The No-Good Christmas War

Christmas. Yay.

I trudged by red and white light-wrapped streetlamps, frustrated that the holiday was here and in my face. Every year like clockwork, the Monday after Thanksgiving, the city lights went up. Most of the businesses around town had their Christmas stuff out since the first part of November, but most of that I could cheerfully ignore. These, the streetlamps, I would see every day on my walk to and from work. Fan-frigging-tastic.

It wasn't that I hated the holiday. Or... I didn't, anyways, until my wife -- sorry, ex-wife -- Bridget served me papers the day after Christmas. If you've ever married a wallet-sucker, you know why -- presents. She waited for my dumb ass to give her the emerald earrings, the knee-length puffy jacket from Nordstroms, and the laptop bag, then dropped the bomb on me that, oh yeah, she was asking for a divorce.

So you can see why Christmas and I weren't exactly on the best of terms. I wanted to punch every Santa I saw. I wanted to take a leak on the pair of snowmen on lawns as I walked by them on my way home, muttering to myself. I wanted to chicken-fry reindeer and serve them on a nice bed of winter vegetables, probably with a cold bottle of Miller, because even though I used to love rum and egg nog or vodka and egg nog or just about any kind of hard liquor and egg nog, I was now firmly in the camp of "screw everything to do with Christmas."

In short, I was the town's Grinch, and I didn't mind one bit.

But one person did.

* * *

I tried not to tighten my hands into fists. "Bobby," I said, surprised at how cool and even my voice was.

"Oh, hey, Daryl. Just about finished up here."

I sucked my teeth, staring at the man on a ladder in front of my rinky-dink house, the one I moved into when the court decided to award my wife -- ex-wife -- our old place. My first instinct was to ask what Bobby was doing, but it was obvious. He was hanging Christmas lights from the roof of my house.

At thirty-five, Bobby was a few years older than me. We were friends mostly because of that, the relative nearness of our age and the fact that neither of us had escaped the Pike Bridge black hole. If you don't know what that is, you've never lived in a small town in middle America. You grow up there thinking someday you're going to escape into the world and make something of yourself, and maybe you do. Maybe you go to college at, oh, say, the University of Nebraska, get a great degree in business management -- top five in your class! Then say maybe you move to Spokane, where you land a rock-solid starter job and meet your future wife, whose mind is poisoned by your sweet, well-meaning parents into convincing the two of you to come home and someday take over the family grocery store, only to have your parents then pull the plug and become Las Vegas snowbirds while you watch your career and your life implode in the one place you never really wanted to live again.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the small-town black hole phenomena. In a nutshell.

Anyway, Bobby was a decent enough guy, a good mechanic, a wicked golfer, and a loyal customer. He was also my former neighbor.

"Decided to put up my Christmas lights for me, huh?" I asked, and now I had the briefest fantasy of walking across my lawn and shaking the ladder until he fell like an apple from a tree.

He chuckled. "Harper and I were driving around last night and saw you hadn't put your lights up last Friday like you used to. I thought you might not be up for it this year on account of... well, you know."

"On account of Bridget."

"Ah, yeah."

"And you thought," I said, my cool evaporating, "that I'd want to be reminded of that. With Christmas lights."

He finally glanced back at me, worry in his eyes. There was no stranger dichotomy in that town than the difference between Bobby O'Byrne and his sister Hailey. Where she was sweet Irish fire in a slender but deliciously soft package, Bobby was a barrel of a man, squat and broad-shouldered. He wasn't ugly, but he'd seen some mileage even if he wasn't all that old, his face ruddy and weathered, his big hands nicked with scars.

"Ah," he said. "I've gone and upset you."

"Nah, Bobby, I love coming home to people climbing on ladders outside my house."

"I was only trying to do you a kindness. And I'm almost done."

"Take it down."

"What?" he asked.

"Take. It. Down." He started to speak, and I held up a hand. "I didn't ask for this. I didn't want this. And whether or not you think you're doing a nice thing, you're not. I'm going to go inside, I'm going to change, get in a workout, and have a beer. And if all this isn't gone by then, I'm..." I faltered, unsure exactly what it was I could threaten him with. "You're not welcome in the store any longer."

"Darryl, I..."

He didn't finish the thought. Despite his raw physicality, Bobby was not a confrontational man. "Kind of a lost soul," my wife -- damn it, ex-wife -- called him once, and I agreed. He was not a stupid man but a sweet and gentle guy, one probably too good for this world. I regretted being harsh with him but damn it he was way overstepping his bounds. Bridget only left a year ago.

I'd done the right thing, I told myself as I walked inside. And I told myself it again as I got in a core workout with my kettlebells. And told myself again as I finished off a bottle of beer.

But when I looked outside to see if Bobby was gone and if he'd taken down the lights, there they were, twinkling along my roof.

Ho. Ho. Ho.

* * *

If you could figure out how to harness the speed of small-town gossip, we'd have colonized Betelgeuse by now.

When my employees started drifting in the next morning at the grocery store, all eyes were on me and I knew why. Bobby was well-loved by Pike Bridge and rightfully so. When the machinery of my business whirred to life, I told my right-hand woman Chelsea I'd be taking off for a while. "Is this about the fight you had with Bobby O'Byrne?"

"Fight?" I asked.

"Mm hm. I heard you two really got into it."

"I asked him as politely as I could not to come onto my property and decorate my house for Christmas." I only realized the absurdity of my words as Chelsea skinned a piece of gum and stared at me as if I was the dumbest man alive.

"And that's a problem...?" she asked, popping the gum in her mouth.

"Because I don't want people on my property decorating my house for Christmas. That's enough of a reason," I said.

She held up her hands in a "you win" gesture. "Fine."

I left without another word, zipping up my parka as I walked. It wasn't uncommon for it to snow around Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the cold wasn't usually that bad. That day, though, it stung like needles pressing in at every exposed part of my skin. I pulled my hood over my head and donned the pair of thin leather driving gloves in my pocket, little good as they did me. For the thousandth time, I reminded myself I needed to buy some actual winterized gloves. I'd given my good pair away to a customer walking home with several bags of groceries the winter before, and I kept meaning to replace them.

I walked back home and dug out my good ladder from the tiny rundown shed in the backyard. As I set it up against the side of the house, I made up very sweary lyrics to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," muttering them as I yanked down the lights and clips Bobby put up. There weren't a lot of lights, just one big string, and I was done in minutes. I stowed away the ladder again, took the time to coil the extension cord and lights into tidy loops -- I might have been mad but I was still anal about that sort of thing -- and tossed the unwanted Christmas junk in the backseat of my Outback.

Pike Bridge was not a big town, which was why I preferred to walk everywhere. I liked to save money where I could and the exercise and time to think were great. But I knew I'd look like a bit of a goober walking around town with loops of Christmas lights and an extension cord wrapped around my arm.

It hurt to see the old neighborhood again, as it always did. I think I missed my house more than my marriage, which sounds like a really shitty thing to say, except that Bridget and I had been veering apart for a while even before the divorce. But I thought it was the usual things marriages went through, a sea of boredom with each other that we would eventually cross. I was wrong about that. Horribly wrong.

Before our marriage collapsed, I put a lot of work into our old house. We bought it for a song right before real estate went crazy, and I spent my free time doing little upgrades here and there, retiling the bathroom and kitchen, replacing a few windows, rebuilding the deck, little jobs I could tackle by hand with my dad and brother. I was proud of that work, and it was taken from me because someone I loved wanted to stick the knife in me as deep as possible.

A year on and I still asked myself the same damn question -- when did Bridget start hating me?

I wish there was an easy answer to that, but as angry as I was with her, I spent so many nights cutting open my own heart and soul in introspection. I tried to be a good man for her. I listened when she wanted to do new things in bed. I didn't make great money running the store but someday, when we were ready to retire young, I could sell it off and we could spend the rest of our days doing whatever we wanted. It was, I thought, a good life.

I'm not saying I was a saint. That was not the case. I liked to look at other women, though I'd never cheated. I tried to keep a handle on the chores, but hey, sometimes if a game on TV was good enough, sure, I'd ignore the garbage until I was reminded a few times during commercial breaks. Little things, but I guess little things add up. Was it my fault? Hers? I don't know. She was the one to deal the damage but I really, honestly could not tell you why she wanted to hurt me so badly.

I brushed the thoughts off as I rolled by the old house. Bridget still owned the place, turning it into a short-term rental. As if in a final screw-you to me, she hired someone to paint it a fugly shade of brown, slopping it over the gorgeous blue-gray with white trim I'd painted it just two years ago. I sighed as I saw it again, wishing I understood what happened and knowing I would never get an answer.

But I was still mad, and when I saw Bobby's place all decorated up for Christmas, I only grew madder. I parked in his driveway, got out, and grabbed the lights and the extension cord from the backseat. I walked to the gate leading behind his house and flung them over it. "Thanks, but no thanks," I muttered to myself.

I headed for my car again, but before I could make it, the front door to the house opened. "Didn't try knocking first?" a soft, feminine voice asked with a touch of amusement.

My spine straightened subconsciously and I sucked in what little gut remained to me after a year of post-divorce workouts. Like I said, Harper O'Byrne was nothing like her older brother. She was the sort of beauty that makes you wonder if she somehow accidentally wound up in the wrong town in the wrong era. Pale, creamy skin, a little ruddy in the cheeks like her brother, but with dark circles around her eyes she didn't hide under her makeup. A tall, narrow, squared-off face that her strong cheekbones really made work. Eyes that always seemed troubled, even when she was smiling her girlish, infectious smile.

And of course, her long, silky red hair, always mussed, deliberately or not. Some days it seemed more orange than red. Other days it was as dark as blood. It was hair to dream about. Hair to wake a man up out of sleep, feeling guilty about dreaming of someone other than the woman he was in bed with.

I turned and growled, "Harper."

"Hiya, Daryl."

I had to force my eyes not to wander down to her black tee over her slender shoulders, the way it outlined her perky breasts. She wore oversized gray sweats she'd knotted high on her waist, emphasizing how slender she was. And tall -- she was inches taller than her brother, a fact that used to get him shit for it. She wore no makeup that morning and judging from the natural unkempt nature of her hair, I was guessing she hadn't showered either.

"I was returning some things of your brother's."

"I figured," she said, crossing her arms under her breasts. "Where did you leave them?"

"Uh," I said. "Over the fence."

"Go get them please. I don't want to have to put on shoes and go out in this cold."

"Funny. I didn't want to have to climb up on a ladder and pull them off my roof."

She sighed. "He told me you were a jerk about it. You know, it takes a lot to upset Bobby, but you managed it. Way to go."

"I..." I was taken aback, momentarily stung. Then I remembered I was the affronted one here, and I said, "I didn't ask for any of this!"

"Oooh, sorry my brother has the world's biggest heart and wanted to do something unsolicited for you," she said, reminding me she wasn't just all looks, but brains to boot I know she did some kind of coding from home for a big software company. A few times she tried to explain what she did to me, but it made my head fog up and she eventually laughed and said she hunted bugs in code. That I could understand.

I didn't have a response to her, so I walked back to Bobby's gate and let myself in. I snatched up the lights and the extension cord off the ground, and when I returned to the front door, Harper was inside. I knocked and let myself in. She glowered at me from the couch, one of her long legs under her butt. She held a bowl of cereal in hand and slurped loudly from it, giving me the dagger eyes.

"Where?" I asked.

"On the chair is fine." I dropped the lights and the cord, and turned for the door. She added, "You aren't this jerk."

I glanced sharply at her, eyes narrowing. "Sorry?"

"You aren't. What Bridget did to you sucks. I know that's why you're really mad. My brother doesn't deserve this kind of treatment. So when you're ready to say you're sorry, come by and apologize to him."

"Apologize to him? Again. I. Did. Not. Ask. For. This."

"You. Didn't. Have. To," she said, grunting each word like a caveman. I almost laughed, but I remembered just in time I was supposed to be pissed off, and I left her there to her cereal and her laptop, only later wondering what the hell she was doing there on a Monday morning anyways.

* * *

They attacked my house again a week later.

The cold spell only got worse. You couldn't really call it a cold snap because the temperatures kept creeping slowly ever downward, more and more snow dumping on our small town and making people wonder if that year's Snow Drop, our big city-wide Christmas celebration, was going to happen. That would have bummed me out in years prior. I loved the Snow Drop, the big gathering of small vendors and Christmas vibes redefining "good cheer." It was always a positive event. Every year since my parents owned it, my store was one of their sponsors. We always ran a booth too, just a small one with a raffle and appetizers usually made with something we had on sale that week.

I was sitting in on a Chamber of Commerce meeting about that event when Bobby and Harper must have done it. I was only there to make an appearance, as usual. I had zero interest in taking an active part in any of the decision making, usually just nodding and agreeing when I was volunteered to do something. Like that year, I was being asked to help set up and take down the big pavilion tents for the Snow Drop, to which I readily agreed. It was an easy enough job if you knew what you were doing and it got me out of having to serve bratwursts or pulled pork or whatever the Chamber decided they were serving that year. I had zero desire to talk to people.

I walked home half-asleep from the overwarm Chamber Hall, though the cold knocked the stuffing out of me by the time I reached my street. I saw the lights and the snowmen at a distance and thought they must be in my neighbors' yard, but as I drew closer, I realized the truth. The lights were back up on the roof, accompanied by light-up snowmen and two smaller strings of lights looped around the bannisters leading up the stairs to my front door.

"Damn it, Bobby," I shouted, but only the wind heard me.

* * *

I went through the same dance as before, going in to work just long enough to open up and make sure we had enough people on hand, then I left again to go home, yank the lights off the roof, pull what I now realized were solar lights off the rails, and yoinked the snowmen's stakes out of the ground. I could add "missing more work" to the pile of reasons I was getting angrier and angrier.

I thought about dropping everything off at his house again but this time I had a better idea, one that might put a stop to all this nonsense. I loaded all the Christmas crap up, strapping one of the snowmen to my roof when it wouldn't fit in the rear of the Outback, and I drove to the mechanic's shop where Bobby worked, grinning or grimacing, I wasn't sure which.

I pulled in and stopped in front of one of the open garage bay doors. A couple guys looked at me curiously as I got out. Trae Brown, a young Black man in the garage's coveralls, smiled at me quizzically. "Got an appointment, Daryl?"

"Nope," I said. "Bobby around?"

"Yeah, he's on the phone if you want to wait a minute."

"Nah. I've got to get to work instead of wasting my time with his crap," I said.

His smile disappeared and he blinked. "Everything okay?"

"Mm hm," I said. I went around the back of the Outback, opened it up, and tossed the snowman on the ground along with the extension cord and the lights. Everyone was out and gaping at me by the time I unstrapped the snowman from the roof. "These are his. Tell him I said to have a..." I meant to say "have a merry fucking Christmas," but looking at the worried expressions of the mechanics stilled my anger and made me tired instead. "Tell him I said, again, thanks, but no thanks. It was funny the first time, but it's getting real old, real fast."

"Why don't you tell him yourself? He should be right out," Trae said.

I didn't bother answering that. I got in the Outback, and left.

* * *

I didn't feel great about what I'd done and the world seemed to agree with me. Word hit my store's employees, and in hours, they were glowering at me. Whatever. I busied myself restocking the dairy aisle, hoping this would all blow over, but of course it didn't.

Harper stormed into the store in the late morning, looking like a marshmallow in her white puffy coat. A redhaired damn vision of a marshmallow, one I wouldn't mind taking my time eating. But I knew why she was there and I squared my shoulders for what was coming.

"You... you jerk!" she snapped at me.

"Hi Harper, how are you, can I help you find anything?" I asked.

"Unbelievable. You know, I thought so much better of you, Daryl. I thought you were nearly as nice as Bobby."

"Sorry to disappoint. Please stop leaving your stuff on my lawn."

"No," she said.

"No," I said, then repeated it again. "No? I'm getting really, really tired of this."

"Maybe if you'd come over, had a cup of coffee with us, talked this out, we would have left you alone to be a miserable asshole. But no. Now the gloves are coming off. You loved Christmas. And don't tell me it was Bridget who made you put up all the Christmas decorations every year after Thanksgiving because that soulless bitch hated anything fun."

I glanced at her sharply. I thought Harper liked Bridget. They were in a book club together and often had drinks. "I thought you two were friends."

"No, not really," she said, her glare losing some of its fire. "I... she was my age, and you know how it is. It was complicated. Don't change the subject."

"Can we do this in my office?" I asked, looking pointedly towards the two customers and one of my employees watching us with blatant glee.