A Dixie Christmas (6 page)

Define decent. Hobbling around barefooted, decent? Wearing nothing but a knot on my head the size of a fist and a pair of wrinkled slacks, decent? Caught practically mid-leak, decent? Under the influence of drugs, decent?
“Yeah, I’m decent.”

The door creaked open and the oldest brother, the father of the baby, stuck his head inside. He apparently hadn’t showered yet because he still had the Elvis hair-do, though the St. Joseph outfit was gone in favor of jeans and a sweatshirt. “Hi. My name’s Chet. Annie told me to give you these.” He shoved a pair of jeans, white undershirt, blue plaid flannel shirt, socks and raggedy sneakers at him. “You look about the same size as me.”

Clay took the items hesitantly. He was about to tell him that he wouldn’t need them since he intended to go back to the hotel, asap, and call his lawyer. Before he could speak, though, the man
 . . .
about twenty-five years old
 . . .
asked with genuine concern, “How ya feelin’? Your body must feel like a bulldozer ran over it.”

“Do you mean your sister?”

Chet threw his head back and laughed. “Annie does have that effect sometimes, doesn’t she? No, I meant the boink to your head and your twisted ankle.”

Clay shrugged. “I’ll be all right.”

Just then Clay noticed the black satin bra hanging on the doorknob. The cups were full and enticingly feminine. He was pretty sure the wispy undergarment didn’t belong to Aunt Liza. Hmmm. It would seem the scarecrow Madonna was hiding something under her virgin robes.

“Hey, that’s my sister you’re having indecent thoughts about,” Chet protested, interrupting his reverie.

“I was not,” Clay lied, hoping his flushed face didn’t betray him.

“Yeah, right. Anyhow, dinner’s almost ready. Do you want me to bring a tray upstairs? Or can you make it downstairs?”

Clay debated briefly whether to eat here or wait till he got back to the hotel. The embarrassing rumble in his gut decided for him. Clay told him he’d be down shortly and went back to the bedroom to change clothes while Chet made use of the shower.

A short time later, he sat at the huge oak trestle table in the kitchen waiting for Annie to come in from the barn with two of her brothers, Roy, a twenty-two-year-old vet student, and Hank, a high school senior. They were completing the second milking of the day for the dairy herd. All this information was relayed by Aunt Liza. That’s what the woman had demanded that he call her after he’d addressed her as “ma’am” one too many times.

Had he ever eaten dinner in a kitchen? He didn’t think so.

Did he have a personal acquaintance with anyone who had ever milked a cow? He was fairly certain he didn’t.

Aunt Liza wore an apron that fit over her shoulders and hung to her knees where flesh-covered support hose bagged conspicuously under her housedress. She hustled about the commercial size stove off to one side of the kitchen. Sitting on benches that lined both sides of the table, chatting amiably with him as if it were perfectly normal for him to be there, were Chet, Johnny, whom he already met, and Jerry Lee, a fifteen-year-old. This family bred kids like rabbits, apparently. The baby was up in his crib, down for the night, Chet said hopefully.

A radio sitting on a counter was set on a twenty-four hour country music station.
Surprise, surprise.

“Do you people honestly like that music?” Clay asked. It was probably a rude question to ask when he was in someone else’s home, but he really would like to understand the attraction this crap held for the masses.

“Yeah,” Chet, Jerry Lee, Johnny, and Aunt Liza said as one.

“But it’s so
 . . .
so hokey,” Clay argued. “Listen to that one. `I Changed Her Oil, She Changed My Life.’“

They all laughed.

“That’s just it. Country music makes you feel good. You could be in a funky mood, and it makes you smile.” Jerry Lee thought about what he’d said for a moment, then chuckled. “One of my favorites is `She Got the Ring, I Got the Finger’.”

“Jerry Lee Fallon, I told you about using such vulgarities in this house,” Aunt Liza admonished. Then she chuckled, too. “I’m partial to `You Done Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat’.”

“I like `I Would Have Wrote You a Letter But I Couldn’t Spell Yuck’,” Johnny said.

“Well, the all-time best one,” Chet offered, “is `Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth ’Cause I’m Kissing You Good-Bye’.”

Some of the other titles tossed out then by one Fallon family member after another were: “How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away,” “I’ve Been Flushed From the Bathroom Of Your Heart,” “If I Can’t Be Number One In Your Life, Then Number Two On You,” “You Can’t Have Your Cake and Edith Too,” and the one they all agreed was best, “I Shaved My Legs For
This
?”

Despite himself, Clay found himself laughing with the whole crazy bunch.

Just then, the back door could be heard opening onto a mudroom. Voices rang out with teasing banter.

“You better not have mooned any passersby, Hank? That’s all we need is a police citation on top of everything else,” Annie was chastising her brother.

“I didn’t say he mooned the girl,” another male said. It must be Roy, the vet student. “I said he was mooning
over
her.”

There was the sound of laughter then and running water as they presumably washed their hands in a utility sink.

Seconds later, two males entered the room, rubbing their hands briskly against the outside chill which they carried in with them. They nodded at him in greeting and sat down on the benches, maneuvering their long legs awkwardly under the table.

Only then did Clay notice the woman who stepped through the doorway. She was tall and thin. Her long,
long
legs that went from here to the Texas Panhandle were encased in soft, faded jeans, which were tucked into a pair of work boots. An oversized denim shirt
 . . .
probably belonging to one of her brothers
 . . .
covered her on the top, hanging down to her knees with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. A swath of sandy brunette hair laid straight and thick to her shoulders. Not a lick of make-up covered her clear complexion. Even so, her lips were full
 . . .
almost too full for her thin face
 . . .
and parted over large, even white teeth. She resembled a thinner, younger, more beautiful version of Julia Roberts.

Clay put his forehead down on the table and groaned.

He knew everyone was probably gawking at him as if he’d lost his mind, but he couldn’t help himself. He knew even before the fever flooded his face and arms and legs and that particular hot zone in between
 . . .
he knew exactly who this stranger was. It was, unbelievably, Annie Fallon.

He cracked his eyes open a bit, still with his face in his plate, and glanced sideways at her where she still stood, equally stunned, in the doorway. Neither of them seemed to notice the hooting voices surrounding them.

How could he have been so blind?

How could he not have seen what was happening here?

How could he not have listened to the cautionary voice of the bellhop who’d warned of destiny and God’s big toe?

All the pieces fit together now in the puzzle that had plagued Clay since he’d arrived in Memphis. God’s big toe had apparently delivered him a holy kick in the ass. Not to mention the fever He’d apparently sent to thaw his icy heart.

Clay, a sophisticated, wealthy venture capitalist, was falling head over heels in love at first sight with a farmer. Old McAnnie.

Donald Trump and Daisy Mae.

Hell! It will never work
.

Will it?

He raised his head and took a longer look at the woman who was frozen in place, staring at him with equal incredulity. It was a sign of the madness that had overcome them both that the laughter rippling around them failed to penetrate their numbed consciousnesses.

He knew for sure that he was lost when a traitorous thought slipped out, and he actually spoke it aloud.

“Where’s the hayloft, honey?”

Chapter Three

A smart man isn’t above a little
subterfuge…

Clay felt as if he’d landed smack dab in the middle of the Mad Hatter’s party. It was debatable who was the mad one, though
 . . .
him or the rest of the inmates in this bucolic asylum.

Love? Me? Impossible!

Elvis music blared in the background—
ironically, “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You
”—and everyone talked at once, each louder than the other in order to be heard. A half-dozen strains of dialogue were going on simultaneously, but no one seemed to notice. Good thing, too. It gave him a chance to speculate in private over his monumental discovery of just a few moments ago.

I’m falling in love.

Impossible! Uh-uh, none of this falling business for me.

What other explanation is there for this fever that overtakes me every time I look at her? And, man, she is so beautiful. Well, not beautiful. Just perfect. Well, not perfect-perfect. Hell, the woman makes my knees sweat, just looking at her.

Maybe it’s not love. I’ve never been in love before. How do I know it’s love? Maybe it’s just lust.

Love, lust, whatever. I’m a goner.

But a farmer? A farmer?

“How come you and Annie keep googley-eying each other?” Johnny asked.

“Shut your teeth and eat,” Aunt Liza responded, whacking Johnny on the shoulder with a long-handled wooden spoon.

“Ouch!”

Meantime, a myriad of platters and bowls were being set on the table. And Aunt Liza assured him this was an everyday meal, no special spread on his behalf.

Pot roast (about ten pounds, give or take a hind quarter) cut into half-inch slabs. Mashed potatoes. Gravy. Thick noodles cooked in beef broth. Creamed spinach. Pickled beets. Succotash (
Whatever the hell that was!
). Chow-chow (
Whatever the hell that was, too!
). Tossed salad. Coleslaw. Homemade biscuits and butter. Pitchers of cold, unhomogenized milk at either end of the table sporting a two-inch header of real cream. Canned pears. Chocolate layer cake and vanilla ice cream.

There were enough calories and fat grams on this table to fatten up the entire nation of Bosnia. Yet, amazingly, everyone here was whip-thin. Either they’d all inherited good genetic metabolisms, or they engaged in a massive amount of physical labor. He suspected it was a combination of both.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to eat so much red meat and dairy?” Clay made the mistake of inquiring.

“Bite your tongue,” everyone declared at once.

For a moment, Clay had forgotten that these were dairy farmers whose livelihood depended on milk products. Plus, they had about a hundred thousand pounds of beef on the hoof in their own backyard.

Clay rubbed a forefinger over his upper lip, pondering all that had happened to him so far this day. In the midst of the conversations swirling around him now, he felt as if he was having a personal epiphany. Not just the monumental discovery that, for the first time in his life, he was falling in love. It was much more than that. He never realized till this moment how much he’d missed having a family. He never would have described himself as a lonely man—loner, perhaps, but not
lonely
. Now, he knew that he’d been lonely for a long time.

And that wacky bellhop had been right this morning about his coldness. Over the years, he must have built up an icy crust around his heart. Just like my father. Little by little, it was melting now. Every time he came within a few feet of Annie, the strange fever enveloped him, and his chest tightened with emotions too new to understand. He yearned so much. For what exactly, he didn’t know.

In a daze, he reached for a biscuit, but Chet coughed meaningfully and Aunt Liza glared stonily at him. Once he sheepishly put the roll back, Annie took his hand on the one side, and Jerry Lee on the other. All around the table, everyone bowed their heads and joined hands, including Aunt Liza and Chet who sat in the end chairs, on either side. Then Annie said softly, “Lord, bless this food and all the poor people in the world who have less than we do, even the rich people who have less than we do. For this bounty, we give you thanks. Amen.”