Christmas at Home

by Carolyn Brown

  “What do you hear, Sharlene?”

  “The helicopter blades. They buzz like flies lighting on cow patties. Shhh, they’ll be here soon and we haven’t finished the job. If we don’t do it, the men will be in trouble.”

  He sat down on the other side of the bed. She grabbed his arm, looked him right in the eyes, and pulled at his arm. “Get down or they’ll see you. Don’t make a noise. I can’t get you out of here if you talk. Just lie here beside me until they are gone.”

  “I’ll be quiet.” He stretched out beside her.

  Her eyes snapped shut and she snuggled up to his side. He decided to wait until she was snoring again before he left. As drunk as she was, she might see aliens the next time her eyes opened, and if the hotel owner had her committed, he wouldn’t have a job come Monday morning.

  So she’d been in Iraq, had she? Were those the demons that made her get drunk? He thought of his sister and the night she died because of a drunk driver. He fell asleep with his sister on his mind and a strange woman in his arms.

  * * *

  A sliver of sunshine poured into the room in a long uneven line through a split in the draperies. Sharlene grabbed a pillow and crammed it over her head. She hadn’t had such a hellish hangover since she got home from Iraq. They’d had a party to celebrate her homecoming and they’d really tied one on that night. The next morning her head had been only slightly smaller than a galvanized milk bucket. Her head had throbbed with every beat of her heart and she’d sworn she’d never get drunk again. But there she was in a hotel room with the same damn symptoms.

  She needed a glass of tomato juice spiked with an egg and lemon and three or four aspirin. Somehow she didn’t think raw eggs and tomato juice would be on the free continental breakfast bar in the hotel dining room. She peeked out from under the pillow at the clock. The numbers were blurry but it was nine o’clock. Two hours until checkout. That gave her plenty of time for a shower. Maybe warm water would stop her head from pounding like a son of a bitch.

  She and her friends had hit four…or was it five bars? She didn’t remember dancing on any tabletops or getting into fights. She checked her knuckles and they were free of bloody scabs. No bruises on her arms or legs. She wiggled but didn’t feel like she’d been kicked or beaten. Either she didn’t start a fight or she won. She frowned and in the fog of the hangover from hell she remembered arguing with a man. Then the helicopters were overhead and she told him that Jonah was dead.

  Then they all left and the man brought her to the hotel. She sat up so quickly that her head spun around like she was riding a Tilt-A-Whirl at Six Flags. She was hot and sweaty, barefoot, and her skirt was missing. She was still wearing panties, a T-shirt, and a bra, so evidently the man had put her to bed and left.

  The newspaper reporter in her instantly asked for what, when, who, and how. She drew her brow down and remembered the what. She’d been drunk and passed out in his truck. The when involved after all the bars closed. The rest was a blur.

  She moaned as she sat up on the edge of the bed and the night came back in foggy detail. Four of her girlfriends who’d served with her in Iraq had come to Weatherford for a reunion weekend. One from Panama City, Florida; one from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; another from Nashville; and the fourth from Savannah, Georgia. Sharlene could only get away for Sunday so they’d flown into Dallas and saved the best until she arrived. One beer led to another and that led to a pitcher of margaritas and then the tequila shots. She vaguely remembered a tequila sunrise or two in the mix. Her stomach lurched when she stood up, and the room did a couple of lopsided twirls.

  She leaned on the dresser until everything was standing upright and her stomach settled down. If she waited for her head to stop pounding, she’d be there until hell froze over or three days past eternity—whichever came first.

  She held her head with both hands as she stumbled toward the bathroom. Hangovers had been invented in hell for fools who drank too much. Or maybe the angels developed them. A good hangover would keep more people out of hell than a silver-tongued preacher man ever could.

  “Holt Jackson! Dear God! That’s who brought me home. Lord, he’ll think I’m a drunk and a slut.”

  She’d slept in his arms and had not dreamed. Even with a hangover, she knew she hadn’t dreamed. She hadn’t seen Jonah’s eyes the night before, and she’d slept for the first time in years without the nightmares. She looked back at the tangled sheets on the king-sized bed, and the rush of what might have happened made her even dizzier than the hangover. She grabbed the wall and scanned each corner of the room.

  “Did we? I can’t remember. Oh, shit! I can’t remember anything but getting into his truck,” she whispered. She reached for the knob to open the bathroom door. It swung to the inside and there stood Holt Jackson, drying his hands on a white hotel towel. She had to hang onto the knob for support or she would have fallen into his arms.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  She rushed inside, shoved him out, and hung her head over the toilet. When she finished, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She heard deep laughter and bristled. Sure, she was in misery, but he had no right to laugh at her unless he was a saint or an angel and had never had a hangover. When she opened the door, he was sitting on the end of the bed, putting on his boots and watching cartoons. He ran his fingers through his dark-brown hair, and green eyes looked at her from beneath thick, deep, dark eyelashes. His face was square with a slight dimple in his chin and his lips were full.

  The anger left and was replaced with remorse. “Sorry about that. I haven’t been drunk in many years.”

  “Not since Iraq, huh?” he said.

  She glanced at the bed. “We didn’t… Did we?”

  “You snored and I fell asleep. Didn’t mean to, but it had been a long day with the moving and then driving to Fort Worth for supper. I apologize. Other than that, nothing happened.”

  “How did you know about Iraq?” she asked cautiously.

  “You tried to convince me that if you could drive an army jeep to the barracks from something or somewhere named Shalma that you could drive your pink Bug to the hotel,” he said.

  “That all I said?”

  “There was something about sand and helicopters, then you passed out. What did you do over there?” Holt asked.

  “My job,” she said. “Thanks for taking care of me. I appreciate it. I’m going to take a shower and go home.”

  “Sure?” he asked.

  “My head is throbbing and my stomach isn’t too sure about whether it’s going to punish me some more, but I’m sober. Still being drunk wouldn’t hurt this bad.” She tried to smile.

  “Okay, then. I’ll see you tomorrow at the building site. Be careful.” He waved at the door.

  She nodded and threw herself back on the bed.

  Holt had seen her in her white underpants and heard her throw up. Nothing the day could bring could top that. She waited five minutes and went back to the bathroom. She stood under the warm shower for twenty minutes, shampooed her hair twice, and could still smell smoke so she washed it a third time.

  A bass drum still pounded out a thump-thump-thump in her head when she threw back the shower curtain and wrapped a towel around her body and a separate one around her head. Using the back of her hand, she wiped a broad streak across the steamed-up mirror and checked her reflection. Dark circles rimmed her green eyes. Every freckle popped out across her nose. Kinky red hair peeked out from under the towel.

  She shut her eyes to the wreck in the mirror and got dressed. The last bar where she and her friends had landed was located close to her hotel. She could easily carry her tote bag and walk that far. She didn’t need to waste money on a taxi.

  The free continental breakfast offered doughnuts, cereal, milk, juice, and bagels. The thought of any kind of food set off her gag reflex so she bypassed all of it and checked out. The girls
had said they needed to get together once a year from now on. Sharlene thought once every five years would be enough if she was going to feel like this the next morning. Hell’s bells, if she was going to suffer like this, she didn’t care if she never saw any of them again.

  The noise of the heavy equipment doing road construction between the hotel and the bar ground into her ears like artillery fire in the desert. Her cowboy boots on the sidewalk sounded like popping machine-gun chatter, and the bag on her shoulder weighed twice as much as her pack in Iraq. The August sun was doing its best to fry her brain, and sweat beaded up between her nose and upper lip. It wasn’t anything compared to the Iraqi desert, but heat and hangovers did not make good partners no matter what country they met up in.

  “If I ever get back to Mingus, I’m never drinking again. I may not even have my nightly after-hours beer,” she said.

  Her hot-pink Volkswagen Bug looked lonely in the bar parking lot. The night before she’d had to circle the lot a dozen times before she finally found a place to squeeze the little car into, but that morning it was the only car in the place. She opened the door, slung her bag into the passenger’s seat, started the engine, and turned on the air-conditioning.

  She bought a cup of coffee from a McDonald’s drive-by window before she got out on Interstate 20 and headed west toward Mingus. It was only forty miles from Weatherford to Mingus, but the way her head ached, it could have easily been five hundred miles. She hadn’t gotten relief when she parked her car in the garage behind the Honky Tonk. She carried her bags out across the grass to the door of her apartment located right behind the beer joint. She’d thought she’d move into the house in town that she’d inherited right along with the Tonk, but it was too convenient to walk through a door back behind the actual bar and be home at two o’clock in the morning.

  Ruby Lee had built the Honky Tonk back in the sixties, and nothing had changed since then. The outside was rough barn wood with a three-level facade and a wide front porch. Inside, a long room served as poolroom, dance floor, and bar with a few tables scattered here and there.

  Ruby had lived in the apartment in those first years before she bought a house in town. She died and left the Honky Tonk to Daisy, her bartender and surrogate daughter. Less than a year later, Daisy fell in love and married Jarod. She gave the joint to her cousin Cathy. Then Cathy and Travis got married, and she gave the bar to Larissa. Now Larissa was married to Hank, and she’d passed the bar and her house down to Sharlene.

  By the time Sharlene inherited the Tonk, it had a reputation for having a magical charm that created happy-ever-after marriages. Women flocked to it with a gleam in their eyes that reflected three-tiered cakes and big, white wedding gowns. Sharlene could have made a fortune if she’d put a little statue on the bar and charged five bucks to rub the place where its ceramic heart was located.

  In the beginning, Sharlene had come to the Tonk looking for a story that would get her a better office and a promotion at the Dallas Morning News. She’d offered to shadow Larissa looking for that human-interest story and they’d become friends. Before long she was living in the apartment back behind the Honky Tonk and helping Larissa out at the bar on weekends. When Sharlene got the pink slip from the newspaper, Larissa hired her full time. Going to Mingus for a story was the best thing Sharlene had done since she came home from Iraq. She’d found a home, written and sold a book instead, and wound up owning the beer joint.

  She forgot about the Honky Tonk charm when she slung open the door and yelled for Waylon. Usually he came running from the bedroom the minute he heard her, but that day he must have been in a pout because she’d left him alone. She checked the bed to find the pillows mashed down where he’d taken a nap. He wasn’t under the table or behind the sofa.

  “Waylon, where are you?” she singsonged as she held her head. “Damn cat, anyway. I’ve got a hangover and he’s in a snit. I’d trade places with him. He can have a headache and I’ll hide and pout.”

  She found him curled up behind the potty. When she called him, he ignored her. When she picked him up, he wasn’t breathing.

  “Waylon!” She sat down in the bathroom floor and wept, her tears dripping off her jaw and onto the dead cat’s fur.

  * * *

  She held him until she got the hiccups, then laid him gently on the bed and went to find something appropriate to bury him in. She found a boot box and lined it with his favorite fluffy blanket, laid him inside, and taped the lid down with duct tape. She carried the box out to her car and gently laid it on the passenger’s seat right beside her.

  “It’s a hell of a hearse but it’s all I’ve got, old boy. At least you’ll have a proper burial,” she said. She wiped away tears several times during the two-mile drive from the place of death to the house where she intended to lay Waylon to rest at the edge of the garden plot.

  She pulled up in the driveway and removed the boot-box casket from the car and carried it to the garden. Two miniature bicycles were propped against the front of the shed, and toys were lined up on the back porch.

  “Crap! I forgot they were moving in over the weekend,” she said.

  She knocked on the back door to let Holt know she was there and exhaled loudly when no one answered. She dang sure wasn’t ready to face him again that day so she would get her cat buried, leave, and no one would be the wiser.

  The house had been the talk of Mingus when Larissa had painted it turquoise with hot-pink trim and yellow porch posts. Then when she painted two rocking chairs bright orange and set them on the porch, everyone in town had a hearty laugh at the sight. It looked like a massive hurricane had picked it up in the Bahamas and set it smack down on the edge of Mingus, Texas, without damaging a single board.

  Sharlene found the shovel in the toolshed, dug a good deep hole in the softened dirt, and laid Waylon in it. After she filled the dirt back in, she found a couple of boards and some wire in the shed. She made a small cross to set on his grave and painted his name on the crossbar in bright-yellow paint.

  She tapped it into the ground with the end of the shovel and began her eulogy. “Waylon, you were a good friend. I will miss you. You’ve listened to so many stories and helped me talk my way out of many problems.”

  She wiped sweat from her brow and fanned her face with the black straw hat that she only wore when she mowed the yard. She was gearing up to preach a sermon when she felt a presence behind her. Not another soul in Mingus even knew Waylon. Not even Merle, Luther, or Tessa. He’d been a very private cat and hid under the bed when anyone came inside the apartment. So who in the world would be coming around to his graveside services?

  She heard the doors of the truck slamming before she realized it had driven up in the driveway. When she turned around, Holt stood there with a kid hanging on each of his long legs.

  “Waylon died,” she said flatly.

  A little boy poked his head out from behind the man’s leg. “I’m not dead. I’m right here. Tell her I’m not dead. Don’t let her cover me up with dirt like they did Momma. I’m scared, Uncle Holt.”

  Sharlene dropped down on one knee to be at the little boy’s eye level. “I’m sorry. Is your name Waylon too? My cat was Waylon and he died.”

  A girl about the same age with the same brown hair and big brown eyes walked past both man and boy right up to Sharlene. “Ain’t no need to be scared, Waylon. I ain’t lettin’ her put you in the ground like they did Momma.” She looked at Sharlene. “Waylon ain’t dead, so why are you havin’ a fun’ral? And what’s your name and why are you havin’ a fun’ral in a yard? You’re ’posed to have them things in one of them places what has gots lots of other dead people in it.”

  Sharlene touched her black cowboy hat and realized what a crazy picture she’d presented in her hot-pink boots, a denim miniskirt, and a bright-yellow tank top. “I’m Sharlene Waverly. Your dad is going to work for me.”

  Holt held up a finge
r and both kids hushed. “We just got back from Palo Pinto where the kids stayed last night. We’re on our way to Stephenville to buy groceries. We’ll let you get on with burying your cat.”

  Sharlene slowly removed her hat and nodded.

  Holt stopped on his way to the truck. “I wanted to measure one more thing. All right if I stop by the bar?”

  “It’s locked. I’m finished here. I’ll follow you,” she said.

  “What about the kids?” he asked.

  “They’re not twenty-one, but then the bar doesn’t open until eight so I don’t think the cops will come and take them away,” she said.

  “I don’t want to go away with the cops,” Waylon whined.

  The little girl rolled her dark-brown eyes and sighed. “They don’t take you away unless you are twenty-one. Damn, Waylon, we ain’t but six.”

  “You better not say that word, Judd, or you’ll get in big trouble. We won’t get to watch television if you say bad words.”

  Judd popped a fist on her hip. “He likes cartoons in the afternoon because he don’t like to be outside when it’s hot. He’s the smart one. I’m the mean one. Uncle Holt says we’re playing at your house. Can we watch television there?”

  Sharlene laughed again. “There’s one in the bar, and you can watch it all day if you want.”

  “Then let’s go see this place where my Uncle Holt is going to work. I don’t have to drink beer, do I, Uncle Holt? I can still have juice packs and peanut butter sandwiches, can’t I?” Judd snarled her nose.

  Waylon tilted his head up and looked down his nose at his sister. “I like beer.”

  “When did you drink beer?” Holt asked him.

  “Momma left some in a bottle and I tasted it. I liked it. Judd made an awful face and tried to puke when she tasted it so she ain’t so mean.”