Mr. Ravenwood was wagging his arms up and down. “I’ve got to get to the bottom of this.” He looked up to the tier of Angels. “You up there,” he said, pointing. “How long have you been singing contralto?”
It was a minute before Scarlett realized he meant Farrie. Heart pounding, Scarlett stuck her head through the plyboard and looked down. “She doesn’t know what that means,” she called. Neither did she.
The band teacher took off his John Deere cap and ran a hand through his hair. “Make her come down here.”
It took Farrie a moment to climb down, Scarlett right behind her. As soon as everybody found out they were Scraggses they were going to start for the sheriff’s house. Even if they had to walk the whole way.
“She has a tremendous, powerful voice,” a Bell was saying. “Little girl, where’s your mother?”
An Angel came up to stand beside them. “I think they’re the Heamsteads’ houseguests.”
The director studied Farrie. “Sing ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.’” He handed her a sheet of music so she could follow the words. “Not all of it – just a couple of lines.”
Scarlett stepped back. The choirs were crowding around Farrie and she knew what was going to happen. Just as soon as her sister started to sing they would ask a lot of questions. She saw Farrie with both feet planted firmly, ready to open her mouth, and thought that she never looked more like a bushy-haired, snub-nosed pixie, her black eyes gleaming.
“I heard the bells on Christmas Day,
Their old familiar carols play -”
After the first words bystanders were exclaiming. Scarlett backed away even more. Farrie could sing, there was no doubt about that. She just had to find a way to get both of them out of there when she stopped.
Judy Heamstead had followed her. “Where are you going, Scarlett? Mr. Ravenwood’s excited about your sister’s singing. Aren’t you going to listen?”
Scarlett sidled across the courthouse lawn toward the parking lot. “I’ve heard Farrie plenty of times. Listen, are you’n your mother going home anytime soon?”
“In just a few minutes. Scarlett, what’s the matter with you?”
Scarlett shook her head and kept going.
There was no need to hang around. She shouldn’t have let Judy and her mother talk them into singing on the Living Christmas Tree. It was not where Scraggses belonged.
Neither, Scarlett told herself as she turned to look back at the courthouse, was learning to cook out of cookbooks, or dressing up in other people’s clothes. Fish out of water. That’s all they’d been all along.
After the fussing over Farrie’s singing died down people would only make fun of her. It was time they gave up all this foolishness and left Nancyville.
In the parking lot Scarlett leaned against the Heamsteads’ car to wait. She didn’t see until the last moment the tall dark shape that suddenly loomed up at her.
Scarlett’s heart leaped. Maybe Buck was meeting her like this! Maybe they could get the misunderstanding between them straightened out.
Maybe he’d hold her in his arms and kiss her again, she thought hopefully.
“Well, Scarlett girl,” the tall shadow said, “looks like you’ve fixed yourself up real good.”
Scarlett whirled to run, but Devil Anse grabbed her. She looked beyond him to the crowd on the courthouse lawn, wanting to yell for help but knowing it wouldn’t do any good.
“Farrie and I don’t have anything to do with you anymore!” she burst out.
“Now listen here, Scarlett.” He gave her arm a shake. “I got something mighty important for you to do and I don’t want no messin’ up, y’hear me?”
When she didn’t speak, Devil Anse nodded. “That’s right, listen good, girl. Me’n Sheriff Buck Grissom’s got a agreement, the first time we managed to get such a thing for our Scraggs business. That’s something to brag on, seeing how his daddy wouldn’t never listen to no talk. Every time the old sheriff saw me he’d start shooting up everything for a mile and a half with that sawed-off shotgun he used to carry. I never could get one word in edgewise. But the boy’s different. I allus said young Grissom’s reasonable.”
Scarlett stared at him. “What did you do?” she cried.
Someone backed their car out down the parking lot. It started toward them. Devil Anse pulled her behind a car.
“Ain’t nothing permanent, yet,” he growled in Scarlett’s ear, “it’s in the nature of a free trial offer. But I figure the way things are going yore young sheriff won’t waste too much time.”
Scarlett pulled back to look up into his face. “Grandpa, you tell me what you done!”
He gave her arm a cruel twist.
“Ain’t what I done, girl, it’s what I want you to do. Now, when you’ve made young Buck happy, you just deliver a little message for me. Tell him in view of all I have done and am going to do for him, I want him to just stay at home, rest up, and not worry about any hijackings.”
Scarlett managed to wrench her arm away. “When I have made him happy?” The full meaning was just sinking in. “You mean -”
When he nodded, she yelled, “I won’t do it!”
“Won’t do it?” The shaggy white brows came together. “Scarlett, don’t talk to yore old grandpa like that. Didn’t I let you have that puny baby sister of yourn to play with, when she’s never going to be no good except taking up space and eating food what should go to the able-bodied? You got a durn sight better treatment, girl, than you deserve, all things considered.”
With a sob, Scarlett lunged away from him. “You leave us alone,” she cried. “You’ve never done anything for Farrie and me – except make us a part of the Scraggses!”
The car that was on its way out of the parking lot slowed, looking Scarlett over. When she didn’t seem to want any help, it went on.
Scarlett’s mind was racing. Devil Anse had made some sort of offer to Buck Grissom. She still didn’t believe it. Her heart was being torn out of her to realize that it was all just a free trial offer. To see if Sheriff Buck liked it.
Now, she thought, he was probably trying to make up his mind!
She circled away, blindly bumping into parked cars. Her grandfather followed. “Are you listening to me, young lady? I don’t want to have to put up with no foolishness from you. You please Sheriff Buck just as hard as you can or you’ll have to explain to me why you didn’t. Do y’hear me?”
Scarlett broke into a run. They were going to have to leave for sure now. Buck Grissom would never tell Scarlett the things she wanted to hear now. Devil Anse had made that plain.
They wouldn’t even stay for the Living Christmas Tree, she thought, fighting back tears. That was out of the question with Devil Anse lurking around every corner, telling her what he wanted her to do.
They had to leave Nancyville just as quick as they could. The only thing was, Scarlett dreaded telling her little sister the reason why.
Eleven
“This has got to be a case of the world’s meanest people,” Officer Kevin Black Badger said, “to hijack a truckload of Christmas turkeys. The birds were going up to the state school for the deaf for Christmas dinner. The place is mostly kids, too.”
Buck followed his deputy down the shoulder of U.S. Route 29 as passing traffic thundered by. “Watch the dog,” Black Badger reminded.
Buck gave him an irritable look, “Don’t worry, I’m not lucky enough to have the damned thing run over.”
They stopped at a place where the grass of the shoulder had been chewed into strips. “This was where,” Black Badger said, pointing to the tire tracks, “the Piedmont Poultry driver pulled his rig over to check his brakes. He hadn’t even put out his flares when this pickup truck comes roaring along, pulls up beside him, and two guys hop out and hit him over the head. When the driver came to last night he was lying here in the freezing rain, and his eighteen-wheeler was long gone.”