A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck Read Free Book Online

one hand on her hip, and the shotgun in the crook of her other arm. She’d raised one flap on her cap to hear what Police Chief C. P. Snokes had to say.
    He was as well-armed as she was. But she could out-draw him. “Doggone it, Mrs. Dowdel, discharging a firearm within the city limits is a crime.”
    “So’s trespassing.” Mrs. Dowdel nodded down at BarbaraJean still sprawled among the melons. “Anyhow, who says we’re inside the city limits?”
    A crowd was gathering out at the edge of the light, people from all around the neighborhood in the darnedest array of sleepwear you ever saw.
    “The County Surveyor says so,” C. P. Snokes said. “You know yourself the city limits is that woven-wire fence that runs along the west side of your property.”
    “Do tell.” Mrs. Dowdel poked at her fire with a big shoe. “You talking white man’s law? I’d say this ancient Kickapoo burial ground was here long before the first so-called pioneers.”
    C. P. Snokes scratched up under his cap. “Mrs. Dowdel, are you telling me you live on an Indian reser—”
    “I reserve the right to protect my property is what I’m telling you. Run that gal in,” Mrs. Dowdel said. “Read her her rights and book her like they do on the television.”
    C. P. Snokes’s flashlight revealed a no-nonsense, heavy-duty patented rabbit trap nearby Barbara Jean. “That’s a mean-lookin’ rabbit trap,” C. P. Snokes said.
    “But legal,” Mrs. Dowdel said.
    “Catch many rabbits?”
    “Caught one tonight,” she said. “Looks like a snowshoe hare.”
    Sure enough, in the flashlight’s beam Barbara Jean looked a lot like a scared white rabbit in plastic hair curlers andshorty pajamas. Her eyes were pink in the glare. Her nose twitched, though she was still too scared to cry.
    C. P. Snokes got a good look at her. “Doggone it, I can’t run her in.”
    “How come?” Mrs. Dowdel said.
    “She’s the Jeeter girl, the doctor’s daughter. And her mama was a—”
    “I know what her mama was,” Mrs. Dowdel said. “Tell her to keep her gal home at night. My motto is, ‘Ready, Fire, Aim.’ Keep that in mind. Next time there won’t be enough of her left to initiate.”
    That pretty well rounded out the night. C. P. Snokes put Barbara Jean in his Dodge. Now she was crying buckets, though he was only taking her home to the Jeeters out on the LaPlace road. The seat of her shorty pajamas hung in tatters. Barbara Jean was crying her eyes out, but she had a good grip on a medium-sized acorn squash.
    Mrs. Dowdel kicked ashes on her embers and went on up to the house, the Winchester over her arm. In these last hours before dawn, the town tried to settle.
    I couldn’t, and was still wide-awake to hear a stealthy foot on the stairs. I peered out of my room just as Phyllis’s form vanished into hers. I followed.
    She nearly jumped over the bed when I turned up there on her heels. Still, she had the sense not to scream. The envelope to a letter she was writing to Elvis Presley was on her table:
    Private Elvis Presley
    “A” Company
    First Medium Tank Battalion
    32nd Regiment
    Fort Hood, Texas.
    She moved between me and it. But I had reason to know she signed all her letters to Elvis,
    Love me tender, Phyllis
    Ruth Ann slept with a night-light. The Elvises loomed over her. The Elvis over Phyllis’s bed glowed in the dark. It was from the
Jailhouse Rock
movie.
    “Close that door,” Phyllis whispered at me. “What are you doing up at this—”
    “The whole town’s up,” I whispered back. “Big doings in the melon patch. Haunts, gunfire, sorority girls, the law. You can’t hear yourself think. We thought you went to bed early.”
    “I did,” Phyllis said, somewhat shifty. “Then I got up and . . . went on a hayride.”
    “I thought the Future Farmers hayride was next weekend.”
    “It is,” Phyllis whispered, not looking me in the eye.
    There were little bits of straw and hay all over her, from her barrettes to her penny loafers.