“Sure,” shrugged Stoddard. He wasn’t a Scrooge by any means, but then, he had nothing better to do at the time.
The black and white Nash Metropolitan toddled along the road east out of town with Moto behind the wheel, Mr Gilley riding shotgun, and Stoddard scrunched in the “back seat” with his knees up to his chin. He didn’t mind the discomfort, though. The mild December eve pushed a fresh country breeze through the window with the sinking sun at their backs.
A turnoff at Lexington Depot led them south by Maxey’s, and finally to the zero-traffic light community of Woodville. The sun was well behind the trees when the Nash pulled up the dirt drive to the Reverend’s ‘Bible Garden.’
Amidst the rustic acres were painted concrete statuary, faded plywood signs with hand-lettered scripture, and the odd apostle and dromedary fashioned from papier-mache and tar paper. A veritable cornucopia of biblical folk art, to be sure, but with the sun swallowed up by the twilight, all were reduced to slouching shadows amongst the scrubby pines and brush.
The sole light source was a dingy yellow bulb hanging from the doorway of a one-storey house set back some distance. The stooped silhouette of an older man came forth as Mr Gilley made his way to the dwelling.
“Here.” Moto thrust a coil of Christmas lights into Stoddard’s chest. “You’re lighter and more nimble than us old men,” he said with mock encouragement.
“Go up that one,” he pointed. Stoddard looked up. Most of the pines were languid longleaf or loblolly, but the one Moto noted was thick with a wide base. Leyland cypress or a fir, perhaps -- hard to tell in the creeping dusk.
Stoddard slung the coil of lighting around his left shoulder as he found his footing on a limb about three feet up. Bit by bit he snaked between the branches clockwise up the tree, letting out the lighting foot by foot as his left arm clung the coil and torch and his right arm grasped for the next handhold.
He was about thirty feet up when he paused for a breath. The sharp pine smell reminded him of the live-cut spruces the old man would bring home at Christmas and later plant in the backyard. Those trees have to be as tall by now as this one, he thought to himself.
Stoddard stilled himself and turned away from the tree. There was a crisp breeze. The sun had fully set behind a horizon of more pines, waking up the stars in a moonless sky. The chirping drone of crickets below. The dull yawn of a train’s horn some miles off. He looked downward and saw the shadows of Moto, Gilley, and the Reverend talking amongst themselves.
Stoddard secured the end of the wiring and slowly descended the tree. He emerged covered in scratches, sap, and bits of tree bark as the three men turned to him.
“Good job,” one of them said from the darkness. A figure knelt and connected the line of lighting to a nearby extension cord.
The big tree lit up the night. Red, gold, green, and blue twinkled through the fine needles. The glow dimly illuminated the men’s faces as they gazed upward. None said a word, but Stoddard could tell they were all smiling. The Reverend’s wife silently stood at the door with her hands clasped, taking in the sight.
“Thank you all, and have a blessed Christmas.”
----
The Reverend and his wife both passed away not long after. As for the Bible Garden, records say “the environment was destroyed.” Herr Moto a died of a snakebite a few years later, and now Mr Gilley has also passed. Stoddard says he tells the story not for any dubious notions of profundity or poignancy, but only because he is the last one alive to tell it.
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