The Christmas Surprise

by R. R. Banks

  "It's a Wonderful Life. We're your angels of Christmas past, present, and future, and we're all here to tell you to stop being so damned stupid," said Boom Boom.

  "I think you have that confused with 'A Christmas Carol."

  "It's the same story, Graham." Cletus said, with a tone of pity in his voice as if he was explaining something that should be patently obvious to a small child.

  "The larger point at hand is that you need to go find Holly, and you need to do it with a little bit of pep in your step." Boom Boom said.

  "I don't think I'm totally understanding what's going on here," I said.

  "I had a feeling you would send her back on her cruise. I told BillyBob so on the way here, didn't I BillyBob?"

  "You did, Cletus."

  "I did, and I won a bet on it too, and don't think I'll let you welch on it either. But that's not the important thing. The important thing is we, and some other folk from the hollow, we knew you'd find a way to screw this up somehow and that just don't jive with it being Christmas and all. When BillyBob showed up out of nowhere, it felt like it was a sign from the Good Lord that we might ought to get our tails in gear and do something good for someone else."

  "So," Boom Boom butted in, "we headed on up here. I remember you saying this was where you were going back round when I met you, and this is the fanciest hotel nearby, so we dropped here first. Lucky us, we caught you."

  "I thought we were gonna miss Christmas," BillyBob said from behind them, taking a long drag from his second beer and shaking the near empty bottle to see how much was left. "But now we found you, we can head back home. I haven't spent a Christmas at home in years and I ain't fixing to keep that tradition going any longer."

  "Well, hold on a second, BillyBob. We got to make sure he actually finds Holly first. Gotta see this thing through to the end," said Boom Boom.

  "Just one problem, fellas," I said. "I have no idea how to get to her in time for you to get back."

  "Oh, now that we got covered," Boom Boom said.

  "How?" I asked. "We can't drive to any of the ports that they will dock at before Christmas. It's too far. And with traffic, we'd get stuck on the road for hours."

  "Roads? Who needs roads?" quoted Boom Boom as he flipped a pair of sunglasses down from the top of his head and over his eyes. I had no idea what he was talking about and it must have showed on my face. Boom Boom's smile faded a bit. "I have a plane. It's a little puddle jumper, but it does all right. Didn't you wonder how we got here so fast?"

  "You have a plane?" I asked, trying to process the thought of Boom Boom on anything but a tractor.

  "Sure do. I got a pilot's license a while back. I had decided to go back to school to get my GED and they said that I should do some vocational training. I thought that they said 'vacational training'." He gave a long sigh and looked into the middle distance for a moment before seeming to snap back into reality. "And anyway, that brings us here."

  "I don't even know what she'd do if I found her," I said. "She might just tell me she's done with me and I should move on."

  "And what if she doesn't?" asked Cletus, "What if she is just plum smitten with you and wants nothing more than for you to come find her and whisk her away for Christmas? What if you are about to let the best woman in your world slip right through your fingers because you're too damned scared she might say no?"

  I hate being told I was scared. But he was right. I thought about Charlie and the glimmer in his eyes when he talked about Holly. I had to find out.

  "You're right. Let's go. I know what we need to do."

  "I am?" Cletus looked genuinely surprised.

  "You are."

  "Well, hot damn. I didn't think I was going to be any damn good at this, but look at me, playing Cupid."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Graham

  Boom Boom let out a long, slow whistle.

  "Golly be, this is a fine aircraft, Graham. Look how danged shiny it is."

  "It's certainly a little bit roomier."

  I thought about the plane that he had shown me. Seeing it had made the whole idea of Boom Boom owning a plane make more sense, but that still didn't mean I was getting into it. The contraption looked like it was only just big enough to hold BillyBob and maybe Cletus, and it very well could have been held together with duct tape, moonshine, and hope. Though it had obviously gotten the three of them to me without incident, I wasn't prepared to take that chance. I might be willing to face my fear for Holly, but I didn't think that that necessarily had to mean getting into what I could only assume would feel like riding in a sardine can thrown by a giant.

  Buying a small plane had never been something that had crossed my mind. But neither had playing chicken with a turkey and then finding myself contemplating scarves as Christmas gifts for that turkey, so here we were. Boom Boom was sitting in the cockpit of the new plane, running his hands adoringly over the controls while Cletus, BillyBob, and I arranged ourselves in the back.

  "Roomier? Jesus, I could put a whole distillery in the back here and still have room to take Momma out for flying fishing."

  "Flying fishing? Do you mean fly fishing?"

  "No. Flying fishing. You know, shooting ducks from a plane. Flying fishing."

  "Of course. What else could it be?"

  Because that absolutely inspires confidence in me.

  "Don't you tell Cornelius about it, though." Boom Boom said. "He would be so mad at me."

  "Boom Boom's just mad because he didn't invent skinnyfishing like I did and he wanted to have some fishing glory of his own," BillyBob said.

  Where the hell did he come from?

  "If you do it just right, you can ride right up to them and catch 'em in a net as they fall. Momma is real good at the catching part. Well, she was up til she fell out of the plane that one time. Lucky old broad that we were over the lake."

  I, for the first time in my life, was literally speechless. I simply had no idea how to respond to this story. Should I say I am sorry? Should I laugh? Should I be even more terrified than I already was?

  That one is currently the frontrunner.

  Before I could settle on which one to go with first, Boom Boom looked back at me.

  "You doing OK, Graham?"

  "I think so. Can we just get going so this can be over with?"

  "Almost. I'm just familiarizing myself with everything. Don't want to go shooting you out of the plane because I hit an eject button rather than a speed control."

  Oh, sweet fuck.

  "If it's any comfort to you, I have a Bible right here."

  He pulled a Bible out from his inside pocket and handed it back to me.

  “I always figure when I am doing something that scares me out of my wits, that it's best to have a bit of the Word in the general vicinity. In case something happens, you got some holy words nearby. Might look good to the Big Man, you know?"

  "I appreciate that, Boom Boom, thank you."

  I took the Bible and noticed that it felt heavier than it should have. I held it in one hand and let it fall open.

  "Boom Boom, there's a flask in your Bible."

  "I know. It's my Daddy's. He tucked it right there, right up in Song of Solomon. He said it was alright because that book is basically Bible porn anyway, so he was preserving our innocence by not finding it."

  "But finding a flask of moonshine."

  "Yep. He didn't want Momma to know. He shouldn't have been so worried about it. She had her own hidden in good old Betty Crocker. And he wondered why we never had anything from the breakfast breads section." He laughed a little, then fell silent. "Besides, if I keep it inside a Bible, maybe a little bit of blessing rubs off on it. That way it can be Holy Whiskey."

  "Holy Whiskey?"

  "That's right. Like Holy Water, only zippier. That's why I always say cheers and point right up to the sky before I drink any of it. It's like I am sharing this here drink with the Big Man himself. Everybody else just whines about what they want out of life and who they
want to keep living, and how much money they want to make and all that. Other than my basic goodnights and pre-dinners, I only ever pray when I am about to take off and I send along a little whiskey with it, and I haven't had an accident yet."

  "What about your Mom falling out into the lake?"

  "Well, technically, I didn't have that accident. Momma did. If she had toasted the Good Lord with a bit of Bible moonshine, then perhaps she would have stayed inside the plane. Hell, I figure it was my prayer that made sure she fell into the lake in the first place and not just flat out on the ground."

  "So, you think the reason your mother fell out of the plane is because she didn't toast Jesus with whiskey before you left?"

  "I ain't saying it's the full-on reason, no. But I am saying that it sure didn't hurt any. You just keep that flask at the ready. Just in case."

  "In case of what, exactly?"

  "In case I need to do a whole bunch of toasting real quick."

  I'm going to die. I'm going to fucking die. And I'm going to do it over a part of the country that is occupied by two hundred people, a herd of deer, and a cat, and they aren't going to find me until they have to take a can opener to this plane and drag out my bones.

  "He's not looking too good," Cletus said.

  "Graham? You doing OK back there?"

  I clung to the seat and nodded.

  "Doing fine."

  "I don't think that's the truth."

  "Well, if you would just focus on flying straight on toward the hollow rather than doing all your little flip-de-doos, he'd probably be alright. I think that last series of corkscrews was just a bit too much for him."

  "We're getting close. He's going to be alright," Boom Boom said. "Why don't you tell him a story or something? Get his mind off of it."

  I nodded.

  "That's a good idea," I said. "I've actually been meaning to ask you something, BillyBob."

  "What's that?" he asked, cracking open another beer.

  I was sincerely hoping that all of this one went directly into his mouth by the power of his own hand lifting the can rather than him just holding it in his mouth and waiting for Boom Boom to flip the plane to pour it in as he had done far too many times for my comfort with the last beer.

  "You've been missing for a while, right?"

  "Well, I don't know if I've really been missing. I mean, I was for a while there, but once I figured out where I was, I wasn't really missing anymore. Just not in the place where other people left me. Isn't that the way that goes? You put something down like your eyeglasses or your cup of coffee or your brother, and then the next thing you know, it's not there anymore."

  I nodded.

  "Uh huh. Yeah. So, you've been not in the hollow for a while."

  "That's right."

  "Where the hell have you been?"

  Boom Boom did another flip and my life flashed in front of my eyes.

  I'm doing this for Holly. I'm doing this for Holly. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.

  "Boom Boom!" Cletus admonished.

  "I'm sorry. That one was necessary. I was...avoiding a bird."

  "Anyway," BillyBob said, drawing the conversation back to himself. "It all started when I was feeling a bit hungry and hadn't been to the store in a while."

  "I thought you disappeared when you were going fishing," I said.

  "Yeah. Like I said. I was hungry and hadn't been to the store in a while. So, I figured I’d go get some dinner out of Lake Creek Lake.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “Lake Creek Lake. It’s what we call that body of water on the edge of Whiskey Hollow. It ain’t quite a lake and it ain’t quite a creek and there was a big old fight about it between the two families that owned the land around it as to what exactly it was. Well in all that squabbling, their kids fell in love and got hitched. So, to bring about harmony in the family and to make things easy they just called it Lake Creek Lake.”

  BillyBob took a sip of his beer as if that explanation had just cleared everything right on up for me.

  “Why didn’t they just call it Lake Creek?”

  Silence fell inside the plane as BillyBob tapped the side of the beer can and looked out of the window, which now showed the ground sailing past at what felt like the speed of sound.

  “One of God’s mysteries, I guess," he said in a distant, almost awe-filled voice.

  Unfazed by neither Boom Boom's erratic flying nor the equally scattered story, Cletus spoke up.

  “Yeah, yeah, we'll bring him to Miss Daisy Pearl's library and show him the newspaper clippings. Get on with your story. He's looking shaky again."

  “Right, well, I invented skinnyfishing because everybody knows that the best way to get a fish is to get down into the water right there with them. But when the weather gets cold, if you get in the water in your clothes. you're freezing your ass off the whole way home. So instead, I get down into the water naked so when I get back out, I can put on my nice dry clothes. So, I took off all my clothes and went running across the field toward Lake Creek Lake."

  "Why didn't you just take them off when you got there?" I asked.

  "Hindsight is twenty-twenty, Graham. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. So anyway, I got to the water and I tucked my clothes up under a rock by a big ass tree with three branches that jutted out in three different directions, like this." He held his arms up at different angles and spread his fingers out. "I figured that was as good a place as any to keep everything dry while I was skinnyfishing. So, I waded on in to the water and started fishing. Well, a bit of time goes by and I realize I can't feel my danglies anymore, so I should likely give up and just go cook up some of the pork I got stuffed in the garage. I swam my way back to where I thought that I had gotten in and I got out.

  It was at that point that I realized that damn near every tree out there has three branches and damn near every one of them has a big ass rock sitting next to it. I was beginning to see the flaws in my plan. So, I spent a good 20 minutes or so looking around, flipping over rocks and quite literally freezing my butt off. Like off. Like I'm still pretty certain that I don't have anywhere near as much butt now as I did when I walked down into that water that day. Anyway, I’m flipping these rocks and trying to figure out how I’m gonna go walking through town stark naked to get home without scarring the children for life when I see this deer out maybe thirty yards from me. And I’d be damned if right by the tree I was standing at was a couple of arrows and a bow with a broken string. Somebody must have been out hunting and broke their string and left their arrows to get some more and then lost it like I lost my clothes. It was like God was shining right down on me and saying...BillyBob, now you know that it's not going to do you any good to just stand around here waiting to turn into a popsicle, but I can't be sending burning bushes all the time just to thaw you out, so you're going to have to help your damn self."

  "I don't think that's proper," Cletus said. "God wouldn't use profanity like that. Especially if you were having a spiritual moment."

  "I think that he would. He's the one sent all them out to wander around through the desert and live in tents. He's just a good old boy. But...I... digress. I’m standing there, my danglies just flapping in the wind and very rapidly getting far too chapped for my liking, and I thought to myself, well, if I could catch that deer, then I could skin it and wear the deer home. It would be right cozy what with it still having most of its body heat and everything."

  "And you could have brought the meat home rather than the fish," I said.

  BillyBob looked at me blankly for a few seconds.

  "Damn. That would have been a good addition to the plan."

  "Keep going, BillyBob," Boom Boom said. "I'm going to have to take a turn up here and I have a feeling he's not going to like it"

  "So, I grabbed up the arrows and went chasing after this deer, chucking the arrows as I went, and I swear that deer was always just a half a step ahead of me. No matter how far I chased it, and no matter how slow and quiet I creep
ed up on it, it always knew the arrow was in the air and it’d take off through the woods. Well, I was chasing that son of a bitch for a good couple hours when I realized I had no damned clue where I was. I saw that I was coming up on a clearing, and there might be some town life beyond it, and I figured I might have circled my way around the hollow and come back to where I started, so I just wandered on out. Well, instead of seeing the Jessups' house or the old windmill, I found myself, stark ass naked and shivering, right behind the Eagleton police station. And there were five officers standing there, chomping down on them fancy doughnuts they sell out there with the bacon and peanut butter on them. Have you ever tried one of those things?"

  "Can't say that I have, BillyBob," I said, squeezing my eyes closed as I felt the plane starting to bank.

  "They're good. Not as good as the apple cider doughnuts rolled in all that cinnamon and sugar that the Galloway's have at their farm round about pumpkin patch time. Those things are the best doughnuts you'll ever put in your mouth."

  "I'll have to remember to try one."

  When I come back to haunt your ass.

  "You should do that. So, they caught sight of me and before I could say anything, one of them just grabs me and slaps some cuffs on me. Does he offer me a shirt? No. Does he give me a blanket? No. Does he wrap his napkin around my poor cold, shriveled parts? No. Just slaps the cuffs right on me without a second thought and starts dragging me toward the police station. Well, this little piggy must have been brand-spanking new because he had no clue who I was or who Cletus was or who anybody from the hollow was, and when I tried to explain where I came from to him, he said there wasn't such a place around. He even pulled up a map and showed me, and of course, I couldn't point it out to him. Like I have said about three billion times, we have GOT to get ourselves back on the damned map. I know the last petition didn't work, but if we can get more than five signatures on the next one, I really think that we might have a chance. It would help to prevent further such issues in the future.

  So, now I am heated, and he brings me to the police station and tries to fingerprint me, which we all know isn't going to work because I ain’t got no fingerprints since I burned my hands at the Great Easter Catastrophe of ’79. So, they can’t run my prints, I don't have a stitch of clothing, much less a damned ID, and nobody at the processing place, all the hell the way over on the other side of Eagleton has ever heard of the hollow. Now, I just can't understand how that could possibly be true, because all you know that plenty of hollow folk have been through that processing center and quite of a few of our youngins end up in Eagleton when they want to leave the hollow for the big city, despite our attempts to guide them elsewhere… I think that there might be a conspiracy going on, and I plan to do some investigating and get to the bottom of it. But no matter how hard I try to tell them any of this, they just won't believe me, so finally they book me as a vagrant and say I got delusions and stick me in a psych ward.