Bluegrass Christmas

Drew caught the exchange. “I’ve stayed a star as long as I have because I know which battles not to get into.”

“You’re a Middleburg resident now, you’ll have to vote soon enough.”

“A gratefully private matter, Mr. MacCarthy.” Drew poured more cream into his own coffee. “God bless democracy.”

Mac leaned in on one elbow. “Why do I get the feeling if Howard wins, you’ll tell him you voted for him, but if I win you’ll say I had your vote?”

Howard wasn’t even pretending not to listen now. He’d turned halfway around to face Mac and Drew, his attention openly on the conversation.

“Eat your pie, gentlemen,” Gina cut in, brandishing the pie-cutter knife she was holding. She tilted the spatula in Howard’s direction. “All of you.”

Drew straightened in his chair. “Don’t anger the pie lady,” he declared as if he and Mac had been caught passing notes in class.

“Good policy,” Mac whispered back loudly, glad to have enough humor to still make a joke. Honestly, his short fuse was way too short lately. He needed to remember to get out more. The combination of year-end workload and campaign tasks on top of his new commission as Bippo Bear procurement agent had gotten to him fast. I’m going to need an easy nature and a mile-long fuse to be mayor, he told himself. That’s a tall order for the likes of me. Are You listening, Lord?

Chapter Four

It couldn’t be. I mean, yes, it was Kentucky, and it wasn’t like they didn’t have snakes in Illinois, but they didn’t take up residence under the kitchen sink. That was the beauty of living five stories up in a city. The wildlife stayed in the wild. Mary stood very still, both hands vise-locked onto the broomstick she now pushed against the cabinet door. Nothing, no one could get her to stop holding that cabinet door shut and keeping that lethal creature inside. Mary heard something shuffle behind the door and swallowed a scream.

Think. You’re a smart girl, think.

No coherent thought came to mind.

If she screamed, surely someone in the building would hear her. Did birds have good hearing? Would Curly be able to hear her even if Dinah or Mac couldn’t? The scene of Curly getting Mac’s attention, “Lassie, what do you mean Timmy’s stuck down the well?”-style, flashed absurdly through her head. Town newcomer saved by vigilant cockatoo. It’d be out over the Internet in seconds, along with a photo of herself being loaded, pale and shaking, into a Woodford County ambulance. Sunflower seed reward for snake-killing bird.

Not helpful, Mary. Think. Think rationally.

I can’t think rationally, there’s a python under my sink.

You don’t even know if it’s venomous. There are perfectly harmless snakes, her rational side argued.

It will eat you in one gulp, her terrified side rebutted, very successfully.

“Mac!” she yelled, trying for some ridiculous reason to sound calm. When no reply came, she tried “Dinah!” After half a minute and another sinister sub-sink shuffle, Mary cried, “Curly!”

Nothing.

Well of course he can’t hear you, it’s winter and the windows are shut. A building as old as this must have thick walls. Lord Jesus! I haven’t even had a year as a Christian, I can’t be ready for Heaven yet! Save me!

The floor. She could use the floor. Forcing in a deep breath, Mary tried to mentally compare the floor plan of her apartment with Mac’s office below. She’d only seen it once, but it was enough to be reasonably sure that his office was directly below where she was standing. If she just thumped, it would only sound like she was moving things. It had to sound deliberate. Somewhere, out of the dark trivia-hoarding recesses of her brain, Mary retrieved the Morse code for SOS. Three short beeps, followed by three long beeps, followed by three short ones again. While the concept of long beeps didn’t directly translate into foot-stomping, Mary guessed she could come close enough. If that didn’t work, she could still reach the toaster and begin throwing it on the ground until Mac was convinced the walls were caving in up here.

Tap-tap-tap. STOMP. STOMP. STOMP. Tap-tap-tap.Mary dug her heel into the floor to produce the loudest possible staccato taps. Lord Jesus, please let Mac know Morse code and not let him think I’m an amateur flamenco dancer. She repeated the sequence again.

Curly noticed first. Mac looked up from his papers, only barely noticing an unusual noise. Mary sure was doing a lot of banging around up there. Rhythmic, too. Exercise?

Tap-tap-tap. BANG-BANG-BANG. Tap-tap-tap. Curly came down off his perch in the window to stand on Mac’s desk lamp. “Your new friend is a bit odd,” Mac remarked, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “Even for city folk.”

The succession of noises repeated again, louder. Folk dancing? Some jumpy new Chicago fitness fad? Morse code? Mac reached for his calculator, chuckling.

Until the bangs repeated.

Morse code? He knew Morse code. He knew the signal she was banging out, or knew it once. Mac stared at Curly, trying to pull the information out of the back recesses of his memory until…

Tap-tap-tap. BANG-BANG-BANG. Tap-tap-tap. SOS. That was Morse code for SOS.

No way. That was absurd.

The series of bangs came faster and louder now. Quite clearly three short taps followed by three more big bangs followed by three more short taps. SOS. Or something too close to it to ignore. But really, how many people knew Morse code, much less stomped it on their floors? Still, he’d never forgive himself if something really had been wrong and he’d dismissed it. Dashing up there would make him look like a complete idiot—if she was fine. “You think?” Mac said to Curly, pushing back his desk chair.

Curly was already flying toward the door. “Yep!”

He stood at the door, hands poised to knock, and listened for another set of stomps. He’d almost talked himself out of knocking, sure she would find his visit an example of overdone small-town meddling, when he heard the moan. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a calm sound. At that point, knocking was no longer needed. Mac flung Curly off his forearm and twisted Mary’s door handle, pushing the door wide open and sprinting inside.

“Oh, Lord Jesus, save me from that thing! Who’s there?”

Mac followed her voice into the kitchen to find Mary Thorpe impaling her cabinet with a broomstick. Throwing all her slight weight against that door as if an 800-pound gorilla were hiding under her sink. It was comic—in an alarming kind of way—until whatever it was behind there made a considerable racket. Then it wasn’t so funny.

Mary shifted her weight, pressing harder against the broom handle, and squeaked “Mac! It’s in there!”

“What’s in there?” Mac said as calmly as he could while scanning her kitchen for heavy objects. He strode to her and took the broomstick, keeping pressure against the door.

She bolted away from him the minute he had a grip, backing into a corner on the other side of the kitchen, her chest heaving. “I don’t know. I only heard it. I sure wasn’t going to open the door and introduce myself.”

Mac worked himself closer to the cabinet, hand-overhand down the broom handle until he held the door shut with his boot. Nothing pushed back against him, but things were definitely moving around in there. A constant, steady rustle rather than an irregular scurrying. Mary Thorpe had a snake in her kitchen. Not exactly the warmest of Kentucky welcomes. “It sounds like you’ve got a snake in there,” he confirmed, trying to keep his tone conversational, as if kitchen snake visits were commonplace. They weren’t rare, but it was unusual to get one on the second floor in December.

“Ooo,” she winced, hunching up her shoulders and squinting her eyes shut. “I knew it. Snakes. I hate snakes. I mean I really hate snakes.”

Mac started searching for something forklike to trap the head. Somehow he didn’t think Mary Thorpe would take kindly to having her carving fork used to skewer a snake. “It’s probably a harmless milk snake. They like buildings.”

“Probably harmless?” Unconvinced didn’t do her tone of voice justice.

“There just aren’t that many that can hurt you around here. Be thankful it’s not a skunk in there.” Mac looked at the cabinet again. Don’t let it be a skunk in there. “Is your phone hooked up?”

“Yes.”

“Is it cordless?”

“Uh-huh.” Her shoulders softened the smallest amount.

He looked her straight in the eye, giving her his best remain calm, things are under control voice. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Go get your phone, and we’ll call Janet at the hardware store to bring over a snake catcher. She’s thirty seconds away, so we’ll have whatever it is out of your kitchen in ten minutes flat.”

Mary nodded.

“So now you need to go get the phone.”

That snapped her out of her shock. She came back with the phone and a roll of duct tape. When he raised his eyebrow at the second item, she explained “Maybe we can seal him in there until Jane gets here.”

Mac allowed himself a small chuckle. “It’s Janet, and I don’t think the duct tape will be necessary.” He gave her the phone number, and she put the handset in speaker mode while she dialed.

“Bishop Hardware.”

“Hey there, Vern, it’s Mac. Is Janet around?” he conversed in a friendly voice. Vern would have a field day with a situation like this, especially given his flair for the dramatic. He’d probably play it up, making Mary think a Komodo dragon was gnawing away the woodwork under her sink, hatching little ones who would feast on Mary in her sleep. No, this was definitely a situation that called for Janet’s calm female touch. His call was right on the money, and Janet promised to be there within three minutes with the necessary equipment.

“Got a flashlight?” Mac asked, thinking Mary needed a bit of distraction while they waited.

“Um…I think so.” Her voice was still a good octave higher than normal. “Why?” she inquired from the other room.

He thought that was obvious. “We need to see who we’re dealing with here.”

She shot back into the room, flashlight in hand. “Don’t you open that door.” Just then she noticed Curly perched on the back of her kitchen chair—she’d been oblivious to his presence until then. “Hi, Curly.” She said it calmly, as if Curly’s intruder status had been stripped—he was a friend now compared to the new invader in her home.

“Hello,” Curly responded amiably.

“Mary,” Mac began, “we can’t get him out without opening the door. It could just be a tiny little mouse making all that noise.” He didn’t really think that, but it sounded better than “It will go more smoothly if I can see how many feet long the big nasty snake is before we kill it.” Said villainous creature chose that moment to push a little against the cabinet door, making Mac gulp and Mary shriek.

“Don’t you dare open that door.”

“Okay, the door stays shut until Janet gets here. No peeking.” After a tense moment, he added, “You know, you could just take Curly down to the bakery and both get a cracker or something while we take care of your little guest here.” Mac doubted the vision of a snake twitching on the end of a stick would do much for her nerves, even if he was transporting the harmless creature downstairs to release him outside unharmed as Janet would insist he do.

“I’m staying,” she countered, the bravado in her voice was a good, if unconvincing, attempt. “But over here.” She kept the kitchen table between herself and the sink.

“You know Morse code?” Mac noted, hitting on a diversionary topic while the door thumped against his shin again. Okay, maybe it was a slightly large animal in there.

“Just the important words,” she indicated, staring directly at the cabinet door. “You know, yes, no, help, SOS, pizza.”

“Pizza?”

“Sergeant Sam’s gave you four dollars off your pizza if you ordered in Morse code. College.”

Mac laughed. She didn’t look like the kind to inhale pizza—definitely more the Brie-and-salad type. “And they say our educational system is in crisis.”

“Well, before today, I thought that was a piece of useless trivia.”

“Hello?” came Janet’s voice from the still-open front door of Mary’s apartment. “Animal rescue here!”

Mac bought Mary a second cup of coffee as they sat at the little table in Dinah’s bakery. “The snake wasn’t that big.”

Mary shot him a look. “Any snake is too big in my book. Any snake in my kitchen, that is. I’m not against them in general. God’s creatures and all. I’m sure they serve a very important link in the food chain. Just as long as that food chain stays out of my apartment.”

Mac hoisted his coffee and swallowed a laugh. “You were very brave. Even Janet was twitching a bit when we finally got that thing out of there—he was a feisty one. But totally harmless. Really. He posed more danger to Curly than to you or me.”

She doubted that. All snakes had teeth, venomous or not. She wasn’t in any hurry to add “snakebite” to her list of thrilling new experiences. “How is Curly, by the way?” she asked as she changed the subject to a different species. “Expanding his playlist?”

Mac made a face. This was obviously not an improvement in topics. “Not by a long shot.” He ran a hand through his head full of unruly sandy-colored hair. “He likes whatever it is you gave him—I have a copy on order, by the way, so you can have yours back soon—and I suppose that means he may take up something from it one of these days, but…”

“But…” she prompted as if she didn’t know what was coming.

His bottle-green eyes took on a teasing expression. “Let’s just say the Three Tenors haven’t made it to a quartet.”

“Still drowning in The Marriage of Figaro?” Mary laughed at the thought of that odd bird’s fascination with operatic tenors. “Maybe we can teach him a Christmas carol and put him in the play.”

“Only if you include one of Howard’s horses, too. He’ll want equal time.”

Mary put down her cup. “Have you always been a thorn in Howard’s side?”

Mac sat back in the chair. He wasn’t an enormous man, more of a strong, lean build, but he looked too big for the bakery’s delicate chairs. He legs refused to fit under the small round table. He flexed his fingers, putting his answer together in his head. Mac’s broad, tawny hands looked as though they divided their time between paperwork and oil changes. The kind of man who could tinker with a spreadsheet just as easily as he could an engine. Evidently she’d asked a delicate question.

“’Spose I have. We go back a bit, you could say. And yeah, Howard and I clash on a regular basis. We see things differently. But I’m not out to get him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Does he think you are? Out to get him, I mean?”

Mac kicked his legs out, and Mary felt like they extended into the center of the room. The man took up space—literally and figuratively—and he was comfortable with it. “I quit trying to figure out what Howard’s thinking a long time ago. Still, I reckon Howard would’ve gotten his dander up at anyone who took him on, even if it wasn’t someone like me. That’s one of the reasons I felt I ought to be the one to run. That kind of heat don’t bother me much.”

That kind of heat. Meaning all that attention. Mary had learned a while back that men who liked attention didn’t much care if it was positive or negative attention. Her former boss, Thornton Maxwell, didn’t care if the business columns praised him or bashed him, as long as they discussed him. What was that old saying? “All press is good press.” Still, Mary wasn’t sure it was right to paint all extroverts with the same sinister brush as Thornton. Just because a guy took the lead didn’t mean he was ready to squash everyone in his path. And it needed saying that not one of Mary’s artsy advertising colleagues or cerebral music composition classmates could have dispatched that snake so calmly. Mac looked like an alligator would have posed an amusing challenge, or maybe some antlered forest beast would have ended up mounted to the hood of his truck.

If he owned one. Mary had never seen him drive anything but the shiny orange sports car that pulled into the spot in front of MacCarthy Engineering every morning. She still couldn’t quite see how that tall man folded into that zippy little car.

“So why’d you do it?” Mary prodded.

“Run?”

“Yeah. Why not just wait until he retired?”

“Howard? Retire? Doubt he would. Not that you shouldn’t like your job, but Howard loves his a bit too much. I’m not even sure he consciously knows he projects the ‘mayor for life’ thing, but I don’t think he can see himself not in charge. He doesn’t know how to follow. The man’s in charge of stuff he’s not even in charge of.” Mac finished off his coffee and pointed at her. “And you ought to keep that in mind. Your newcomer status may be the only thing keeping him from taking over the Christmas drama. And he still might. I saw him in the diner earlier—he’s just warming up on you. I give it two weeks before you’re knee-deep in Howard.”

Mary raised an eyebrow. Mac wasn’t looking humble himself at the moment, either. “Knee-deep in Howard’?”

“Okay, that sounded a bit ridiculous. But you know what I mean.”

She shot him a look.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think Howard’s all bad. His motives are good. He believes he’s got the town’s best interests at heart.” Mac wiped his hands down his face, as if he still hadn’t found the words to explain what he was trying to say. “I love it here, but I get so annoyed with people for being so…predictable. People here fall into life by default. No one’s run against Howard because everybody is so used to Howard as mayor. But Howard’s so stuck in how everything’s always been that he can’t see the possibilities. I don’t want Middleburg to die off just because it’s the path of least resistance. Life should never be the path of least resistance, the expected thing.”

“And you’re the new possibility?” She hoped her skepticism for his speech didn’t show.

“Sounds corny, doesn’t it? But, well, yeah. I prayed about it for weeks when I first got the idea. Even I don’t tilt the world sideways without thinking it through. But the honest truth is that I believe this is what God wants me to do. Run, at least. I’ll leave the part about whether or not I win up to Him.”

She’d seen him at church, heard him lead prayers during services, but it was different to hear him talking about how God affected his everyday life. She was just getting used to this praying-over-decisions thing. Part of it was wonderful; she could bring the Lord of the universe in on even her smallest decisions. Another part of it was frightening, because she’d given up having the final say. God hadn’t said no to anything she’d asked Him yet, and she wasn’t sure how she’d handle it when He did.

She looked at Mac again. Most of the people she knew in Chicago had so many layers, so many overlapping hidden agendas that a simple conversation gave her a headache. Mac was just the opposite—living, walking “what you see is what you get.” It was as unsettling as it was refreshing.

Chapter Five

“I memorized a line today,” Gil bragged to Mac as they brought more wood in from the pile in Mac’s backyard. He puffed up and bellowed, “Spare not one!” into the night air. Mac had to agree with the casting; Herod was a very good use of Gil’s commanding baritone.

“I’m shaking in my boots, your majesty. And you have all of what, six lines?”

“Seven.”

“Ain’t that useful. I, on the other hand, have no less than forty-two lines to occupy my whopping load of free time.”

“Star.” It wasn’t a compliment.

“I got ’em typed out onto index cards and stacked up on my dashboard. I go over them at stop lights and while I’m waiting at the train crossing. Because that’s how much free time I have.”

Gil dumped his armload of wood into the wrought iron holder beside the enormous stone fireplace that was the centerpiece of Mac’s living room. “Rots to be you, don’t it?”

Mac dropped his own wood, then bent down to arrange a fire. “Pastor Dave was dead-on casting you as the villain. You’re just plain mean. You’ll probably scare the little kids or something.”

“Emily’s delighted,” Gil said as he settled into one of the large leather chairs that stood in front of the fireplace. Emily had wound up being Mary, and was over-the-top happy about her starring role, not to mention Gil’s. “For all I know, she put Dave up to it.”

Mac struck a match to a pile of kindling. “Who knew you had an artistic side? It’s almost unnatural.” He cast a sideways look back at Gil as he opened the pizza box that sat on the coffee table between them. “I can’t quite see you in a crown and flowing robes. This ought to be fun.”

“Speaking of unnatural, I heard you got to play hero to Mary Thorpe earlier this week. Peter Epson was telling Emily about it—said he wanted to do an article, but he was afraid his dad would throw a fit.” Peter Epson was Howard’s son and a reporter for the local paper.

“You see,” Mac elaborated as he pointed the tip of his pizza slice at Gil, “that’s exactly why I’m running. People do things—or don’t do things—way too much based on what Howard will think. Okay, Peter may be a bit of an exception, but you know what I mean. The guy’s got too much influence. And I don’t even think he goes after half of it. You might be surprised to hear I don’t actually hate Howard. Not at all.”

Gil raised an eyebrow as he bit into his own slice. “Could have fooled me.”

“Granted, he’s overblown, self-centered, backward-looking, but this ‘mayor for life’ thing has gotten so out of proportion that Howard doesn’t have to look at something before people decide how he feels about it. Okay, maybe he’s grabbed at power with both hands, but we’ve been handing him more and more over the years without even thinking about it.”

“And you’re just the guy to turn us around,” Gil guessed with his mouthful.

“I’m just the guy God asked to do the job,” Mac clarified, meaning it. It bugged him that people thought he had it out for Howard personally, when he just wanted to change people’s mind about the inescapability of Howard being mayor.

“Howard might say the same thing.”

“Enter the blessings of democracy.”

“Man, you really are starting to sound like a politician.” Gil took a swig of his soda. “But a snake charmer? Did you and Curly really pull a milk snake out of that lady’s sink?”

“The press should have been there. I was heroic. An epic battle. The thing was six feet long.”

Gil shot Mac a dark look. “Janet Bishop said it was a foot and a half at most and it took you four minutes.”

“Four very dramatic minutes. You should have heard Mary Thorpe shriek.”

“She’s from Chicago,” Gil said as if it explained everything.

“Cut the woman a little slack.”

Gil grinned. “Sounds like you already did. Dinah told me you bought her a nice soothing beverage afterward in the bakery. Charmer, like I said.”

“She was afraid to go back into her kitchen just yet. What was I supposed to do? Just leave her standing in the hallway? After all, Curly likes her.”

“Just Curly?”

“We’re not in the same place, Gil. She’s just barely getting her feet underneath her where her faith is concerned. I admit, she shows some spine, and…maybe under different circumstances…but not now.” She wasn’t Mac’s type, even with those eyes.

“Circumstances change all the time. Maybe she’s just what you need.” Gil raised an eyebrow.

“What I need,” Mac declared narrowing his eyes, “is for people to stop planning my life for me, thinking I need what everyone else thinks I need. God and I can tackle my own path just fine, so leave it, okay?”

“Yeah,” uttered Gil, drawing out the word with a sarcastic flourish, “we’ll just leave it. For the moment.”

“We’ll just leave it, period.”

Stop it, Mary scolded herself as she felt her pace slowing. There was no reason to be afraid of opening her apartment door. Nice people were behind it. Nice people who’d asked her to a local party, to be friendly. “Why is it, Mary asked herself as she caught her scowling reflection in the hallway mirror, that “nice” is so hard for you to get used to? Very pleasant people live in Chicago. You just never seemed to meet any of them. Pausing for a second to apply a friendly smile to her face, Mary put her hand on the door handle. She was about to check through the peephole when she heard Emily’s voice call out “Mary, it’s us!”