The Last Noel by Michael Malone Read Free Book Online

did I do wrong this time?!”
    A little while later Wade stormed back outside and bolted down the porch stairs. Noni now sat in the swing that was hung by chains from a high bough on a huge oak near the driveway. Standing behind her, Kaye pushed on the wooden seat. Noni was laughing with her hands over her mouth.
    Wade growled, “What's so funny?”
    She shook her head, laughed harder and harder.
    Wade picked up river pebbles from the driveway and gratuitously hurled them at the two doves sitting, as usual, in the dogwood near the house. Then Noni and Kaye watched as he flung himself into his Mustang and went squealing away fishtailing, tires spitting gravel behind him, unaware of the stickers on either side of his front bumper—IMPEACH NIXON and STOP THE WAR.
    Noni couldn’t stop laughing. “Asshole,” Kaye said, mimicking Wade's furious stomping around the yard flinging pebbles.
    â€œDon’t make me laugh, or I’ll, I’ll…”
    â€œPee?”
    â€œYes!” She couldn’t believe she’d admitted that. She ran off and left him. When she returned, he got off the swing and sat her back down in it. Pushing hard with her feet, she began to pull herself back and forth.
    Kaye grabbed both chains. “Hang on!” He hauled the swing back, further and further, high over his head, as high as it could go, until Noni was almost tilted out of the seat. “Kaye, stop!”
    â€œHang on!”
    Then Kaye pushed hard, running forward as fast as he could. Noni felt his shoulder against her back, and suddenly her body remembered the sharp feel of his bone as he’d raced her down the hill on the red sled so long ago.
    Now he was running all the way beneath her swing, pushing her as hard as he could when he ducked beneath. She arced skyward, legs pumping, laughing, free.

    In the wide front hall of Heaven's Hill there were willow baskets of poinsettias lining the parquet floor and holly wreaths with plaid bows on the doors. Christmas cards hung from swags of white pine on the banister. Presents from guests had piled up on the green leather bench and on the cherry console. Chocolates in gold boxes, champagne in silver boxes, a camellia in red foil. Noni placed Kaye's candies among the gifts between the little pear tree and the blue antique Chinese jar.
    As they moved together toward the living room, Kaye felt himself pulling inward, making himself completely still in the way he had always tried to do whenever confronted with something he wasn’t sure of. He felt Noni sense this tightening as she took his arm. At first he resisted her, but then his muscles relaxed beneath her hand.
    Gently she squeezed his arm. “Don’t worry about it if you don’t know anybody. They’re mostly jerks anyhow.”
    He mugged in his cocky way. “You’re the worrier. You’re the one hid under the covers the night I met you.”
    â€œI did not.”
    â€œYou’re the one was scared to sled down the hill.”
    She smiled, happy to feel close to him again in their old joking way. “I was not. You wanted to quit before I did.”
    Kaye looked into the living room of Heaven's Hill, smoky and crowded with white people, mostly middle-aged. He wagged his eyebrows, grinning, and spoke again with the bravado of that alien Philadelphia “street” voice. “Hey, long as they don’t sic their dogs on me, long as they don’t call in the Fuzz, they don’t worry me at all.”
    â€œMost people aren’t like you say.” She felt she had to protest. “My parents’ friends aren’t like you say.”
    â€œSure they are.”
    Swarming out of the living room with its tall windows and old Persian rugs rushed a loud hum of laughing voices. Two small children sat at the grand piano banging on the keys until a woman in taffeta bell-bottom pants ran over, slapped them on the hands, and pulled them crying away. Another