Six Geese A-Slaying(2)

“Clarence!” I said. “You made it!”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said, giving me a bear hug.

“So this is one of the six geese a-laying?” said a nasal voice with a hint of a southern drawl. I glanced over to see who was talking and saw a tall, cadaverously thin man in jeans and a faded brown parka. And he wasn’t just tall compared to my five feet ten—he even looked tall standing beside Clarence, who was six and a half feet tall and almost as wide.

Brown parka was scribbling in a pocket notebook. Around his neck he wore a small silver digital camera and a lanyard with a laminated badge.

“You must be the reporter from The Washington Star-Tribune,” I said.

“Are you—” he paused to look into his notebook. “Meg Lansdowne? The parade organizer?”

“Meg Langslow,” I corrected.

“J. Ainsley Werzel,” he said. He stuck out a hand and I shook it, somewhat awkwardly, since he was still holding the ballpoint pen in it.

“So, one of your geese, I presume?” he repeated. He stuck his pen behind his ear and grabbed his digital camera, apparently intent on getting a festive holiday shot of the ferrets inked up and down Clarence’s arms.

“And also one of our vets,” I said. “This is Dr. Clarence Rut-ledge. He’ll be helping look after the welfare of the many live animals appearing in today’s parade.”

I winced inwardly at how stilted I sounded, like something out of a press release from the town council. But better stilted than dimwitted.

Clarence shook the reporter’s hand with a great deal less caution than I had. He was so used to enduring the teeth and claws of his more recalcitrant patients that a mere ballpoint pen wound meant nothing to him. Werzel was the one who winced.

“Damn,” Werzel said, as he continued to gape at Clarence. “I wish my photographer would get here already. You haven’t seen him, have you—short guy with a big Nikon?”

I shook my head.

“Damn,” Werzel repeated. “He said ten minutes half an hour ago. Ah, well.”

He stood looking around with an odd expression on his face, as if tracking down the source of a bad smell. I checked my foot again. No, it was clean. And when I took a deep breath, the icy air held only the tantalizing odors of the coffee, cocoa, and spiced cider at a nearby refreshment stand. I could hear sleigh bells jingling in the distance, and strains of Christmas carols drifting from various parts of the yard. A brace of cousins hurried by pushing a cart loaded high with poinsettias, and several small children dressed as elves were handing out candy canes, courtesy of the Caerphilly Candy Shop. What could possibly be causing that sour face?

“Quaint,” Werzel pronounced.

“Quaint what?”

“Clearly that’s going to have to be my angle on this story.

Quaint.”

He nodded as he said it, and a satisfied expression replaced the frown. He couldn’t have been here more than five minutes, the parade itself wouldn’t start for hours—and he’d already decided on his angle?

“Pity I can’t think of something more sexy,” he said, shaking his head.

Not that he’d tried.

“I’ve never really considered Christmas all that sexy,” I said aloud.

“It’s all a big conspiracy by the stores,” he said.

I hoped that wasn’t going to be the theme of his story. But then, I didn’t have high hopes about the story anyway. The Caerphilly Town Council members might have been thrilled when they heard that the Trib wanted to cover our event, but I was far more pessimistic about how much could go wrong today. Not to mention more cynical about how ridiculous an unsympathetic reporter could make us look if he wanted to.

And why was the Washington Star-Tribune sending a reporter to cover our parade, anyway? Caerphilly County and the town of Caerphilly were in rural Virginia, two hours’ south of Washington, D.C., and the Trib rarely mentioned their one claim to fame—the small but prestigious college where my husband taught in the drama department. Our parade drew good attendance each year, but mainly from the county itself and from nearby counties even more rural than we were. Why wasn’t Werzel covering more glamorous sights closer to home, like the national Christmas tree and whatever holiday parades and festivals the greater metropolitan Washington area had to offer? He could have written a clichéd story about our quaint country parade without leaving his desk. I was convinced Werzel had an ulterior motive—to make us look not only quaint but ridiculous. Unfortunately, if that was his plan, I couldn’t think of any way to stop him.

The ten lords a-leaping danced past, with Rob in the lead. They had all strapped sets of Morris dancing bells onto their shins, and their procession sounded like “Jingle Bells” on steroids. I couldn’t help smiling as they passed. Werzel didn’t even look their way.