Six Geese A-Slaying(14)

Michael, at the head of the procession, looked as if he had been born in a camel saddle—partly because he was fairly good at riding horses, and partly because he was too good an actor to let anyone know that he wasn’t quite at ease with Larry’s oddly swaying gait. Behind him rode Dr. Montgomery Blake, my grandfather, who had spent so many of his ninety-some years roving various wildernesses for zoological projects and environmental crusades that he was perfectly comfortable riding a camel, horse, donkey, elephant, or any other steed or vehicle you could think of. He had one leg hooked around a protrusion that was the Bedouin equivalent of the saddle horn, and was turned around nearly backwards, shouting instructions at our local police chief, who was portraying the third wise man.

“Chief Burke doesn’t look altogether happy,” Clarence said, with a frown.

That was an understatement. The chief’s normally calm, brown face wore a fierce scowl that would ordinarily have reduced his officers to abject terror lest they be the ones who’d screwed up. Under the circumstances, I suspected the scowl was a deliberate attempt to hide absolute panic. But I had to hand it to him—he hung on gamely as the procession lurched and swayed its way past the house and headed down the road.

“Aren’t they going the wrong way?” asked a child’s voice at my side. Cal Burke stood, shovel and pail in hand, staring anxiously at the camel procession as it disappeared around a curve in the road.

“They’re just taking a practice ride,” I said.

“Hmph!” Minerva Burke, the chief’s wife, had appeared, wearing the maroon satin choir robe of the New Life Baptist Church. She shook her head as she watched her husband’s progress. “At this rate, the old fool will break his neck before the parade even begins. But there’s no stopping them when they get a crazy idea in their heads, is there? Cal, go keep an eye on your grandfather.”

Cal nodded and scampered off behind the camels. Clarence frowned—was he still worried about Larry’s limp?—and followed.

Ainsley Werzel sauntered up. He’d thrown on one of the county-issue brown shepherd’s robes and was stuffing his press pass inside it.

“Getting into the spirit of things,” he said, when he saw me eyeing the robe.

More like trying to fool people into thinking he was part of the parade and catch them off guard, I suspected.

“So Chief Burke’s one of the wise men?” he asked. “Is that okay?”

“More than okay, it’s useful,” I said. “In the unlikely event of any trouble, we’ll already have the police chief and a number of his officers on hand to deal with it.”

“Yeah, but isn’t that carrying this whole multicultural thing a little too far?” Werzel asked. “I mean, were any of the original wise men African-American?”

Was he making a joke? No, he sounded serious. I was still trying to figure out a tactful way to answer when Minerva Burke spoke up.

“African-American?” she said, with a snort. “Not hardly, since it wasn’t till fifteen centuries after the Nativity that Columbus discovered what the Indians had already found and a while after that before people started calling it America. Not to mention a couple of centuries till the slave trade brought Africans to this side of the ocean. So, no, there weren’t any African-American wise men.”

“However,” I said, “there’s a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages that one of the wise men, Balthazar, was African.”

“Just African,” Minerva Burke said. “No hyphen required.”

“And we’ve asked Chief Burke to be a wise man to honor that tradition.”

“Great, great,” Werzel said. He backed off, smiling nervously, until he was about ten feet away—at which point he pretended to become fascinated with one of the musical acts—a barbershop quartet dressed as Christmas trees—and loped off as fast as he could.

“Sorry,” Minerva said, shaking her head. “Don’t know why, but that man just brings out the mean in me.”

“Don’t apologize,” I said. “You’re welcome to chase him away any time you see him hovering near me. I really don’t want to have to deal with a reporter on top of everything else.”

“I’d have thought you’d be pleased to see he was here,” Minerva said. “After all, we’ve been trying for years to get someone other than the local rag to cover it. And you snagged the StarTribune—it’s a fabulous coup.”

“I didn’t snag him,” I said. “He just showed up. And if that’s a coup, it’s one that could backfire, big time,” I said. “Have you read any of Werzel’s articles?”