Steve Hockensmith - Naughty-Nine Tales of Christmas

When he reached the last of the cars, the Reptile shot a quick look over his shoulder. Only a handful of people had made it past the minister into the parking lot and none of them were looking his way. The Reptile pivoted sharply, veering right, and darted toward the bushes and shadows that lined the side of the church. It only took a few seconds of running to put him around the corner, out of sight of anyone coming out of the building or heading to their car. Diesel chugged after him, nearly invisible as he plunged into the darkness beside the Reptile.

"My man, you oughta keep that lady-suit when we're done with all this," the Reptile said. "It's better camo than your camo. I can barely see you."

"What are we doing over here?"

The Reptile took a quick survey of their surroundings. High wooden fence to their left, quiet subdivision homes beyond it. Nicholas Road about a hundred yards straight ahead. And running along on their right, the back wall of the Shepherd of the Hills Methodist Church.

The Reptile walked to the nearest window.

"What do you think we're doing?" he said, peering in at an empty classroom. The tables and chairs were uniformly tiny, and toys and thin-spined books were stacked on low shelves. A banner on the wall said "JESUS LOVES THE LITTLE CHILDREN." A shudder ran through the Reptile's slender body, the chill coming either from the brisk winter air or the ghostly tickle of Sunday school lessons long forgotten. "We're looking for another way in."

The window could be opened outward, swiveling on hinges like a miniature door. But it was sealed tight with a latch on the inside. The rest of the classroom windows were the same.

The Reptile moved on.

"Dude… dude, it's cold ," Diesel whined as he clomped along after him, his boots seeming to seek out and land on only the twigs with the loudest snap potential.

"Hey, how about a little more stealth back there, Rambo?" the Reptile said. He looked in at the next room-a teen center, to judge by the foosball table, bean bag chairs and posters of pretty young men and women sporting the faux-scruffy look favored by whitebread Christian rockers. Again, the windows were sealed tight.

The Reptile invoked the name of the man whose birth they'd been celebrating in church-invoked it with blasphemous bitterness. After suffering through the Christmas service, he desperately needed a Kool. Hell, he could've smoked two just then, jamming them between his lips at the same time and sucking them down to their butts in seconds. But he knew better than to fire up his lighter within sight of the road. So he pressed on. When they were done, he'd light up a whole pack with a fifty dollar bill.

"We're getting pretty close to Nicholas Road, dude," Diesel said as the Reptile went striding past window after window, lock after lock. "Someone's gonna see us."

"Only if we're outside. That's why we gotta find… yes!"

A way in. At last.

They'd reached the end of the building, turned the corner. And the very first window they came to was open .

The Reptile peered through the glass at the room beyond. A shaft of light from a half-open door beamed in on a stack of dark, oversized folders and a row of golden robes hanging in a closet.

The window was only open about four inches, not enough to let in a person, just some fresh air. Scattered on the ground outside was an elephant's graveyard of cigarette butts. Apparently, somebody in the choir liked to warm up their lungs with a pre-service smoke.

"Finally. It's our window of opportunity, D!" The Reptile took hold of the edges and pulled. The window didn't budge. "Help me loosen this up."

The Reptile gave the window another tug… alone. When he turned to see why he wasn't getting any help, he found himself staring into an electric blue wall. Diesel's back.

"D? The window's over here, my man. Behind you. Attached to the building . D?"

"Geez, man… it's like she's looking right at me."

"She? Who? Damn!"

The Reptile jumped around Diesel, ready to keep jumping all the way back to his Reliant. There was a good forty yards of lawn between them and Nicholas Road, and the nearest street light was even further away than that, yet still he expected to see a car slowing to a stop, the driver gawking at them slack-jawed.

And there were indeed cars out there. But they were all zipping right along.

Diesel wasn't looking at them, anyway. He was staring across the road, across the ditch on the other side, across the long stretch of grass beyond it, at Shepherd of the Hills's competition: Bethlehem United Church of Christ. Sitting in front of it was what could have been a henhouse surrounded by floodlights. Fuzzy figures huddled in and around the ramshackle wooden structure. From a distance, it looked like they were all draped in bathrobes.

"Her," Diesel said. "In the naiveté scene."

"Who in the what?"

The Reptile squinted hard at the chicken shack. His eyesight might have been fading, but it didn't take strong eyes to figure out what was across the road. All that was required was a functioning brain.

"It's ' nativity scene,' D. And it's plastic. Or plaster, I don't know. Anyway, nobody's looking at you."

"But I feel like she is, you know?" Diesel said, his tone pleading, begging for his friend's understanding. "Mary. I feel like she sees me. And she seems… disappointed."

The Reptile blinked at Diesel as if he'd just sprouted wings and fired up a neon halo.

"Damn, D. I shouldn't have let you blast that roach when we left the house. Cuz I swear, you sound like you've got The Fear."

"It's not the pot. It's just that I've been thinking-"

"Well, there's your problem right there," the Reptile cut in. "You listen to all that preachy church crap and start thinking , you'll get so spun-around dizzy you can't see straight."

"No, dude. I was thinking before we even went into the church. Like, when we were watching the cartoon tonight? And Linus starts talking about the little baby in swallowed-up clothes and the heavenly hostess singing the good news and peace on earth, good will to men? You know. Like, a second a chance for everybody? That's what Christmas is all about." Diesel nodded at the window the Reptile had been clawing at. "Not this ."

The Reptile shook his head and waved his hands like a man trying to shoo away a fly intent on buzzing its way into his ear.

"No, no, no. Forget Linus. Lucy , D. Lucy's the smart one."

Now it was Diesel's turn to shake his head.

"She's smart, dude, but that doesn't make her right. What she's talking about, the rackets and all… that's what we're supposed to save ourselves from ."

"What are you, a wise man all of a sudden?" the Reptile snapped. "Listen to me, Kenneth . You're just as dumb now as you were when you woke up this morning. So don't start thinking you can think. Leave that to the Reptile. Now get your big ass over here and yank this god damn window open."

The Reptile spun around, marched back to the window and started tugging at it again. He'd never gotten nasty with Diesel before. It had never been necessary. What the Reptile said, Diesel did. It pained him to be so harsh with D now, but what choice did he have? They had a job to do, and they had to do it quick. Mary and the other assembly-line saints across the road didn't bother him. But real flesh-and-blood people driving past in real steel-and-chrome cars-those were a worry.

"I don't like this," Diesel said.

"There's a little crank thingy for opening the window," the Reptile replied without really replying. "If we just get a little more of a gap here, I think I can get my arm in and reach it."

"I mean, I feel bad , dude."

"Well, you know what they say, D." The Reptile leaned back, pulling on the window with all of his weight. For the first time, he thought he felt it budge. "No pain, no gain."