Jill Churchill - The Merchant of Menace

“Jane, I think you're making too much of all this. All you have to do is make the extra cookies and clean up your house—"

“Both of which are significant hurdles, in case you hadn't noticed.”

Shelley glanced around. "The house does have a hint of nuclear holocaust about it. Butyou can manage. And I'll help with the buffet. Paul might even help us get a good deal with caterers.”

Shelley's husband Paul owned a chain of Greek fast-food restaurants. They were enormously successful and neither Jane nor Shelley had ever been able to figure out why. They were in agreement that the food served in the restaurants was inedible. Paul even admitted it but said his policy was "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

“Not Greek," Shelley assured Jane. "But he's subcontracted for a lot of caterers."

“Would you trust a caterer who subcontracted for his food?" Jane asked.

Shelley thought for a minute. "You've got a point. All right, then. We'll do a couple presliced hams, a bunch of scalloped potatoes from a boxed mix with some decent cheese and some green and red peppers added, and we'll tell everyone to bring either a salad or a dessert.”

Jane sighed again. "Shelley, you're a good woman. Now tell me what gifts to get my kids."

“You haven't done your shopping yet?" Shelley almost yelled.

“I know. I know. You had yours finished in August.”

Shelley didn't deny it. "It's too late to even count on catalogs. Sorry, Jane, but you're on your own there. Gift certificates are nice," she added wryly.

“Life was so much easier when they could be thrilled with a Big Wheel or a huge new box of crayons and half a dozen coloring books. Easier and cheaper. Mike sent me a list of computer programs and games he wanted. I went and priced them and reeled back out of the store looking like a woman who'd been hit in the head with a shovel.”

Shelley abandoned the topic. "So what were your other complaints? Something about the neighbors?"

“Oh, that's right. You and Paul were out of town when they moved in."

“I've been meaning to get over there and meet them," Shelley said. "What's wrong with them?"

“Nothing, I guess, if you'd grown up in Possum Hollow and were married to your half-brother."

“Hicks?"

“Oh, way beyond hickdom, Shelley. Way beyond. You should have seen the furniture going in. Stuff I'd be embarrassed to put out for the trash. A hideous rainbow plaid sofa that made my eyes water. Dining room chairs with fake gold legs and plastic covers on the seats. I hate being a snob—"

“I can see why," Shelley commented, glancing at Jane's hair.

“But the wife wears housedresses — the kind our grandmothers wore in the Depression — and I saw her once at the grocery store with her hair in pin curls. I haven't seen anyone do that for at least twenty years."

“Have you met them, or just gawked at them?"

“We've met, briefly. I took a tuna casserole and a salad over to them for dinner the first night they were here. The husband — Billy Something, Jones or Johnson, I can't remember which — wears cowboy boots, a deer-hunting hat. He made us come in the house and meet his wife."

“Us?"

“Suzie Williams was with me. She brought a dessert. He very nearly drooled on her.”

Jane and Shelley's friend Suzie, who lived a couple houses down the block, was a big, voluptuous platinum blond. A Mae West — looking woman, but much prettier and just as vulgar.

“Why wouldn't he drool over Suzie? It's a perfectly natural impulse for a man."

“Well, the poor wife was standing right there, for one thing."

“Was he nasty?"

“No, not nasty. Just sort of showed off like a kid trying to impress a teacher he's got a crush on. Had to tell us all about his alligator boots and how he 'knew the of boy what raised the 'gators hisself.' And he wanted us to admire their pictures they were hanging. Landscapes they'd bought in a vacant gas-station parking lot. Oh, well. Maybe they'll grow on me. It'll be a cultural experience, at the very least."

“What does he do, did he say?"

“He's retired.”

Shelley looked surprised. "Oh? Older people?”

“No. He looks about forty."

“What's he retired from?”

Jane shrugged. "No idea. Making moonshine?”

As if she'd made a cosmic announcement, her last word was followed by a trumpet blast of Biblical proportions that shook the windows.

TWo

Billy Joe Johnson ran out the front door and down the sidewalk to where his wife Tiffany was standing. Once again, she had her hair in pin curls, but with a woolen scarf on her head, peasant-style. She was wearing jeans, a lumberjack shirt, and a light jacket she was trying to keep overlapped in the front and cover her ears at the same time. She didn't have enough hands for both.

“Ain't it great, Tiff?" Billy Johnson shouted over the music. The raucous noise had resolved itself into a brass band recording of "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.”

Tiffany cupped her ear. "What? I can't hear you!”

Jane and Shelley came out onto Jane's front porch and Billy Joe waved cheerfully at them. Jane raised a limp hand in response as she and Shelley minced down the front steps to get a better look at the Johnsons' house. It was almost buried in Christmas decorations.

Four-foot-high lighted candy canes lined thedriveway. A life-sized Santa in a sleigh with two extremely lifelike reindeer were to the left of the sidewalk, and a coven of evil-looking plastic elves even more revolting than Jane's cookie elves disported themselves to the right of the yard. Every window in the house had a lighted snowman, angel, or star shining from it and was outlined with twinkling lights on the outside. In fact, the entire structure of the house was strung with lights. The bushes were a psychedelic nightmare, flashing and pulsating in red and green lights.

Jane and Shelley exchanged horrified looks. Tiffany cupped both hands and bellowed into Billy Joe's ear, "TURN OFF THE MUSIC!”

He bounced off to the house to do her bidding and a moment later the sound was abruptly cut off, mid-trumpet. It was suddenly so relatively silent that Jane could hear her pulse in her ears. Or maybe she'd gone suddenly deaf, she thought, and that's all she'd ever hear again. Her own heartbeat.

She tested her voice. "Shelley? Why didn't you tell me about this?”

Shelley was shaking her head, as if to clear it. "I've been inside all day and came from my kitchen door across the driveway to your kitchen door. I had no idea! He must have been working on this all day long."

“It's—" Jane fumbled for a single word that would describe the Johnsons' house. " — amazing! Horrible and amazing.”

Jane's front door flew open and two of her children came barreling out. Katie, Jane's sixteenyear-old daughter, came to a sudden stop and said, "Holy sh— oops. Sorry, Mom." Her eyes were as big as saucers as she stared at the sight next door. "'I was on the phone with Jenny and there was this awful noise. ." Her voice trailed off.

Todd, in seventh grade and just inching past his sister in height, came out behind her, looked at the house, and grinned. "Awesome!" he said.

Jane glanced down the street. Here and there porch lights had come on, and people were standing on their front steps, huddled in sweaters and coats, staring at the Johnsons' house. Somebody pointed to the roof, and Jane looked up, then clutched Shelley's arm. "Shelley, the roof—”

Atop the house, set up between the two front dormers, was an entire life-sized crèche. Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus, wise men, shepherds, two sheep, and a smallish camel who looked like he came from a different set. The figures were brilliantly hued plastic, lighted from inside. It was, beyond any doubt, the most ghastly thing Jane had ever seen.