A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg Read Free Book Online Page B

Dottie Nivens, our postmistress. We got her from an ad we put in
The New York Times
. We were afraid when she got here that she’d see how small we were and leave, but she stayed and we sure are glad. She gives one wingding of a party and makes a mean highball; not only that, she can jitterbug like nobody’s business.” Oswald wondered if the postmistress might be a little off her rocker as well, to leave New York City for this place.
     
    Around twelve-thirty, while Oswald was having his lunch, Mildred, who had been in Mobile all morning buying Christmas decorations for the Mystery Tree with money from the Polka Dots’ jingle-bell fund, called Frances the minute she got home and said, “Well?”
    Frances, trying to be tactful, said, “Well . . . he’s a cute little man, with cute little teeth, and of course he has that funny accent and . . .”
    “And what?”
    Frances laughed in spite of herself. “He looks like an elf.”
    “Good Lord.”
    “But a nice elf,” she quickly added. Mildred was always one to make snap judgments, and Frances did not want her to make up her mind about Oswald before she even met him. She could be so cantankerous.
     
    As a rule, Oswald rarely ate three whole meals in one day, but on his first day, in Lost River, after a huge breakfast, for lunch he ate baked chicken, a bowl of big fat lima beans, mashed potatoes, three pieces of corn bread and honey with real butter (not the whipped margarine spread he usually bought), and two pieces of homemade red velvet cake. He had not had real home cooking since he had been married to Helen and since the divorce he had been eating out at greasy spoons or off a hot plate in his room. That night at dinner he finished everything on his plate, plus two servings of banana pudding, which pleased Betty no end. She liked a man with a big appetite.
    He was still somewhat tired and weak from the trip and went up to bed right after dinner. As he reached the top of the stairs, the mother, who had no teeth, poked her head out of her room and yelled, “Have the troops been fed yet?”
    He did not know what to say so he said, “I think so.”
    “Fine,” she said, and slammed her door.
    Oh dear, thought Oswald. And even though he suspected that Roy had been kidding around with him earlier, he did lock his door that night, just in case.
     
    The next morning the birds woke him up once more, but he felt rested and hungry again. While eating another big breakfast, he asked what had brought Betty and her mother all the way from Milwaukee to Lost River, Alabama.
    Betty threw four more pieces of bacon into the pan. “Well, my friend Elizabeth Shivers, who at the time worked for the Red Cross, was sent here to help out after the big hurricane, and when she got here she just fell in love with the area and moved down, and when I came to visit her, I liked it too so I moved here myself.” She flipped the bacon over and mused. “You know, it’s a funny thing, Mr. Campbell, once people find this place, they don’t seem to ever want to leave.”
    “Really? How long have you lived here?”
    Betty said, “About fourteen years now. We moved down right after Daddy died.”
    At the mention of the father, Oswald tried to sound as casual as possible. “Ah . . . I see. And what did your father die of, if I may ask?”
    “Will you eat some more eggs if I fix them?” she asked.
    “Sure,” he said.
    She went over to the icebox and removed two more eggs, cracked them and put them in the frying pan, and then said, “Well, to answer your question, we’re really not sure what Daddy died of. He was twenty-two years older than Mother at the time, which would have put him right at a hundred and three. I suppose it could have been old age, but with the Kitchens you never know. All I know is that it was a shock to us all when it happened.”
    Oswald felt better. Obviously the old man’s exit from the world had not been by violent means as Roy had suggested, but at age 103, just