The Organist Wore Pumps (The Liturgical Mysteries) (17 page)

As the float turned the corner, the tappers were taking a breather, but Big Mel horse-whistled them to tapping position in short order. Big Mel was on the float, of course, dressed as the Virgin Mary and sitting in the stable beside the manger. Flanking her on either side were two wise men, their black tap-shoes sticking out from beneath their bejeweled robes. There was an angel praying on his knees in the hay-loft—a boy named Brian who had been studying at the Academy for several years. I recognized him from Bible School at St. Barnabas last summer—quite a little tumbler.

The float pulled up to the judges’ stand. Big Mel smiled from beneath her blue veil as she eyed the prize. Big Mel was a champion.

Sleigh Ride
was a fine Christmas tapping song as far as it went, but Big Mel knew that it would take something special to win. She’d already won this year’s grand prize at the Fourth of July parade in Kingsport and the Veteran’s Day parade in Galax, and she saw no sense in reinventing the wheel. Leroy Anderson’s
Sleigh Ride
was okay for tapping the parade route, but for the competition she’d hung her star on another, more famous, composer.

The judges pulled out a new scoring sheet as the truck came to a stop, positioning the float directly in front of the courthouse. The two kings wasted no time in jumping down from the flatbed and pulling a set of hidden steps from underneath the trailer. The twirlers, dressed in angelic, gold-sequined spandex, poured quickly down the steps and took their place in front of the stage as the opening notes of
Stars and Stripes Forever
bellowed forth from the giant speakers in the back of the pickup.

Meg’s mouth dropped open. Pete’s eyes grew wide. Nancy gulped. I just stood there, unable to look away.

Fifty tap-dancing shepherds waited out the four-measure introduction, then attacked the oak stage like the little stars they’d been trained to be. Big Mel had shortened the march by cutting the beginning section and splicing the introduction straight onto the most famous part of John Philip Sousa’s magnum opus: the trio, the part that every child knows as “Be kind to your web-footed friends, for that duck may be somebody’s mother.” The speakers blared, the kids tapped their well-rehearsed routine, the twirlers twirled, and the two wise men, who had gotten back into the stable, were spinning a couple of flags that were emblazoned with “Merry Christmas” on one side and Mud Creek Academy’s logo on the other.

Baby Jesus, up till now hidden by a thin layer of hay, sat up in the manger and waved. The stunned judges waved back. Mary sat there serenely, treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

She pondered them until the repeat: the part where the music slows, trombones and tubas come in with the countermelody, and the piccolos take off into the stratosphere for the big finish.

Yes, Big Mel was a champion. She’d won the Two-Baton National Title in 1983. She’d won the Three-Baton Title in ’85. She didn’t twirl three anymore, but two batons were her bread and butter. When she heard the trombones come in, she jumped up, threw off her veil, dropped her white robe, grabbed her top hat from behind the manger and tapped to the front of the stage in her black tie and tails with matching hot-pants. Standing almost seven feet tall in her top hat, with size fourteen tap shoes that sounded like machine guns, she dwarfed her co-stars. The two wise men took a beat to reach down and retrieve Mel’s batons from where they were hidden in the hay, torch them with a couple of fireplace lighters, and, as the wicks on the ends burst into flames, tossed them to Big Mel. She caught them, still spinning, and whipped them into an artistic blur of flame and smoke.

This was the cue for Brian, the angelic host in the hayloft, to push the button and ignite the fireworks. Four pyrotechnic fountains erupted from the roof of the stable. Red, white, and blue fire shot up into the air, accompanied immediately by a number of Roman candles and something the fireworks company had dubbed
The Battle of Vicksburg.
The crowd cheered as Brian turned to face them and accept his accolades, but then he appeared to stumble, arms waving frantically, and he tumbled out of the loft and plummeted toward the floor of the flatbed trailer. The crowd gasped and Kimmy Jo Jameson leapt to her feet and screamed in terror.

The flailing Brian dropped like a rock just behind the manger, but our fears came to naught as the little acrobat landed squarely on the hidden trampoline and bounced back up into the air, executing a neat somersault just above the head of Big Mel. The only casualty seemed to be Brian’s halo which flew off his head and into the crowd of shepherds.

The spectators roared their approval. The tiny tappers heard the crowd and redoubled their tapping efforts, their feet firing like little cap guns. The trombones boomed, the piccolos shrieked, the angelic twirlers spun their batons in a blur of holiday exultation. Brian bounced higher, doing a piked front somersault, followed immediately by a cat twist and a double back flip. The wise men spun their flags like airplane propellers and Big Mel tapped and twirled for all she was worth.

And Big Mel was a champion.

She threw her first fire baton ten feet in the air, spun around once, twice, still twirling the other, and caught the falling baton without dropping a step. The crowd gasped. Another fireworks fountain went off with a
whoosh.
The driver of the truck turned the music up a notch as the march headed toward its final cadences.

The clatter of the tappers was unimaginable, one hundred heels and toes slapping white oak with a rhythmic precision that was astonishing. Faster and faster went the batons of the twirlers; higher and higher bounced Brian. Roman candles exploded and blazed into the afternoon sky. Big Mel threw her fire batons up into the air, one after the other, in rapid succession. Ten feet into the air, twenty. The music slowed slightly for the penultimate chords. Then, just as all the performers were preparing for the big finish, the unexpected happened.

Big Mel, fueled with adrenaline, sent one of her aerials soaring dangerously high. This wasn’t a problem for Mel; she was well used to catching flaming batons from dizzying heights. It
was
a problem for the St. Germaine Electric Co-op. The overhead wires that prevented Bullwinkle the Moose from making his trip around the downtown square seemed to reach out and pluck Big Mel’s baton from the air. Still spinning, it circled the live wire twice and spun off in an altogether different direction, stopping only when it banged, flaming end first, into a nearby transformer sitting atop an electric power pole. The explosion and resulting cascade of sparks that rained down from the ruined transformer blended right in with the fireworks finale, now reaching its zenith on the roof of the stable. In a few moments, the final chords of John Philip Sousa’s masterpiece sounded, the pyrotechnics sputtered to a halt, and the performers finished, breathless, standing in expectation of thunderous applause. Unfortunately, most of the crowd was too busy watching the blaze that had started in the stable when the hay caught on fire to clap.

In the dimming, late-afternoon shadows, we watched in silence as the two kings used their emergency fire extinguishers to put out the flames, while at the same time, all the electric lights in the square, first the outside decorations, then the lights in the shops, blinked twice and went out.

•••

“
Wow!” said Nancy.

“
I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Meg.

Pete nodded but was speechless.

“
Well, someone had better call the electric company,” I said. “Nancy, you want to do it?”

“
Already dialing.” Nancy had all the emergency numbers for the town in her cell. Efficient.

The parade continued on its route and folks who had been inside, for some reason or other, began to emerge from the powerless buildings to see what was going on. I looked across the street to the library and saw Rebecca Watts and Diana Terry come out of the front doors and look around. The same thing was happening in every doorway of every shop around the square.

After the band marched by, Cynthia’s float was next. Her belly dancing to
Jingle Bell Rock,
although both seasonal and scintillating, was rather a letdown after Big Mel’s extravaganza. A number of camera flashes went off, though, and I suspected that Cynthia’s shimmying mayoral snapshot would be adorning
Our State
magazine. Her float didn’t stop in front of the judging stand and neither did Santa’s, and in a few minutes the parade was on its way out of town, a chorus of children, including Moosey and Bernadette, dancing in its wake.

“
Hayden!” Rebecca called as the crowd on the street began to disperse. “C’mere, will you?”

“
Be right back,” I said to Meg, then hurried down the steps of the courthouse, across the street and up to the library doors.

“
What’s happened?” asked Diana. “I was inside using the computer and all the electricity went out.”

“
I checked the breakers,” said Rebecca. “They seem to be okay.” She looked around the square. “It seems as though the power is off everywhere...”

“
Big Mel blew up one of the transformers.”

“
How’d she do that?” asked Diana.

“
Fire baton,” I said, like it was the most reasonable explanation in the world.

“
Oh,” said Diana with a confused look. “Fire baton. That explains it.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Sheesh. How long till the power comes back on?”

“
I expect that the power company will need to replace the transformer. I’d give them a few hours, anyway.”

“
I’m locking up and taking the rest of the afternoon off,” declared Rebecca. “I’ve got to open back up tonight for a book club meeting. I hope the power’s back on by then. We’re Skyping Jan Karon.”

“
I was in the middle of an email,” said Diana, her irritation evident. “The whole computer just shut down.”

“
Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “Nothing we can do about it.”

“
It’s always
something
,” said Diana.

Chapter 16

“
I forgot to tell you,” called Meg from the library. “Your Christmas beer came yesterday. I put it in the garage fridge.”

“
Excellent! Thanks.”

I’d been sitting at the typewriter, resolved to generate some first-rate detective fiction, or at least some first-class second-rate fiction. Failing that, I was determined at least to enjoy the process. I trekked to the garage and opened the door to the old refrigerator. Looking up at me, a twinkle in their eyes, were twelve bottles of
Samichlaus
—Swiss-German for
Santa Claus.
Only brewed once a year on the feast day of St. Nicholas, this beer is the strongest in the world. Few occasions call for such a strong brew, but, the way things were going, I figured that the stresses and strains of this festive season justified an encounter with Santa Claus in his most powerful incarnation. I carried it into the kitchen, popped open a bottle, filled a frosted mug, and carried it back into the living room.

She stood there in front of my desk like one of those long-legged birds you see in Florida that stands on one of them and gobbles frogs, except she was standing on both of them and wasn’t gobbling frogs, so I knew right away she was trouble, which those birds usually aren’t, unless you’re a frog or maybe a very ugly adolescent male with really bad acne, bulging eyes and a greenish complexion, so she wasn’t actually like one of them after all. I lit up a stogy and remembered I didn’t like those birds.

“
What’s the problem, Polly?” I asked, thinking about a parrot I had once that I also didn’t like.

“
My name’s Annie,” she said. “Annie Key. I’m a singer. It’s my Life Coach Accompanist. I think she’s trying to ruin me.”

I gave her the old “once-over,” the “up-and-down,” the “eye-frisk,” the “peeper-perusal,” the “yo-yo ya-ya,” and I liked what I saw.