That evening, after Patsy was in bed, the phone rang. It was Betty Kitchen.
“How’s Patsy doing?”
“Terrible I’m afraid.”
“Well, I figured as much. Is Mr. Campbell there?”
“No. I haven’t seen him all day. Why?”
“He didn’t come in for his Christmas dinner so I wondered if he was over there with you. You know it’s not like him to miss a meal.”
A little after midnight, Oswald had finally passed out and fallen off the bar stool. It was 12:45 A.M. when Betty woke up to the sound of loud knocking. She came out of her closet, put on a robe, and went to the door. The good Samaritan in the John Deere cap had Oswald slung over his shoulder. He tipped his cap and said, “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am, but I’m afraid he’s had a little too much Christmas cheer. Where do you want him?”
Betty had never seen Oswald take a drink before, but having dealt with many a drunk in her day she said, “Bring him on in, no need to drag him upstairs tonight. Put him in my bed and I’ll deal with him tomorrow.”
The man, who had obviously had a snootful of booze himself, walked into the closet and deposited Oswald on her bed. “Merry Christmas, and to all a good night,” he said as he left. Betty took Oswald’s shoes off, covered him up, and shut the door. She tiptoed upstairs, went into the spare bedroom down the hall, and got in bed, thinking to herself that this had been the worst Christmas she ever remembered. Patsy had had her heart broken, her mother had eaten almost all the wax fruit out of the bowl on the dining room table, and now her boarder had come home dead drunk.
Good God, what next? she wondered.
Betty did not have much time before she found out. At around 5:45 A.M. the next morning the screaming started. Betty’s mother, Miss Alma, was standing in the hall in her nightgown screaming for her daughter at the top of her lungs. “Betty! Betty! Get up! Get up! My camellias are flying off the bushes. Help! Betty!”
Betty woke up and heard her mother carrying on out in the hall, but she was so tired—she had not slept well—so she lay there hoping her mother would give up and wander back to bed. But no luck. The old lady continued to run back and forth in and out of her room, yelling about her camellias. Finally poor Betty got up, went down the hall, and tried to calm her mother down. “OK, Mother, it’s all right. Go back to bed. There’s nothing wrong, you just had a bad dream.”
But the old lady would not be calmed. She grabbed Betty by the wrist and pulled her to her room and pointed out the window and screamed, “Look! Look, there they go! Go get them!”
Betty sighed. “Come on, Mother, calm down, you are going to wake Mr. Campbell. Let’s just get back in bed.”
Miss Alma continued to point out the window. “Look, look, look!” she said, jumping up and down.
“OK, Mother,” Betty said, and, just to appease her, walked over and looked out and could hardly believe what she saw. At almost exactly the same time in the house next door, Patsy sat up in bed and screamed for Frances. “Mrs. Cleverdon! Mrs. Cleverdon!”
Her screaming startled Frances and she came running to the room. When she opened the door she saw Patsy, her eyes wide with excitement, jumping up and down at the open window. “I saw him, I just saw Jack! He was here! I knew he would come!”
“Where did you see him?”
“Here. He landed right here on my windowsill and blinked at me. I know it was him. He came back!”
Frances went over and looked out the window and she too could not believe what she saw. It almost took her breath away. Although it was just beginning to get light outside, she could see that the entire yard and all the trees were completely covered with snow!
Everywhere she looked, for as far as she could see, was absolutely white, until all of a sudden she saw a flash of a powerful, incredible red streak by the window, then two, then four. When she leaned out and looked down, she saw that the ground was filled with big red camellias that must have fallen off the bushes. It was not until she saw one fly away that she realized that the whole yard was alive with redbirds!
By this time Betty Kitchen was running down the stairs, her large arms flailing in the air, yelling, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, get up, Mr. Campbell!”
Oswald opened his eyes and sat up in the small dark closet, and immediately hit his head on a shelf. He didn’t know where he was or how he got there and with all the yelling and screaming he was not sure if he had died and gone to hell or what. Just then Betty jerked the closet door open and yelled, “It’s snowing!”
Pretty soon, people up and down the street were out in their yards, in various stages of undress, screaming and hollering, jumping up and down, and pointing at all the redbirds that continued to swarm up and down the street. There were hundreds of redbirds, in flocks of twenty or thirty, sitting in trees and flying around the bushes. With his head ringing with pain from a hangover and having just hit his head, Oswald struggled to get his shoes back on. When he finally walked out he was further startled. He had walked out of a pitch-black closet into a blindingly white world just in time to see a flock of redbirds fly by.
What a sight. It was still snowing big soft white flakes, and as he stood in the street it was as if he were standing inside one of those paperweights that had just been turned upside down. He didn’t know if he was still drunk or not but he suddenly felt like he was inside a picture of some fairyland that could have been an illustration for a children’s book. The Spanish moss, now covered with snow, looked like long white beards hanging down from the trees. As soon as she saw Oswald, Patsy went up to him and took his hand and—with her face flushed and her eyes shining—said, “I saw him, Mr. Campbell. He came back just like you said he would if I wished hard enough. He came right to my window and blinked at me. Look,” she said, and pointed to the birds. “There are all his friends. I just knew he’d come back!”
He looked up as a flock landed in the tree above and shook snow down on the two of them.
At that moment Oswald was not sure if he had died and gone to heaven, but if by any chance he was still alive he swore to God he would never take another drink as long as he lived.
Oh, what a morning!
Betty ran in, called her friend Elizabeth Shivers over in Lillian, and said excitedly, “Can you believe it? Have you ever seen anything like it in your life?”
“What?” she said.
“The snow, look out the window! And we’re full of redbirds. Are you?”
Elizabeth, who had been asleep, looked out the window and said, “Betty, there’s no snow over here. What redbirds?”
In the meantime, the Creoles had heard the screaming all the way across the river and wondered what was happening. When they came out and looked, they saw that it was snowing on the other side. As they all stood on the docks, the Creole children who had never seen snow were having a fit to go see it up close. And finally even the adults could not resist, and they did something they had not done in nineteen years. The snow was still falling as one by one, they all got in their boats and started rowing across the river to join the people on the other side. Pretty soon the entire street was filled with Creole men, women, and children who had joined their neighbors laughing and dancing in the snow. In less than an hour, word had spread by phone and the entire place was packed with people who had come from all around to see the snow and the redbirds. For most of the children who came, this was the first snow they had ever seen, and for the adults, it was certainly the first time they had ever seen snow in Lost River. But nobody there that morning, child or adult, had ever seen that many redbirds.
Frances and Sybil and Dottie went down and opened up the community hall and made coffee and hot chocolate for everyone, and when they switched on the interior lights the Christmas tree outside suddenly lit up. It was almost like Christmas Day all over again. Even though it was Sunday, Roy opened the store in honor of the snow and gave away candy to the kids and free beer to the adults. He was busy opening a can for Mildred, who had joined the pa
rty, when he looked up and saw Julian LaPonde standing outside looking in. As soon as the others saw him, a hush came over the store. They all held their breaths, wondering what was going to happen next. The two men looked at each other, neither moving. Then Roy walked over and held the door open and said, “Come on in, Julian, let me buy you a beer.” He knew how proud a man Julian was and how hard it must have been for him to come that far. To the astonishment of everyone, Julian walked in and took the beer.
Later, Oswald walked down to the river and watched the pelicans and the ducks and the egrets try and figure out what all the white stuff on the river was. Three pelicans skidded off the top of a piling and fell into the water and were mad about it and Oswald had a good laugh.
As the morning went on and the sun came out, the snow began to melt, but not before three people who had no idea how to drive in it slid into one another. A lot of strange and unusual things happened that day. Oswald in his excitement had forgotten about his condition and against the doctor’s orders was out in the snow all morning. But he did not catch pneumonia and die; he didn’t even catch a cold. But the best thing by far was that Patsy got her wish. She had seen her friend Jack again.
Naturally, after that day there were many questions. Why had it snowed in just that area? Why had so many redbirds come? Why had that one bird blinked at Patsy? Of course no one person could be 100 percent sure what had really happened that morning, but Mildred had a theory. She went over to her sister’s house, stood in the middle of the living room with her hand on her hip, and declared with defiance, “Frances, I believe her. I believe she did see Jack.”
“But Mildred, how could she? We both know he’s been dead for months.”
“I don’t care,” Mildred said, “I think she saw him, I don’t know how or why, but she did.” Then Mildred looked her sister right in the eye as serious as a heart attack and said, “Frances, I think it was a miracle of some kind.”
Frances thought about it. “Well, I don’t know what it was, if she really saw Jack or if she just thinks she did. But I’m not going to question it. She’s eating again, and that’s all I care about.”
Of course, if the exact same event had taken place on Christmas morning instead of the day after, many more people might have believed a miracle had occurred. Still, everyone had his or her own personal explanation as to why it had happened. As far as Patsy was concerned, it was Santa Claus who caused it; he had just been a day late. And according to all the meteorologists, there was a perfectly good scientific reason for the sudden snow. A cold snap from the East swept down from Canada and dipped all the way down to northern Florida, causing the temperature to drop to 38 degrees, and the moisture of the river may have caused snow to fall only in and around the river area. The bird experts who appeared explained it away saying that the Northern Cardinal has been known to flock together in large numbers in cold weather; and not being a migratory bird, they most probably had been in the area all along, hidden among the thick foliage. However, Roy and Butch believed it was the fifty pounds of sunflower seeds they had spread all around in the dead of night on Christmas Eve trying to attract a redbird for Patsy that caused them to come. Roy had said if there was a redbird out there within a hundred miles that liked sunflower seeds as much as Jack, they might have a chance. But as to why that particular redbird had landed on Patsy’s windowsill and blinked at her was a question for which nobody really had an answer.
As time passed, even more strange and unusual things started to happen. The night after Roy had rowed across the river to Julian LaPonde’s house with Jack, he had found out that Marie was divorced from her husband. And after being apart for so long, Marie and Roy were finally able to get back together again. With her two children, the confirmed bachelor of Lost River was soon going to become a family man.
But romance did not stop there. A few months after the redbird event, Frances Cleverdon made a surprise decision. One morning she marched over to Betty’s house and said to Oswald, “Listen. I never thought I’d want a new husband, but I’ll have you, if you’ll have me. Patsy needs a daddy. She likes you, and so do I.”
Oswald was stunned. But after she left he thought about it and realized that he absolutely adored everything about the woman, from her gravy boat collection right down to her pink kitchen. He had just been too dumb to see it before. The truth was, he would love to be married to her and be Patsy’s daddy. But before he gave Frances his answer, Oswald decided he’d better go back to Chicago and see his doctor. It was only fair that she know what she was getting for a husband and for how long.
When he arrived in Chicago and called, he found out his doctor had died. However his son, Dr. Mark Obecheck III, had all Oswald’s charts and agreed to see him the next day. After he examined him and came back in with the results, he looked at Oswald. “Well, Mr. Campbell, I’ve got good news and bad news. What do you want to hear first?”
Oswald’s heart sank. He had hoped against hope that it would all be good news. “Let me have the bad news first, I guess,” he said.
“The bad news is you are no long eligible to receive your disability check.”
“What?”
“The good news is that those lungs of yours have cleared up quite a bit since your last checkup. You are doing great, Mr. Campbell. Keep up the good work.”
“Really? How long do I have?”
“How long do you want?” asked the doctor with a smile.
“Forever.”
“Well, Mr. Campbell, I can’t promise that, but you can try.”
“Thanks, Doc. I’ll do my best.”
Before he left, he called his ex-wife, Helen, and told her all the great news, and she was very happy for him.
On his way home to Frances and Patsy, Oswald felt like he was the luckiest man alive. And he owed it all to old Horace P. Dunlap and that faded old brochure. He was no longer an “accidental visitor” in Lost River. He was now a permanent resident. And if that wasn’t enough wonderful news, one day right after Oswald came back from Chicago, Miss Alma, Betty’s mother, came downstairs and out of a clear blue sky announced, “I think I’ll do some baking today,” and started up again. Everyone was so thrilled with her fancy cakes and petits fours that eventually Betty Kitchen started her own bed and breakfast and bakery.
Patsy, content that Jack was alive and well, returned to the hospital and finished her therapy. Within a year she was walking without even a hint of a limp. However, Butch Mannich continued to drive to Atlanta every weekend, even after Patsy finished her therapy, and within six months two new dishes of tamales and enchiladas were permanently added to the community potluck dinner by his new bride, Amelia Martinez.
The most unexpected development involved Mildred. On that morning after Christmas when Julian LaPonde had walked in the store, she thought he was the best-looking man she had ever seen. And when Julian, a widower, had spotted Mildred he had asked Roy, “Who is that?”
After a whirlwind courtship, Mildred, now a platinum blonde, had run off with Julian, and they were now living in New Orleans, having a wonderful time.
Dottie Nivens remarked, “That’s what comes from reading all those racy books,” and sat down and started writing one of her own, which won a first novel award from the Romance Writers of America. At last she was a real Woman of Letters both professionally and at the post office.
Five years later, right before another Christmas, Oswald T. Campbell came in from a meeting at the county courthouse and informed Frances with a chuckle, “Well, honey, it looks like we are not lost anymore. We’ve been found!”
On Christmas Eve a new sign was to be unveiled in front of the community hall that said:
WELCOME TO REDBIRD, ALABAMA
A Bird Sanctuary
Population 108
That night, when Butch switched on the Christmas tree lights and the new sign lit up, Oswald squeezed Frances’s hand, and they both smiled and waved at Patsy, who was standing over with all the other children.
Then Oswald leaned over and whispered to Frances, “Isn’t it amazing how one little bird changed so many lives?” And it was.
Epilogue
ALTHOUGH OSWALD LOST his medical pension, thanks to the wealthy clientele that patronized the art shop at the Grand Hotel his work was soon discovered and much to his surprise he became quite a well-known artist. But as successful as he became, everyone agrees that his best work hangs in the Redbird community hall, and people come from miles around just to see the portrait of Jack and Patsy on their birthday.
And as for Patsy, she is a now a veterinarian who specializes in the treatment of birds and has grown into a lovely young woman with children of her own. Sometimes when she walks down the street, especially around Christmastime, a redbird will fly by . . . and it always makes her smile.
RECIPES
Frances Cleverdon’s
(How to Get a Man)
Scuppernong Jelly
5 cups scuppernong juice*
1 box Sure-Jell
1 teaspoon cooking oil
7 cups sugar
Stir 1 box Sure-Jell (or other powdered pectin) into scuppernong juice and oil mixture. Bring mixture to a full rolling boil (one that does not stop when stirred). Boil 2 minutes. Add sugar quickly to juice and bring again to full rolling boil. Boil 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour immediately into sterilized half-pint jars, leaving 1⁄8 inch space at the top, and seal.
MAKES 1½ PINTS
*1 lb. grapes = 1 cup juice
Claude Underwood’s Fried Mullet
6 medium mullet, cleaned and dressed
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
hot sauce (optional)
1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup self-rising cornmeal
¼ cup bacon drippings or shortening
Sprinkle mullet on both sides with salt and pepper; if desired, douse with hot sauce. Let stand at room temperature 10 minutes. Combine flour and cornmeal and dredge mullet in mixture. Fry in hot bacon drippings 8 to 10 minutes, turning once, or until golden brown on both sides.