Ruth Sanger’s counter-campaign showed up first at the diner, the way weather around here showed up first in the cottonwood leaves.They moved differently, or whole branches of them bent a certain way.They even changed color when certain kinds of storms blew in.
Hank stopped in at the diner for a piece of pie and found Ruth holding her usual court, only the court had changed its docket.She was telling the Petersen girl who hadn’t been born when it happened about the time a fireman named Del had gotten the bright idea to go down the church chimney in a Santa suit and surprise everyone by popping out of the big fireplace behind the pulpit during the Christmas Eve service.
However, he got stuck partway down, right at the part of the sermon where the preacher was describing the angel Gabriel telling Mary she was going to give birth to the son of God.
Just then, Del shouted from inside the chimney in a booming voice, “Hey, I’m trying to come out down there!A little help?”
The whole diner started to laugh as Ruth described the entire congregation jumping a foot in the air and the pastor nearly fainting.
The pastor called out, “My Lord.Is that you?”
Del yelled back, “Yeah, and I’m stuck up in here.You gotta grab my feet and give me a good yank so I can come down to you!”
Walter Meeks, a retired rancher and diner regular chimed in, cackling, “Pastor Dave darned near fainted dead away.”
The Petersen girl asked breathlessly, “What happened then?”
Pastor Dave went over to the fireplace and started praying like I never saw that man pray before.He blubbered about all his sins and asking for forgiveness, and how he wasn’t worthy to birth the Lord reborn.And the whole time Del was yelling down at him, ‘Stop being afraid.It’s just me, You Idiot!’Of course the more Del yelled at him, the more hysterical Pastor Dave got.”
“What did the congregation do?”the Petersen girl demanded.
“Well,” Ruth replied, her eyes glinting with just slightly malicious humor, “The folks in the pews were all praying like their everlasting souls depended on it.That is, until Jesus started cussing up a blue storm in the chimney and yelling for the fire chief to get his sorry ...umm, posterior ...up front and get him unstuck from the chimney.”
Gales of laughter filled the diner.It was the first time in weeks that Hank had heard anything like it in here.Even better, folks on both sides of the great fire investigation debate were laughing together.
Ruth mopped her eyes with a napkin and finished with, “At that point, the fire chief at the time recognized Del’s voice doing all the cussing.He stood up and called for the other volunteer firefighters in the church to come help him rescue the dumbest firefighter this side of the Rocky Mountains.And the whole town sat there watching from the pews while covered dishes for the midnight potluck went cold in every lap.“
Hank looked around the diner.The folks in here had spent the past month arguing over accelerants, motives, and insurance payouts.But today, they listened to her droll story, the gray heads nodding along and adding hilarious details Ruth left out.The woman in the end booth pressed her hand to her mouth, laughing and crying at the same time, because Del had been her brother and it was exactly the sort of stunt he would’ve pulled.
The moment of levity hadn’t fixed everything.The sedans still sat at the fire station, and the valley still held its breath.But for a quarter of an hour the talk at Rose’s was about the town’s shared history instead of blame.Hank ate his pie quietly and silently declared it a fine a start.A broken bone didn’t heal all at once, after all.It got splinted and held exactly where it belonged, then the body and time did the rest.
He paid for his pie and surreptitiously passed enough cash to Rose to cover Ruth’s lunch as well.He picked up his hat, and as he walked out, he nodded once, briefly, to Ruth.She smiled a little at him, and her chin dipped just enough for him to see and no one else to notice.
He drove over to Tessa’s farm that afternoon to pick up the other project he’d been working on with Dillon’s help.In the wood shop behind Tessa’s house, he’d been building a proper drawing desk.
It was made of oak to match the dining room floor, with a top that tilted at an adjustable angle.It had brass clips mounted at the top and on both sides to hold a sheet of paper securely, a shallow drawer for pencils, and another one for storing blank paper or finished pieces.Lastly, it had a lamp mounted on a swing arm so the morning sun wouldn’t be the only light a working artist could count on.
He’d known Presley had talent.It was impossible not to know that with all the funny cartoon doodles and tidbits of more serious sketches she drew on every scrap of paper she got her hands on.He’d been finding them all over the house, digging them out of trash cans, and quietly collecting them in the big, flat box his latest pair of boots had come in.
He hadn’t known the rest of it until Sunny told him, offhand, while they did the dishes together one day after feeding all the kids lunch that an art gallery had asked to buy and hang several of her drawings.Sunny told him how Presley had handed over three and flatly refused to part with a fourth one.
His heart had expanded in his chest until he thought it might explode when Sunny mentioned the drawing Presley wouldn’t sell at any price was a study of a man’s hands on a guitar, apparently drawn from the porch steps one evening when she’d made herself small in the dark and he didn’t know she was there.
His hands.The child had drawn his hands.And then she’d kept them back from the whole world because they were precious to her.
Hank had very carefully set down the pot he was scrubbing and gone out to sit a while in the aluminum chair while his pulse did things it had no business doing.That was when he decided to make Presley a proper drawing desk, but sized down for a not quite adult-sized artist.
He gave Presley the desk Saturday afternoon without ceremony because ceremony would have mortified them both.He carried it into the dining-room corner and set it down, saying it seemed to him a working artist ought to have a proper work space.He showed her the lamp switch on the left side and told her the bulb was a special kind that shone at the exact frequency of natural sunlight.
Presley walked around it twice without touching it, the way her mother circled a kindness hunting for the catch.Then she slid open the top drawer running across its whole width and saw the rows of adjustable storage he’d filled with drawing pencils, charcoals, pastels, erasers, and smudgers.She opened the drawer and lifted out the large, leather bound portfolio he’d mail ordered and had her initials engraved on the front of.She ran her fingers over her initials with something akin to reverence.
Then she opened the notebook, started turning its clear, pocket protected pages, staring.He’d carefully tucked in every single one of her doodles and sketches that he’d collected since she’d first come to his home.She looked up at him with her mother’s eyes, except filled with wonder and joy her mother rarely allowed herself to show.Beneath to the scrapbook was an empty picture frame Dillon had helped him get perfect and square.
Gesturing at the six inch wide, chest high shelf running all the way around the dining room, he said, “Your mom went to a lot of trouble to restore the dish rail in this room.It occurred to me it can hold more than just fancy plates.And since I don’t have any fancy plates to put on it, I was hoping you might be willing to display some of your art on it.”
She stared at the rail.Then, without warning, she turned and raced from the room.She tore up the stairs to the second floor, and then to the third.There was a moment of silence, and then her tennis shoes came back down just as fast.
She had a drawing in her hands, and very carefully put it in the empty frame and slipped the piece of protective glass over it.She set it on the dish rail beside her desk and stepped back.
