Haywire, Texas
1886
With a nod at the pianist, Holly Sanders turned her attention back to the six elderly people staring at her in waiting silence. Wishing she could plug her ears, Holly braced herself with a quick breath and raised her baton. “One, two, three…”
As predicted, each singer started on a different beat. Slow as rising bread, their wobbly voices gradually grew louder, assaulting even the uppermost rafters of the old barn used for rehearsals. Unaware that they were singing off-key, the oldsters sang with such joyful abandon that Holly didn’t have the heart to stop them and make them start over.
From a nearby stall, Romeo the donkey made no such allowances. Twitching his ears and stomping his foot, he drew back thick lips in protest and added to the dissonant sound with a loud hee-haw. Following his example, Molly the milk cow let out a low, though no less disapproving, moo.
Not that Holly could blame the barn’s residents. Getting the six to sing in unison was harder than getting rain to fall on command. Forget about tonal deficiencies. If the oldsters would just learn to begin and end a song together, she would consider her job done.
Holly shot a look of apology to her pianist, Mrs. Brewster. The retired schoolmistress did her best to speed up or slow down on the whim of the singers, but she had the pinched look of a prune.
Feeling bad for putting the piano player through such an ordeal—not to mention the animals—Holly lowered her baton and groaned inwardly. Dear God. A group of yipping coyotes couldn’t sound worse.
Still, it did her heart good to see her dear grandfather looking more like his old self. After Grandmama had died, he’d been so melancholy, Holly had feared losing him, too. It was only at Doc Avery’s urging that she agreed to move her grandfather into the Oddfellows Home for the Aged. It turned out to be the right thing to do.
He now had friends his own age and had gained back some of his old spirit. Unlike the last three years, he also seemed to look forward to Christmas.
She only hoped that the good citizens of Haywire had a handy supply of cotton for their ears when the group took the stage at the annual Christmas pageant.
Though her baton remained motionless, the six oldsters seemed unaware that she had stopped directing.
As much as she liked seeing them have a good time, a body could take only so much discord, and hers had reached its limit. Signaling Mrs. Brewster to stop, Holly banged her baton against the music stand for attention.
Five singers mercifully fell silent. Oblivious to what was going on around him, her grandfather kept singing.
And singing.
It was the fifth night of rehearsal, but the group had shown little if any improvement. Whoever said that practice made perfect had never met her grandfather or his cronies.
Holly waved her hand to gain his attention, but it took a nudge by Mrs. Stone with her cane before her grandfather stopped singing. “Whatcha do that fer?” he asked, rubbing his side.
Mrs. Stone tossed a white-haired nod to the front of the barn, and Holly’s grandfather’s faded-gray eyes came to rest on her.
“We’re singing ‘Joy to the World,’ Grandpapa,” Holly explained, her calm voice belying her frustration. If the group didn’t improve, her reputation as a teacher would be put in jeopardy. Since she was hoping to teach at the new school when it opened, that was a concern.
Certainly, she would never again be asked to direct the school pageant.
He lifted his hearing horn to his ear. “Aye? What did you say?”
Holly repeated herself, this time louder. Even with his hearing apparatus, Grandpapa couldn’t hear worth a tinker’s dam. She spoke louder. “We’re singing ‘Joy to the World,’” she repeated. “You were singing ‘Deck the Halls.’”
Grandpapa smiled. Now, as always, his toothless grin made her forget her annoyance. That is, until he started singing off-key again, his grating voice hitting notes not found on any known musical scale. “Fa, la, la…”
Taking this as a cue, his elderly friends joined in, and for once their voices actually harmonized in a croaky sort of way. All except Mr. Carpenter’s. The old veteran somehow managed to sing every Christmas carol to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.”
But John Brown’s moldy body couldn’t hold a candle to Miss Wright. In her younger days, the spinster had traveled to New York to hear Jenny Lind sing. Unfortunately, her imitation of the operatic singer sounded more like a screech owl than the Swedish Nightingale.
Holly waited for the last fa, la, la to fade away. “Let’s sing ‘Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem,’” she said. Heaven knows, they’d rehearsed it enough.
“Aye? Whatcha say?”
Raising her voice, Holly repeated the name of the carol for her grandfather’s benefit. “All right, everyone.” She raised her arms. On the count of three, she signaled the pianist with a nod of her head and dipped her baton. “Oh, little town.…”
A screech owl was not part of the heavenly host on that very first Christmas, but it certainly was present tonight. And even John Brown’s body couldn’t compete with her grandfather’s imitation of a pack of howling wolves. “Fa, la, la, la, laaaaaaaaaaa.…”