Prologue #2
Without conscious effort, they had both been walking during their conversation, keeping level with the float. Clare made a shooing motion. “I’m staying clear until I’m needed. You go. Now. Get his attention and get him off that tractor.”
The woman nodded. Trotted close to the fight, then closer. Despite her intentions, Clare drew nearer as well. Above the churn of music and shouting she could hear Russ swearing at Tucker. “Goddammit, Ron, give over!”
The brouhaha was split with the most ear-shattering shriek she had ever imagined.
The wife, close enough to touch the far tire, wailed like the goddess of vengeance, shrill and booming at the same time.
Her husband flinched and reared back, while Tucker, startled, half turned.
That was enough. Russ surged up, wrapped his arms around the other man, and pulled him bodily off the tractor.
The two of them stumbled backward, Tucker flailing.
“Stop it, Ron!” Russ shook the mechanic.
“He’s not worth it. He’s not worth it!” Clare darted forward, flinging herself at Tucker’s chest. Some deeply embedded parental training compelled him to fling his hands in the air to avoid hitting a woman.
Clare took advantage by crowding him backward, toward the sidewalk, Russ tugging him in concert until they were far enough away for distance and the icy air to cool the mechanic down.
Russ rubbed the back of Tucker’s head. “Okay? You okay now?”
Tucker wiped his bleeding mouth with his parka sleeve. “Goddammit.” He spat onto the withered grass next to the sidewalk, then glanced toward Clare. “Sorry, Reverend.”
“That’s fine, Ron.” She looked at Russ.
He heard the question she wasn’t asking. “Ron’s kids are Black.”
“Oh. Oh.”
“Shouldn’t matter,” Tucker mumbled. “Decent people shouldn’t put up with trash like that.”
The Greenwich police had finally made it through the logjam of floats. One cop got out of the car and directed the tractor to the side of the road, while the other pulled their unit behind. Clare jerked her chin toward the officer, now besieged by witnesses. “Do you need to talk to them?”
Russ hesitated. “No.” He put his arm around Tucker’s back. “Let’s get Ron back to PJ’s place.”
Clare looked back. The woman who had helped her stood near the knot of people surrounding the officers, the tractor driver, and the banner man.
She still clutched her bucket against her midsection, and even from a distance, she seemed lost and defeated.
“I need to talk to that woman. I’ll just be a moment. ”
“Clare—”
She didn’t wait to hear what undoubtedly sensible advice Russ was about to give her.
She strode down the sidewalk, paused while Girl Scout Troop 3099’s float, a hay wagon filled with sparkler-waving kids, rolled past, and then darted across the road toward the tangle of helpful citizens eager to tell the police everything they had witnessed.
With a guilty start, she saw Terry and Bill being questioned by one of the officers.
She ducked her head and walked faster, making sure she was in the woman’s eyeline.
She didn’t want to startle anyone with a scream like that.
The woman noticed her, and shifted, as if she might flee. Clare held up one hand. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
Clare glanced over her shoulder. “Do you have kids here?”
“Yeah.” The woman pushed a hank of hair beneath her knit cap. “I’m not worried about ’em. The others will keep an eye out.”
Clare tilted her head toward where the men were arguing with the officers. “It’s the big kids you have to worry about.”
The woman blinked, then laughed. “You got that right.”
“I’m Clare.” She held out her hand.
“Meghan.” Close up, and in the light, Clare could see Meghan was younger than she had thought by at least a decade.
Not unusual for their rural area, where girls finished high school at eighteen, married at twenty, and became mothers within a year or two, just as they had for generations.
Clare’s mother and her friends had done the same, albeit after graduating from Sweet Briar College.
Meghan squinted at her. “Where are you from?”
“Oh.” Clare touched her mouth. “My accent, right? Southern Virginia, originally. I live up here now. My husband’s from Millers Kill.” She couldn’t control the little smile she still got at the word “husband,” despite celebrating their first anniversary last month.
“A Southerner. Okay, that makes sense.” Meghan glanced back toward where several other men had joined the argument.
“No, that doesn’t mean—I’m not— Not every white Southerner is a racist!”
“We’re not racists.” Meghan sounded indignant. “We just believe our own culture should be respected in our own country. My family’s been here since 1720! And now our government’s being controlled by globalists and our jobs are getting taken by immigrants.”
Arguing that there had been non-white people here long before 1720 was probably not going to win Meghan over.
Arguing wasn’t going to win her over, at least not here and now.
Clare took a breath. “I just wanted to thank you for helping defuse that fight. And to give you this.” She dipped into her parka before remembering she had put them in her jeans pocket.
She pulled out a small stack of business cards, which she had started carrying when she realized a surprising number of people she encountered were flustered by a phone-to-phone exchange of information.
Meghan looked at her suspiciously. “Are you in real estate?”
Clare laughed. “No. I’m an Episcopal priest. A minister.” She held out a card. “I’m not trying to proselytize you. Convert you. But if you’d like to talk sometime, I’d be happy to.”
“About what?”
“About anything. Husbands. Kids. Life. Choices.”
“Huh.” Meghan still looked doubtful, but she took the card.
“I guess I should say thank you, too. Rick would’ve punched that guy’s lights out and I’d’a spent the rest of the night trying to scrape up bail money if it wasn’t for you and your husband.
” She glanced to where the tractor, sans white supremacy banners, was getting slotted back into the flow of the parade by the officers, who had spread out and were slowing down the next two floats. “I better go.”
Clare couldn’t bring herself to say Nice to meet you, so she settled for “Stay safe.” She watched as Meghan strode down the sidewalk, her candy bucket bumping against her side.
The momentary holdup of the parade gave her the chance to cross the street without dashing; emerging on the other side from between the dazzling lights reminded her of stepping out of the midway at the Washington County Fair.
Hiking back toward PJ’s house, she could see Ron Tucker by the fire pit, one friend rubbing his back and another protectively hovering.
Russ had collected Ethan and was balancing him against his shoulder, so the baby could look out at the spectacle while the two men talked. Russ beckoned her over.
“Hey there. Everybody okay?” It looked as if Tucker may have collected a few bruises, though it was hard to tell in the flickering light.
“Yeah.” Ron swiped an enormous hand over his face. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize. If you hadn’t tried to take that banner down, somebody else would have.”
“Maybe.” Russ looked skeptical. “What were you up to with Eva Braun over there?”
Clare pressed down on a smile. “I gave her my card. In case she’d like to talk.”
“Clare—”
“If people like us don’t talk to people like them, how are they ever going to change?”
“Scum like that doesn’t change,” Russ said. “They know what they’re saying and they know it’s wrong, but they’re enjoying hating too much to stop.”
Ron nodded. “It’s like alcoholism. You can hear facts and reason all day, every day, and if you’re not ready to give up how the booze makes you feel, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.” He smiled crookedly at Clare. They had both been through that wringer.
“We need to report ’em to somebody,” Ron said. “You don’t put a float together and jump through all the hoops to get into the parade without having a group of ’em working together.”
Russ was shaking his head. “I don’t know who you’d tell, Ron. The cops here know about them—or at least, they do now. There’s no law against being a redneck idiot. Be nice if there was.”
Ron sighed. “I know. I know. I’m just blowing off steam.
” He visibly collected himself, then looked up at his friends.
“What say we get a couple beers and enjoy the rest of the evening?” He stood.
Russ shifted Ethan and the two men shook hands.
“Thanks, Russ. For the tough love.” He nodded at Clare. “Thank you, Reverend.”
They watched him climb the front stairs, ducking his head beneath one of the glowing Japanese lanterns.
The booming brass of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” made Clare turn around.
She tugged Russ’s arm. “It’s Santa! And Mrs. Claus!
” Like in the famous Macy’s parade, the couple sat in a sleigh surrounded by waving elves, twinkling snow, and glittering trees—although unlike Macy’s, they rode in a hay wagon pulled by another enormous tractor.
“Look, Ethan! It’s Santa! Can you say hi? Can you wave to Santa?”
Russ shifted the baby and manipulated his tiny arm in a wave.
Clare laughed. “I don’t think he’s really feeling it.”
“At least he’s not scared. I was terrified of the jolly old elf. Mom has all these photos of my sister smiling and sitting on his lap while I ran shrieking from the VA hall.”
They watched as the sleigh rode out of sight. It was the end of the parade. The start of the holiday season. Clare put her arm around her husband. “It’s going to be our first Christmas together as a family.”
“Hopefully it won’t involve any more street fighting and screaming women.”
She bumped him with her hip. “No more police work for you. Things are nice and quiet at the church.” Something cold touched her nose.
Then another. “Oh, Russ, it’s snowing. It’s perfect.
” Snowflakes began drifting out of the night sky, dazzling in the street light and the firelight and the glowing lanterns.
She took a breath and dared fate. “It’s going to be a perfect holiday. ”
Russ looked down at her, bemused. “We’ll see, Reverend. We’ll see.”