at least six feet tall. “Come on in!” she said, in a booming voice, and snatched his suitcase away from him before he could stop her. “I’m Betty Kitchen, glad to have you.” She grabbed his hand, shook it, and almost broke it. “Breakfast is at seven, lunch at twelve, and dinner at six. And if you see a little funny-looking woman spooking around don’t let it bother you; it’s only Mother. She doesn’t know where she is half the time, so if she wanders in your room just chase her out. Let me show you around.”

The house had a long hallway down the middle, and he trailed behind her. She walked to the back of the house, pointing as she went: “Living room, dining room, and this is the kitchen.” She switched the lights on and then off. She turned around, headed back to the front, and pointed to a small door under the stairs. “And this is where I sleep,” she said. She opened the door, and inside was a closet just big enough for a single bed. “I like to be close to the kitchen where I can keep an eye on Mother. It’s small but I like it; it reminds me of being on a train. I always slept well on a train, and I was on a lot of them in my day. Come on upstairs. I’ll show you your room.”

As he followed her up the stairs, Oswald felt that there was something familiar about her manner and her way of speaking. It was almost as if he had met her before, but he was sure he had not; she was a person you would not forget.

“Mother used to be a baker in Milwaukee, specialized in petits fours and fancy cakes, but that was before she slipped on a cigar wrapper.” She turned around and looked at him. “You don’t smoke cigars, do you?”

Oswald quickly said no. Even if he had, from the tone of her voice he would have quit on the spot. “No, I have emphysema; that’s why I’m here. For my health.”

She sighed. “Yes, we get a lot of that. Most of the people that come down here have something or another the matter with them . . . but not me. I’m as healthy as a horse.” That was evident as they walked into his room and she heaved his suitcase onto the bed with one arm. “Well, here it is, the sunniest room in the house. It used to be mine before I moved downstairs. I hope you like it.”

He looked around and saw it was a spacious open room with yellow floral wallpaper and a small yellow sofa in the corner. The brown spindle bed was made up with a crisp white chenille spread, and above it hung a framed embroidered plaque that read
HOME SWEET HOME.

She pointed at two doors. “Closet to the left, bathroom on the right, and if you need anything just holler. If not, see you at oh-seven-hundred.”

He went in the bathroom and was surprised to see it was almost as big as the bedroom, with a green sink and tub. Another surprise: It had a window. He had never seen a bathroom with a window. He was so tired he just wanted to go lie down, but he felt grimy from the train ride so he took a bath and put his pajamas on and got into the soft bed with its clean sweet-smelling sheets. He lay there and looked around his new room once more before he turned off his lamp and fell into a deep peaceful sleep.

After Oswald had gone upstairs to bed, the phone rang. It was Frances calling Betty to inquire if Mr. Campbell had arrived safe and sound. After she was told yes, Frances’s next question was, “Well?”

Betty laughed. “Well . . . he’s a cute little man, with crinkly blue eyes and red hair. He sort of looks like an elf.”

Frances said, “An elf?”

“Yes, but a nice elf.”

Somewhat disappointed that Mr. Campbell was not as handsome as she had hoped for—Mildred was so picky where men were concerned—nonetheless Frances looked on the bright side. An elf, she thought. Oh, well, it
is
close to Christmas. Maybe it was some kind of sign. After all, hope springs eternal.

Oswald opened his eyes at six-thirty the next morning to a room filled with sunlight and with the sound of those same birds chirping he had heard over the phone, only twice as loud. To a man used to waking up for the past eight years in a dark hotel room around nine-thirty or ten to the sounds of traffic, this was unsettling. He tried to go back to sleep but the birds were relentless and he started coughing, so he got up. As he was dressing, he noticed an advertisement on the wall that Betty Kitchen had obviously cut out of a magazine. It was a picture of a ladies’ dressing table and alongside a compact, lipstick, comb, and a pack of Lucky Strike Green cigarettes was a WAC dress uniform hat. The caption underneath said
SHE MAY BE A WAC
—
BUT SHE
’
S A WOMAN TOO!

Then it dawned on him. That’s what had seemed so familiar. The old gal must have been in the service, probably as an army nurse. God knows he had been around enough army nurses, in and out of so many VA hospitals. He had even married one, for God’s sake. Downstairs in the kitchen, while eating a breakfast of eggs, biscuits, grits, and ham, he found out he was right. Not only had she been an army nurse, she was a retired lieutenant colonel, supervisor of nurses, and had run several big hospitals in the Philippines.

He informed her that he had been in the army as well.

She looked up. “Somehow, Mr. Campbell, I wouldn’t have pegged you for a military man.”

He laughed. “Neither did they. I never got out of Illinois.”

“Ah, that’s too bad.”

“Yeah, I guess, but I don’t have any complaints. I got a nice medical discharge and went to school, thanks to the old U S of A Army.”

About that time, the mother, who was half as tall as her daughter and looked like a dried-up little apple doll, appeared in the doorway. She ignored Oswald and seemed highly agitated. “Betty, the elephants are out in the yard again. Go see what they want.”

“Yes, Mother,” said Betty. “I’ll go find out in just a minute. Go on back upstairs now.”

“Well, hurry up. They’re stepping all over my camellia bushes.”

After she left, Betty turned to him. “See what I mean? She thinks she sees all kinds of things out in the yard. Last week it was flying turtles.” She walked over and picked up his dishes. “I’m not sure if it was that fall she took a while ago or just her age; she’s older than God.” She sighed. “But that’s the Kitchen curse, longevity—on both sides. How about yourself, Mr. Campbell? Do you have longevity in your family?”

Not having any information about his real family, but considering his own current condition, he said, “I sincerely doubt it.”

After breakfast, Oswald went back to his room and finished unpacking, and a few minutes later he heard Betty call up the stairs, “Yoo-hoo! Mr. Campbell! You have a visitor!”

When he came out, a pretty woman in a white blouse and a blue skirt looked up and said, “Good morning!” He recognized the voice at once and went downstairs to meet Frances Cleverdon. Although her hair was white, he was surprised to see that up close she had a youthful-looking face, with blue eyes and a lovely smile. She handed him a large welcome basket filled with pecans, a cranberry cream-cheese coffee cake, little satsuma oranges, and several jars of something. “I hope you like jelly,” she said. “I made you some green pepper and scuppernong jelly.”

“I do,” he said, wondering what in hell a scuppernong was.

“Well, I won’t stay, I know you must be busy. I just wanted to run in for a second and say hello, but as soon as you get settled in and feel like it, I want you to come over for dinner.”

“Well, thank you, Mrs. Cleverdon, I will,” he said.

As she got to the door, she turned and asked if he had been down to the store and met Roy yet. “Not yet,” he said.

“No?” She smiled as if she knew a secret. “You need to go and see what’s down there. I think you’re in for a treat.”

After she left, Oswald guessed he should take a walk and at least see the place, and he asked Betty how to find the store. She instructed him to go out the front door, take a left, and it was four houses past the post office at the end of the street.

When he opened the door and walked out onto the porch, the temperature was the same outside as it was inside. He still could not believe how warm it was. Just two days ago he was in an overcoat and icy rain, and today the sun was shining and he was in a short-sleeve shirt. He went out, took a left, and saw what he had not been able to see last night.

The street was lined on both sides by fat oak trees, with long gray Spanish moss hanging from each one. The limbs of the oaks were so large that they met in the middle and formed a canopy of shade in each direction for as far as he could see. The houses he passed on both sides of the street were neat little well-kept bungalows, and in every yard the bushes were full of large red flowers that looked like roses. As he walked along toward the store, the fattest squirrels he had ever seen ran up and down the trees. He could hear birds chirping and rustling around in the bushes, but the undergrowth of shrubs and palms was so thick he couldn’t see them. He soon passed a white house with two front doors and an orange cat sitting on the steps. One side of the house had
POST OFFICE
written above the door.

As he went by, the door opened and a thin willowy woman with stick-straight bangs came out and waved at him. “Hello, Mr. Campbell. Glad you’re here!”