It was nearly Christmas Day by the time we Barnharts left church. The bride and groom had long fled. What they drove I never knew. The rest of the Burdicks had hauled Aunt Madge back to the sticks. Brad went off between Mrs. Dowdel and Mrs. Wilcox. Miss Flora Shellabarger had fired up her Packard Clipper. But plenty of people wanted to linger on the church steps, replaying the evening and giving one another the greetings of the season.
Dad and I made a final check of all the windows before he locked up the church. It was long afterward before I learned where we came by these top-of-the-line windows stout enough to keep December’s fury out.
They’d been paid for with Mrs. Dowdel’s profits from her roadside stand back at the time of the Kickapoo Princess. So she hadn’t buried her money in Joey’s room or out in the melon patch. She’d given it to the church, though she wasn’t a church woman. All her gifts were supposed to be secrets, of course. But it took the whole town to keep a secret.
Ruth Ann was half asleep in Dad’s arms as we turned toward home. The big tree still blazing in Mrs. Dowdel’s bay window showed us the way, though she’d put it there to show Brad his. Our own tree winked out of the front window across the porch.
As soon as we were inside, we saw we’d had a visitor. There on an end table was a plate of Christmas cookies, half eaten—sugar cookies in shapes and divinity fudge.
Ruth Ann was bolt awake now and sliding down Dad. She rolled her eyes at the cookies and stared at the tree. Actually, the Dempseys’ tree.
In front of it stood a doll buggy, and it hadn’t come from the Goodwill store. This was an old-timer, tall and wicker with wire wheels and a patent-leather seat. It looked a lot like one Mrs. Dowdel had me bring down from her attic. You could find anything up in that attic.
Now it was freshly sprayed a snowy white with ribbons worked through the wicker. Somehow Grachel had found her way downstairs and into it. She sat in the patent-leather seat, gazing one-eyed around the room, wondering what had kept us.
“Would you look at that,” Dad said. “Seems like we’ve had a visit from Saint Nick while we—”
“Daddy,” Ruth Ann said, small but sure, “there is no Santa. Word gets around.” But she couldn’t take her eyes off that grand, antique doll buggy. She was ready to take Grachel for a midnight airing this minute. She looked up at Phyllis and me like we ought to get ready to go.
“If it wasn’t Santa,” Dad said, “who was it?”
We waited. Mother’s hand slipped into Dad’s.
“Hoo-boy,” Ruth Ann said. “It was Mrs. Dowdel.”
“Was it?” Dad said. “Then I wonder what you could give her in return. Something she’d like. Seems like she’s always the one giving the gifts.”
Ruth Ann thought. She pulled on more chins than she had. She patted her back hair, braided with white bows to match her choir robe.
“I know what.” She raised a small finger. “I could tell her I thought Santa brought it.”
“Good girl,” Dad said.
Then we all hung up our stockings with care because we did that every year. I hadn’t expected much out of this particular Christmas since I was in kind of an in-between time: too old for toys and still forty-two months from a learner’s permit. But it was the Christmas we always remembered.
By the time I got up to my room, Mrs. Dowdel had doused her Christmas tree lights. She’d lit our way home, and she had her great-grandson with her. I expect he was all the Christmas she needed. Her whole house seemed to be asleep, the last house in town. And the melon patch behind. The town slept now, nestled among the silvered fields.
Under a Christmas star.