Page 6 of The Forever Christmas Tree

Especially when she heard a voice in the background yell, “Hey, Mil, where’s the vodka?”

Chapter 2

Ding, dong, ding, dong, dang! . . .

“I hate Christmas.” Ethan Rutledge hadn’t meant to say that aloud, but as he sat at the conference table in the Bell Cove municipal building on a Friday night, drumming his fingertips on the scarred surface, he had to have some way of expressing his exasperation. The emergency meeting of the town council was taking forever to commence.

Everyone at the table turned to look at him as if he’d committed some sacrilege. He supposed it was, for a Christmas tree farmer.

Like I care!

Just then, the bells of Our Lady by the Sea Catholic Church out on the square tolled the hour. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. That was immediately followed by the bells of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Not to be outdone, the clock in the tower above this building, which had been late for years, rang its own bells. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. It was like a freaking bell competition. Day in, and day out.

“And I hate the bells, too,” Ethan declared, which was definitely a sacrilege in a town that was built on bells.

His remark prompted some gasps and looks of horror from everyone, except Laura Atler, editor of the weekly newspaper, The Bell, who sat next to him. She chuckled and whispered, gleefully, “Way to go, Scrooge!” Laura, who had been best friends with she-whose-name-he-hadn’t-spoken-for-many-years, got pleasure in needling him every chance she got.

Frank Baxter, owner of Hard Knocks, the hardware store, glared at him and said, “Don’t take your bad mood out on the rest of us.” Then, he inquired, not in a nice way, “Business bad, boy? I certainly hope the market isn’t dropping for those wonderful Charlie Brown trees.”

Ethan was a successful businessman selling Christmas trees—well, all kinds of trees—around the country, but what Baxter referred to was the infamous Rutledge Tree inadvertently developed by his grandfather and further mucked up by his father, a self-taught botanist, which was sold only on the Outer Banks . . . IN HUGE NUMBERS! There was a time when Ethan had been embarrassed by the stunted, scrawny evergreens, but he’d learned to have a sense of humor, and now promoted the hell out of the funny Christmas trees. And people came from many miles away to buy the stupid things. Go figure!

“Business is just fine,” asshole, Ethan said. “How are those aluminum foil trees moving?”

“They’re not aluminum foil,” Baxter sputtered. “They’re genuine Williamsburg reproduction silver leaf fir trees.”

Williamsburg, my ass! “Hmpfh!” Ethan snorted.

He and Baxter had been in a running battle ever since Ethan’s grandmother, Eliza Rutledge, opened a Holiday Shoppe (With two p’s and an e on the end! Don’t ask. Half the people in town called it the shoppie.) on the lot of their landscape business two years ago and made the mistake of offering some items that could also be purchased at the hardware store, such as removable wall hooks, of all things. Which had prompted Baxter to start carrying Christmas tree lights, which resulted in the shoppie, rather shop, selling electric drills to aerate the trunks of trees. Those drills had been like a gauntlet thrown down. This year, the window of Hard Knocks was stuffed with Christmas paraphernalia, everything from tree toppers to garlands, with the coup de grace being those artificial trees. Now, that was a sacrilege. North Carolina was one of the largest producers of Christmas trees in the United States, second only to Oregon. Dissing real trees was a Tar Heels sacrilege.

While the other council members conversed softly with each other, trying to ignore the hostility, Ethan sank down lower in his chair and pretended to be reading text messages on his phone. How he’d gotten roped into serving on this body was beyond him. A moment of madness when Leonard Ferguson had died suddenly of a heart attack and they’d needed a temporary replacement. Temporary? Hah! That had been two years ago.

Leonard Ferguson’s shoe store, named simply Shoes, had been a fixture on the town square for as long as Ethan could remember. He, his dad, his grandfather, all of the family, had gotten their shoes and boots there over the years. It was now renamed Happy Feet Emporium, whatever the hell an emporium was, by his widow Doreen Ferguson, who also happened to be the mayor. He hadn’t been in the store lately, but he’d heard some of the fancy gear there sold for a couple hundred bucks a pair.

Ethan looked at his watch again and sighed. Before you knew it, the bells would be chiming again. Mid-December was the busiest time of the year for a Christmas tree farmer. His local lot and its shop were open until nine p.m. tonight, manned only by his grandmother, aided by two high school kids and Ethan’s daughter, Cassie, who was eleven going on eighteen. God only knew what kind of mess he’d find when he got back. Plus, he had three flatbed trucks of Fraser Firs, the Cadillac of Christmas trees, up at his mainland farm set to go to wholesalers early tomorrow morning. He had a seaplane that he kept over at the airport in Echo Harbor for commuting across the sound, which saved him hours getting back and forth to his headquarters, but still time was a-wasting here.

Just then, the mayor straggled in, thank God! Her lateness was what had been holding up the meeting. “Sorry, sorry,” she apologized. “I got a last-minute phone call that I had to take.”

More like a shoe customer, I bet. Wanting to buy a pair of three-hundred-dollar high heels with a name like Man-hole-ah or Jimmy Choose.

“That’s all right, Reenie,” the suck-up Baxter cooed. Everyone knew the old fart had the hots for the mayor. If Ethan had wanted to be mean, he would comment on Baxter’s comb-over, a recent practice designed to entice the merry widow, he guessed. Actually, it wasn’t so much a comb-over as a comb-forward. With bangs! He knew what bangs were because he had a eleven-year-old daughter who cared about such things. In a good wind, Baxter would look like a lightbulb with a fur collar.

“Don’t worry. It’s no big deal,” the others said.

Ethan said nothing.

The mayor plopped a pile of papers onto the table, which he hoped wasn’t an agenda. If they had an agenda, it would mean hours. Exhaling whooshily as if she carried the weight of the world, or at least Bell Cove, on her shoulders, Doreen sank down into a chair and smiled at each of them. That’s when he noticed her appearance.

Doreen, who was a few years younger than his grandmother’s seventy-two, was sporting the most godawful hairdo today, probably thanks to her daughter, Francine, who owned the only beauty parlor in town, Styles & Smiles. It was what his mother used to call a bouffant. In other words, a big gray bush. It was the kind of thing you couldn’t stop looking at. But it was nothing compared to the deep, orangish color of her skin. He’d heard that Francine had started offering spray tans in her shop, but holy cow! If this was the result, there were going to be a whole lot of dingbat women around Bell Cove looking like yams.

Besides that, Doreen was wearing a Christmas sweater, fluorescent lime green, with two Rudolphs. She probably didn’t realize that the red noses were directly over her breasts which were lifted higher than nature ever intended, probably a purchase from that new boutique on the square, Monique’s Boutique.

Baxter’s beady eyes about popped out.

Despite himself, a smile tugged at Ethan’s lips.

“Oh, my God!” Laura whispered beside him.

“Could we get this show on the road, Doreen?” Ethan asked. “What’s so urgent that we needed a special council meeting?”