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“It’s not strictly legal, and if you get caught, I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
    About eleven-thirty, I called Ben at the rectory to see if he wanted to have lunch and accompany me to Alpine Falls. Teresa McHale answered the phone and sounded pained when I asked for my brother.
    “I thought he’d be spending the days with you,” she said in an irritated voice. “I don’t see any need for him to go through yesterday’s collection. Father Fitzgerald can handle that when he feels better.”
    “It’s probably wise to get the cash to the bank,” I said in a mild tone. “It may be a few days before Father can cope.”
    “He’s coming home tomorrow, Friday at the latest,” Teresa went on in her irritable manner. “Knowing him the way I do, he’ll want to get right back to work. Speaking of which, why doesn’t the city get off its lazy backside and plow Cedar Street or Cascade? It’s very hard for our older parishioners to get to mass in all this snow.”
    I sympathized, though I was confident that most of Alpine’s senior citizens had probably been dealing with snow all of their lives. Maybe it was Teresa who was having problems. I made commiserative murmurs, then asked if the Volvo had four-wheel drive. It did, she assured me.
    “That’s not the point,” Teresa went on, sounding increasingly cranky. “I’ve been here over a year and I can’t believe how backward this place is. Half the streets don’t have sidewalks, the power is unpredictable, you can’t get decent TV reception without one of those ugly satellite dishes, the growing season lasts about four months, the Seattle Sunday paper has to be trucked in on Saturday. There’s only one dress shop, two decent restaurants, no public swimming pool, no espresso carts, no live entertainment unless you count the drunken loggers throwing each other through the windows at the Icicle Creek Tavern. I feel marooned in this town!”
    Again, Teresa McHale struck a sympathetic chord. After almost three years, I often felt the same way—cut off, isolated, cast adrift. I, too, missed the opera, the theatre, major-league sports, vast shopping malls, and high-rises. But most of all, I missed the energy of the city. Despite the demons that drive urban dwellers to despair, there is no other atmosphere that has such vitality. But I wasn’t about to say so to Teresa McHale.
    “Dear me,” I sighed in mock anguish, “why ever did you move up here from Seattle?”
    There was a faint pause. When Teresa spoke again, I heard a defensive note in her voice. “I wanted a change. I thoughtI’d be doing some good, taking this job. I never figured I’d be bored to tears in the bargain.”
    “I wouldn’t think you’d be bored, what with all the help you could give Father Fitz in the parish,” I pointed out, genuinely trying to exercise compassion.
    “He’s got plenty of lay people to do all that,” asserted Mrs. McHale. “That’s another thing: this town has more busybodies than we had in the whole north end of Seattle. I’m talking about spare time activities. Instead of passing that bond issue for the new swimming pool in the last election, these backwoods dodos voted it down because they’re getting a bowling alley. Now who in their right mind would rather bowl than swim? No wonder everybody is about fifty pounds overweight!”
    Again, Teresa had a point. Alpine, like many other small towns, seemed to churn out a greater proportion of people with greater proportions. On the other hand, Teresa wasn’t exactly wasting away. “There is a gym,” I said, a bit sharply. Teresa and her gripes were spoiling my festive tree-cutting mood. “Has my brother shown up yet?”
Like in the last ten minutes while you were bitching my ear off
, I wanted to say.
    “He just walked in.” Mrs. McHale was obviously not appeased by my suggestion of working out at the gym.
    The next voice I heard was Ben’s, faintly amused. “I haven’t cut down a Christmas tree