* * *
On Christmas Eve, Dale Haapala sat in the fourth pew of Bethany Lutheran Church in his good corduroy jacket with his hands on his knees, and when the Sunday school came down the aisle in their bathrobes and dish towels, he did not look anywhere but at the third angel from the left.
She had tinsel on her halo and a pillowcase for a robe and two braids, tight and even, with the rubber bands wrapped twice. She had done them herself, that afternoon, at the kitchen table with the hand mirror propped against the sugar bowl, and they had taken her forty minutes and she would not let anybody touch them. Nora had sat across from her the whole time with her hands folded on the oilcloth, not helping, only saying, over, over, under, now the left one, that's it, you've got it, Bird, you've got it.
When it came time, Birdie stepped out in front of the shepherds, and planted her sneakers, and looked straight up at the back of the church where the light was, and said, "Fear not," in a voice that rang off the old beadboard ceiling like a bell. "For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." Then she spoiled it by grinning and waving at her father, and half the church laughed, and the other half said Amen.
At the end they lit the candles, the ones Dale had seen in a box in the back of a tan Volaré in October, and passed the flame down the pews until the whole church was gold. Across the aisle Eino Rautio lit his wife's candle, and then turned and lit the one behind him, and Dale saw that his hand was shaking.
They sang Silent Night. Then the organist, who had been asked, began the other one, the Finnish one, and the old people in the church who still had the words sang them, and Dale sang them too, all he knew, and hummed the rest.
Afterward, on the steps, in the cold, with the snow coming down soft and straight for once, Nora took his hand in front of everybody.
"I called Minneapolis this morning," she said. "I told them no."
He looked at her.
"Not because of the vote," she said. "I don't know how the vote's going to go. Whichever way it goes, I'm staying. If Bethany won't have me, there's a two-point parish over in Newberry that's been vacant since 1983, and they'd take a bear in a collar if it could drive in snow." She looked down at their hands. "I'm staying put, Dale. I'm going to try. I've never once stayed anywhere long enough to find out what happens next. I'd like to find out. I'd like to find out here."
"I was rough on you," he said. "That night in the shop. I'm sorry."
"You were right."
"I was right and I was rough. Those aren't the same either."