Judy and Scarlett were in full costume for the dress rehearsal, wearing long white gowns over their coats, tinsel halos, and carrying flashlights with big aluminum-foil collars cut to look like stars. The Angels’ long skirts made it hard to climb the catwalks, but they were a lot more comfortable than the Bells, who wore red turtleneck sweaters and had stiff cardboard cutouts shaped like red Christmas bells around their faces. Instead of flashlights they carried dinner bells from the Nancyville hardware store, donated by the Downtown Merchants Association.
Scarlett could answer Judy’s question by telling her that she hadn’t been happy since last night, when she’d realized she was in love with Buck Grissom. But Judy would probably laugh at something as stupid as that.
Above them men were lifting Farrie into place. “You think you can sing up there?” one of them teased. Scarlett heard Farrie laugh.
“There is something wrong,” Judy insisted, peering at her. “Are you all right at the Grissoms’ house? Sheriff Grissom been mean to you, has he?”
“Mean to me? Oh, no!” Scarlett swallowed. “He’s been real nice. Buck’s – really kind.”
“Buck?” Judy’s eyes widened. “Buck? Oh Scarlett, is that why you’re looking so miserable? Are you stuck on handsome ole Buck Grissom?”
Scarlett couldn’t look at Judy. “What are we going to sing?” She juggled her flashlight to open the music. “Are we on the last number?”
Judy was staring at Scarlett fixedly. “They say Buck hasn’t dated anybody since he broke up with Susan Huddleston. Oh, tell me, did Buck Grissom come on to you? Did he kiss you? What was it like?”
Scarlett’s face was burning with humiliation. If people in Nancyville thought there was anything going on between her and the sheriff, they’d think the worst.
She started to say something, but just at that moment the band teacher raised his arms, brought them down for the beat, and the tree began to sing. Scarlett didn’t have her place. She looked across the courthouse lawn and saw early traffic moving around the square. Some cars had already pulled into parking spaces. A fancy blue Dodge pickup truck had just stopped. Two figures got out, an old man with a prophet’s white beard, and a younger one.
She saw them look up at the tree. Reese Potter pointed, calling Devil Anse’s attention to Farrie. But the old man’s eyes had found Scarlett.
What those eyes silently said froze her to the bones. Her fingers gripped the music pages as Devil Anse’s glare, full of an unknown warning, seemed to bore into her skull.
A moment later she saw him take Reese Potter’s arm, and they got back in the truck. After a minute, the Dodge pulled out of its space and drove away.
“You don’t have to come in the back way,” Sheriff Buck Grissom’s secretary said, “they’re already here.”
“So I see.” Buck shoved the Scraggs dog out of his way and started toward his office. Unfortunately, the Committee for the Real Meaning of Christmas, with Junior Whitford in front, moved to block his way.
“Sheriff, we hope we’re not going to have any trouble with you tonight,” Whitford said belligerently. “We come down here this morning to tell you that under the Constitution of the United States we’re entitled to our free speech. Ain’t that right?” he said, turning to the three men and two women behind him.
They nodded vigorously.
Buck stood with his hands in his Sam Browne belt. The leader of the Committee for the Real Meaning of Christmas was a small, paunchy, middle-aged electrician of undoubtedly sincere convictions. But the last time Buck had heard of Junior he’d been a member of a snake-handling church that his deputies tried to keep their eye on over in Folsom Ridge.
“I’m going to give you trouble?” Buck said. “I’m not trying to break the law, Mr. Whitford, you are. We have a court order that says there are to be no displays of religious significance on the courthouse lawn. And it’s my job as sheriff of Jackson County to enforce that order.”
“With armed deputies?” Junior shrilled. “That’s what you said on the television news last night, wasn’t it – armed deputies?”
“Sheriff,” one of the ladies behind Whitford called. She held up her arm, waving several sheets of paper. “We have a petition -”
“Wait!” This was Madelyne Smith, coming to Buck’s rescue. She jumped up from her desk and hurried to hand him a pink telephone-message slip. “Sheriff,” she said loudly, “I have Mr. Byron Turnipseed on the line from the Georgia State criminal investigation department. Folks” – She turned to the committee, smiling brightly – “I can make an appointment for all of you to meet with Sheriff Grissom if you’ll just tell me when you want to see him.”
Buck took advantage of Madelyne’s strategy to hurry past Junior and his crowd, stumble over the Scraggs beast, enter his office and shut the door.
He sat down behind his desk, feeling winded. He’d never expected to find the committee lying in wait for him when he got to work. It sure wasn’t a great way to start his day.
When he looked at Madelyne’s pink telephone slip in his hand it said: “Byron Turnipseed is not on the line, Buck, but he did call last night after you left. Mose took the message. The Georgia criminal investigation department wants you to contact them ASAP.”
Buck had just lifted the telephone to do that very thing when Deputy Rory Haines entered his office wearing an expression of disgust and pain.
“What’s the matter?” Buck said, putting the telephone back down.
Haines lifted a small, naked body by the legs and held it out to him. “You won’t believe this, Sheriff, but I found out where them turkeys have gone to.”
“I believe it,” Buck said, staring at the inert form that the deputy now laid carefully on his desk. “Just tell me.”
“A deputy from Union County came down last night with one of these, wanted to know if it was what we had a bulletin out on. Seems half of a little town up there called Deer Run’s been just saturated with turkeys. Somebody’s selling them out of the back of a truck at about five dollars apiece.”
Buck got up, swearing under his breath. “Damn, I haven’t been here five minutes. I’m never going to get a chance to do my paperwork.” In front of his desk the Scraggs dog was sitting on its haunches, staring at the plump body on his blotter. “Better take back that turkey,” he reminded the deputy.
“It’s the Piedmont Poultry hijacked truck, ain’t it?” Haines said, picking it up.
“Sounds like it. I guess I’ll have to go up to Union County and see what they’ve got.”
The deputy followed him to the door, bird in hand. “Sheriff, if you’re going up that way, Kevin Black Badger’s down with bronchial pneumonia, and wants somebody to bring him his camping stuff he left on his desk. He doesn’t want it lying around the office while he’s out sick.”
Buck nodded.
Moses Holt met them in the outer office with what appeared to be Kevin’s things: a stack of blankets and a sheepskin hide, a Coleman stove perched on top, and a sleeping bag. As they went out to the parking lot Buck looked around warily, but Junior and his committee seemed to have left.
“I’ll be back around noon,” Buck told his deputies as they loaded Black Badger’s camping gear in the back of the Blazer. “I have to check out the Living Christmas Tree early and see we’ve got all our security in place.”
The deputies looked at each other.
“Sheriff,” Moses Holt said, “there’s no possibility we’re going to have to fire on anybody, is there? Junior Whitford’s a cousin of my wife’s sister’s brother-in-law and he says -”
“The story all over town is,” Haines interrupted, “that the committee is going to try tonight to put a manger scene in place. A sort of Christmas sit-in.”