A Redbird Christmas (5 page)

He waved back, although he had no idea who she was or how she knew his name. When he got to the end of the street he saw a redbrick grocery store building with two gas pumps in front and went in. A clean-cut man with brown hair, wearing khaki pants and a plaid shirt, was at the cash register.

“Are you Roy?” Oswald asked.

“Yes, sir,” the man said, “and you must be Mr. Campbell. How do you do.” He reached over and shook his hand.

“How did you know who I was?”

Roy chuckled. “From the ladies, Mr. Campbell. They’ve all been waiting on you. You don’t know how happy I am you are here.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah, now they have another single man to pester to get married besides me.”

Oswald put his hands up. “Oh, Lord, they don’t want me.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Mr. Campbell. If you’re still breathing they want you.”

“Well”—Oswald laughed—“I’m still breathing, at least for the moment.”

“Now that you’re here we have to stick together and not let any of those gals catch us off guard. Unless, of course, you’re in the market for a wife.”

“Noooo, not me,” said Oswald. “I’ve already made one poor woman miserable. That’s enough.”

Roy liked this little guy right away. “Come on back to the office and let me get you a cup of coffee, and I’ll introduce you to my partner.”

As they walked back, Roy whistled and called out, “Hey, Jack!”

Jack, who had been busy all morning running up and down the round plastic bird wheel with bells that Roy had ordered through the mail, heard the whistle, flew out of the office, and landed on Roy’s finger.

Oswald stopped dead in his tracks. “Whoa. What’s that?”

“This is Jack, my partner,” Roy said, looking at the bird. “He really owns the place. I just run it for him.”

“My God,” said Oswald, still amazed at what he saw. “That’s a cardinal, isn’t it?”

Roy held Jack away from him so he could not hear and confided, “Yes, officially he’s a cardinal, but we don’t tell him that; we just tell him he’s just a plain old redbird. He’s too big for his britches as it is.” Then he spoke to the bird. “Hey, Jack, tell the man where you live.”

The bird cocked his head and Oswald swore the bird chirped with the same southern accent Roy had. It sounded exactly like he was saying, “Rite cheer! . . . Rite cheer! . . . Rite cheer!”

When Roy was busy waiting on some customers, Oswald wandered around the store, examining the mounted fish and stuffed animals that covered the walls. They looked almost alive. The red fox seemed so real Oswald jumped when he first saw him up on the counter. He later remarked to Roy, “That’s really nice stuff you have here. For a second I thought that damn fox was alive. And those fish up there are really great.”

Roy glanced up at them. “Yeah, I guess so. My uncle put them up there. He won most of them in a poker game.”

“Who did them, somebody local?”

“Yeah, Julian LaPonde, an old Creole, lives across the river.”

“A Creole? What’s that? Are they Indians?”

Roy shook his head. “Who knows what they are—they claim to be French, Spanish, Indian, you name it.” He indicated the mounted animals. “And in that guy’s case, I’m sure there’s a little weasel thrown in.” He changed the subject. “All those fish you see up there were caught by our mailman, Claude Underwood. That speckled trout is a record holder. Do you fish? ’Cause if you do, he’s the man to see.”

“No,” Oswald admitted, “I’m not much of a fisherman, or a hunter either, I’m afraid.” He wouldn’t have known a speckled trout from a mullet.

Oswald had spent about an hour roaming around the store and watching that crazy redbird of Roy’s run around on his wheel when the phone rang. Roy put the phone down and called out, “Hey, Mr. Campbell, that was Betty. She said your lunch is ready.”

Oswald looked at his watch. It was exactly twelve o’clock, on the dot. “Well, I guess I’d better go.”

“Yep, you don’t want to get her riled. Hey, by the way, have you met the mother?”

“Oh, yes,” Oswald said, rolling his eyes.

“They say she’s harmless, but I’d lock my door at night if I were you.”

“Really? Do you think she’s dangerous?”

“Well,” said Roy, looking up at the ceiling, “far be it from me to spread rumors, but we don’t know what happened to the daddy, now, do we?” By the look on Oswald’s face, Roy could tell he was going to have a lot of fun kidding around with him. He would believe anything he told him.

As he left the store and headed back, Oswald realized he had been so busy looking at Jack and talking he forgot to notice if the store sold beer.

Oh, well, there was always tomorrow.

When he got home he asked Betty about the woman with the bangs at the post office who had waved at him, twice now. “Oh, that’s Dottie Nivens, our postmistress. We got her from an ad we put in
The New York Times
. We were afraid when she got here that she’d see how small we were and leave, but she stayed and we sure are glad. She gives one wingding of a party and makes a mean highball; not only that, she can jitterbug like nobody’s business.” Oswald wondered if the postmistress might be a little off her rocker as well, to leave New York City for this place.

Around twelve-thirty, while Oswald was having his lunch, Mildred, who had been in Mobile all morning buying Christmas decorations for the Mystery Tree with money from the Polka Dots’ jingle-bell fund, called Frances the minute she got home and said, “Well?”

Frances, trying to be tactful, said, “Well . . . he’s a cute little man, with cute little teeth, and of course he has that funny accent and . . .”

“And what?”

Frances laughed in spite of herself. “He looks like an elf.”

“Good Lord.”

“But a nice elf,” she quickly added. Mildred was always one to make snap judgments, and Frances did not want her to make up her mind about Oswald before she even met him. She could be so cantankerous.

As a rule, Oswald rarely ate three whole meals in one day, but on his first day, in Lost River, after a huge breakfast, for lunch he ate baked chicken, a bowl of big fat lima beans, mashed potatoes, three pieces of corn bread and honey with real butter (not the whipped margarine spread he usually bought), and two pieces of homemade red velvet cake. He had not had real home cooking since he had been married to Helen and since the divorce he had been eating out at greasy spoons or off a hot plate in his room. That night at dinner he finished everything on his plate, plus two servings of banana pudding, which pleased Betty no end. She liked a man with a big appetite.

He was still somewhat tired and weak from the trip and went up to bed right after dinner. As he reached the top of the stairs, the mother, who had no teeth, poked her head out of her room and yelled, “Have the troops been fed yet?”

He did not know what to say so he said, “I think so.”

“Fine,” she said, and slammed her door.

Oh dear, thought Oswald. And even though he suspected that Roy had been kidding around with him earlier, he did lock his door that night, just in case.

The next morning the birds woke him up once more, but he felt rested and hungry again. While eating another big breakfast, he asked what had brought Betty and her mother all the way from Milwaukee to Lost River, Alabama.

Betty threw four more pieces of bacon into the pan. “Well, my friend Elizabeth Shivers, who at the time worked for the Red Cross, was sent here to help out after the big hurricane, and when she got here she just fell in love with the area and moved down, and when I came to visit her, I liked it too so I moved here myself.” She flipped the bacon over and mused. “You know, it’s a funny thing, Mr. Campbell, once people find this place, they don’t seem to ever want to leave.”

“Really? How long have you lived here?”

Betty said, “About fourteen years now. We moved down right after Daddy died.”

At the mention of the father, Oswald tried to sound as casual as possible. “Ah . . . I see. And what did your father die of, if I may ask?”

“Will you eat some more eggs if I fix them?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said.

She went over to the icebox and removed two more eggs, cracked them and put them in the frying pan, and then said, “Well, to answer your question, we’re really not sure what Daddy died of. He was twenty-two years older than Mother at the time, which would have put him right at a hundred and three. I suppose it could have been old age, but with the Kitchens you never know. All I know is that it was a shock to us all when it happened.”

Oswald felt better. Obviously the old man’s exit from the world had not been by violent means as Roy had suggested, but at age 103, just how much of a shock could it have been?

The following morning when he went downstairs, Betty Kitchen looked at him and said, “That’s quite a cough you have there, Mr. Campbell. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Oswald quickly downplayed it. “Oh, yeah. . . . I think I may have caught a little cold coming down, but I feel fine.” He realized he would have to cough quieter and try not to let her hear him from now on.

After breakfast he thought he would take another walk and asked Betty where the river was. “Right out the kitchen door,” she said.

Oswald walked out the back of the house into a long yard filled with the tallest pine, evergreen, and cedar trees he had ever seen. He figured some must have been at least six or eight stories high. As he walked toward the river, the fresh early morning air reminded him of the smell of the places around Chicago where they sold Christmas trees each year.

He followed a small path that had been cut through the thick underbrush, filled with pine needles and pinecones the size of pineapples, until he came to a wooden dock and the river. He was amazed at what he saw. The bottom of the river was sandy and the water was as clear as gin—and he should know. He walked out onto the dock, looked down, and could see small silver fish and a few larger ones swimming around in the river. Unlike Lake Michigan, this water was as calm as glass.

As he stood there looking, huge pelicans flapped down the river not more than four feet away from him, flying not more than two inches off the water. What a sight! He had seen pictures of them in magazines and had always thought they were all gray. He was surprised to see that in person they were many colors, pink and blue and orange, with yellow eyes and fuzzy white feathers on their heads. A few minutes later they flew off and then came back and crashed with a loud splash and floated around with their long beaks in the water. He had to laugh. If they had been wearing glasses they would have looked just like people. The only other birds he had ever seen this close up were a few pigeons that had landed on his windowsill at the hotel.

The river was not very wide, and he could see the wooden docks of the houses on the other side. Each one had a mailbox, including the one he was on; he looked down and saw the number 48 on it, as Frances had said. So far, everything he had been told or had read about Lost River in that old hotel brochure was true. Old Horace P. Dunlap had not been lying after all. Who would have guessed Oswald would now be living in one of those dandy little bungalows that old Horace had talked about. From that day just a month ago, when he was headed for the doctor’s office, to today, his life had taken a 180-degree turn. Everything was upside down. Even the seasons were flipped. In his wildest dreams, Oswald could never have imagined a month ago that he would wind up in this strange place, with all these strange people. As far as he was concerned, he might just as well have been shot out of a cannon and landed on another planet.

The next day he did not know what to do with himself, so after breakfast he asked Betty what time the mail came. She said anywhere between ten and eleven, so he went down to the dock and waited. At about ten-forty-five a small boat with a motor came around the bend. As Oswald watched, the man in the boat went from mailbox to mailbox, opening the lid and skillfully throwing the mail in while the boat slid by. He was a stocky man in a jacket and a cap who looked to be about sixty-five or seventy years of age. When he saw Oswald, he pulled up and turned off his motor.

“Hello, there. You must be Mr. Campbell. I’m Claude Underwood. How are you?”

“I’m fine, happy to meet you,” said Oswald.

Claude handed him a bundle of mail wrapped in a rubber band. “How long have you been here?”

“Just a few days.”

“Well, I’m sure the ladies are glad you’re here.”

“Yeah, it seems they are,” Oswald said. “Uh, say, Mr. Underwood, I’m curious about this river. How big is it?”

“About five or six miles long. This is the narrow part you’re on now. The wide part is back that way.”

“How do you get to it?”

“Do you want to take a ride with me sometime? I’d be happy to show it to you.”

“Really? I sure would. When?”

“We can go tomorrow, if you like. Just meet me at the post office around nine-thirty and bring a jacket. It gets cold out there.”

Walking back home, Oswald thought it was pretty funny that Mr. Underwood would worry about him getting cold anywhere down here. It might say December on the calendar, but the weather felt just like a Chicago spring and the beginning of baseball season to him.

The next morning, as Oswald walked up to the porch of the post office, a striking-looking woman wearing a lime-green pants suit came out of the other side of the house. The minute she saw Oswald she almost laughed out loud. Frances had described him perfectly. She walked over and said, “I know who you are. I’m Mildred, Frances’s sister, so be prepared. She’s already planning a dinner party, so you might as well give up and come on and get it over with.” Mildred chuckled to herself all the way down the stairs. Oswald thought she was certainly an attractive, saucy woman, very different from her sister. She had a pretty face like Frances, but he had never seen hair that color in his life.

He went inside the post office and met Dottie Nivens, the woman who had waved to him the first morning. She shook his hand and did an odd little half curtsy and said in a deep voice, “Welcome, stranger, to our fair community.” She could not have been friendlier. Oswald noted that if she had not had a large space between her two front teeth and such straight hair she could be a dead ringer for one of Helen’s sisters.