“Oh. Well, that’s good, then. What kind of crime do you have in Dry Creek?”

  Les had never thought he’d be sitting on an old log behind a girl’s house at his age. And if he had pictured himself doing something like that, he’d certainly never expected to be spending the time telling her about the crime life in Dry Creek. And even if he’d seen all those other things coming, he would never, ever have expected to be enjoying it so much. He liked watching her eyes while he told her stories.

  Chapter Six

  Marla didn’t know why the deputy sheriff didn’t just put handcuffs on Sammy and escort him into church. Or brand his forehead with a T for thief. She had expected Les to check to be sure that Sammy showed up in Mrs. Hargrove’s Sunday-school class, but she hadn’t expected him to wait for them in front of the church.

  Les wasn’t even standing on the porch or near the Nativity set like the other church people. There was no mistaking his interest for being social rather than business. He was pacing back and forth on the edge of the street, clearly waiting for them. He looked so official everyone must notice it. Especially because, Marla saw as she got closer to him, he was wearing his khaki sheriff’s uniform.

  She’d never even seen Les in a uniform until now. He never wore a uniform when he walked around Dry Creek. That alone should tell people he was working. It certainly made a statement to her.

  Marla kept her back straight. She didn’t want people to think she was bothered at being on the business end of a sheriff’s concern. After all, Sammy was making amends. They had nothing to be ashamed of.

  “He’s not in a suit,” Sammy muttered. He was walking on one side of Marla and Becky was on the other. “And he’s the sheriff.”

  “He’s got his uniform on. And he’s the temporary sheriff,” Marla said. She didn’t know why that made a difference to her, but it did. It meant that someday when Les Wilkerson passed her on the streets of Dry Creek he wouldn’t be obliged to greet her just because he had her son in some kind of casual probation situation. He wouldn’t need to be an official keeper of her son’s schedule. He’d be able to choose whether or not he wanted to be their friend. He might even change out of his uniform when he planned to meet her.

  “He’s wearing boots. Why can’t I get boots?” Sammy continued.

  Marla took note of Sammy’s comment with hope. His amigos didn’t wear cowboy boots. Of course, they didn’t wear suits, either, and that was Sammy’s biggest complaint this morning.

  Not that she blamed him about the suit. She could blame him for other things, but not for that. She’d bought both of their suits at a discount store in the garment district of downtown Los Angeles so they’d have something appropriate to wear for Jorge’s funeral. And she hated the black suit she had on even more than Sammy disliked his suit.

  After Jorge’s funeral she’d vowed never to wear her suit again. The thing made her look like a crow. She’d noticed that fact when she looked in the mirror after the funeral. It was the worst day of her life, and all she could do was think of the crows in the cemetery where they had buried Jorge. She’d been struck at the time how much her black suit made her look like them, all squawky and ugly and sitting on lone branches in those trees, each one spread out so they were all by themselves looking fierce and protective of their aloneness.

  The suit didn’t just make her look like a crow, it made her feel like one, too.

  She had almost given the suit to the Salvation Army before she moved up to Dry Creek, and now she wished she had. The only other thing resembling a dress she even had in her closet was a south-of-the-border senorita skirt-and-blouse set. She couldn’t wear that to church here, though, so if she hadn’t had the black suit, she could truthfully have told herself she had nothing to wear and maybe she could have justified staying home. Instead, she was left with trying to make that suit look better with a coffee-colored tank top and a black pearl necklace. She’d even found a gold circle brooch to wear on the lapel.

  She wasn’t sure any of it softened the suit enough, and she had finally given up. Maybe if she went for the grim look, people would stare at her instead of spending so much time studying Sammy, anyway.

  “You’re here,” Les said when Marla and her children came within speaking distance.

  Marla nodded with a quick look at the assortment of people gathered at the steps leading into the church. “We said we’d be here. It’s our agreement.”

  Not for the first time, she wished Sammy hadn’t stolen something from a church. Of course, she wished mostly that he had never stolen anything from anywhere, but if he had to steal, why a church? She’d rather have to volunteer for a school function or even put in some hours at the local hardware store. But a church? She didn’t know anything about churches. The truth was they scared her a little bit.

  She’d certainly never expected to have a sheriff’s escort when she entered the church in Dry Creek for the first time.

  Everyone was watching her and the kids as they walked up to the steps leading into the building. She wondered if she had “visitor” stamped on her forehead. If she did, it probably said “official visitor—sentence being served.”

  “Welcome,” a man said, dipping his hat to her as she walked past.

  “Good to see you here,” another added with a smile.

  Fortunately, Les reached Marla’s side about then and he ushered her through the rest of the people standing on the church steps. Marla didn’t know what she would say to any of them if they asked her if she knew what had happened to the missing shepherd. Of course, they might not even need to ask the question if they thought about Les escorting them into the church in full uniform.

  Marla didn’t know how a man could be so self-contained. Les didn’t look as if he was doing his duty this morning, but he didn’t look relaxed, either. He nodded to various people, but he had his hand on her elbow and he was guiding her up the stairs.

  Marla would have paid good money to know what was going on in that head of his. He’d cut his hair since she’d seen him earlier in the week. And he was wearing some cologne that smelled good. He gave everyone a smooth smile, but his eyes looked a little anxious. She hoped he wasn’t worried that Sammy would back out of his agreement. Sammy had his problems, it was true, but he didn’t go back on his word. At least, she didn’t think he did.

  Marla sighed. She needed to face the fact that she didn’t know her son very well anymore.

  Les wondered for the first time if it was such a good thing to have suggested some service to the church as a way for Sammy to make amends for taking the shepherd. Marla and the kids all looked as if they were facing a judge. Or an executioner. He’d liked the way Marla looked in the bathrobe better than he did in this suit of hers. Maybe the suit material was scratchy and that’s why she held herself so stiffly. She might have been annoyed with him when she answered her door in her bathrobe the other morning, but she’d looked happier then than she did now.

  “Mrs. Hargrove will tell you how to do everything,” Les said to Sammy as he motioned for the boy to continue up the walk ahead of him. “You might even surprise yourself and have fun.”

  “He’s not supposed to have fun,” Marla said as she stepped closer so only Les could hear her words. “He’s supposed to learn a lesson.”

  “Well, it doesn’t need to be painful. Mrs. Hargrove likes to keep things happy in her class. There’s lots of singing and stories.”

  “So I could take my suit jacket off?” Sammy asked as he looked up at Les. “I don’t want to scare any little kids.”

  “You’ll wear the suit jacket,” Marla said.

  Les lifted his hands in surrender. “Your mom’s the one with the say here.”

  “Nobody wears a suit,” Sammy mumbled. “It’s lame.”

  Les shrugged. “They say it makes you look older.”

  Sammy looked up at him skeptically. “Old enough to be dead maybe.”

  “I’m just repeating what the girls say.”

  “Then why don’t you have a suit on?”

  Les wondered suddenly if he should have a suit on. Marla was wearing a suit. Her son was wearing a suit. Maybe she expected everyone to be wearing suits. That’s probably the way it was in Los Angeles. Suddenly he was unsure of himself. He’d put on his uniform because it was the most dressy thing he owned. But maybe it had been a mistake.

  “Don’t talk that way to the sheriff,” Marla scolded Sammy quietly. “It’s none of our business how he’s dressed.”

  Les looked down at his khaki slacks. They were clean. And pressed. He even wore his regulation dark tie with his uniform shirt. He looked at the other men who stood around the Nativity set. No one there was wearing a suit or a uniform. Of course, Pastor Matthew would wear a suit. But he would probably be the only man in the church building wearing one. Unless anyone counted Sammy. Les had a spurt of empathy for the boy.

  “Hey, what happened to the shepherd?” one of the ranch hands from the Elkton place called over to Les when he was at the top of the stairs. “He was the only figure in the whole Nativity set that I can relate to and he isn’t here.”

  Several ranch hands were standing around the Nativity set admiring it. Les could see where one of them had brought in a bale of straw to scatter around the manger. Mary was surrounded by the stuff.

  “The shepherd got a bit damaged,” Les said. He was speaking, but people were looking at the space where the shepherd had been. He was grateful to have the attention off himself. “Don’t worry, though. We’re fixing him up. He’ll be better than new before you know it.”

  “That angel needs to be rehung,” another ranch hand said. “She’s going to fall if we don’t do something.”

  Les nodded. Sammy had called it right. “Maybe we can get a ladder from the hardware store after church and restring her.”

  Marla had been holding her breath when Les was talking to the men. She was surprised the other men didn’t ask more questions about how the shepherd had been damaged. But they seemed to trust that Les was taking care of whatever was wrong. She hoped the rest of the people in the church were as easily satisfied about the shepherd.

  Someone rang a bell and suddenly everyone was walking up the steps into the church. Marla was grateful that Les hung back and walked with her and the children instead of going ahead with the other men.

  Marla relaxed as soon as she walked into the church. There, at the front, was a large wooden cross. It reminded her of the one she had at home. It was made of the same hard polished wood. She wondered if the people here knew what Jorge had discovered by looking at his cross in his dying days.

  The air smelled of pine—someone had placed a big Christmas tree in front of the church, off to the left side. There was a piano on the right side and a young blond woman sat at it playing a Christmas hymn. The notes sounded full and smooth.

  “The adults have a class up here,” Les said. He seemed to be nodding a greeting to a dozen people while he talked to her. “Mrs. Hargrove will take Sammy and Becky down to her class.”

  “But shouldn’t I be with them?”

  “Ma,” Sammy protested. “You don’t need to come.”

  “They’ll be fine with Mrs. Hargrove. And don’t worry about Becky. Mrs. Hargrove already suggested she might like her class better than the one for the younger kids, especially if Sammy is there. Here comes Mrs. Hargrove now.”

  Marla knew the children would be okay with the older woman. She was just so used to having them with her. She wondered if she would be okay without them.

  Mrs. Hargrove greeted everyone and pointed the children in the direction of a doorway before Marla finished wondering what she should do. She relaxed when even Becky seemed unconcerned that Marla wasn’t going with them. Her children were growing up.

  “The kids’ classes are in the basement,” Les said as he nodded to the nearest row of pews. “The adults sit up here in comfort.”

  The pews were the same smooth wood as the cross, but Marla wasn’t sure she would be comfortable even if the pews had deep cushions. As a child, church people had given her family charity baskets, but they had never invited them to come to their churches. If Marla had to be in a church at all, she would like to be in the back row so she could duck out if she discovered she wasn’t welcome.

  Unfortunately, Les wasn’t gesturing toward the back row. And so Marla reluctantly walked with him to the front pew.

  “I’m not used to churches,” Marla said quietly as Les waited for her to enter the aisle space before him. “They make me a little nervous that I’ll do something out of place.”

  “Don’t worry. You can’t make any mistakes,” Les said as she sat on the pew and he joined her.

  “I brought something for the offering plate. It’s not much, but—”

  “You don’t need to put anything in the plate.”

  “I can afford to give something to the church.”

  Marla wondered how everyone could be so relaxed and friendly to everyone else. She’d already been given more welcoming smiles than she’d ever seen in Los Angeles. In ways the small town of Dry Creek reminded her of the town in Mexico where her mother had grown up. Marla had spent a couple of weeks with one of her aunts there when she was a teenager. People had the same unconscious interest in a stranger there as they did in Dry Creek. In Los Angeles, no one looked at strangers. Here, everyone looked her in the eye and greeted her.

  “Surely some of them know about Sammy and the shepherd,” Marla said, her voice low so only Les could hear.

  “I doubt it. Mrs. Hargrove can keep a secret, and she’ll see that Charley and Elmer watch their tongues, too.”

  Marla relaxed. Maybe things would work out for them in Dry Creek, after all. Maybe she was worrying too much. Maybe people were more tolerant here than she expected.

  The pastor stood up then and walked to the front of the pews, opening his Bible on the way.

  Marla had never heard the story of the young Mary before. Oh, she knew all about the baby Jesus being born in a manger and the angel proclaiming the good news to the shepherds. Anyone who received Christmas cards knew that much. But she had never heard anyone talk about how Mary must have felt when she was pregnant and had to ride that donkey off into a new land just to satisfy some bureaucrat someplace.

  Marla had never expected to feel kinship with someone in the Bible. She thought all those people had lived golden lives where they floated on clouds and lived the special sweat-free lives of saints. She had never imagined Mary would possibly have had morning sickness. Or felt fat, just as Marla had felt during both her pregnancies.

  As the pastor spoke, Marla got a vivid picture of how awkward everything must have been for Mary. There was no hot water in the manger. Not even a bed to lie down on. Marla knew firsthand how it felt to not even have basic furniture. And to be a woman in a strange land. She knew about that, too.

  Marla might not be pregnant right now, but she, like Mary, knew the uncertainty that children brought to a woman’s life. She didn’t know for sure what to do with Sammy. He didn’t seem to want her sympathy and support. Marla really identified with Mary, though, when she realized that Mary had also needed to trust a man with her deepest secret.

  Marla looked over at Les when the pastor talked about how vulnerable Mary must have felt, knowing Joseph could judge her harshly. He not only knew her secret; he also controlled her future.

  Les wouldn’t be a bad person to trust, Marla supposed. Although she couldn’t help but notice he was scowling at the man who had sat down on the other side of her. This was the same man who had greeted her outside at the Nativity set, and he seemed harmless enough. There, the man smiled at her again. She could see Les’s scowl out of the corner of her eye. She wondered if Joseph had spent the trip to Bethlehem scowling, too. No wonder Mary always seemed so quiet in those pageants.

  The adults’ class ended with a prayer for peace in Dry Creek and throughout the rest of the world. Marla looked around to see if anyone focused on the cross at the front of the church when they prayed, but it seemed as if everyone just closed their eyes. Someday when she knew everyone better she was going to have to ask someone about the purpose of the cross in prayer. The cross looked too important to be a decoration, but she hadn’t seen anyone do anything with it. Of course, she didn’t want to ask any questions now that would reveal her ignorance.

  After the prayer, Les suggested that they have some coffee in the kitchen area. He looked as if he had something to say, but somehow no words ever came out, so Marla just followed him. She counted herself lucky that she didn’t have to ride a donkey along the way.

  Les wondered how he could have forgotten the ranch hands. He should have known they would all be at church when word got out that a new single female was going to be there. Most of them came, anyway, during the Christmas season, so an eligible woman was just an added bonus.

  “That man has worked at the Elkton place for almost ten years now,” Les finally said as he nodded toward Byron and then led Marla back to the table where the coffee was being served. He didn’t want to criticize Byron, but he hoped Marla would realize a man who only worked on a ranch wasn’t as ambitious as a man who actually owned his own ranch.

  “That must be nice,” Marla said.

  Les looked at her. How could it be nice?

  “To work in the same place for that long.”

  “Yeah, well.” He barely restrained himself from mentioning that he had worked in the same place for almost twice as long and it was his own place.

  Les noticed that Byron was walking back to the coffee table just as they were. The ranch hand didn’t have a suit on, but Les could plainly see that the man’s shirt and pants went together as if they belonged in a magazine ad somewhere. Of course, Les’s shirt and pants matched, as well, but khaki and khaki didn’t exactly make a man stand out from the pack.

  Les felt a frown settling on his face. Byron was dressed like a man who charmed women, and Les knew the ranch hand could do it. Byron had even talked himself out of eating soup during the drive for labels and the women he’d charmed to do that were safely married, so they didn’t even have anything to gain by giving in to his smiles. Les calculated every man in Dry Creek had had to eat ten extra cans of soup to make up for Byron’s share.

 

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