Six Geese A-Slaying(10)
“I never knew that.”
“When my parents were little, they didn’t have Santa at all. But once we kids started seeing a lot of American Christmas movies, they had to have some way to explain to the kids what the fat guy in the snow suit was all about. Not sure if it’s just my parents or if it’s widespread in Costa Rica, but that’s how I was brought up.”
“I wish we were having a Costa Rican holiday parade, then, but I think around here the kids would be heartbroken if we didn’t have a Santa.”
“Yeah,” Jorge said. “I guess they don’t know that behind that beard is the meanest man in town.”
With that he waved and wandered off. I finished my coffee and could already feel my energy level rising. I’d crash later—I’d been running on four or five hours of sleep a night for the past week—but for now, I was okay. I squared my shoulders and turned back just in time to see the long-awaited arrival of the flatbed truck for the nativity scene.Ourheavily-pregnant Virgin Mary waved cheerfully at me from its passenger window. Things were looking up.
Clarence had even stopped the piping and drumming, thank goodness. I could see the musicians straggling across the road in small groups, heading for the cow pasture. Followed by several tourists with cameras. Well, the musicians were a picturesque sight—the drummers and fifers in their red, white, and blue Revolutionary War uniforms and nearly every one of the bagpipers wearing a different plaid with his full-dress kilt. Given the temperature, all of them probably had matching blue knees by now—should I have someone check them for signs of frostbite?
“There you are!” My father bounced into view, his round face beaming. His exuberance erased whatever last bits of stress I’d been feeling. Dad adored Christmas—adored holidays generally in fact, and was in seventh heaven at being able to help with the annual holiday parade. No present I could possibly have given him would have made him happier. Well, okay, maybe announcing the prospect of another grandchild would have beat the parade, but Dad was one of the few family members who took it on faith that Michael and I had been working on that project since our Memorial Day elopement, and he had never demanded periodic updates on our progress.
He was carrying his black medical bag. I hoped this meant that he was prepared for any emergency that might need his medical skills, and not that we’d already had one.
“Where do you want the boom lift?” he asked.
“I don’t know that I want a boom lift at all,” I said. “Who brought it, and why? Does one of the floats need repairing or something?”
“It’s going in the parade, of course!” he exclaimed, and from his expression I could see that he was clearly astonished at my lack of enthusiasm for the boom lift. “The Shiffleys brought it. Don’t you have it on your list?”
I flipped through the pages of my checklist, baffled. Had I, in a moment of mental derangement, approved the addition of a boom lift to the parade? Perhaps decked in holly, evergreen, and red ribbon, and carrying a banner saying “Merry Christmas from the Shiffley Construction Company”?
“There it is,” Dad said, pointing to an item on my list. “The Clayville Congregational Church Choir.”
“I thought they were just marching and singing,” I grumbled.
“They’re calling it ‘Angels We Have Heard on High.’ They’re all wearing angel costumes, and they’re going to have the soloists up on the platform, scattering confetti. Biodegradable confetti, of course. Don’t you remember?”
“Silly me,” I said, although this was the first I’d heard of the Congregationalists’ plans. “How about putting the boom lift over there by the side of the road? Just beyond the elephants.”
“Elephants? We’ve got both of them, then? Splendid! That means I get to ride one!”
Dad scurried off, and a few minutes later, I saw the boom lift chug slowly by, with Dad twenty feet in the air on the platform. It appeared to be driving itself, unless the person standing up on the platform with Dad was the driver. I’d been wrong about the holly and red ribbon—they’d covered up as much of the boom lift’s industrial orange frame as possible with sky blue crepe paper, and stuck several giant cotton clouds to it at random intervals.
The choir members followed in the boom lift’s wake in twos and threes, most of them already wearing white choir robes, white wings made of cotton batting and silver glitter, and glitter-coated halos.
And there went Werzel, the reporter, stumbling along in pursuit of the choir, snapping away with his tiny camera. So much for our image as an erudite, cosmopolitan community. Maybe I should be glad he’d already pegged us as quaint. Quaint was an improvement over barmy.