A Redbird Christmas (6 page)

He walked through the door and found Claude in the back of the post office, sorting the last of the mail and putting it in bundles. As soon as Claude finished he put it on a small cart with wheels and they walked to his truck and drove a few blocks down a dirt road to an old wooden boathouse. “This is where I keep my boat,” he said. “I used to keep it behind the store, but those redneck boys that moved here shot it up so bad I had to bring it up here.” When they got in the boat Oswald looked around for a life jacket but did not see one. When he asked Claude where it was, Claude looked at him like he thought he was kidding. “A life jacket?”

“Yes. I hate to admit it, but I can’t swim.”

Claude dismissed his concern. “You don’t need a life jacket. Hell, if you do fall in, the alligators will eat you before you drown.” With that, he started the motor and they were off, headed up the river. Oswald hoped he was kidding but was careful not to put his hands in the water just in case he wasn’t. As they rounded the bend and went under the bridge and on out the length and breadth of the river was amazing. It was extremely wide in the middle, with houses up and down on both sides. As they went farther north, delivering the mail at every dock, Claude maneuvered the boat inside tiny inlets where the water in some spots could not have been more than six or seven inches deep, opening mailboxes of all sizes, tall and low, and while the boat was moving past them, he never missed a beat or a mailbox.

Oswald was impressed. “Have you ever missed?”

“Not yet,” Claude said, as he threw another bundle of mail in a mailbox. “But I’m sure the day will come.”

On some of the docks people were waiting and said hello, and on some dogs ran out barking and Claude reached in his pocket and threw them a Milk-Bone.

“Have you ever been bitten?”

“Not yet.”

About an hour later, they turned around and headed back the way they came. Oswald noticed that Claude did not deliver mail on the other side of the river. When he asked him about it, Claude said, “No, I don’t go over to that side anymore. I used to but that’s where the Creoles live. They have their own mailman now.”

Oswald looked across and asked, “Is that where that Julian LaPonde lives?”

“How do you know about Julian LaPonde?” Claude said.

“Roy told me he mounted all those fish and animals at the store.”

“Huh,” said Claude, lighting his pipe. “I’m surprised he even mentioned him.” But he did not say why he was surprised.

“Well, he sure is a good taxidermist, but I got the impression that Roy doesn’t think much of him as a person.”

“No, he doesn’t,” said Claude, and left it at that.

They had been out on the river about two and a half hours when they returned to the boathouse. Oswald was exhausted and as he got out of the boat his legs were shaky. He needed a nap. All that fresh air was too much for one day. He asked Claude what he did after he got off from work every day.

Claude’s eyes lit up. “Ah. Then I go fishing.”

Dinner at Eight

O
SWALD HAD BEEN
unable to avoid running into Frances Cleverdon, since she lived right next door, and finally agreed to have dinner at her house the next week. After all, he could not hurt her feelings; she had been responsible for his coming to Lost River in the first place.

Frances’s house was a neat blue bungalow. It was very nice inside as well, with a completely pink kitchen—pink stove, icebox, and sink—right down to the pink-and-white tiles on the floor. Frances showed him her prize gravy boat collection, and Mildred, whose hair to Frances’s dismay was now the color of root beer, remarked, “I’ll never understand why anybody in their right mind would collect gravy boats.” Although Oswald had not wanted to go that night, the food was delicious, especially the macaroni and cheese, and after dinner they played a good game of gin rummy.

However, much to her sister’s disappointment, Mildred did
nothing
to help things along in the romance department. All she did all night was crab and complain about everything under the sun, including how much she hated that bird Roy had up at the store, and in between her complaints about Jack she managed to tell several blue jokes that Oswald laughed at. Frances smiled, but was secretly horrified and wanted to strangle her sister. How was she ever going to get a man? A perfectly good dinner wasted, as far as she was concerned.

The next day, true to form, Mildred was back down at the store fussing at Jack, who fluttered around her head. She said, “You’ve heard about the four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie? Well, mister, I’m going to bake one big redbird pie if you don’t quit pestering me!”

Roy laughed. “You better watch out, boy, or she’ll have you for dinner one day.”

Despite all her complaints Roy liked Mildred a lot. He got a kick out of her and how she was always dyeing her hair different colors. Besides, as Oswald had just found out, she sure could tell a joke.

After just a few weeks, Oswald found that he was beginning to get into a routine. Every morning after breakfast he would go to the store, hang around awhile, and then go down to the dock to smoke cigarettes and wait for Claude Underwood to come by with the mail. He didn’t dare smoke in Betty’s house. As he sat waiting, sometimes for an hour or two, he saw that the river was full of things he had never seen before. All kinds of large birds, loons and egrets, geese and ducks of different kinds, swam up and down the river. A few swam in pairs but most were in flocks that took off together and landed in the water together.

One day while he was waiting, Oswald noticed a black duck out in the river all by himself and he wondered about it. Why did this one lone duck not swim with a mate or with the flock? Did the duck even know he was supposed to be with the others? What had caused that duck to separate from the rest? The more he watched it out there, swimming around, the sadder it made him. He realized he was just like that duck. All his life he had been out in the world alone while the rest of the world swam by, happy in their own flock, knowing who they were and where they belonged.

Oswald was feeling a little sad these days anyway. Christmas was just around the corner, and Betty was already playing Christmas carols on the radio. He supposed it put some people in a good mood, but all those “I’ll be home for Christmas” and “There’s no place like home for the holidays” songs just made him feel lousy. For him, Christmas had always been a season with everything set up just to break your heart. As a kid, all he had ever gotten were cheap toys handed out by a bunch of once-a-year do-gooders, toys that by the next day were either broken or stolen. Even as an adult, when he had spent the holidays with Helen’s family, it just made him feel more of an outsider than ever. Each year was the same; all her brothers and sisters would sit around, looking at home movies and reminiscing about their wonderful childhood Christmases. No, Christmas for him had always been like someone shining a great big spotlight down in that dark empty space inside him, and the only way he had been able to handle it in the past was to get drunk. A hangover was nothing compared to feeling all alone in a roomful of people. This year he would be spending what could turn out to be his very last Christmas on the river with the birds and ducks. That, he guessed, was better than nothing.

The next time Oswald went in the store he found himself eyeing the cartons of beer stacked over in the corner and was almost headed over there but when Betty Kitchen came in, he decided to stick to his original plan and asked Roy if there was some kind of book he could get so he could try and figure out what kinds of birds and ducks he was looking at. Roy said, “Come on back in the office with me, I think I have something for you.” The office was a mess, with stacks of papers and old ledgers and Jack’s toys everywhere, but Roy rummaged through a pile on the floor and handed Oswald an old ripped paperback copy of
Birds of Alabama: A Birdwatcher’s Guide.

“May I borrow this?” asked Oswald.

“Oh hell, you can have it. I don’t need it.”

Oswald took the book up to his room. While he was thumbing through it, he found an old postcard from 1932 that described Lost River as

A magical spot, invisible from the highway by reason of its location in masses of shade trees, along the winding banks of the river, where it lies in a setting of flowers and foliage and songbirds, like a dream of beauty ready for the brush and canvas of the landscape painter.

That’s the damn truth, he thought. It
would
be a great place for a painter or a birdwatcher. Then it dawned on him that he, Oswald T. Campbell, was actually studying to become a birdwatcher. Birdwatching was certainly not one of the things he would ever have put on his
THINGS TO DO
list. As a matter of fact, he had never even had a
THINGS TO DO
list, and now it was almost too late to do anything. Oh, well, he thought, live and learn. Better late than never. And then he wondered why in the hell he was thinking in clichés.

From that day on, after he had gone down and had a cup of coffee with Roy and shot the breeze with him for a while, he would take his birdwatcher’s guide and go down to the river and try to match the birds he was seeing with the pictures in the book. So far he had identified a great blue heron that cracked him up by the way it walked. It picked its feet up and down as if it were stepping in molasses. He had seen cranes, a snowy egret, mallards, wood ducks, and a belted kingfisher, and by December 19 he had already identified his first pileated woodpecker. He was hoping to see an osprey one of these days.

On the morning of December 22, when Oswald walked over to the store for coffee with Roy, he saw that the huge cedar tree outside the community hall had been decorated with hundreds of Christmas ornaments and silver and gold tinsel. When he went in the store, he asked Roy who had done it. Roy shook his head.

“We don’t know. Every Christmas it happens overnight and nobody knows who did it, but I have my theories. I think it’s that bunch of crazy women that do it.”

“Who?”

“Oh, Frances, Mildred, and Dottie; probably Betty Kitchen is in on it, too. I can’t prove it but I’ll tell you this: Anytime you see all of them wearing polka dots on the same day, watch out.”

Just then the door opened and Frances Cleverdon walked in, looking sunny and cheerful. “Well, good morning, Mr. Campbell,” she said with a smile. “How are you getting along?”

“Oh, fine,” he said.

“I hope you’re coming to the annual Christmas Eve Dinner at the community hall. Roy’s coming, aren’t you? We’re going to have a lot of good food.”

Roy said, “I’ll be there. Hey, Frances, have you seen the tree yet?” He winked at Oswald as she turned around and looked across the street.

“Well, for heaven’s sake!” she said, feigning surprise. “When did that happen?”

“Last night.”

Frances turned to Oswald. “Last year the same exact thing happened on the twenty-third. I just wish I knew who was doing it.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Roy. “I was just telling Mr. Campbell, it’s a mystery, all right.”

Walking back home Frances was so pleased. The Polka Dots had done it again! Frances and Betty Kitchen had started the club twelve years ago and the founding members, after herself and Betty, were Sybil Underwood and, later, Dottie Nivens and Mildred. They had named themselves after a Mardi Gras group over in Mobile because they wanted to have fun as well as do good works. And thanks to Dottie Nivens and her amazing ability to make delicious highballs, which they drank out of polka-dotted martini glasses after every meeting, they did have fun. When their friend Elizabeth Shivers over in Lillian heard about it she started another secret society, the Mystic Order of the Royal Dotted Swiss. They also did a lot of good work, but Frances was convinced that they could never top the Mystery Tree caper.

The Christmas Dinner

O
SWALD HAD ALWAYS
been shy and was no good at social events. Although it was the last thing on earth he wanted to do, it seemed that on Christmas Eve he had no choice but to put on his one blue suit and tie and go with Betty and her mother to the Dinner and Tree Lighting Ceremony at the community hall. It was made clear to him over and over that everyone was expecting him. So at five-thirty he and Betty Kitchen and her mother, Miss Alma, wearing three giant red camellias in her hair, strolled down the street. It was still about 69 degrees outside and hard for Oswald to believe it was really December twenty-fourth. When they arrived, the hall was already packed with people, and the minute they saw Oswald everyone made a point to come up and shake his hand and welcome him to the area. After about thirty minutes of being pulled around the room like a wooden toy, Oswald was thrilled to see Roy Grimmitt come in, looking as uncomfortable in his blue suit and tie as Oswald felt in his. At around six-thirty, after a prayer was said, it was time to eat and someone called out, “Let Mr. Campbell start the line.”

Oswald was handed a plate and pushed to the long table, full of more food than he had ever seen: fried chicken, ham, turkey, roast beef, pork chops, chicken and dumplings, and every kind of vegetables, pies, and cakes you can imagine. At the end sat two huge round cut-glass punch bowls of thick, delicious-smelling eggnog. One was labeled
LEADED
, the other bowl said
UNLEADED
. Oswald hesitated for a moment and seriously thought about it, but at the last second went for the unleaded. He did not want to get drunk and make a fool out of himself and embarrass Frances. After all, everyone knew she was responsible for getting him there. The long tables with the white tablecloths had centerpieces decorated with sprigs of fresh holly and pinecones that had been dipped in either shellac or gold or silver paint and sprinkled with glitter. On the pine walls, huge red paper bells hung from twisted red and green crepe paper that wrapped around the room, interspersed with pictures of the nativity. Oswald sat next to Betty’s mother and Betty sat on the other side and about halfway through dinner the old lady punched him in the ribs and said, “Ask me what time it is.”

“OK,” he said. “What time is it?”

“Half past kissing time; time to kiss again!” she said, then screamed with laughter and continued to repeat it over and over until Betty had to get up and take her home. It seems Miss Alma had gotten into the leaded eggnog.

Oswald had just dropped whipped cream from the sweet potato pie all down the front of his tie when Dottie Nivens, the president of the association, made an announcement. “Before we start the program this evening, we have a first-time visitor with us tonight and I would like for him to stand up and tell us a little bit about himself.” Everyone clapped and they all turned around and smiled at him and sat waiting for him to speak.

Oswald’s ears turned as red as the bells on the wall. Frances, seeing how uncomfortable he was, quickly stood up and said, “Keep your seat, Mr. Campbell. Mr. Campbell is my guest tonight, and I can tell you he came all the way down here from Chicago to get away from bad old cold weather and to spend the winter with us and maybe longer, if we don’t run him off with all our crazy doings.” They all laughed. “So welcome to the community, Mr. Campbell.” They all clapped again and he made an attempt at a nod.

The program for the evening was a reading of “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas” by Dottie Nivens, an unfortunate selection for a woman with a lisp, followed by a solo rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” played on the musical saw, and ending with a visit from Santa Claus, who came in the room with a large sack thrown over his shoulder.

Santa sat in the front and called out the names of the children in the room, and one by one each went up for their present. Oswald noticed that when they got back to the table and opened their packages, they all seemed to like what they got. After everyone had received gifts, Santa Claus stood up and said, “Well, that’s all, boys and girls.” But then, as he lifted his sack, he pretended to find just one more present. “Oh, wait a minute,” he said. “Here’s another one.” He read the card, looked out, and asked, “Is there a little boy here named Oswald T. Campbell?” Everybody laughed and pointed. “Come on up, Oswald,” said Santa. When he got there Oswald saw it was Claude Underwood under the beard, who asked, “Have you been a good boy?” Oswald laughed and said he had, received his present, and went back to his seat.

The evening ended with the lighting of the tree. As soon as everyone was outside they all mashed together in a large clump, and Oswald found himself in the middle. He could not help but think about the photo in the old hotel brochure of those thirty people standing under a rosebush. People in Alabama must love to stand around in clumps. Butch Mannich was stationed in the doorway. When the children, standing over to the side mashed together in their own smaller clump, started singing “O Christmas Tree,” he switched on the lights and they all applauded.

After it was over, Oswald walked home with Frances and Mildred. He told them the most amazing thing about the evening to him, besides all the food, was that all the kids seemed to love their presents. He said he almost never liked what he had gotten for Christmas. They smiled and explained that the reason they were all so pleased was because each year Dottie Nivens, the postmistress, opened the letters they had written to Santa Claus and told their parents exactly what they wanted. As they walked farther up the street, Oswald noticed that one side of the sky seemed to be glowing red off in the distance. Frances told him it was caused by the fires the Creoles lit along the riverbanks every Christmas Eve to light up the night for “Poppa Christmas” and help him find his way to the homes of the Creole children. “We used to go and watch him come up the river, but we don’t go over there anymore,” she said.

Although it was around ten o’clock, the night was still mild and it was very pleasant with the moonlight shining through the trees, walking past all the houses with their Christmas lights twinkling in the windows. As they strolled along in silence listening to the night birds singing, Oswald suddenly began to experience an unfamiliar feeling he could not quite identify. He was actually glad he had gone to the dinner; it had not been that bad after all.

When he got home, Betty, who was downstairs in her nightgown with cold cream on her face, said, “You don’t have to worry about waking Mother up tonight, she’s as drunk as a skunk and out like a light, so maybe I’ll finally get some rest.”

When he got upstairs to his room, he unwrapped his present and saw that it was a brand-new hardcover copy of
Birds of Alabama.
It was signed
Merry Christmas, from the Lost River Community Association.
It was just what he wanted. And he had not even written Santa a letter.

The gift was really from Claude and Roy. A few days before Christmas, Claude had told Roy he felt sorry for Mr. Campbell.

“Why?”

“Aw, the poor guy, he comes down to that dock waiting for the mail, and all he ever gets is some pension check from the government. The whole time he’s been here, he hasn’t received one personal letter, not even one lousy Christmas card.”

What they did not know was that Oswald did not expect to receive any mail. He was down at the dock every day only because he did not have anywhere else to go, except to the store and back to his room again. All he was doing was just sitting around killing time, looking at the birds and waiting to die.

Being aware that his days were numbered was not easy. Oswald found the hardest part was to wake up each morning with nothing to look forward to but getting worse. From what the doctor had told him, Oswald had assumed that as time passed he would start to feel weaker and weaker. However, on December 31 he woke up and noticed he was not coughing as much as he used to. He was really starting to feel pretty good, and somehow for the first time in his life, certainly for the first time since he was fifteen, he had actually managed to get through Christmas sober. In the past he had never been able to get more than one year in AA because he could never make it through the holidays without falling off the wagon, usually on Christmas Day. And also for the first time, he was experiencing another unfamiliar feeling. He was proud of himself and wished he had someone to tell. Not only had he made it through Christmas, he had also put on about five extra pounds since he had been there and he noticed in the mirror that he had a lot more color in his cheeks. This place was obviously agreeing with him. Damn, he thought. If he hadn’t known better he could have sworn he
was
better.

On New Year’s Day, Frances and Betty and everybody up and down the street made him come in, and they all insisted that he eat a big bowl of black-eyed peas. They said it was good luck to eat them on New Year’s Day, and by that night he was up to his ears in black-eyed peas. Maybe they were right. Maybe he would get lucky and last a little longer than he had expected.

A few mornings later when Oswald sat down for breakfast, Betty announced, “Well, Mr. Campbell, you’re famous. You’ve made the papers,” and she handed him a copy of the local newsletter that came out once a month.

ALONG THE RIVER

The Lost River
Community Association Newsletter

Oh, my, what a busy and happy Christmas season we had on the river! Everyone agreed that the “Mystery Tree” was prettier than ever this year. Kudos to those secret elves, who must have come down from the North Pole to surprise us yet again! If we only knew who they were we would thank them in person.

Christmas Eve Dinner was especially delicious. We are mightily blessed with an abundance of good cooks down here and mucho thanks to the good ladies and gents who made the hall so festive and so full of Christmas cheer. A special nod goes to Sybil Underwood, who supplied the centerpieces; we are all amazed at what she can do with only simple pinecones and a few sprigs of holly. Thanks also to husband Claude for the fried mullet. Yum, yum. We had the largest crowd ever and it was good to see Betty Kitchen’s mother, Miss Alma, out and about again. As usual, the highlight of the evening for the children was a visit by good old Santa Claus himself. All the boys and girls loved their presents, including our newest member, Mr. Oswald T. Campbell. Welcome!

The evening ended as usual with the annual tree-lighting ceremony, and amid the oohs and ahhs of the crowd I heard someone say that those folks up at Rockefeller Center in New York have nothing on us. I could not agree more.

And so ends another Christmas season, with all of us worn down to a frazzle and exhausted from all the busy activity but already looking forward to next year’s happy Noel. In the meantime, all you lovebirds out there, married or single, don’t forget to grab your sweetheart for the annual Valentine’s Dinner on February 14. Yours truly and Frances Cleverdon will be the hostesses again this year, and we promise that love will definitely be in the air!

—Dottie Nivens

After he finished reading, Betty said, “You know, Mr. Campbell, Dottie’s no stranger to the written word. When she was younger she had herself quite a little literary fling up there in Manhattan.”

“Is that so?” he said, although he was not surprised. She certainly did look the artistic type, since she usually wore a long black scarf and a black velvet beret on her head.

“Oh, yes,” said Betty. “She lived in Greenwich Village and was a genuine bohemian, from what I understand. Dottie told me she thought she was going to be the next Edna Ferber or Pearl Buck, but it didn’t work out so she had to get a job.”

“That’s too bad,” he said.

“Yes, but she’s a good sport about it. When Dottie became our official postmistress she said she’d always hoped she’d wind up a woman of letters, but this was not quite what she had in mind.”

Oswald understood how she felt. He had always dreamed of becoming an architect someday but instead wound up working as a draftsman all his life. His ambitions had never quite panned out either. He might have a lot more in common with her than he had thought, which would please Frances. Although Oswald did not know it, in her secret scheme to get him married, Dottie Nivens was second in line to get him if he and Mildred did not work out. And at the moment that did not seem to be going anywhere, at least as far as she could glean from Mildred. After that first dinner with Oswald at her house she had tried her best to get at least a clue as to how she felt. After he had left that night she had asked Mildred, “Well, what do you think?” Mildred had looked at her as if she had no idea what she meant. “About what?” She knew full well what Frances had meant and was just being cantankerous to irritate her. But far be it from Mildred to tell you what she was really thinking!

Sunday mornings in Lost River were quiet. Almost everyone, including Betty Kitchen and her mother, went over to the little town of Lillian for church. Frances and Mildred had asked Oswald to go with them, but he was not a churchgoing man. Another person who did not go was Claude Underwood, who went fishing. When asked why, he told everyone that he attended the Church of the Speckled Trout and would much rather be on the river than be in a suit and tie cooped up in some hot stuffy building.