Steve Hockensmith: Naughty-Nine Tales of Christmas

"'No pain, no gain'?" Diesel said. "Alright. I can live with that."

The Reptile didn't hear him. He was grunting and growling with effort, convinced the window was finally starting to move. He leaned back further, still gripping the window like a mountain climber clutching a rocky ledge. Something snapped.

The window tilted upward. The Reptile sprawled downward. The ground stayed just where it was-which is why the Reptile smacked into it so hard.

He lay there a moment, flat on his back, breathless with both exertion and surprise. Far above him, luminous white clouds, backlit brilliantly by a hidden moon, blotted out all but a small black pond of night-time sky. A single star shimmered in the circle of darkness, its twinkling beams reaching out like tendrils straining to touch the earth.

Gazing up at its lonely beauty, the Reptile felt something inside himself shift, itch, grow. It started as an observation, turned into a doubt, then transformed into a question that shook his very soul.

Where the hell is Diesel?

He sat up and looked around. His literal partner in crime was gone.

"You idiot!" the Reptile wanted to scream. "I've got the keys to the car! You're going to have a merry god damn Christmas walking all the way home tonight! Do you hear me, you moron? You stupid freak !"

He couldn't scream all that, of course. Not without drawing an unwanted audience. So he took out his frustration on the ground, kicking and pounding at the frozen sod. It wasn't very satisfying. The terra was far too firma. The Reptile's fists and heels were aching after the very first blows, and it was quickly clear that he was hurting himself more than the innocent earth beneath him. He ended his tantrum and dragged himself to his feet.

The window he'd been working on, he now saw, was hanging from a single hinge. He'd managed to bend and snap the other one. The glass pane was dangling, loose. All he had to do was push it aside, hoist himself up, and he'd be in.

A miracle. Hallelujah.

And he was the only one there to see it. The only one with pockets to stuff full of money. All because Diesel let himself get spooked by some baby Jesus-talk and a factory-made Mary.

The Reptile turned and shot a spiteful glare at the nativity scene across the road.

"Thanks a lot, lady," he snarled. He couldn't tell if the hazy Madonna he was squinting at so furiously was plaster or plastic or Play-Doh. He just knew she was fake -in every way-and she'd come between him and his only friend.

A woman , he thought. Ain't that always the way?

He tried to think of a suitable blasphemy to throw in her fuzzy face. After a moment's thought, he settled on "'Virgin' my ass." Then he whirled around, walked to the window and started climbing.

Just as he set a toe in the promised land, inside the church, he heard footsteps behind him.

"There he is!" a woman barked.

When the Reptile looked back over his shoulder, he was blinded by twin lights-flashlight beams aimed right at his face.

"Oh, yeah," a man said. "We got us a back-door Santa alright."

"This isn't what it looks like, officers."

The Reptile put up his hands. He didn't have to see the people coming toward him to know they were cops.

"Oh?" the male one said.

The Reptile felt a sudden pressure on his forearm, a jerk that wrenched his shoulder, and then he was on the ground again. Face down this time, his hands behind his back.

"Well, these aren't handcuffs, either," the male cop said. He snapped something hard and cold on the Reptile's wrists. "They just look like them."

They felt like them, too.

The cops hauled the Reptile to his feet and began steering him back toward the parking lot. The woman was reminding him of his right to remain silent, but that was the last right the Reptile wanted to exercise just then.

"It was him , wasn't it?" he ranted. "D! I can't believe it. I can't believe it! He ratted me out! After all we've been through together, he narcs on me! On Christmas Eve!"

The cops fell silent for a moment. Then the male cop spoke, sounding amused in a way the Reptile couldn't understand.

"And who would 'Dee' be?"

" Dean ," the Reptile corrected incorrectly, struggling to regain the cold-blooded calm he thought of (also incorrectly) as his defining trait. "Just a guy I know. So he didn't send you guys over here, huh?"

The cops went quiet again. Then the female cop picked up where she'd left off, reminding the Reptile of his right to have an attorney present during questioning. And the funny thing was, she sounded amused, too.

They were sharing a joke, those two. And the joke was on him. Only he still didn't know what it was.

The punch line came ten minutes later. The cops had prodded him about "Dean" a few more times, brought the minister over to gape at him, let him freeze his ass off in the back of their patrol car while they slurped hot coffee fetched by a choir member still in her golden robes. Then they climbed in and hauled him off to be booked.

The cops were relaxed, even jovial. Definitely not worried about any other "back-door Santas" still on the prowl. That meant the minister hadn't noticed he and Diesel were together, the Reptile figured. And whoever'd called the police hadn't seen both of them creeping around outside the church. So D might end up alright, as long as the Reptile didn't drag him into it.

And he didn't plan to. Diesel got lucky because all of a sudden he started caring that something seemed "wrong." The Reptile could forgive him for that.

After all, it was Christmas, right? Like D said-the time for second chances. You just had to be smart enough to take your chance when it was handed to you. Diesel could still redeem himself. The Reptile would be needing money for a lawyer, and New Year's Eve was on its way. The easiest day of the year to roll drunks.

As the police cruiser pulled out onto Nicholas Road, the Reptile scanned the darkness beyond the reach of its headlights, straining for a sight he knew his eyes were too weak to see. He imagined Diesel peeking out around a tree or cowering behind a car, his borrowed blue pantsuit turning him into a wall of shadow. Or maybe he was hiding in plain sight, the fourth wise man in the "naiveté" scene. The Reptile smiled grimly as the patrol car passed Bethlehem United Church of Christ and the phony little manger with its phony little savior.

And suddenly the Reptile, who'd always fancied himself cold-blooded, knew what it felt like when your veins really do turn to ice.

Up close, he could see that the manger wasn't small at all. It was nearly life-size. Which was appropriate, since the figures milling about around it were alive .

The shepherds, the wise men, Joseph, Mary-everyone but the baby Jesus. They were real people in costume. Teenagers, by the look of them. A youth group bringing the nativity to life on Christmas Eve.

Only they weren't in character any more. They were standing around in clumps of two and three, chattering, watching the cop car, pointing. The only one still in position was Mary, who remained hunched over the straw-stuffed trough that served as crib for their pudgy Cabbage Patch Christ. Her mouth was moving, though she clearly wasn't speaking to anyone the Reptile could see.

She was talking into her cell phone.

Me and Santa Claus, we got a thing or two in common. Not in the looks department, obviously. I look more like a shriveled old elf than your classic jolly fat man. But the way I see it, Santa's a trucker, just like I was for thirty-something years.

Now, obviously, he ain't a trucker in your literal, Biblical sense. The man don't drive a rig and he ain't a Teamster-at least, far as I know. But he's the fella who gets the goods from point A to point B. The elves, they're the manufacturers. And the kids, they're the customers. And Santa's the man who brings 'em together. Just like a trucker.