Rescuing Christmas
THE REINSTATEMENT OF CHRISTMAS
COPYRIGHT/PUBLISHER
A Lazy Beagle Entertainment Publication
Rescuing Christmas
©Copyright
Jason Nichols and Lazy Beagle Entertainment
Cover Art by Soxie
Cover Art ©
Copyright Soxie
Edited by Tena Coleman-Dupree
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to publisher and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Lazy Beagle Entertainment or the author Jason Nichols.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1998 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2015 by Lazy Beagle Entertainment.
Warning: This story contains some violence and partially sexual material of a homosexual nature which may be objectionable to some.
RESCUING CHRISTMAS
BY JASON NICHOLS
LETTER TO SANTA
Dear Santa,
Today my best friend Chris came to me and told me that his mom and dad are making him move away. He is my best friend in the whole wide world. I only want one wish, and I will never ever ask you for anything ever again. I wish that you would make my friend's parents want to stay here so we can stay together forever Santa. Please, I love my friend and I don’t want to live without him.
Jamie
P.S. My mom says you are diabetic so she put out sugar free cookies and a bottle of water for you, but don’t worry, as soon as she goes to bed I will put out some real cookies that look exactly the same. She’s the diabetic one but she isn’t eating them so it won’t matter. I know you aren’t diabetic. I will also add some sugar to the water, but that is the best I can do for you.
P.P.S. My mom also says the reindeer don’t need anything to eat as they eat only magic dust but that doesn’t make sense. I went into her greenhouse and chopped up as much as I could of all the plants she was growing in there. I think they were called orchids, but she won’t mind. They are pretty and the reindeer might appreciate them. Mom says they are the rarest of all orchids, so something that special has to be close to magic, right? Anyway, I climbed up on the roof earlier and put them in eight different boxes so each reindeer could have their own plate.
Jamie
Jamie read the letter twice to make sure it was fine before he finally folded it up and put it in the envelope. He got a little papercut on his tongue when he licked the envelope flap, but he considered it a small price to pay for such an important request to Santa. Since his daddy had died two years before in Afghanistan, Jamie was feeling a little desperate because all he had left now were his mother and his best friend Chris.
Life is hard when you are eight years old and everything is constantly changing. First his daddy died, then they had to move out of their house to a small trailer park. His mom had managed to save her small portable greenhouse and her flowers and moved it with them. Chris had to ride his bike to come see him now. Jamie couldn’t go over to his place anymore because mean Mr. Johnson had run over his bike when they first moved and his mother couldn’t afford to buy him a new one. His mom had told Mr. Johnson he should buy Jamie a new bike, but the man had just sneered at her before he slammed the door in her face; all while he was shouting for her to go away before he shot her with his shotgun.
In a town of only four thousand people, there was no semblance of privacy which meant that even while everyone felt sorry for the McCormick family no one ever really bothered trying to help out. They were always too busy trying to help themselves. Jamie was made fun of at school now for being poor, having a dead daddy and a best friend who loved to pick fights with people, especially those who picked on little Jamie.
Jamie, however, did not pay much attention to these things because at least he still had his mom and his best friend Chris.
That is, he did have his best friend until a week before Christmas.
***
Jamie was outside stringing up a small set of lights around the silver metal Christmas tree his mom had thrown away. He had rescued it from the trash and was now decorating it with some of their leftover Christmas decorations. They had too much to fit inside their little trailer and most of it was left in boxes. His mom said she would take them to their storage unit later when she could afford time off work and could borrow a car. As it was she had to walk two miles every day to get to work at the diner as well as the two miles to get home. She would sleep a few hours, then go to her part-time job at a seedy little motel that was just down the road from their trailer park. She cleaned the six rooms before going home and returning to sleep.
Eight-year-old Jamie would open a can of vegetables or ravioli or whatever was available at the time, pour the food into a bowl and heat it in the microwave. He would have his dinner and go to sleep before his mom left for the diner. In the mornings he made them both a bowl of cereal and when she got in from work she would practically drink hers down before falling asleep and he would trudge off to school. He didn’t tell his mother, but the powers that be had gotten rid of the free lunch program at school so he just didn’t eat when there. When Chris had found out he wasn’t eating lunch, he began sharing his with Jamie.
When he finally finished stringing up the small strand of lights, he plugged it into the extension cord that ran through the small hole in the screen of the tiny kitchen window of the trailer and watched as the green lights danced about the snow, flickering as the wind moved the tree about.
Mr. Johnson stuck his head out of his door and screamed, “Turn those lights off you little asshole. No one wants to see your crappy decorations.” After spouting his usual verbal abuse, Mr. Johnson withdrew back into his trailer and slammed his door. Jamie ignored him and his ranting. He only turned around when he heard a bike pull up behind him.
His face lit up when he saw it was Chris and he said, “Hey Chris! Want something to eat?”
Chris merely shook his head and said, “Dude, nice tree.” He smiled fleetingly and then said, “Can we go inside where it’s warm for a minute. I can’t stay because my mom said I have things to do but I wanted to tell you something.”
Despite the disappointment that Chris couldn’t stay long, Jamie was happy anyway. Even just a few minutes with his friend was enough to brighten his day.
They went inside and Chris sat down on the faded and taped up vinyl cushion of the ugly yellow dining room chair. He put his head down on his arms which were folded in front of him on the rickety table and sighed before he looked up dramatically.
“We’re moving. My mom and dad are making me leave because my dad got a job that will give him more money.” He shook his head and said, “I tried to make them see reason and stay, but they won’t listen to me.”
Jamie asked, “Is it closer to me or farther away? I wrote a letter to Santa asking for a new bike. If he brings it to me, I can get anywhere you are living now.” Jamie smiled really big and looked at his friend but his smile faltered when he saw Chris was crying.
Chris said, “We are moving to California. We leave on Christmas morning.”
Jamie sat there stunned and couldn’t even talk. When he finally was able to articulate a sentence all he said was, “I have a plan. You won’t move.”
Chris just sniffled and smiled and said, “Okay.”
Chris left then and Jamie went to his small room and grabbed the letter to Santa off his little desk and tore it up and threw it on the floor. He grabbed a fresh piece of paper and began a new letter. He was ready to put his plan into action. He wasn’t' going to let Chris leave without a fight.
***
Jamie ran into the living room and handed his mother the envelope with the letter to Santa and asked her to see that Santa got it before it was too late. His mother looked down at the envelope with Santa written on the envelope in green crayon and smiled. She tucked it into the pocket of her apron and said, “I will mail it on my way to work. Now, get to bed so Santa can come. Mrs. Lawrence from next door will check in on you while I am at work.”
She walked back to his bedroom with him, tucked him in and kissed him on the forehead. “I love you little man. Always remember that.” She was thinking of the letter in the apron pocket and hoping that he hadn’t asked for anything too outrageous.
“I love you too Mommy,” said Jamie. He turned over and buried his face in the pillow and she left the trailer, opening the envelope to read the letter as she walked to work.
ALMOST TWENTY YEARS LATER
“All I remember being good about Christmas that year was that Mr. Johnson, that mean son of a bitch who hated us so much, electrocuted himself on Christmas day when he tried to tear down my silver Christmas tree. Between his bare feet, the slushy snow and the shoddy lights, his putrid soul didn't stand a chance. The paramedics didn’t show up in time to save his sorry ass and no one grieved his loss,” Jamie said when his mother asked him if he remembered anything about that year.
His mom chuckled and said, “Well normally I wouldn’t condone you speaking ill of the dead, but he was a mean bastard wasn’t he?”
“Mom, why are you in my bar on the first day of December asking me questions about Christmas from almost twenty years ago?” Jamie stopped wiping the counter down and looked up at his mother. She was being awfully cagey about something.
She met his gaze and said, “Well, I was pulling out the Christmas decorations this morning and found my old apron from the diner that I bought. You came out and gave me a letter to Santa on Christmas Eve and I stuffed it into my apron pocket. When I was walking to work I read it. Of course I was furious when I realized what you had done with my orchids, but I also realized how heartbroken you were at the time. It also saved my life reading that letter. You changing out the cookies and water. Of course you didn’t understand the ramifications then, but you do now. Anyway, remember I came home the next morning and watched you as you ran your hands over every square inch of the bike I got you from the thrift store. I opened the paper as I was sipping coffee and checked my lottery numbers. That day changed our lives forever. Mr. Johnson died two hours later, but I also saw that I had the winning lottery numbers for the thirty-million-dollar jackpot.”
Jamie stared at his mother as she reminisced and said, “Mom. You’re stalling. I know all of this already. We became rich and you bought the diner and fired most of the staff and then bought a few more businesses and this bar which you gave to me when I turned twenty-one. Okay, we've taken a nice stroll down memory lane, but I don’t recall my life being very happy even after we became rich. Chris and his family left that Christmas morning and he didn’t even come by and say goodbye. That’s the day I stopped believing in Santa. If you are here again trying to get me to decorate my bar for Christmas, you can forget it. So, out with it woman, what’s going on?”
His mother opened her mouth to say something but the bar door opened and a customer came in and sat on the bar stool next to his mother. She turned to him and smiled, then hugged him.
Jamie stared and thought to himself,
“You have got to be kidding me. My mom found a younger man. He must be after our money.”