“Let it be
Christmas, everywhere/In the hearts of all people, both near and far/Christmas
everywhere…”
“Colton,
can’t you please practice your guitar somewhere else?” Becky complained from
where she sat at the computer desk.
He stopped
in mid-strum. “Why come?”
“It’s distracting, I’m trying to chat with Lizzie, that’s why.”
“It’s distracting, I’m trying to chat with Lizzie, that’s why.”
“Oh,” her
brother thought this over. “I guess I can quit for a while.”
“Thanks.”
“Thanks.”
“As soon as
I finish this one song.” Colton finished.
“Fine…” Becky
rolled her eyes, then frowned. “What’s that smell?”
“Seems
sorta familiar…”
“Y’all.”
Their mom’s voice contained an odd quality, a note of fearfulness and
uncertainty. “Guys…the house is on fire.” Her composure snapped. “Get out
now!!!”
Colton set
his guitar down and dashed out the front door, Becky typed out a hasty goodbye
and then followed.
A state of
disbelieving shock filled the hotel room several hours later, punctuated by
phone calls from people checking to see how they were doing. The outside sky
was gray and threatening, the temperature was hanging just below forty degrees.
The cell buzzed again, it was answered by Becky in a perplexed tone. “Hi, this
is Becky.” (Pause, she frowned in puzzlement.) “Yeah, she’s here…what? Uh,
okay…” (To Sunny) “Mom, it’s for you.”
She took the phone from her
daughter wearily. “Hello, this is Sunny Holliday, who’s this? ... You’re who?”
(Pause) “Amanda Snow…? Yes, I’ve heard a
lot about Hailey and Lizzie Snow – Oh! Okay, they’re your daughters? Got
it.” (Pause) “Yes, we’re fine. Most of our stuff is trashed… Not yet, no…we’re
just staying at a hotel at the moment. (Long pause) “Uh, wow. You guys would do
that? Really? I mean, it’s almost Christmas and all… We-ll, I’ll talk to my
husband, and then we’ll let you know, all right? Okay, thank you, bye.”
“What’d Hailey’s mom call you for?”
Becky wanted to know. “Who’s Hailey?” her dad, Nate, wondered. “Girl I met at
church camp, Dad, she’s from Missouri.” “Oh, I see,’ his tone showed that he
didn’t.
“Yeah, well, anyway, that was her
mom, and she was calling to ask if we wanted to spend Christmas with their
family,” Sunny said.
“With strangers?” Colton asked.
“They’re good people, and besides,
they have a brother,” his older sister countered.
“I don’t know…” Nate thought about
it, there was about twenty minutes’ worth of discussion.
“Well…I hate the idea of spoiling
somebody else’s Christmas, but we do need
somewhere to go…I guess if they really don’t mind, tell ‘em we’ll take it.’
Becky was already gleefully dialing
the phone. “Here ya go, Mom!”
At the Snow’s house, things were
slightly a mess, to say the least, but it was a happy disarray. Hailey and Tim
were decorating the tree while their younger sister Grace looked on, and Lizzie
was in the kitchen, her domain, baking cookies.
“You know what we need?” Tim asked
while untangling a particularly knotted string of lights.
“Music?” Lizzie hollered back. The
kitchen was right next to the living room, and high ceilings make good
acoustics.
“How -?’
Hailey laughed. “We know you,
little bro.” She inserted the official Snow family Christmas album, Alan
Jackson’s “Let It Be Christmas”, into the CD player and hit “PLAY”.
“You woulda played music even if
nobody asked, Hailey,” Grace pointed out.
“True…and thanks for the reminder,
I need to tune my guitar…’
The doorbell rang, Tim went to
answer it.
“Hi Mr. Bell, what’re you doing
today?”
“Hello, Tim! Just wanted to make
sure you all are ready for the ice storm the weather people say’s coming.”
“Thanks, I think we’re gonna be
okay. Mom’s at the store right now, and we have plenty of wood stored up. Drop
by if you need to.”
“All right, tell your sisters we
said hi.”
“Will do.”
Jim Bell walked back toward the
road.
“Tony, be careful up there,” he
called, remembering a painting accident that broke several ribs and tore apart
his shoulder.
Tony, stringing Christmas lights on
the roof-line, looked down. “Okay, Jim, I’ll try, not planning anything too
fancy. Think Gail’s waitin’ on ya…”
Jim rolled his eyes. “She’s in a
hurry to bake those fudge pecan pies…we gotta run to Wal-Mart for more of that
baking chocolate. Why can’t that stuff taste good just by itself? But those
squares are some of the bitterest things…”
Lizzie poked her head out the window.
“Cookies are ready!”
A small stampede headed towards the
kichen. “Now, just one, you guys!” (Groans and complaints.) “Well, we’ll need
some for Becky’s family, ya know.”
“You tell ‘em, Liz!” Amanda cheered
as she dropped some grocery sacks on the counter.
“Did you just get here, Mom?”
“Yep. You all ready for our guests
coming tomorrow?” Her mother helped herself to a sugar cookie, yelping from the
heat. “Youch!”
“Yeah, Mom.” Lizzie winced. “I
literally just took those out of the
oven…”
“Heck yes, I’m ready!” Hailey
excitedly answered.
Tim and Tony both looked a little
nervous. “They’re coming tomorrow?” “As in, like, the day after today?”
“Yep! So let’s get the house
presentable, okay?”
A crazy afternoon followed, but the
house was much cleaner.
An airy blanket of whiteness was
settling onto the Ozarks as they pulled into the driveway.
“You sure this is the right place?”
Nate asked.
“Yup, this is it. I’ve been here
before, remember?” Becky replied somewhat flippantly.
“Well, all right, then.”
They grabbed their backpacks out of
the trunk and uneasily made their way to the front door, where Sunny rang the
doorbell. In a minute, a lady in her late thirties or early forties answered it.
“Um, hello, is this the Snow’s
residence?”
“Yep! You must be the Hollidays,
right? Becky! Good to see you again!” They nodded. “Well, hey, I’m Amanda. Come
on in.”
Inside, Hailey was trying to play
chess, but neither she nor Tim could concentrate. Her black knight was captured
by a pawn, and the white bishop was beheaded after a rook un-checkmated
Hailey’s king. Lizzie was looking through a cookbook found at a garage sale, Tony
was reading a story to Grace, and Amanda was idly flipping through a
six-year-old copy of Reader’s Digest. Snow
began to fall, forming the first layer of a slick ground covering not fit to
walk on. After what seemed like forever, a silver Ford pulled slowly in. The
people sat there a minute, then climbed out and grabbed backpacks and headed
towards the door.
There were four of them, the man
was kind of thin, which made him look taller than he was. He had black hair and
carried a Mountain Dew in one hand. His wife looked anxious, and stressed
showed plainly on her face from beneath a Thunder baseball cap. They recognized
Becky instantly, the girls from camp, the rest from pictures and her visiting.
Her hair was somewhere between blonde and brown, with a hint of red.
Colton(that’s who it must be) had a worried expression, like they all did, and
was muttering to himself. They rang the doorbell, and the Reader’s Digest skidded across the coffee table as Amanda hurried
to answer it.
The dad spoke up nervously. “Um,
hello, is this the Snow’s residence?” Amanda smiled. “Yep! You must be the
Hollidays, right? Becky! Good to see you again!” (Pause, probably giving Becky
a hug.) “Well, hey, I’m Amanda. Come on in.”
They did. The Hollidays looked
uncertainly around the room, wondering if this was a good idea. Except for Becky,
who was getting massive bear-hugs and “How are you?”s from Hailey and Lizzie.
Colton rolled his eyes. “Girl stuff…all the same, it would be kinda nice to
have friends like that, though.”
“Oh, I almost forgot the cookies!”
Lizzie exclaimed. “Yeah, but I didn’t,” Tim grinned at his older sister.
“Anybody want one? There’s sugar and chocolate chip.” “I was gonna make peanut
butter, but I couldn’t remember if any of y’all were allergic or anything…”
“Nah, we’re good, thanks for baking them,” Becky assured her friend.
Munching cookies, the two families
got acquainted as the hours ticked by. The next few days slipped past, things
went reasonably smoothly and a routine of chores of activities began to flow.
Nate spent most of his time working on insurance details in the aftermath,
everyone else took part in fierce Monopoly battles and caroling
expeditions.
“I read a note my grandma
wrote/Back in 1923…”
Colton looked around to find out
where the music was coming from, wandering down the hallway.
“Grandpa kept it in his coat/And he
showed it once to me…”
He poked his head into the open
doorway of Haley’s room, listening. After she got through the chorus, he spoke
up quietly. “Nice song.”
“Huh -? Oh, yeah. It is.” Hailey
said, startled.
“It’s by Colin Raye?”
“Yup, ‘The Letter.”
“Could I play for a bit?” Colton
asked.
“Sure, go ahead.” She handed him
the Fender, picking up almost without noticing the bright orange acoustic
leaned up by the bed.
“Need a pick?”
“Naw, thanks, though. I usually
just play with my thumb.”
After naturally forming a G chord
as soon his fingers touched the fretboard, he dropped down into a D. “Run your
car off the side of the road/Get stuck in a ditch way out in the middle of
nowhere…”
“Tracy Lawrence, ‘You Find Out Who
Your Friends Are.”
He nodded. “Seems true. Sure had a
chance to find out over these last couple weeks.”
“So, how long you been playing?”
Hailey asked after a pause.
“About a year, I guess. Had a black
Takamine acoustic-electric, but it, ah, got scorched.” Colton answered.
“Well, that kinda sucks.”
“Yep.” (Pause) “How about you, how
long you been playing?”
“Ever since my grandpa died,”
Hailey bit her lip. “When I’d go out to his farm, we’d read books, or go
fishing, riding the horses, things like that. He started to teach me how to
play, but then…well, his cancer got really bad. It was his,” she gestured at
the guitar she was cradling.
“Oh,” was all Colton said, trying
to figure out what the proper way to react to this information was. “I,
uh…sorry if that brought up unhappy memories, I didn’t know. Thanks for letting
me play.”
Colton handed the honey-colored
Fender back to her, walking quickly out of the room.
Hailey stared at nothing in the general area of her closet door, sighing.
She set the pick down on the desk, among several others lying on top of mail
from Mountain College, Midwest Missouri State and several other colleges."
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