I swipe my tears with the back of my hand and determinedly sing on. “The first Noel the angels did say was to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay.” I sing louder and louder, banishing the memories, one song after another banishing the ghosts of Christmas past. “It came upon a midnight clear.”

The dogs howl with me, both of them now standing next to the sofa, their snouts pointing up like wolves. “Whooooo! Whoooo!” I wail with them, egging them on. Buster escapes up the stairs, his hair standing on end. “O, come, all ye faithful!”

I’m singing so loud, I don’t hear the sound of a car whining up the hill. I don’t hear the footfalls in the snowy path to the house. I don’t hear the first soft knock on the door.

13

Visitor

I’m in the middle of “Star of wonder, star of night” when the beagles start growling and run for the door. Someone knocks again, louder. My face goes hot and my stomach cold.

I have nothing on but my long johns with one leg rolled up above my knee, my camisole, and Nora’s old red silk kimono. On my feet are wool socks with holes in the toes. I can’t imagine who would make a social call on Christmas Eve. Maybe it’s the traditional stranger you read about and I must let him in and give him dinner or it will be bad luck all next year. Realistically, I know it must be about some woman in labor.

“Who’s there?” I wrap my kimono closer and pull my long underwear down over my cut.

“It’s Daniel Hester. I saw your lights.”

The vet? Possibly he’s passing this way after tending a sick horse, but the intersection with Raccoon Lick and Wild Rose is a half mile away. I crack the door and find him standing on the porch with a bottle of booze swinging in his hand, totally illegal.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask, indicating the glass container with a nod. “You could get arrested for violating Prohibition.” He’s wearing a dark brown trench coat with his brown felt hat pulled low on his head and already smells like booze, but his stance is steady, and without asking he steps out of his rubber boots and walks in. “The music sounds great. You have a nice voice, and the beagles do too!” He smiles at his little joke and flashes his strong white teeth. (“All the better to eat you with, little Red Riding Hood,” comes to me.)

“Were you really making a sick call on Christmas Eve?”

“No, just lonely,” he says without embarrassment, looking round the room.

“What about your wife?”

“My wife?”

“The lady at the window . . . in your kitchen.”

“Nah, no wife. She’s my part-time housekeeper.”

“So you thought I might want some company?”

Hester ignores my question. “I like your Christmas tree. Reminds me of when I was a kid. We made those colored paper chains in my one-room schoolhouse in upper New York State. Got colder than hell up there. Sometimes forty below. Coldest I’ve seen, since I moved south, is thirty below. What happened to your leg?”

I look down at my lower limb and notice the blood seeping through my long johns. Not a pretty sight.

“What happened?” he asks again.

“Cut it on some corrugated metal this afternoon. It’s okay.” I don’t mention the sledding. “I can get around. All I need to do is get to the barn and back.”

“Can I look?”

I feel like saying “Do you have to?” On the other hand, he is almost a doctor, and this is like getting a free house call.

“I guess . . . Will you make me pay with more veterinarian assistant jobs?” I think this is funny, but the vet is all business, leading me back to the sofa, sitting me down, picking up my ankle, gently removing my crude bandage.

When he gets down to the laceration, we both wince. It’s an evil-looking wound, and the edges that I thought had come together are now peeling apart.

“I need to do something about this,” Hester says as he stands up and puts his coat on. “My bag is in the Ford.”

I contemplate arguing, but he’s out the door.

When he returns, he goes into the kitchen, washes his hands, and sits down in the rocker. He reaches into his black doctor bag and pulls out one of his curved needles with suture, a glass syringe, and a vial of clear liquid.

“Is that numbing medicine?” I asked hopefully. If it isn’t, I’d better find something to bite on, like in the old cowboy movies when the Doc gives Tom Mix a stick to grip between his teeth.

The vet looks at me. “You don’t think I’d stitch you without topical anesthesia, do you?”

I shrug, thinking, Yeah, maybe; you didn’t numb Moonlight!

Twenty minutes later, my cut is cleansed, dusted with some kind of antiseptic powder, stitched back together with black thread that makes my leg look like one of Frankenstein’s limbs, and bandaged with a clean white surgical dressing.

The vet gives me a packet of the white powder from his bag. “In three days, remove the gauze and start dusting your wound with this on a daily basis. It might help prevent infection. You have to be very careful in the barn. Don’t get the wound dirty. You could get tetanus or lose your leg.”

Is he kidding? The man has his back turned while putting his needle holder back in its case. Tetanus! I roll my eyes.

“You ever have a rum toddy? Holiday cheer?” Hester holds up his booze bottle.

My leg is throbbing, and I think that the alcohol might do me some good, but I remember what Katherine MacIntosh said about rumors. Did Mr. and Mrs. Maddock hear the vet’s car come up the road?

I throw caution to the wind. “Okay.”

The vet steps back on the porch and brings in a bottle of fresh milk. “A Christmas present,” he says with a laugh. “If you didn’t answer the door, I was going to leave it on the steps . . . Where’s the sugar?”

I try to stand.

“Keep your leg up. I’ll find it.”

Through the kitchen door I watch him pour the milk into a pot and stir the coals in the cookstove. “What are your dogs’ names?” he calls over his shoulder.

“Emma and Sasha.”

“Like Emma Goldman? The anarchist?”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“My grandmother was a Russian immigrant. Sasha was Emma’s name for her lover, Alexander Berkman, wasn’t it? My gram told me the story of the riot at Homestead in ’92. How Sasha Berkman tried to assassinate Frick, Carnegie’s henchman, the dastardly opponent of the workers.” He says this in a mocking tone, and I wonder whether he mocks himself for knowing this history, his grandmother for her tales, or the union men who struck Car-negie Steel and battled the private security guards in hand-to-hand combat. If he is mocking the unions, it pisses me off. The struggles of workers and labor unions have been dear to me for the last fifteen years.