Christmas Cats: A Literary Companion

Shirley Rousseau Murphy

When Virgie Woods saw that stray cat slinking through the muddy snow, she was so angry with life that she felt nothing more for the thin, starving waif than for a fly on the wall. Not that she'd hurt it, or any living creature—except maybe her worthless brother. Hector Lee deserved a clout on the head or whatever else he got in life. And of course she had no human love for that Worley clan, the young smart-ass hoods who killed her Muffy. Her anger at the world, after Muffy's death, was so overwhelming that it was all she could do to check out books and get through the library's story hours trying to keep her reading voice cheerful and the little kids laughing. Muffy had been the official Greeley Library cat. When he died so terribly, the kids nearly rioted with rage. If Hector Lee'd been here, that day, to watch the library, those Worley boys—surely high on some drug—wouldn't have scooped Muffy up, the little yellow cat being so trusting with everyone…

Leaning over her desk to look out the library window, Virgie felt a shiver of hopelessness, watching the stray cat out in the mud and snow. A white and orange cat, what she could see under the mud that caked its coat. When Virgie moved behind the glass, the cat sprang away and vanished into the bushes.

She waited until it crept out again warily, its stomach dragging. Clearly it was nursing kittens. Grouched in a muddy puddle, it peered out at Main Street as if wanting to race across; it went rigid when it heard a noise in the bushes behind it, and it was gone again. Virgie peered through the window into the bushy shadows, sickened by the cat's thin, bony body under that dirty, matted coat. Despite her bitterness, if that cat was hurt or sick, she knew she'd have to do something about it.

She didn't want to be involved with another cat. Sure not a starving stray and a bunch of sickly kittens. She listened guiltily to the choir down at the church practicing Christmas carols; this holy season, she should be in a more charitable frame of mind. Seemed there was nothing kind left inside her, only anger.

A voice in her head said, That little cat has no one, Virgie. But Virgie didn't want to listen. Her hurt over Muffy's death was a hard lump in her, and seemed all to center on Hector Lee. If he'd just been there in the library that day. Hector Lee was just worthless. He might have abandoned the petty crimes of his youth, but he sure hadn't straightened up. Never had a steady job. And too hardheaded to come live there in the cottage behind the library with her, as a proper brother should in their old age…

Even as she sat thinking about Hector Lee, she saw him going into the jail up the street carrying his bedroll, his backpack slung over his shoulder. Moving in for the coldest part of the winter. Moving in to mooch off the sheriff and the town. Their sheriff was too good natured. From half a block away she could see Hector Lee's week's growth of beard, his muddy shoes and stained, wrinkled khaki pants. Her own brother, choosing to spend the winter in jail.

Though Greeley jail was usually empty, and was better shelter than that windy shack out by the quarry, that was no more than a chicken coop. Sheriff never used those old cells anymore unless the new county jail was full. But why didn't Hector Lee find the gumption to fix up his own place? Glean himself up, too. Shave, try to get a steady job instead of a few odd jobs when the mood took him.

When the cat appeared again, creeping and shivering, she knew it had lived its whole miserable life in a panic of fear and hunger. Well, the cat didn't have a choice. Hector Lee had a choice. Shuddering, Virgie turned away. There were stray cats all over Greeley, wild cats that refused to be tamed; and half-wild farm cats that lived fine on mice and rats. Folks in Greeley believed that if you fed a mouser it wouldn't hunt. That without hungry stray cats, the rats would come right out of the woods and overrun the town. Well it was true Greeley's old brick buildings, the courthouse and stores and library, had plenty of holes in the foundations where mice and rats liked to invade; buildings dating from the war between the states; the library and her little cottage went back to the time of Sherman's march through Farley County burning and killing. When she dug her bit of garden in the spring, to plant her vegetables, she would find hand-cast lead balls from their old muzzle loaders.

Somehow Sherman had missed burning Greeley. Folks told some wild stories about that; some said Greeley had just vanished from the map until Sherman passed on by, headed for Atlanta, then the town appeared again, to keep on fighting the north. Some said the stray cats around Greeley had all appeared at that time, so many stray cats all with bright orange eyes the color of Sherman's fires.

Well, this was a southern town; its stories were cherished, as they should be. A wealth of southern folklore passed down the generations; that was why southern literature was so rich, Virgie thought—southern children sitting on the porches listening to their elders' tales, generation after generation, growing up to tell their own stories.

Virgie's life as Greeley's librarian was more a labor of love than a living. Oh, she had her social security, and the little old cottage the town provided was rent free. Four rooms just behind the library, small and dingy but cozy enough. Every few years the women of the library board got someone to paint it for her, but the paint never did much good, the dark stains of smoke from the woodstove bled right through again.

Beneath the window the cat started away across the yard, its belly dragging the trampled snow. Where were her kittens? Virgie wondered if that big old tomcat had killed them. Maybe that was why she was so nervous. So much killing, at Christmas time. That tomcat—biggest cat she'd ever seen, hanging around real bold, not staying out in the woods like most of the wild ones. Most all tomcats would kill kittens. Virgie stared up at the ceiling as if she could see right through to the sky and to the face of her maker, wondering why He had, in His infinite wisdom, made tomcats to kill innocent kittens?

But she knew why.

"Away in a Manger" rang along Main Street, the choir's sweet voices lifting Virgie up for a moment, reaching in to ease her anger. It was less than a week until Christmas. She remembered the Italian legend about one little kitten born under Christ's manger, and she thought about putting out some scraps for this poor mama. How could that mama cat hunt for food when it was weak from hunger and from nursing kittens? Virgie imagined those kittens—if they were still alive—their little pansy faces…

After Muffy died, and the town's children settled down from their tears and shouting, they had brought a succession of farm kittens around to the library hoping she'd take a shine to one, that they'd have another library cat. She'd shaken her head, and turned them all away.

But Muffy had had a good life, eighteen years coddled and loved by the whole town. It was a badge of achievement, in this backwoods town, for a cat to live right in the library among the books. Well, it was a badge of achievement for Greeley to have a library. Except, this was the county seat. Muffy had been petted by her readers and fed tidbits by the children; it was special indeed for a cat to be mourned in a long procession of village children and buried, with a headstone, in the library garden.

Below her, the cat seemed easier now. It sat down in the mud and began to wash. Watching it with a strange, unwanted longing, Virgie shook herself. The morning was getting on, it was almost ten, time to open up. Saturdays were busy with children checking out books.

In his cell, Hector Lee folded the jail blanket neatly at the foot of the cot next to his bedroll. He liked this corner cell, it was the biggest, and was nice and light. The warmest, too, being right under the overhead heat vent. Sheriff would let him keep it unless county jail got full and they sent over a bunch of no goods. Then Sheriff d move men in with him. He hated that, hated sharing with young, smart-ass studs. If it came to that, he'd move back out to his shack beside the quarry even if it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a bull. His old board shack, no matter how much scrap wood he nailed on the sides or how much scrap he burnt in the woodstove, scrap he toted from the sawmill that they'd throwed away, it was cold as a frozen outhouse. He looked down the short hall between the three cells and the office. At the end of the hall, over the clock, Sheriff had put up a couple branches of white pine decorated with red paper bells. Down the street, the choir was practicing… Oh comeje, oh comeje, to Bethlehem. …

On Christmas Day, Hector Lee knew, Virgie would bring him a fine dinner; he always looked forward to that. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberries, all the makings. And a whole, big, homemade punkin' pie just for him. Oh, his sister could cook, even if she was a librarian and so stiff and proper. Pie so good, made you think you'd died and went to heaven.

Well, it felt real good to tuck up in his old cell. He'd made it legal, so not to get Sheriff in trouble, had stole half a dozen cans of beans from the corner market, enough to get arrested proper. Sheriff never locked Hector Lee's cell door. He could still go out to do odd jobs, if it weren't too cold, shovel snow from folks' walks, and the like. Lookin' out his barred window he could see Virgie at the library window; she'd be lookin' over here cluck-clucking because he'd moved into his old cell for the winter.

Except, she wasn't lookin' over to the jail, she was leaning over, her forehead against the glass, peering down at the muddy ground. At first, he couldn't make out what she was looking at. Then something moved—a skinny cat, sitting in the mud washing its paws. Seemed like a waste of time washing paws that would be muddy again the minute the cat set them down. But then the cat stopped washing, and looked around toward the bushes.

And there, toddling unsteadily out to press against the cat, was a might of a kitten.

The mama cat looked to be orange with white markings, what you could see under the mud. Kitten, though, it was bright orange and white and black, pretty as a hound pup.

Was there only the one kitten? He couldn't see no more hiding in the bushes. Likely that ole tomcat had got em. So that was why it'd been hanging around: kill the kits, get the female to come back in heat. Big old battered tomcat the color of scrub water. He'd seen it outside the courthouse and in the alley turning over garbage cans, strong and bold as a dog, seen it snatch food from the trash behind the diner. Seen it tear up a couple of pet cats, too, and attack Miss Millie Severn's little lap dog. He heard that Millie'd loaded her husband's shotgun and swore she'd kill the beast. That tomcat didn't look to be a critter a person'd want to get friendly with, great big dirty white cat with brownish streaks, head as wide as a road scraper. Orange eyes that blazed at a person like lightning flash.

He watched Virgie come out of the library door with a bowl in her hand and kneel down in the snow a few yards from the crouching female and its kit. That was Virgie, couldn't resist mothering a stray. His sister had a giving heart—too giving. Bake him pies, then try to lure him to living all proper in that cottage with her, smothered like a beast in a cage. The shadows were growing heavy, starting to get dark; dusk came quick in the winter. Virgie was very still, watching the thin cat and its kit.

Well, that cat weren't about to come to her, she should know that. Them wild ones, you couldn't get near 'em. When the cat didn't move but only stared at the food, Virgie finally set the bowl down, rose, and went back up the steps and inside. Hector Lee shook his head. Too bad. Virgie, all unknowing, had set a trap for that cat. That wild mother was foolish to let down her guard, to be distracted by a human. Tomcat would drive her off, kill the kit, and, for good measure, take the supper Virgie'd left. Hector Lee watched 'till it was too dark to see. Turned away when Sheriff brought him his own supper, a burger and fries from the diner. Sheriff was as portly as his three deputies, his uniform tight across his belly, from good eating; though his face was sharp planed and determined; Hector'd seen him take down a few mean ones with a single, hard blow. Sheriff handed him the Styrofoam box. "Surprised Virgie didn't bring you a bowl of bean soup, Hector Lee, this cold night."

"I expect she doesn't know I'm here, yet," Hector Lee said, seeing Virgie's shadow at the dark library window again, still looking out at the stray cats. Hardly touching his burger, he searched the darkness for the tomcat, feeling his heart quicken. Tomcat mean as a human killer out there stalking that helpless female and her kit.

Virgie might call him worthless, but he had a tender spot or two—not that he liked to show Virgie. He watched until it was too dark to see. Over at the church, the choir was practicing, Noel, Noel…

Turning from the bars, Hector Lee tied into his cooling burger and fries, wishing he had a double chocolate malted. He finished quickly, stuffed his napkin into the Styrofoam box, shoved it out onto the hall floor, and curled up in his bedroll warm and comfortable. He liked the feel of solid brick walls around him, sure didn't miss the icy wind whipping through the cracks of his own thin wooden walls. In the quiet jail, serenaded by Christmas carols, Hector Lee slept.

He slept thus for three nights, peaceful and long, his thin belly filled with burgers and fries, and then, when Virgie knew he was there, her good beef stew and apple pie, and then her Brunswick stew and pecan pie and ice cream. No matter how she disapproved of the way he lived, he was her brother, her only family, and she relished doing for him. Each night when she appeared at the jail, pulling open the cell door and handing him his supper, she'd tell him about the little cat and kit.

"They're coming up the porch steps now, Hector Lee.

After dark. They're eating from the bowl right there on the top step. Remember our cats, when we were kids? Remember we had a little calico, a lot like this little kit?"

He remembered. He thought there was no need to mention the tomcat that was prowling, no need to distress her. He didn't understand why that cat had, so far, left those two alone. Maybe it was afraid to go so near the house, but that seemed strange, bold as it was. Hector Lee, rolled in his bedroll thinking about them cats, felt real peaceful hearing Christmas carols fill the dark. That music warmed him with a happy haze that embarrassed him, for its soft foolishness.

By the end of the week, Virgie said she'd enticed that mama cat and kit right up on the porch beside the rocking chairs. Hector Lee said, "Then that ain't no wild stray, Virgie, somewhere along, that cat's lived with folks."

"Whatever the case," Virgie said stubbornly, "I'm set on taming them."

Hector Lee thought he might ought to tell her about the tomcat; but he didn't. They were sitting on the bunk in his cell, Virgie pretending to be at ease there. "There's only the one kit, surely. That's all the mama ever brings, Hector Lee. Just that one bright orange and black and white princess." Virgie laughed. "That's how I think of her. And that little kit's eyes, they're as big and green as emeralds."

Well, Hector Lee thought, the tomcat had stayed away so far. Maybe it had gone off somewhere, maybe the mother cat and her kit would stay lucky.

It was the fifth night, just after Virgie had taken Hector Lee over a plate of baked pork chops and apple dumpling and sat with him for a while in the chill cell that, coming home, the cat and kit followed her up her steps and right on inside her cottage. She was afraid of frightening them; but when she opened the door, hardly breathing, they followed her right on in, never made a bobble, just plopped down on the rug and looked up at her. She swallowed, and stepped to the kitchen alcove, leaving the front door cracked open so the cat wouldn't feel trapped. She cut up her pork chop that she'd kept warm in the pan, blew on it until it cooled, and put it on a plate on the rug.

When the mama and baby both began to gobble bits of pork chop, Virgie sat down at the table and ate her plate of dumplings. The cats finished eating and curled up together on the rug, the kitten falling deeply asleep as if it was exhausted, the mama jerking awake every few minutes, at any smallest sound from out beyond the front door. Virgie stayed at the table for nearly an hour, reluctant to move and frighten them. She rose at last, did up the dishes as quietly as she could. Only when she tried closing the door, did the cat panic. Quickly she opened it again, pushed in a stout shoe to keep it open, and fixed the burglar chain in place. That chain wouldn't keep anyone out, but the little town didn't have much theft. Crime in Greeley revolved around bigger issues: pot farms hidden back in the hills because there wasn't much call for moonshine anymore; drug smuggling coming through their little county airport headed for dealers in Atlanta. Matters that wouldn't have to do with an unlocked cottage door. Besides, with the sheriff just up the street, she felt safe enough. Putting on her flannel gown, Virgie went to bed. Heavy frost covered her windows.

She got up twice during the night to look into the living room where the cats still slept, curled together. The third time she woke, the cat was up and pacing, staring at the window. Not until it settled down again, did Virgie go back to bed. It was that night while Virgie slept that, across at the jail, Sheriff roused Hector Lee from sleep.

The time, by the jailhouse clock, was three A.M. Before Hector Lee knew what was happening, Sheriff shoved three men into his cell, and slammed and locked the door. Sheriff stood for a minute looking in. "I'm sorry, Hector Lee. You can sure come on out, right now. Can go on home, or over to Virgie's for the night, maybe."

Hector Lee looked at the young, half-drunk, belligerent Worley brothers slumped on the other three bunks. Rod and Jude scowled. Randy Worley was tense and angry, glaring at Hector Lee hungering for a fight. Old Hayden Worley's boys. Mean as snakes. Across the hall, the other two cells held two Worley cousins, and an uncle and a second cousin. Hector Lee looked over his three cellmates, and knew he'd be smart to leave. But, waked up in the middle of the night by this scum, he felt as mean and contrary as the Worleys looked. "I'll stay here, Sheriff."

"Come on out of there, Hector Lee."

Stubbornly Hector Lee sat down on his bedroll. Sheriff gave him a look, touched his side arm as if to force Hector Lee out, but then he scowled and turned away. Randy Worley waited until the sheriff had gone on into his office, then he jerked Hector Lee off his bunk. "You'll sleep on the floor, old man."

"You don't need my bunk, Randy."

Randy stretched out on Hector Lee's bedroll and yawned. Hector Lee jerked him up and got in two hard punches before Randy had him down, beating on him.

He woke on a cot in the sheriffs office, his jaw and eye hurting bad. His side felt like raw meat. When he moved, that pained him so, he hoped a rib weren't broke. He must have moaned, because Sheriff turned in his swivel chair. "How you feel, Hector Lee?"

"I've been better." Shivering, he looked up at the barred office window. The dawn light was cold and gray.

"There's a glass of water there on the file cabinet, Hector Lee. And some aspirin." Sheriff rose and shook out three aspirin for him, handed them to him with the water. Leaning painfully up on one elbow, Hector Lee swallowed them down.

"Try to get some sleep," Sheriff said. "I don't…" The phone rang and he turned back to the desk. Hector Lee rolled over real careful facing the wall where the light wasn't in his eyes, and pulled the blanket up. He meant to go back to sleep but the sheriffs conversation held him listening.

"… plane must have landed around midnight. One of my deputies lives out there but was on duty. Got home around one, the plane was tied down, the field empty. He'd passed the boys' car on the road. He called in, and took off after them. Half an hour before we found them. Not a thing in the car, they've stashed it somewhere. Deputies are out looking. If you have a drug dog free, to send up here…" Sheriff listened, and made a grunting sound in his throat. "Well, hell. Guess that's more important." He listened again, then, "If these punks won't talk, and we don't have the stash by noon I'll call you, see if you can pull a dog off for two or three hours."

He listened, then, "Well, yeah, a lot of farms and open country, but they didn't have time to go far. This isn't a very big town, maybe we'll get lucky."

Sheriffs last words before he hung up the phone were disgust that his jail was full of scum on Christmas Eve morning. Hector Lee was drifting off when the sheriff left the jail. He heard him talking with a deputy, then heard the front door slam. His dreams were filled with the hurts he'd been dealt, and, strangely, with the sweet voices of the Greeley choir—as if the two elements were engaged in some fierce battle. He woke with the sun in his eyes through the barred window, and the Worley boys banging their shoes on the bars shouting for breakfast. A deputy, sitting at the desk, looked around at Hector Lee. His thin black hair was slicked back, pink scalp showing through, his cheeks pink from shaving. "You going on back to your place, Hector Lee? You can't move into the office for the winter," he said, grinning.

Hector Lee didn't answer.

"Calling for more snow. By tonight, temperature'll be down around zero." Deputy watched him. "It's Christmas Eve morning, Hector Lee. You could sleep in Virgie's garage for a few nights, until we can make room in county jail for those punks."

Hector Lee swung off the cot. "You fetching some breakfast for those snakes?" he asked hopefully.

The deputy laughed, and rose. "Ham and eggs?" Hector Lee nodded. He was rolling up his bedroll, and the deputy not back yet with breakfast, when Virgie came for him.

"I need you to come help me, Hector Lee. It's the little cat, the stray. There's a tomcat started hanging around. I'm afraid he's set to kill the kitten. I thought maybe you could… maybe trap it? Or borrow a shotgun? A big, mean-looking tomcat, all scarred up from fighting and killing."

Hector Lee said nothing, just stood looking out the window waiting for the deputy, listening to his stomach growl.

"Hector Lee? I have bacon in the skillet and sourdough pancakes…"

Hector Lee looked at Virgie. Well, he might could go on over there, just for a bit of breakfast.

He followed Virgie through the snow and mud thinking about her good sourdough pancakes slathered with molasses. But he sure didn't want to shoot no tomcat. Heading around behind the library to her cottage, Virgie said, "Gat wanted to go out this morning. Real insistent, guess she wanted to hunt. Herded her kit right out, I couldn't keep them in. Maybe she's back now, she… there," she said, pulling him back.

In the shadows by the door, the cat and kit were crouched and watchful. Hector Lee stood still as Virgie went on up the steps like nothin' was different. But before she could reach for the knob, the cat looked past her at Hector Lee and was gone, her kit beside her. Hitting the end of the porch they disappeared around the side of the house, among the bushes.

Virgie looked back at him helplessly, both of them thinking of the tomcat. He followed her in through the house and sat down at the kitchen table. She cooked his pancakes, distracted, kept looking out the window. Hector said, "Cat won't come, with a stranger here. I'd best…"

"She'll come," Virgie said. "Be patient. Eat your breakfast." She looked at Hector Lee. "Jail's full of those Worleys, Hector Lee. They killed my Muffy. Oh, I hate that family. They're dangerous. And it's too cold for you to go back to your place, you don't want to freeze to death all alone, on Christmas Eve."

Hector Lee grinned at that. Virgie said no more; and before he knew it, they were outside again, bundled up, looking for the mama cat and her kit. "Maybe she'll come to the house while we're gone," Virgie said. "Maybe I can come back alone and get her inside."

Hector Lee followed her wondering what he was doing out in the muddy snow freezing his tail looking for stray cats. "Twice last week," Virgie said, "I saw them go in the garage. You stay here, let me have a look." She went in through the side door and shut it, so the cat wouldn't run out. Hector Lee didn't know what good that would do, the garage door didn't fit tight, you could drag a steer under that door. He stood shivering in the snow, his boots wet, his feet freezing, his mind filled with cold thoughts. How much need a fellow do, just to earn breakfast? He could hear her inside, moving stuff. If them cats were in there, that would chase them out. He waited for near ten minutes, then Virgie opened the door a crack. "Come in quick, they're in here somewhere, I heard a rustling and a little thump."

Inside, he could see three clean squares in the dust of the cement floor, over in the corner where she'd moved some boxes. "Put your hand in here behind these other boxes, Hector Lee, these rags back in here are warm. They must've been sleeping here when I opened the door. She might even have born her kittens here."

He looked behind the boxes, reached in and felt the dirty rags. They were warm, all right, and smelled of young animals. Virgie said, "I guess she's been coming in here all along. Maybe that tomcat is too skittish to come inside. I'd best put those boxes back, or she'll be really upset." The boxes she'd moved were neatly labeled: Old towels. Cancelled checks. Turkey roaster. He remembered family dinners when they were kids, a twenty-five-pound turkey sizzling brown in that roaster. Virgie didn't have cause no more to cook a big turkey dinner. Undoing the four flaps of a box lid, she looked in at packets of bank statements and cancelled checks held together with rubber bands. "Years old. These can go in the fireplace."

But then, frowning, she lifted out a canvas bag from beside the bales of checks. "I don't…"A sound made them turn.

The tomcat stood in the middle of the garage, looking at them. He did not look friendly. If he'd been any bigger, a fellow would want to back off. Virgie had opened her mouth to say something, when the female appeared on the shelf above the torn, looking down at him. Everyone was still. Then the mama cat jumped down, chirruped to her kitten, and the two of them waltzed past the tomcat, not inches from him; sauntering to the corner, they leaped over the boxes and settled down in their nest. The tomcat sat looking after them, his body and tail softly relaxed, his purr loud and ragged. Virgie smiled.

"I never," Virgie said softly. "That's his little family. Not a tomcat in a thousand would do like that." Satisfied that the tomcat meant no harm, she set the canvas bag on the workbench and opened it, frowning at a tumble of small plastic bags.

"Rock salt," Virgie said. "But we haven't made ice cream…" Her eyes widened.

"Not rock salt," Hector Lee said softly, looking at the stash. "Better open the rest of them cartons… No, second thought, better not."

Twenty minutes later Virgie had the female cat and her kit inside the house, settled down with a bowl of cat food. She had just picked them both up from their nest, real bold and gentle like, and carried them right out, before the sheriff and four deputies arrived to take pictures and lift fingerprints and count the bags of crack. Leaving the law to their work, and with the state drug unit on the way, Virgie and Hector Lee sat at her kitchen table drinking coffee, eating her good punkin' pie, watching the two cats settle in, and listening to the choir's sweet voices, Hark! the Herald Angels. . . . The tomcat had disappeared.

Tomcat showed up again hours later, when the law had finished in the garage and gone away. It was just dusk. Outside, all was quiet, no music now. Already folk were heading for the church. Soon most of Greeley would be crowding in for the service—there would be grand music, then. It was truly Christmas Eve; and when they looked out the window, there stood the tomcat, staring in at them.

Handing the kit to Hector Lee, and picking up the mama cat in her arms, Virgie opened the door. She let him see the female, then she stood aside.

Tomcat, he looked up at the scrawny little female, and he looked at Virgie. And without a by-your-leave he walked up onto the porch past Virgie as bold as Sherman himself, and right on into the house. Followed Virgie and the little female right on into the kitchen where Virgie poured him a saucer of cream off the top of the milk jug. Fresh thick cream.

That was the way the mama cat and her kit and that ole tomcat moved in with Virgie. And that cat, he helped the mama take care of their kit and teach it to hunt, as gentle as a person could want. Virgie said, "I guess, once in a while, you find a tomcat like that." Hector Lee, he moved in, too, into Virgie's spare bedroom. All of a sudden Virgie Woods wasn't alone anymore. And, it being Christmas Eve and all, Virgie thought that was the way a southern story should end. With family coming in out of the cold together, the spicy smell of Christmas baking, the turkey roaster waiting all scrubbed to take a fresh turkey, and holy music filling the night brighter than Sherman's fires ever blazed.

As for them Worley boys, there was no Christmas Eve charity for that bunch. The DEA boys packed 'em off to Atlanta, and no one in Greeley, that Christmas Eve nor ever after, was sorry to see them go.