The Christmas Cantata (The Liturgical Mysteries) (2 page)

St. Germaine is dependent on the tourist trade. We have tourists in the summer who are trying to escape the heat of Florida, Georgia, and even South Carolina. They stay from mid-June through August. The next batch comes into town for leaf season around the second week of October and they come by the thousands. Leaf season (when the leaves change from green to their autumn hues and the foliage is at its most beautiful) lasts for about four weeks, give or take. The five bed and breakfasts in town are booked months and sometimes years in advance. Then, starting at Thanksgiving, the throngs begin their thronging on the weekends. Closer to Christmas, these visitors extend their stay for a few days on either end and the town is packed.

The principal reason for their migration is shopping, but that isn't the only draw. St. Germaine offers something that can't be found in many other places. The Germans have a word for it:
Gemütlichkeit
. Its closest English equivalent is the word "coziness," however, rather than merely describing a place that is compact, well-heated, or nicely furnished (a cozy room for example),
Gemütlichkeit
connotes the notion of belonging, social acceptance, well-being, cheerfulness, the absence of anything hectic, and the opportunity to spend quality time with friends and family. This is St. Germaine during the Christmas season.

From Thanksgiving weekend through New Year's Day, downtown St. Germaine is decorated as if Martha Stewart had gone on a holiday rampage. The park, storefronts, streetlights, abandoned cars, trees, bushes, and everything else—nailed down or not—are festooned with pine and fir garlands, tens of thousands of lights, ribbons, wreaths, and ornaments of every size and description. One year, Nancy Parsky, my lieutenant, even found a dead turtle (she surmised by the smell that it had met its end sometime in October) lying in the gutter with a red bow stuck to its shell and a blinking Rudolph nose tied to its head. And decorating is just the cinnamon on the eggnog.

It is the town's mission to make everyone feel welcome. From the oldest resident to the newest, locals and visitors, tourists and shoppers, all are gladly and warmly received. Shopping in St. Germaine doesn't have that hurried, frantic feeling that the malls and the mega-stores seem to produce. Yes, we have lines, but if you find yourself having to wait in one, someone will be happy to chat with you, any number of people will wish you a Merry Christmas and offer to hold your packages for a while, or an employee might walk up and give you a cup of hot chocolate and a hug. If you can't find something for that special someone on your shopping list, the owner of the store might suggest you try the Ginger Cat down the street, or even call into Blowing Rock because she saw "just the thing you're looking for" the last time she was shopping there.

Is all this goodwill an accident of geography or maybe a Brigadoon-like aberration? It is not. It is a well-thought-out, careful plan instituted about fifteen years earlier by Pete Moss (the mayor of St. Germaine at the time). Pete saw it as a cross between
It's a Wonderful Life
and
Field of Dreams
, telling the city council that people were longing for small town America and "if we build it, they will come." It took a few years to implement Pete's plan—to get everyone on board—but once started, the goodwill was self-perpetuating, and it didn't take long for word to get around.

St. Germaine has added various Christmas events over the years to keep things fresh; the outdoor Living Nativity presented in alternate years by either the Kiwanis or Rotary Club, rival civic organizations; the Christmas Parade, hosted by the club that isn't in charge of the Nativity; and, last year, the St. Lucy Walk on December 13th in support of acid-reflux research. This was an idea that Vernell Lombard, a newly-elected member of the city council, had come up with. Her husband, Buddy, had just been told by his doctor that his heartburn was most probably caused by acid reflux.

"Why doesn't he just stop eatin' like a hog?" asked Cynthia Johnsson, the current mayor, when Vernell brought the proposal in front of the council at their September meeting. "I waited on him down at the Slab Café and he put away half a dozen chili dogs, a large order of onion rings, potato salad, and two slabs of apple pie." Cynthia, in addition to her part-time job as mayor, was a professional waitress and belly dancer. Usually Cynthia was well-spoken and used the King's English albeit with a slight North Carolina accent, but when she "got in thar amongst 'em" as she said, her dialect dropped right into the vernacular of the rest of the city council. "I saw Buddy tear through that food like a human garbage disposal. If he'd stopped to take a breath, one of them six wieners might have stood a fighting chance."

"Acid reflux is a disease," said Vernell, her mouth set in a hard line. "Like brain cancer, or erectile disfunction. There just
has
to be more research. Anyway, Buddy was in a hurry. He's only got a half hour for lunch. Let's vote on it."

"Fine," said Cynthia, throwing her hands into the air with the realization that she'd never get the forty-five minutes back that the council had just spent arguing about the project.

"Fine," she repeated. "Let's vote."

In the end, the vote was five to four in favor of the project and the St. Lucy Walk was scheduled and well publicized. St. Lucy isn't so much remembered for suffering from acid reflux as she is for having her eyes removed and served up on a plate just prior to her head being cut off, but St. Lucy's Day was in December (December 13th to be exact), and would fit in well with the St. Germaine Christmas celebration scheme. St. Lucy's Day is now most often celebrated in the Scandinavian countries by young girls dressed in white who walk through the town wearing a crown of lit candles on their heads. Once Vernell discovered
that
little tidbit, she invited all the girls in town between the ages of twelve and twenty-one to participate, providing they could supply their own white gown and bring their own candles. It was a very beautiful sight and we had quite a large turnout, not only among the girls who were happy to march in support of a worthy cause, but also the folks who dropped coins into their red velvet purses, purses that Vernell had made the night before, as they walked along their route.

The fund-raiser went as smoothly as could be expected. That is to say that only two of the girls lit their hair on fire and had to be doused by the chaperones standing on each corner of the square brandishing CO2 fire extinguishers. No one was seriously hurt, although there was talk at the Beautifery that wigs might be needed all the way through Groundhog Day. Vernell blamed the accidents on Noylene who was in charge of coiffing the girls for the event. "That Noylene uses too much hairspray!" she said. "Them girls was walkin' fire-bombs."

The St. Lucy Walk raised $232.45 and Vernell promised to write a check and send it to the Society for the Movement toward Acid Reflux Prevention (SMARP), headquartered in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The prevailing thought, though, was that Buddy spent the money on hot dogs.

The council had decided not to sponsor the St. Lucy Walk this year, but the Living Nativity (it was the Rotarians' turn) had been scheduled for the third week in December, and the Christmas Parade (this year, hosted by the Kiwanians) was always a big hit. The economy was better than it had been for a couple of years. People were pouring into town and goodwill and friendliness should have been the order of the day. But this year was different. This year, St. Germaine was just plain crabby.

Chapter 2

It was a Monday, and there were exactly three weeks until Christmas. As the choir director and organist at St. Barnabas, this concerned me. In my capacity as the police chief of St. Germaine, I was less concerned, but at this time of year it was not difficult to let the one responsibility slide in deference to the other.

I'd been the chief for nineteen years, ever since I'd been hired by Pete Moss, the then-recently-elected mayor of St. Germaine who had found himself in need of a constabulary officer. Detective Hayden Konig, Chief of Police: that's what my card said. I'd been the musician at the church for almost as long as I'd been the chief, although I'd taken the occasional hiatus. I had a Master's degree from UNC in music and another one in criminology. This, apparently, gave me all kinds of credibility in both fields. I could spot a French 6th chord or a double parked car with equal proficiency.

Pete's primary occupation, now that he was no longer the mayor (which didn't pay that much anyway), was to be the purveyor of "fine dining" at the Slab Café. "Fine dining" might be a stretch, but if you asked any local about the food at the Slab, they'd say, "Oh, it's fine." It was enough for Pete to slap the motto on the front of the menu. In fact, the Slab served a great breakfast; sandwiches, burgers, and just good all-around lunch fare; and had a pie case full of homemade desserts.

I was sitting at our "designated" table (reserved for the SGPD and friends) in the Slab Café at seven in the morning. I expected Nancy to join me shortly. Dave wouldn't make it into the office until nine or so. There were three other customers in the restaurant. I didn't recognize them.

When I first came to St. Germaine, I comprised the entire police force. Now we numbered three: myself, Nancy Parsky, and Dave Vance. Nancy was a great cop. Dave was great at filling out reports and running errands for Nancy. He was also in charge of donut procurement.

"What do you want?" said Pete, from behind the counter. I could tell he was not in a good mood. Crabby. "Noylene will be here in a bit. She just called in. Frozen pipes." Pete, unlike the rest of the folks in the Slab, was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. He'd given up his flip-flops once the health department complained. Still, in essence a hippie from the seventies, he now tied his gray hair in a ponytail and only wore his earring on days that started with a "T."

"Just coffee right now," I answered.

"Get it yourself, will you?" Pete crabbed.

"Oh, sure," I answered as snarkily as I could. "Don't worry about it. Allow
me!
" If Pete noticed my sarcasm, he ignored it.

The coffee station was at the end of the counter and Pete had a couple of full pots resting on warmers and another one brewing. In front of the counter were four stools, one of them occupied by a man with his wool cap pulled down over his ears. The other two customers were men as well, both in the insulated coveralls that marked them as utility workers. They sat across from each other in one of the six booths that lined one of the walls. The tables, mine included, were covered with red and green checked vinyl tablecloths and decorated with a few Christmas ornaments. There were colored holiday lights strung throughout the café, and Noylene had put some of her "signature" homemade Christmas wreaths up on the wall, along with the prices, just in case someone might like one for their home.

Noylene was a woman of many talents. Along with waiting tables at the Slab, and being the owner of the Beautifery, she also ran the Dip-n-Tan, a contraption by which anyone with $24.95 could be lowered, naked, into a vat of tanning fluid and generally come out looking like they'd just spent a week in the Caribbean. If the formula was slightly off, though, as it frequently was in the early days of the Dip-n-Tan, a customer might end up a lovely shade of pumpkin. Noylene had taken to testing the formula before dipping a nervous customer by lowering a pig head into the vat, leaving it there for two minutes, then pulling it out and comparing it to a chart she'd fixed to the wall. She'd gotten so she could gauge the strength of the tanning fluid pretty well and pig heads were free since she'd made that bartering deal with Jenny Limpet, the butcher's wife. She traded professional beautifying in exchange for pig heads, and she had a freezer full. A bonus was that she could sell the heads (after they'd been organically tanned) to a restaurant specializing in Scottish cuisine where her son, D'Artagnan Fabergé, worked as a sous chef.

"Noylene say how many of her pipes burst?" I asked.