A Very Carny Christmas

Old Man Beale didn't give a good goddamn if me and Cloda was "an item." "Just keep it off the midway," he told us. Come Christmas, in winter quarters, we was still together, despite her old man trying to kill me with tent-hook back in Ohio. Old Beale wanted us to sit on his lap for the Santa picture, like he always done, but Cloda wouldn't and I don't blame her. "Just take the picture," I told the guy and he did. Even if she goes back to her old man by New Years I'm keeping the picture. We look good together.

A Very Short Tempered Christmas

It wasn't five minutes before Pert had to sit on that damned scooter.  Dress riding up, no shoes on her feet, making a damned fool of herself, like she did. "Take my picture!" Of course they did and everybody laughing. I knew it was a bad idea to let the old girl near the thing. I'd tried to tell them, you get a thing like that, and Pert will be on it and riding down your children before you can say, "Merry Christmas." Hushed me right up, like they always do. What do I know? I've only been married to the woman for 28 years. Tried to show her how to regulate the speed, but would anybody listen to me? Hell no. Tried to pull her off it. Next thing you know the cat's deader than possum on the road and everybody's crying and carrying on like somebody died. Woman spoils every damned thing.

A Very Short Christmas in the New World

Misty was house proud. Who could blame her? That chamber-pot was better than two hundred years old. Hers was an old and respected family. The move to Alaska had been hard. No one in Juno seemed to give a tinker's damn about the Daughters of the American Revolution, hand-blown Swiss ornaments, the Paul Revere spoons. With Tom out on the rigs all winter and no one to really fix the heater until Monday, she settled in for the Christmas siege determined to show herself a good time. The boy from the beer-distributor  made it up the drive, bless him. Only right to ask him in for a drink. He seemed interested in everything, bless him. When he left the next morning with the spoons she wasn't in a mood to argue.

A Very Short Christmas Eve

It was hard to avoid Albert on Christmas Eve. Try as she might, Sally could not move him out of the way once she'd put the kids to bed. By then he'd have worked his way through just enough cheer to be feeling friendly, which was the last thing on that woman's mind when she still had so much to do before she could go to bed herself. Still hadn't taken tomorrow's ham out of the oven. There was still the damned dollhouse to wrap, and she never had found the brush set she just knew she'd put in the hall closet and now it wasn't there.

If she got too close, Bert would grab at her, but she wanted to check behind the sofa again. Damn him.

""You look hot as hell in that apron, baby," he said, "like the day I met you in the dinner."

Never did find the brush set.

A Very Short Dog Story for Christmas

Penny decided to put all four blond falls on before she took her Christmas photo this year. Took some doing since that pixie-cut she gave herself when Georgie left had gone so wrong. Still, "'nothing ventured', as the naked lady said to the mailman," she said to Mr. Sniffles. The little dog was of a nervous disposition to begin with. When confronted by the suddenly blond and curly Penny snatching at him behind the sofa, Mr. Sniffles piddled a little on more than one bit of wrapping. "Come on, you little shit," Penny shouted, clutching him to her chest, "the timer's about to go!" She turned into the flash, doing her best imitation of Gloria Grahame. Perfect. Later Penny felt bad for squeezing the dog so hard and poured a spoonful of the good gin over his dinner. "I miss him too, Mr. Sniffle-whiffles," she pouted, "go ahead and piss on that sweater I made him, the bastard. He'll never wear it anyway."

A Very Short Christmas Visit

"The bourbon was a gift," she said, "and I made the cookies myself." Everybody in the room knew that neither statement was true, but nobody said a word. Visiting Aunt Claire on Christmas Eve was something of a trial at the best of times. At least since they'd bought her the television, they could watch the Danny Thomas Show and not have to talk much. After an hour or so, they'd open their gifts: elaborately wrapped cartons of Chesterfields for the men, new nylons or old gloves for the women, and for the children, always more of that weird, tweed outerwear she ordered from the back pages of Yankee Magazine. "That should keep everybody warm!" she'd say, and everyone would try to laugh.
"When that old lady dies," Uncle Teddy always said after, "she better have Grand-dad's war-bonds under her mattress." But she didn't.

A Short, Orderly Christmas Story

Of course, there wasn't really a clinical term for it in those days. "Order," that was Mrs. Beck's word for it. She like things in threes. Girls, dolls, kitchen canisters, the tines on a fork, Christmas ornaments, strands of tinsel. When the doctors told Mr. Beck that his wife would not be able to have another child after Agatha and Aurore, the woman just refused to believe it. When little Annita came home with his wife after her long trip to the rest home in Colorado, Mr. Beck thought it best not to ask too many questions. It was some time after the New Year before the authorities back in Indiana finally caught up with Mrs. Beck and returned the baby to her parents. Turns out, the girl's name was Ramona, which everyone agreed was something of a coincidence numerically, even if it hadn't entirely suited Mrs. Beck, poor soul.

A Very Short Christmas Dinner

Christmas dinner at what the Fathers used to call "the Parakeet" was a grim business even back in the day. Not one of 'em could cook so much as toast, what with women to look after them all their lives -- before they had their troubles. Brother Morris got himself a copy of that Joy of Cooking finally from his friend in Chicago. Studied that book like he was back at seminary. Didn't do too bad, that first year, but for the Jello-salads that wouldn't set in the heat. The desert's not kind to that kind of thing. (This is probably the last picture they let Father Brian take before they found his collection in the laundry room and confiscated his cameras.)

Another Very Short Christmas Story

"They sent me up that ladder with the damned bell," Carrie told us later, "wasn't my idea." The photographer from the Yuma Sun always denied he'd done any such thing. However she got there, everybody agreed after about just the two things: 1) Carrie looked real pretty when they printed the picture in the paper, and 2) the additional weight took poor Emmet and the ladder down hard into parking lot. The girl didn't end up with a scratch on her. "Of course it was sweet Lou Hudson who got the worst of it," Carrie said, "when Mrs. Hudson saw that damned picture in the paper and put two and two together. Next thing I knew, that crazy lady drove her Buick through the display window, I was out of a job, and Lou stopped paying the note on my car and I had to move out of the trailer. That," she used to laugh, "was a pretty shitty Christmas all 'round!"

A Very Short Christmas Story

Grandma Mona kept the liquor under the kitchen sink, "where the kids know not to get into things." That was the idea, anyway. Every year she set up her Christmas village on the end-table by the big chair. Her cigarettes lived under the church. When she wasn't smoking, which wasn't often, she'd put her ashtray under there too. The kids still talk about the cloud that hung over the pine trees, and the ring from her high-ball on the mirrored skating rink. The year the older boys got into the Jameson was the same Christmas Mona finally burned the church down. "You had to laugh," she told Father Michael when he visited her in the hospital, "I was trying to get the coffee down their necks, so I didn't notice a thing until the curtains went. Funny little bastards, falling all over the kitchen, I'll admit that much, but I'll miss that chair."

A Very Short Shopping Story

"Thrifty," Katarina Maria recalled, "that was Mom's word for it." Theo remembered Christmas less kindly, "That old woman loved Woolworth's. If it was in a bin by the door, and the shit was less than a dollar, then... maybe." "It wasn't like we didn't have money," his sister explained, "she just didn't want to spend any of it. Old world, maybe. Who knows? Anyway, me and Theo, we robbed that Woolworth's blind."

Another Very Short Christmas

Bobby and Bill didn't so much resent their new "Dad" as fear their mother's influence over the nice new man in their lives. They worried. It was what they did.  They'd found the guns and the money in the garage. A sure sign Harriet would be making her "special punch" for yet another Christmas party, and they'd be moving again come the New Year. And they really liked Anthony, they really did.

A Very Short Christmas in Paducah

Who can forget Christmas, 1927? That was the year Bettelhiem's Acrobatic Babies -- probably the most notorious little people act in American vaudeville -- shot up the boarding house in Paducah. "I never had trouble from Show People," said the landlady, Mrs. Emma Thrush, "exception being Ernie Bettelhiem and his damned tumblers." She went on to tell the local paper, "He wasn't good to 'em, that's true, so when they got into my peach brandy, why, next thing you know, the boy's got my late husband's deer riffle, and all Hell broke loose."  The act broke up shortly thereafter.

A Very Short Dog Story

"Mom always said, 'You need a good dog,'"  Bobby said of his mother, Dot Perry, "'... and a good cigar!'" Known for her support of local Fire Station #43, there was some irony when the volunteers were called to Dot's house on Figurello Road at 3AM on Wednesday last. "At least the dogs got out," said the Chief, Todd Baumgartner on the scene, "but we'll miss Dot's chili this Chrismas, for sure!"

Still Another Very Short Christmas Story

Barb and Wendy were inseparable at that age, though Barb tended to be a bit overshadowed by her more dynamic little sister. "Wendy was just an adorable little firecracker," Barb would say later, "so I just let her go." And it came as quite a surprise to everyone when Barb became the first woman in 100 years to be indicted in the state of Minnesota for running a brothel. "Fun girls are a dime a dozen," Barb would claim in her unpublished prison memoir, Minnesota Madame, "but bookkeeping takes skill." (Wendy stood by her sister to the bitter end. "Hell," she told friends, "who do you think paid for the bariatric surgery and all my divorces?!")

A Brief Story of a Too White Christmas

"Ah, ma petite Marine, "said Papa, "do you like your new doll?" "C'est noir," said little Marine, confused. "Oh oui!" laughed her father, Jean-Marie, "so it is." And somewhere downstairs a maid pissed in their soup.

And Another Very Short Christmas Story

Margery always said Phil was "the heart and soul" of their annual Christmas Eve Party. She would decorate, bake, cook, and wrap all the presents. She always broke out her festive skirt and got her hair done -- just this once -- "by a professional" down at the Cosmetology School. And Phil? He put on pants. It was a special day.

Still Another Very Short Christmas Story

It wasn't until their conviction decades later that anyone thought to examine the twins' doll-collection more closely. Only then was the 1964 disappearance in younger siblings Beth and Tammy -- to say nothing of all the missing neighborhood pets -- finally explained. "Where those little girls learned taxidermy," said a spokesman for the Sheriff's Department, "we may never know."

Another Very Short Christmas Story

Betty and June decided to dress up for their first Christmas in their new "bachelor gal" apartment together. "Heck," said June, "when are we ever going to wear our ball-gowns in Schenectaty otherwise?!" Betty laughed lightly. "You bet!" she said. They had sausage-rolls and highballs, watched the Chordettes Christmas Special, and laughed and laughed. It was forty-eight years later, almost to the day, when Betty buried June with a rose from the hem of her pink taffeta.

Another Very Short Xmas Story

"Mrs. Harold Gunthe, nee Anette Beuhla McGee, known professionally as 'Beuhla Belle, The Girl Who'll Never Tell', has passed away in Actors Home, Los Angeles, after a long illness. She was preceded in death by her husband Harold 'Bud" Gunthe in 1961. Beuhla met her late husband while performing her famous 'balls off' number in the Minsky's Christmas Show in Jersey City, NJ, when famously one of her discarded ornaments put out his good right eye. Bud always said, 'I knew right in the ambulance I was going to marry that girl.' Even in retirement, Beuhla could still be persuaded to revive her most famous number every December, at the end performing from her wheelchair decorated appropriately by an appreciative nursing and support staff at her assisted living facility. 'It just won't be the same this year without Beuhla's balls flying,' said the home's entertainment director, Mitchell Burke, of Beuhla's contribution to the annual Christmas Talent Show."