Steve Hockensmith - Naughty-Nine Tales of Christmas

You know, I even pulled a Santa one year. Worked a real Christmas miracle for the children of River City. Well, for a toy store in River City, really. And for myself. But it's a whopper of a Christmas tale all the same. They oughta make one of them cartoon shows about it, like the ones they show on TV every year. Fetch me over a plate of them nachos and another beer, and maybe I'll tell it to you.

Thanks.

So now let's say you and me climb in my magical time machine and go waaaaaaaaay back to that ancient year nineteen and eighty three. I had it pretty sweet in them days. My wife Bootsie, God bless her, she pulled in good money at the Lawn Devil plant. That was before they packed it all up and shipped it to Mexico, you understand. Back then, Lawn Devil brought good money into River City-and into our house. I owned my own rig, didn't work for nobody but myself, could do a job or not do a job as I pleased, more or less. Not many truckers have things that cushy. This was years before Bootsie got sick.

We were all set for our usual Christmas Eve. Bootsie's momma was gonna come over with a ham, we would give each other presents, the boys would get in a fight about who got what record album and who got what poster and who got what T-shirt and what all. Then Bootsie and her momma and me would sip on some Fuzzy Navels and sing along with Johnny Mathis and Elvis while the boys sneaked out back to go kill a six pack with their friends behind the garage.

It don't sound like much, does it? But, boy, I miss it.

I missed it this year I'm talking about, too. Because the day before Christmas I get a call from Ivor Boraborinski. He and his brother Basil, they used to run a small transport company down around Evansville. Still do, now that I think of it. They're a bit on the seedy side, but not what you'd call outright shady.

Now whenever I got a call from a Boraborinski, I knew it was gonna be something interesting, because them two boys never stuck their noses into anything that wasn't. Every job with them was a double-rush long-haul ask-us-no-questions-we'll-tell-you-no-lies kind of deal, and it always ended up being a story. You listen real good to this one, maybe I'll tell you about the time they had me drop off a whole herd of reindeer at a danged mall !

So anyway, there it was Christmas Eve, and Ivor calls up and says, "I got a job for you, Bass."

"Uh-huh," I say.

"You'll probably want to leave right away," he says.

" Uh-uh ," I say. But that doesn't faze Ivor.

"You'll have to be back by ten a.m. tomorrow," he says.

I don't even bother with an "Uh-uh" this time. Remember now-"tomorrow" is Christmas Day.

"Round trip's about a thousand miles," Ivor says.

I could've whistled or groaned or asked him just how much Jack he'd put in his eggnog, but I stayed quiet.

And then he mentioned how much he'd pay.

Bootsie heard me gasp from the kitchen and hustled over, looking worried. She probably thought somebody'd died or the church had burned down or one of the boys had got himself arrested again. I gave her a don't-worry shake of my head, but my words didn't comfort her much.

"You know I don't haul drugs or guns, Ivor," I say.

"I'm not asking you to," he says.

"Well, I don't get it then," I say. "Cuz that figure you just mentioned is obb-scene. If it was a movie, Jerry Fallwell'd tell me to boycott it."

And then he said something that really made me think he'd gotten carried away with the Christmas spirits that day: "You ever heard of a Cabbage Patch Kid?"

Well, I hadn't. I look at Bootsie and roll my eyes and do that little finger-circle-around-the-ear crazy sign. I figure I'm talking to a loony tune.

"No, I have not," I say, getting ready to hang up before he asks me whether I believe in the Abominable Snowman.

"They're dolls," he says. "Ask your wife about 'em. She'll know. Everybody's crazy for 'em this year. Stores can't keep 'em on the shelves. You got people practically killing each other for the chance to buy one. There've been fights, riots, you name it."

"Over a doll?" I say. I still don't exactly believe him at this point, but he's starting to make some kinda sense.

"Over a doll," Ivor says. "And right now in River City, you can't buy a single one of 'em. Sold out. On Christmas Eve."

"Uh-huh," I say.

"The company that makes 'em is working around the clock to crank out more," Ivor says. "The folks at Monkeyberry Toys have a consignment on order that'll be ready tonight at midnight. Six hundred dolls. And they know they can sell every dang one of 'em-if we can get 'em back to River City on Christmas Day."

"Uh-huh," I say. "Can you hold on a minute?"

Ivor grunts at me, and I slap a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

"Bootsie," I say, "Ivor Boraborinski wants me to do a special haul for him. Like right now. About a thousand miles."

"Uh-huh," says Bootsie, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I drop it: I tell her how much they'll pay.

"You want Pepsi or Mountain Dew this trip?" she says.

"Mountain Dew," I tell her.

Ivor overhears that and knows what it means. He starts telling me where to go to get the dolls.

Now usually, Ivor'd have me pick up a load of this or that on my way out of town. In the trucking business, it don't pay to go nowhere with an empty trailer. But Ivor just tells me forget it, this is rush-rush stuff and the Monkeyberry folks couldn't get anyone else to do it and the profit margin is covered but good . I've just gotta grab them toys and get 'em back to River City by Christmas morning.

See? Just like Santa Claus.

So less than thirty minutes later, I'm headed east on I-70. Pennsylvania, here I come. Turns out them "kids" didn't grow in any cabbage patch. They were made in a factory in a dumpy little industrial park outside Pittsburgh. This was back when you could actually find a doll that didn't have MADE IN CHINA tattooed on its keister, you understand.

They may as well have come from the North Pole, though. Whammy! The second I hit the road, here comes the snow. It starts off all slow and pretty and I've got my Johnny Mathis on the tape deck singing "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" and it's real cute. But darn it all if Mother Nature don't take Johnny serious. The snow just don't stop. It didn't take long to go from cute to a pain in the butt to downright dangerous. And I've got hours and hours to go.

That's where the Mountain Dew comes in. Load me up with a couple cases of that stuff and I could drive to the moon and back without making a pit stop. When one can wears off, I pop open another. And when I get tired of that, I start tossing Lemonheads in my mouth to give it an extra kick. A man can't live on caffeine alone, you know. He needs sugar, too.

So by the time I get to the factory, here's what I've got on my bodily odometer: fifteen cans of Dew, two jumbo boxes of Lemonheads, God only knows how many cigarettes, enough beef jerky to start my own cattle drive and about five hundred close calls with ice, snow, deer, state troopers and cars driven by drunks and pinheads. And I've got to face that all over again on the way back, all without a single wink of sleep. Which is not exactly legal, but you know how it is. A trucker's logbook's got more fairy tales per page than Mother Goose.

When I finally get to the factory, it's something like eleven forty five in the p.m. Right on schedule-on my part, anyway. But it turns out I'm the twentieth truck in line. They've got people in the factory working quadruple overtime, those dolls are breaking the sound barrier as they come flying off the assembly line and still they're behind schedule. The demand was just too huge. So I'm told to sit down, shut up and wait my turn.

Which I do. But not 'til after I've gotten me my first gander at them dolls. They're in boxes all pushed together by the hundred and wrapped up tight in industrial plastic. But if you get up close and squint you can see their pudgy faces back there, like row after row of chubby little mummies staring out at you through their shrouds.