Free A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg Page A

and happy Christmas season we had on the river! Everyone agreed that the “Mystery Tree” was prettier than ever this year. Kudos to those secret elves, who must have come down from the North Pole to surprise us yet again! If we only knew who they were we would thank them in person.
    Christmas Eve Dinner was especially delicious. We are mightily blessed with an abundance of good cooks down here and mucho thanks to the good ladies and gents who made the hall so festive and so full of Christmas cheer. A special nod goes to Sybil Underwood, who supplied the centerpieces; we are all amazed at what she can do with only simple pinecones and a few sprigs of holly. Thanks also to husband Claude for the fried mullet. Yum, yum. We had the largest crowd ever and it was good to see Betty Kitchen’s mother, Miss Alma, out and about again. As usual, the highlight of the evening for the children was a visit by good old Santa Claus himself. All the boys and girls loved their presents, including our newest member, Mr. Oswald T. Campbell. Welcome!
    The evening ended as usual with the annual tree-lighting ceremony, and amid the oohs and ahhs of the crowd I heard someone say that those folks up at Rockefeller Center in New York have nothing on us. I could not agree more.
    And so ends another Christmas season, with all of us worn down to a frazzle and exhausted from all the busy activity but already looking forward to next year’s happy Noel. In the meantime, all you lovebirds out there, married or single, don’t forget to grab your sweetheart for the annual Valentine’s Dinner on February 14. Yours truly and Frances Cleverdon will be the hostesses again this year, and we promise that love will definitely be in the air!
    —Dottie Nivens
    After he finished reading, Betty said, “You know, Mr. Campbell, Dottie’s no stranger to the written word. When she was younger she had herself quite a little literary fling up there in Manhattan.”
    “Is that so?” he said, although he was not surprised. She certainly did look the artistic type, since she usually wore a long black scarf and a black velvet beret on her head.
    “Oh, yes,” said Betty. “She lived in Greenwich Village and was a genuine bohemian, from what I understand. Dottie told me she thought she was going to be the next Edna Ferber or Pearl Buck, but it didn’t work out so she had to get a job.”
    “That’s too bad,” he said.
    “Yes, but she’s a good sport about it. When Dottie became our official postmistress she said she’d always hoped she’d wind up a woman of letters, but this was not quite what she had in mind.”
    Oswald understood how she felt. He had always dreamed of becoming an architect someday but instead wound up working as a draftsman all his life. His ambitions had never quite panned out either. He might have a lot more in common with her than he had thought, which would please Frances. Although Oswald did not know it, in her secret scheme to get him married, Dottie Nivens was second in line to get him if he and Mildred did not work out. And at the moment that did not seem to be going anywhere, at least as far as she could glean from Mildred. After that first dinner with Oswald at her house she had tried her best to get at least a clue as to how she felt. After he had left that night she had asked Mildred, “Well, what do you think?” Mildred had looked at her as if she had no idea what she meant. “About what?” She knew full well what Frances had meant and was just being cantankerous to irritate her. But far be it from Mildred to tell you what she was really thinking!
     
    Sunday mornings in Lost River were quiet. Almost everyone, including Betty Kitchen and her mother, went over to the little town of Lillian for church. Frances and Mildred had asked Oswald to go with them, but he was not a churchgoing man. Another person who did not go was Claude Underwood, who went fishing. When asked why, he told everyone that he attended the Church of the