Shepherds Abiding in Dry Creek

By the time Christmas was here, she hoped to be able to take the blankets off the front windows of her house and welcome any visitors inside. By then, she might even be comfortable offering visitors a tamale and explaining that she and the children had a Hispanic heritage.

Marla saw movement and stopped daydreaming about the future. The door of the café had opened and a man had stepped out. She had recognized the pickup parked next to the café when she first looked out the window, and so she figured the man standing on the café porch was Reserve Deputy Sheriff Les Wilkerson. He was probably getting ready to patrol through Dry Creek and had stopped at the café for coffee. Marla had seen the deputy walk down the street of Dry Creek every morning since she’d moved here and it made her nervous.

She hadn’t heard of any criminal activity around, but she kept the children close to the house just in case. She’d called the school when they’d first arrived in Dry Creek and they had agreed, since it had been almost time for the holiday break, that Sammy could start his classes after Christmas. Becky was even more flexible. When she’d first noticed the sheriff patrolling the town, Marla had been glad she’d arranged to have Sammy close by for a few weeks, but maybe if the children were in school she’d at least know more about what was going on.

There must be something happening if a lawman was doing foot patrol. In Los Angeles that happened only in high crime areas. She hadn’t heard any gunshots at night, so she doubted robberies were the problem. The deputy must be worried about drugs.

Marla had briefly met the man last Friday when she was at the hardware store looking for paint, and she had wanted to ask him about any local drug problems. But he had stayed only long enough to scowl at everyone and do something with an ashtray.

The two older men sitting beside the woodstove talked about Les after he left. They made it sound as if he was somebody special. She supposed the older men wanted to reassure her that her children were safe here in Dry Creek with a lawman around, but, truth be told, the reserve deputy didn’t make her feel better about the isolation of the small town.

She was used to lawmen, even reserve volunteer lawmen, who had a certain amount of swagger to them. Les didn’t strut around at all. He looked strong enough, but he wasn’t exactly brawling material. Not only that, he didn’t even carry a gun.

She doubted there were any lawmen in Los Angeles who didn’t carry a gun. There were certainly none the few times she’d visited her aunts and uncles in Mexico. Marla supposed Les would have to talk a criminal down, but when she’d been introduced to him, he hadn’t seemed to be much of a talker. He’d only nodded and mumbled hello to her that day. He was even quieter than she was, and she was perfectly able to carry on a conversation. She’d do fine with talking when she had her house ready for visiting.

Of course, no one else seemed to be worried about Les’s lack of conversational skills, and they knew the town and him much better than she did. Maybe he was one of those people who shone in emergency situations, but who didn’t appear to be of much use at other times.

Les wasn’t even wearing a uniform that day. He’d had cowboy boots on his feet and a plaid flannel shirt on his back. The only thing that had marked him as a reserve deputy sheriff was a vest and, from what the other men said, he didn’t even always wear that. Of course, everyone must just know he was the lawman on duty; it was such a small town.

Marla watched Les step off the café porch and start walking down the street. He must be making his usual morning patrol. Fortunately, the sun was starting to lighten up the day, so he might even be able to see while he did it.

Les felt the snow crunch beneath his boots as he moved down the one street in Dry Creek. Usually he thought it was an advantage to have only one street in town. Today, though, he would have liked a million other directions to turn.

He stopped when he got to the church. The Nativity set was still all lit up even though the sun was beginning to rise. The wise men stood to one side with their hands overflowing with gold baubles. The blond angel was hanging from a wire attached to the rain gutters of the church. Les took a minute to look closely at the rain gutters and note that whoever had written the note was right. Someone did need to add another wire or the angel would eventually fall.

Les looked back at the wise men and wondered why one of them hadn’t been taken instead of the lone shepherd. They certainly looked more exciting than the missing figure. Everyone he knew, except himself, would pick flash over something drab any day. Strangely, it didn’t make him feel any easier in his mind about the theft.

When he could delay no longer, Les walked farther down the street and then started up the path to the Gossett house. Until Marla and her children moved to town, the house had been closed up. Old man Gossett had spent some time in prison before he died and no one had taken care of the house. Someone had enough civic pride to paint part of the picket fence that faced the street so the property looked somewhat cared for if an outsider happened to look at it on a casual drive through town. None of the people in Dry Creek liked to see the town buildings look neglected and Les couldn’t blame them.

As he walked up the path, Les saw how the weather had started to flake the white paint off the house until there were large sections of exposed gray boards. Even the snowdrifts couldn’t disguise the fact that the yard had gone to seed. Only the pine trees in the back of the house had flourished, growing together in thick clumps of muted green.

Les was halfway up the walk when someone turned off the light inside the house. For the first time, Les thought maybe the little girl really had stolen the shepherd. What else but guilt would make someone turn off the lights when a visitor was coming to the door? Usually people turned a light on when someone was walking toward their house.

When Les stepped on the porch, the door opened a crack. It was just enough for Les to see a small portion of a woman’s face. There was one brown eye and a hand holding the side of the door. The hand covered up most of what face would have shown in the crack. The room behind the face was in darkness. Les wouldn’t have recognized the woman even though he had met her that day in the hardware store.

“Mrs. Gossett?”

The woman nodded.

Les wished she would open the door wider. Regardless of what he’d told himself, he was looking forward to seeing more of the woman’s face. He hadn’t taken a very good look at her the other day in the hardware store and he’d like to see her better. There was no particular reason to ask her to open the door wider, though. Especially because it was cold out and she was probably just keeping her heat inside like any wise Montana housewife would do.

“I brought something to eat,” Les said as he held up the white bag. “For the kids. And you, of course.”

He had a feeling he could express himself a lot better if the woman didn’t keep eyeing him as if she was going to slam the door in his face any minute now.

At his words, her face stiffened even more. “We have enough to eat. You don’t need to worry about us.”

Les had coaxed frightened kittens out of their hiding places many times and he reminded himself that patience usually won out over fear.

“It’s only a few doughnuts,” Les forced his voice to be softer. “Linda, at the café, thought the kids might like them.”

The woman’s face relaxed some. “Well, I guess doughnuts are different.”

The woman opened the door and Les gave her the bag. He waited a minute in hopes she was going to ask him inside. It would be easier to talk to her if she was relaxed and not looking at him through the crack in the door. But once she took the bag, she closed the door so it was back in its original position.

“Please tell the woman—Linda—thank you for us. We haven’t had a chance to get over to the café yet, but it’s a very nice gesture.”

Les was afraid the woman was going to think he had just come by to bring her the doughnuts, so he said his piece. “I’m doing a search of houses. We’ve had some property stolen from the church.”

The woman frowned. “We don’t go to church.”

The woman turned a little as if she heard something inside the house.

“You don’t need to go to church to take something.”

The woman snapped back to look at him. “Are you accusing me of stealing? From a church?”

“No, ma’am.” Les ran his finger around his shirt collar. “It’s just that I did think that maybe your daughter—well, do you know where your daughter was last night?”

The woman turned again to look inside the house.

Les figured it was one of the children who had been distracting the woman, so he wasn’t surprised when he heard her whisper to someone. “Just be patient. Mommy will be right there.”

The woman turned back to look at Les. In all of the turning, the door had opened a little farther. “Becky was here with me last night.”

The woman was wearing an old beige robe that was zipped up to her neck and she didn’t have any makeup on her face. She had strong bones, Les noticed. And a weariness to her that made him think she’d come through a long patch of hard times. He couldn’t let his sudden sympathy for her change what he needed to do, though.

“Was your daughter with you for the entire night?” Les could see into the rest of the large room behind the woman. The windows were all covered so the room was in shadows, but he could make out most of it. Not that there was much to see. Except for a wooden sitting chair, there was nothing there. Maybe the family’s furniture was still coming on a moving truck.

“Of course, all night. Where else would she be?” The woman was looking straight at him now. “I don’t even know why you’re asking me these questions. You came straight to my door. I saw you. You’re not asking everybody. Just because we don’t have blond hair and blue eyes like everyone else around here, it doesn’t mean we stole something.”

“No, of course not.” Les was bewildered. Did everyone around here have blond hair? He hadn’t noticed. Still, he’d come to do a job and he might as well get it done. “I’m talking to people because someone stole one of the Nativity figures from the set in front of the church.”

“That has nothing to do with us.”

Les nodded. “I just wondered, because whoever took the figure wanted to trade it back to the church for a Suzy bake set.”

A little girl’s squeal came from behind the door. Les couldn’t see the girl, but he could hear her as she said, “A Suzy bake set! The one with the cupcakes?”

“No, dear, I don’t think so,” the woman said with her face turned to the inside of the room.

Why was it that the line of a woman’s neck, when she turned to look over her shoulder, always reminded him of a ballet dancer? Les asked himself. Marla—well, Mrs. Gossett—had a beautiful neck.

The woman turned back to look at Les. She even gave him a small smile, which made the knot in his stomach relax. No one who was guilty would smile. But then, maybe the mother didn’t know what the daughter had done.

The woman continued, “I’m sorry. I think every little girl everywhere wants that Suzy bake set in the cupcake edition. It’s quite the thing. I don’t know if you can even find it in the stores anymore.”

Les nodded. Maybe that’s why someone had written the demand note. Maybe they thought the church would have extra pull with a store. “Whoever took the shepherd left a note.” He held the paper out to her. “I think a girl might have written it.”