Mending Christmas

Despite the childish voice insisting he was dead, Billy Clark was fairly certain he was still among the living.

The searing pain burning across the back of his arm assured him of that more than anything else at the moment. In fact, it felt as though someone had heated a hot poker over a blazing fire and rammed it into his arm.

He tried to recall what had happened, but the last thing he remembered was trying to distract a bull so the bull rider could get safely out of the arena.

Had the bull run over him? Had he hurt himself on a gate or the fence?

Slowly, Billy opened one eye, then the other. He could see people milling around, hear the announcer hollering for the medical team to help him. The lack of pounding hoofbeats cued him in to the fact that he wasn’t in the arena. He recalled running from a bull. Ol’ Hot Rod must have hooked him with his horn and given him a fling. No wonder his arm hurt like the dickens.

Billy tilted his head back slightly, and his gaze focused on a woman’s face hovering above him, curly brown hair falling around her like a thick curtain. Maybe he had died and she was an angel, but the way she frowned made him think that wasn’t likely.

With the wind knocked out of him, he waited a few heartbeats, then drew in a shallow breath. Grateful that his lungs still seemed to function, he took in a second breath, noticing the air smelled like popcorn, dirt, and the woman’s soft fragrance. When one of her silky curls brushed his cheek, he found himself intrigued with her, which seemed entirely loony, considering his current predicament.

To center himself, Billy closed his eyes and slowed his thoughts, but the childish voice that had declared him among the deceased grew nearer and louder.

“Is he dead, Aunt Beth?” the little girl questioned in a voice loud enough it would have yanked him back from the afterlife had he already taken his final breath.