Chapter Text
1. “McCormick!” Judge Milton C. Hardcastle, retired, bellowed, standing at the door to the basement. A radio was blaring psychedelic oldies, the washer and dryer chugging to the beat while Mark McCormick swayed back and forth as he folded a large assortment of T-shirts belonging to both him and Hardcastle. Looking up, McCormick’s faint smile of welcome faded at the annoyed grimace clouding Hardcastle’s features. “What’s wrong?” “Gotta go to -- will you shut that racket off!” Once it was peaceful except for the clump-chunk of the machines, Hardcastle continued. “Aunt Mae and Aunt Zora are having a family reunion this Christmas and I can’t get out of it. Somehow they got me to agree to go to Clarence.”
“Oh.” McCormick blinked. Family reunion? That meant another lonely Christmas for him. It seemed something always messed up their Christmas together. Two years ago, the Judge was in jail. Last year it was a bad case of flu that had both of them in their respective beds, hacking and wheezing. “That’s -- nice.”
“Nice? I thought you’d be thrilled, kid,” Hardcastle commented.
McCormick made an effort to appear normal, hiding his face by bending over the next pile of dirty clothes. “A vacation from you is pretty…exciting. I just need time to take it in.” “Vacation from me? What the hell are you babbling about? I’m not sending you there alone, they’d spoil you rotten. ‘Course, you’re already spoiled.”
“Huh?” McCormick stared at Hardcastle, his mouth hanging open. “But…you said it was a ‘family reunion’. I’m not family.”
“Don’t you remember? You said it yourself once, you’re here by adoption. My aunts specifically told me to bring you along. In fact, I don’t think I’d be too welcome if I left you home.” Hardcastle jumped when McCormick whooped, grinning ear to ear. “Is the bleach warping what’s left of that brain? What is wrong with you?”
“Not a thing, Judge, not one little thing,” McCormick replied, his jaws aching with the width of his grin. He was going to a Hardcastle family get-together. He knew that Hardcastle’s various friends and relatives apparently accepted him, but they didn’t have much of a choice. To be considered a member of the family was a warm feeling.
“Are you listening to me?”
“What?” McCormick realized that Hardcastle had continued talking to him, giving him orders and he hadn’t heard a single one.
“I’m gonna get your hearing checked. I said, be sure and pack warm clothes for us. It’s cold in Arkansas at this time of year. And I thought we’d drive, do some sightseeing on the way. You’ve got the Christmas holidays off at law school, we have the time for it. What do you think?”
“That’d be great! We haven’t had a real vacation in ages. Are we taking the pickup or the Coyote?”
“I think the pickup would be better, the traction might be needed if we run into any snow. The heater works pretty good, so we shouldn’t freeze or anything. Maybe I’ll borrow some snow tires.”
McCormick looked up. “How long have you known about this? You seem to have it all planned out. I know you, it takes you ages to organize a vacation. Or do you have some case planned on the way to Clarence?” His suspicions rose. He wouldn’t put anything past Hardcastle. And due to his schooling, the Judge was forced to behave himself. McCormick would accept nothing less than total abstinence from criminal chasing, afraid his friend would wind up hurt or dead. Surprisingly enough, Hardcastle had agreed. Now he wondered if this was why he was being taken along.
“No case. But I have know about this for a while,” Hardcastle admitted. “I was trying to think of a way out of going there.”
The dryer shut off and McCormick busied himself emptying it before he said what was on his mind. “Is it because of what happened there, the last time?”
“Nah, kid, I’ve put that away. It’s the past, no sense in dwelling on it. I just don’t like having to put up with Gerald and the aunts fussing about and all the various cousins that show up at one of these things. It’s one big pain.”
A bit wistfully, McCormick sighed. “Sounds nice to me.” He picked up the basketful of clean clothes and edged past Hardcastle, heading for the bedrooms on the second floor.
Hardcastle trailed after him, stopping outside the den. “You won’t say that after you get caught in that mass of people, all jabbering about what horrible things you did as a kid, filling you up with different homemade foods, full of good cheer, but only for the holidays. The rest of the year, they’re all grouches who don’t want anything to do with you.”
Halfway up the stairs, McCormick tried to imagine it. Christmas for him was being alone in the dingy one-room apartment that his mother rented for an unreasonable sum of money while she worked a special shift at the local diner. It was more money, something they had little enough of. It meant a warmed-over turkey dinner after his mom got home at three a.m., too tired to do more than watch her bastard son open a tiny present or two. It was usually something simple, like candy or a toy car, but once, it had been a Mickey Mouse watch. It didn’t even matter to him that it was from a pawn shop and didn’t keep good time, it was the most beautiful think he had seen in his seven years. And even that family feeling had ended when his mother died six years later. Most of the foster homes he had been put into did it for the money or the community good will or, in a few cases, they could get children to torment or worse. A real family, to fawn over you, that was something very special to McCormick and he wouldn’t miss the get-together in Clarence for the world. And getting to hear more ‘Hardcastle as a kid’ stories would only put the icing on the cake.