Steve Hockensmith - Naughty-Nine Tales of Christmas

"Holy Cheez Whiz," I say. "That's what all the fuss is about? Looks like somebody busted these babies in the face with a baseball bat. Any kid with one of those in her bed's gonna wake up screaming for sure."

The toy people aren't exactly amused by this, maybe because they're just as tired as me. So I shut my trap and climb into my cab and turn up my Elvis Christmas tape real loud. But I'm off my stride with the Mountain Dew, and nature takes its course.

One minute Elvis is singing about having a blue Christmas without you, the next he's telling me to run for my life cuz them Cabbage Patch Kids are the unholy spawn of Satan. I even see one peeking at me in the rear-view mirror, its beady little eyes glowing in the dark, blood trickling from its nasty puckered mouth. I try to yell for help but nothing comes out. The little monster's pulling at the handle of the door and there's something pink and pulpy caught in its sharp teeth and I hear it say "I'm hungry, Daddy" and I can't move a muscle and knock knock knock . Suddenly some bossy foreman's telling me to wake the heck up cuz it's my turn to load.

First thing I do, of course, is pop open another soda. Then I take a peek at my watch-and nearly give myself a Mountain Dew shower, I jump so bad. It's almost two in the zippity doo-da morning! Those unmentionable so-and-sos let me sleep for two blankety-blank hours!

I rev up my rig and whip around to the loading dock and back up at fifty five miles an hour and hop out and start tapping my foot and staring at that loading crew so hard my eyes are about to pop out of my skull. They get the message, too.

"Take it easy, fella," the foreman says to me. "We know, we know. We've got families to get home to, too."

"Yeah, but mine's five hundred miles away," I say.

"O.K., O.K.," the foreman says all irritable like, but he and his boys work fast. Twenty minutes later he's sticking a form under my face saying, "Alright, fella, sign it and haul."

I look in the trailer and don't like what I see. The thing's more than half empty.

"That's six hundred dolls?" I say.

"Hey, they're dolls-not TVs or hogs or whatever you're used to hauling." He slaps the paper he's trying to get me to sign. "Six hundred. Just like it says in the order."

"Alright," I say. "You know your business."

"Damn straight," the foreman says-and pardon my French for saying it now.

I sign and I haul.

The snow's still coming down as I pull out. There's maybe eight inches on the ground at this point, and it's starting to drift. It don't look good. But I'm in a fine mood cuz I'm finally on my second leg, so it's just one more big push and I'm home. The factory's about five miles off I-71. All I've gotta do is get on the interstate, crank up the Christmas tunes and let the Dew do the rest.

I'm about half-way to 71 on this dark little two-lane stretch through the woods when I see a big orange sign propped up in the middle of the road. "Detour," it says. There's a black arrow pointing off onto something that looks about half a step up from a deer trail. But the weather being so bad and all, I just figure it's drifting up ahead, and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation must know what they're doing, right? I turn onto the detour road.

Now this isn't one of your classic straight-as-an-arrow roads mapped out by a cartographer with a degree from a big state school. It follows a creek bed. It twists and it turns and it doubles back on itself until you don't know if you're headed east, west, north, south or straight down. I was out of sight of the main road before I'd gone thirty yards. By the time I'd gone a hundred, I was beginning to think about turning around-if I could ever find a spot to do it. Eighteen wheelers aren't exactly known for their maneuverability.

Of course, I'm none too happy about what this is gonna do to my ETA. And "none too happy" becomes "downright p.o.ed" when I see a fella in the middle of the road up ahead waving his arms. A few yards behind him there's a rusty old Buick half-on half-off the road at a cock-eyed angle. Looks like some Bud-happy yahoo couldn't handle the snow, and now it's up to old Bass to save the day… while ten a.m. Christmas morning gets closer and closer.

I'll admit it: There was a part of me that wanted to just keep on truckin'. But I guess all that "joy to the world" spirit of Christmas stuff was sloshing around in my head along with the Mountain Dew. I stopped.

I roll down the window and lean out and say, "What's the trouble, buddy?" To which the fella in the road has two interesting responses. One, he rolls down the stocking cap on his head so it covers his face. Turns out it's a ski mask. And two, he reaches under his coat and pulls out a revolver, which he proceeds to point in the general direction of my head as he walks over to my truck.

"No trouble here, 'buddy.' Unless you make some," he says.

I'm usually pretty good with the snappy comebacks, but this time I'll admit I wasn't up to the challenge. All I could get out of my mouth was something none too snappy like "Wha'?" or maybe "Huh?"

"Out," the fella says, waving the gun with three quick little jerks of his wrist. "Out out out."

Now I don't know about you, but my first inclination is to do what people pointing guns at me tell me to do. But just as my hand wraps around the door handle and I'm getting ready to climb down from my rig, I see lights flashing over the snow. Headlights. Someone's driving up behind us. Could be the state police. Could be some poor sucker about to get his head blowed off just cuz he's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Could be both.

I freeze.

Mr. Gun glances down the road toward the lights, then takes another step toward me.

"You deaf or somethin'?" he says. He cocks the revolver. "I said out ."

The lights are close now-so close Mr. Gun is lit up like he's up on stage at a girlie bar. Plain as day I can see his faded blue jeans and raggedy parka and muddy good ol' boy boots. And I notice that he's not the biggest buck in the herd and his hand's shaking maybe a little more than the cold would account for. And I start to figure that this here highwayman ain't exactly Jesse James. Which doesn't help whoever's driving toward us. This fella might not be a professional, but he's got himself a gun, and that can be enough.

The crunch of snow and gravel's getting pretty loud now, the lights are getting brighter, but Mr. Gun's still focused on me me me.

"I'm not kiddin' around here, you so-and-so," he says, except his language is a little stronger than that. "Get out of the ding-danged truck."

A beat-up red pick-up pulls to a stop behind him while he's saying this, and I figure this is when the shooting's gonna start. I'm getting ready to throw myself down on the floor of the cab and start praying for a miracle when I notice the orange Detour sign lying in the back of the truck. A heavy-set fella steps out of the pick-up and walks up to Mr. Gun. He's got himself a ski-mask, too. His has got "Campbell's Soup" written across the forehead and "M'm! M'm! Good!" on the chin. The mask is stretched so tight across his fat face the fabric looks like to rip, like maybe it's three sizes too small.

"What's going on here?" Mr. Soup says. Except it sounds more like "Whuz goin' on hee-er?" He's got him a Southern accent so thick you could make a mattress out of it.

"He won't get out of the truck," Mr. Gun says. His voice is high-pitched, nervous, and for the first time I notice his accent instead of just being hypnotized by his Smith and Wesson. Sounded like these two were Mountaineers-kid hillbillies up from West Virginia.

"Well, heck," Mr. Soup says, and he snatches the revolver right out of Mr. Gun's hand. He steps up on the footboard of my rig and brings the barrel up under my nose. "This just ain't your night, is it?" he says, and a big grin stretches the fabric of his mask even further. "First truck we saw went whoosh-right by our little Detour sign. Didn't even slow down. The second one came down this way but didn't bother stopping to help my buddy here. On Christmas Eve yet! So we've been out here waiting a looooooong time. We're cold, we're tired and we want them babies. So just step out of the truck and I won't have to mess up your pretty face with a couple of bullets."