White Christmas in Dry Creek

“Who else was with you?” the voice asked.

“My platoon. The eleventh mountain division, sir. It was a trap.”

There was silence after that. Rusty closed his eyes and saw the flashes of the bombs. He’d failed them all.

“Tonight?” The man’s voice had softened, but it was persistent. “Here in Montana?”

Rusty felt the pounding in his head and opened his eyes. He remembered the snow now.

“Where am I?” he asked.

He smelled Christmas. The scent of pine trees and popcorn.

The doctors hadn’t wanted to release him yet, but his younger brother, Eric, had called to say he needed him. Rusty had let down so many people already that he was determined to save his brother from whatever trouble he was in. The doctors said they wouldn’t release Rusty until next week, but he had pressed them and left early. He hadn’t called Eric and told him that he was here, though.

“You’re in Montana, son. You were out riding a horse—”

“Annie. Is she all right? And my dog?”

“There was no dog,” the woman said. “Maybe the wolf chased it off.”

“Not a wolf. It’s my dog.”

“Goodness,” the woman gasped.

“I—” Rusty paused. His felt sweat on his forehead, but it was cold. He’d picked up Annie and the dog from the Morgan ranch this afternoon. After his family lost the ranch, he’d paid the Morgans to board his horse and dog along with his brother until he could get back here.

“Take a minute. Think about tonight,” the man’s voice urged.

Rusty took a ragged breath and offered up a prayer for strength. Thanks to that chaplain, he and God had forged a truce of sorts in Afghanistan. Rusty wasn’t sure the connection was going to hold in Montana, but he wasn’t ready to give it up, either.

“There was a pickup.” Rusty forced his mind to leave the old battles and remember the past few hours. The wind had been frigid, but he’d welcomed the bite of the snow as it hit his face.

He’d been riding on the south section of his family’s ranch. His father had died while he was overseas, and riding on the land was the only way Rusty knew to say goodbye to the man. He’d been out for hours and was ready to turn back when a large black pickup seemed to emerge from the night as it came across the fields.

The pickup went off-road and into a ravine. When Rusty rode to the top of the ravine and looked down, he saw another pickup was already parked at the bottom, sitting there with its lights off. Someone stepped out of the smaller pickup, leaving the door open. The small overhead light let Rusty see enough. He knew it was Eric standing there because the boy was wearing his brown baseball cap backward. It was unlikely anyone else around here would wear a cap like that, especially when the wind was so strong.

“They shot me,” Rusty added, remembering that much from his scramble up the side of the ravine. “It hurts pretty bad.”

He’d signaled his dog to stay silent so it wouldn’t be shot and the animal had obeyed. Rusty marveled that even though he had been gone so long, his dog still saw him as master. They’d been through some tough times together, he and that dog.

“Who shot you?” the sheriff asked as he took a small notebook out of his pocket.

Rusty hesitated. “I don’t know.” Fearing that might not be enough, he added, “It was too dark to see any faces.”

He waited for the accusation to come. He had never lied—not even by withholding information. Until now. He knew he’d seen Eric tonight even though he hadn’t seen his face. And he wasn’t willing to give up his brother that easily. Not until he heard the other side of things.

The sheriff didn’t press and Rusty breathed deep. Maybe the doctors were right that he merely needed some rest.

He turned to search for the woman’s face. If the lawman’s voice was real, she must be, too.

Just then he heard the soft sounds of slippers on the hardwood floor and he saw the woman turn to look behind her. She had a lovely neck, he thought with a smile.

“No,” the woman whispered in horror as she looked at something.

Rusty tried to raise himself up to defend her from whatever was coming, but he had no strength. Then he saw the woman was merely worried about the girl who ran from behind her and stood in front of him with her little hands on her hips. Her angel wings were crooked, but her face was beaming.

“Have you seen my daddy?” she demanded to know.

Rusty felt as if the room was spinning. “What’s he look like?”

He’d known too many fathers who had died in Afghanistan. “Was he an army man? In my platoon?”

“No, he’s a king,” the girl replied proudly as she stepped a little closer.

“British?”

“No, he’s a king in Montana,” she insisted with a guilty look at her mother. Then she leaned forward and whispered, “With a crown. My mommy doesn’t believe, but—”

Rusty smiled, finally realizing she was pretending. He had no idea that kind of innocence was still alive anywhere in the world.

He was going to answer her when he was struck with a sudden worry. The girl must have a mortal father, too.

“Does your father wear an orange parka?”

That would describe the tall man who had been in the ravine waiting for Eric. The man must have been using night-vision goggles, too. He wouldn’t have been able to see Rusty without them.

“My father always wears a purple robe,” the girl said firmly. “Purple is for kings. Never orange.”

He relaxed. “I haven’t seen him, then.”

Rusty wondered if his brother knew the man in the orange parka had taken a rifle out after the taillights on Eric’s pickup disappeared from view. In the dark, Rusty wouldn’t have known the man was aiming the gun at him except that he’d seen a small white beam of light a second before the shot was taken.

“Tessie, sweetheart,” the woman said as she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the girl, “the sheriff needs to ask the man some questions. And you need to go back to the bedroom.”

The woman released her daughter and gave her a nudge in the direction of the hallway. All three adults watched as the girl dutifully walked down the hall and went through a door.

“Sorry about that,” the woman said.

The lawman nodded and then moved closer so Rusty could see him and the notebook in his hand.

“Where were you when you got shot?”

Rusty thought a minute and then decided there was no harm in telling the lawman. “The ravine that is a quarter of a mile from the gravel road that intersects with the road that goes up to the Morgan ranch.”

Rusty had been fortunate he’d been able to scramble to the top of the ravine and get on his horse before the man in the orange parka could walk over to where he had been shot.

“So you were on your father’s old place? The one the bank foreclosed on?”