R. I. P.: A
Christmas Story of Peace and Good Will Among Men,
Mary Beth Shivers,
Creative Writing,
November 30, 2012
“Where
is he? Dumb kid!” spat Corny. “I swear, Dirkall, them illegal
immigrants sure take their time; I guess the holiday spirit gets to
them around this time of year. Well, you make sure to cut the holiday
spirit out with that butter knife of yours. When you gonna get a
proper knife, huh? That old woman's thing ain't gonna be much use if
somebody tries to rob us.” A fourth waterfall of saliva hit the
floor.
Dirkall, a lean
African-American man with long dread-locks that stuck to his head,
lifted his eyes to the face of a burly white man with blonde hair
clipped like grass and muscles the size of apples. “Don't bug me
about “proper” knives, Corny,” his voice greased out, “since
you lost mine, remember? Anyhow, old woman's thing or not, it does
the job fine: it draws the little pig's blood out a-plenty when you
dig it in enough. And if you ask me, you can do what you need to do
well enough without “proper” weapons. Remember the purse we got
from that man's wife a week ago? Had to do the wife in and we didn't
even have a bat; turns out though, we didn't need one. Just needed
her own book to put a dent in her skull. So there's no point in
crying about “proper” weapons: guns, knives, whatever. We'll do
fine without them. What we need to worry about is where Amigot has
got to with our money.”
Corny glared at the
entrance to their dark, grit-covered basement that had only a plastic
curtain for a door. “The cops shouldn't have gotten him; nobody
checks a red stocking. If he's gonna take this long, there better be
a lot of money in it. We had to grab those watches from three stores!
If there ain't, well, after you draw some pictures on his back, I'll
break his nose to help him remember.” A second after he said this,
the curtain lifted and in came the topic of their discussion: Amigot.
A short, skinny Mexican twelve-year old boy. His real name neither
Corny nor Dirkall had ever cared to find out. They simply called him
by the conjunction of the two words that most often came to their
mind when they looked at him: “amigo” and “maggot”. There he
stood in the doorway, red stocking over his shoulder. The stocking
bulged a little at the bottom, but it didn't look like a huge profit.
“Bring it here!” Dirkall and Corny growled at the same time.
Their eyes glued to the stocking as Amigot shuffled forward. They did
not notice the whiteness that fought with the tan on his face. Nor
the gleam that lurked beneath his brown irises. None of this did they
notice.
Dirkall snatched
the stocking and dug his hand into it. He frowned. His fingers
weren't touching the smooth surfaces of dollars. No, they were deep
in – with a motion so foreign to his placid, festering disposition,
so unlike Dirkall, he tipped the stocking over and dumped its
contents onto the table. Dust poured out; a fingertip-deep layer of
sandy dust. And a scrap of paper. Corny turned the paper over. Both
he and Dirkall leaned in. There were these words on the paper:
“R. I. P. Tidings of comfort and joy to you both,
amigos.”
Both men raised
ashen faces towards each other. Then they turned to Amigot – but
Amigot wasn't there. He wasn't in the basement at all. But someone
else was there with them. A white man in a navy blue hoody stood in
their doorway. His hands pointed a gun at them. The hood was drawn
over his head, but by bending a little and peering under it, they
were just able to recognize – the face of the man whose wife they
had killed a week ago. There was death in his eyes.
The man took a step
back. He aimed his gun at Corny. Before the flash that lit up the
room, before the bang that roared through Dirkall's ears, before the
red hole that appeared in Corny's chest, Dirkall caught a look in
Corny's wide eyes. A look that said, “What was that you were saying
about not needing “proper” weapons, again?” Three seconds
later, there was another flash, another deafening bang, and a red
hole in his chest too.
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