Read Online Christmas on Crack by ed. Carlton Mellick III - Free Book Online

yet.”
    “Save
some for later,” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Then I patted the
opposite pillow. “Just lie down. Relax.”
    He
looked from the whiskey to the pillow and back again. Finally, he put the
bottle on the nightstand and stretched out awkwardly beside me. His tired old
body seemed to resist the reclined position. Knees wouldn’t bend fully; his
back arced slightly. Neck, too.
    I
touched his hand, the nape of his neck. He felt so cold. I decided I’d be a
Good Samaritan and donate a little of my body warmth to him.
    We
spooned silently for so long I began to feel drowsy. I looked over at the
clock. It wasn’t even 3 AM yet.
    “I’m
tired of lying around,” I said, my voice a whisper. “Aren’t you?”
    “No,
it’s soft here,” he replied, his voice cracking with
    phlegm.
“I’m not used to soft.”
    “Okay,”
I said. “We can keep doing this. Guess I owe you, after that entertaining story
you told.”
    “It
wasn’t a story.”
    I
sat up a bit. “But I can’t believe you. See, I know exactly where my presents
came from. Mom and Dad and the aunts and uncles—they bought them in stores,
wrapped them up and put little bows on top. Same story every year.”
    He
turned around and faced me. “I never claimed all the presents were mine,” he
said. “Usually, a kid got one of my gifts every three or four years. But if I
gave one, it was always the kid’s favorite.”
    “Three
or four years?” I said. “Your Bad List must have been huge.”
    “It
wasn’t that they’d been bad. It’s just that other kids had been better, and I
didn’t have time to go to every house.” He paused, looked so deeply into my eyes
I almost flinched. “You were a little better than most. You got four before you
turned ten, but you didn’t get another until you were 24.” He half-smiled.
“That was my last delivery.”
    “Wait.
You delivered to adults?”
    “It
wouldn’t be fair if I’d just given them to kids, would it? Adults deserved a
little magic too.”
    He
still stared at me. I wanted to turn away, but there was something behind his
eyes, something that shimmered, and it tried to convince me that what he was saying
was true. Conflicting thoughts began to churn inside my head. For a moment, I
felt like blubbering.
    I
composed myself. “So, if you’re really Santa, what was my favorite gift when I
was five?” I paused, smirked. “Or was that too long ago for you to remember?”
    “One
thing I’ve got is my memory.” He tapped his head. “Every present that everyone
has ever received from me is locked up here. I can’t forget them, even if I
tried. That year, you wanted, more than anything, a yellow toy truck.” His eyes
twinkled, but it was a melancholy twinkle. “And you got it.”
    I
reared back involuntarily, knocking my head against the wall. My palms pricked.
I felt my heart in places I shouldn’t. “You’re right.”
    “Of
course. I’m Father Christmas. Or Santa, if that’s what you’d rather call me.”
    After
a breath, I made myself think rationally. Toy trucks weren’t an uncommon
childhood want. It could have been a lucky guess, the color an even luckier
one.
    “I
even remember it had a decal of a clown-head on the left door,” he continued.
    And
that sealed it for me. No more room for doubt. I had given alcohol to and
spooned with the embodiment of Christmas himself, and there he was, still on my
bed and available to me. There were so many things I want- ed—and perhaps
needed—to ask him.
    “But
why didn’t I get that scooter when I was eight? I wanted it more than
anything.”
    “Well,
you were a bad boy that year. Remember what you did to your older brother,
Billy?”
    The
name plucked a chord in me. I hadn’t thought about Billy in quite some time.
He’d been dead at least a decade, and it’d been fifteen years or more since I’d
last spoken to him.
    “He
was with his girlfriend out in the yard. They were kissing. Billy’s tongue was
down her