The Christmas Trust, Page 3

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  GODDAMNIT!! No way! It couldn’t be. Last time I’d heard those words, it was six months ago and they came from Joe Skives, my boss. Joe called everyone “Mac”; no one was particularly sure why, but it grated on your nerves, like fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. At that time, he lived in a 6,000 square foot house in Granite Bay with a Hummer, Land Rover, and Cadillac SUV parked in the driveway. Joe had me up to the house once, and only once, about a year ago, to discuss my future with the company. He wanted to groom me for VP of a new experimental division. I said yes and was quickly enrolled in a higher management training course. Up until then, I had managed the steel pipe division of Lahey and Lahey, although without VP status. Joe wanted to place me at the top of the on-demand specialty laser-cut items. It was a plum.

  He was the suit I had quarterly reported to for the past five years, and the only drawback to this promotion was I would still be reporting to him. Not anymore, though.

  Shortly after I started my new position, Joe’s boss, Stanley Simpson, had me over to his even bigger house, one that looked out over the Sacramento Valley. I sure could see myself sitting in one of those babies someday.

  Standing around the pool with a drink in my hand, I was light years out of my league, yet somehow, it felt as if I was made for that kind of luxury living. We made small talk, complained and bragged about our kids, and laughed about common gripes with our wives.

  “Hey, Marv; I’ll get right down to it—” My intestines turned to water and I puckered my rectum, expecting the worst. “—we fired Joe.” Simpson let the revelation hang in the air, and seemed to relish the changing colors of my face.

  “Joe’s division has always exceeded our goals, and he was a model VP and employee. That’s why it was so hard to catch.” I choked in amazement. “We caught him taking bribes from suppliers and monkeying with test results.” I felt something somewhat disingenuous with his words.

  Joe had been a favorite son who shot to the top and enjoyed the fast life with all its perks. I was never a fan of Joe’s; in fact, I loathed the man. He was easy to hate – everyone did – except his superiors.

  His trademark, “Hey Mac! Hey Mac!” curdled my spine every time I heard it.

  My bowels solidified and I relaxed, knowing it wasn't I who was getting the axe.

  “Marv! Marv!” Suddenly, I had been promoted to being called by name. “You still with me?”

  “Yeah... it’s just such a shock.”

  “It was for us too; we double-triple checked the evidence just to be sure. The legal division will end up prosecuting the poor bastard and suing to recover our losses. He’ll end up broke and in jail. In a way, I pity him. What the big boys want to know is, can you do his job?”

  “Yes!” I said emphatically, surprised by my own confidence.

  Simpson slapped me on the back, my drink sloshed on the ground, and he stuck a fat cigar in my mouth. “That a boy! That’s what we like to see.”

  That was a Friday. By Monday, I was in a big corner office on the tenth floor, sitting at Joe Skives’ old desk, spinning around in the expensive leather chair. My nameplate was already on the door.

  Marvin Battles ~ Vice President

  Six months later, I’m driving home in an expensive new car, one I always wanted but couldn’t afford, and Joe Skives is bumming change just to eat. A combined sense of awe and dread fills my bowels and they once again turn to liquid like the three bags of Choco-Santas, marshmallow filled, sitting in my passenger seat.

  My Cadillac CTS, with the full performance package, sits idling in the circular drive leading up to my also new house alongside the Sacramento River. This was where my wife Maggie had always wanted to live; my signing bonus was enough to set us up in a mortgage with good enough terms for us to live much larger than we had before. I turn off the engine and sit, stunned at how fast this man’s fortunes had turned. Suddenly, I’m not as irritated by the run up to Christmas.

  Maggie stands at the door with her arms crossed and must have watched me sit for a while; her look turns sour when she sees the mushy Choco-Santas. Those stupid things have been a tradition since I worked nights at the Mini-Mart and she worked at Target. Cheap and wrapped in colored foil, they doubled as Christmas decorations. I hold up my finger to say silently, just a minute—I can explain. I lift the lid on an empty garbage pail, and the bags of Choco-Santas land in the bottom with a meaty thud.

  “I’m sorry about the Santas, honey. I’ll get some more tomorrow.” I plant a nice warm kiss on her waiting lips, give a warm, sexy hug, and say, “Wait till you hear this!”

  “It better be good, pal! It cost me my Choco-Santas.” She smacks me on the butt. I know then I am out of the doghouse.

  “So, that explains a lot,” says Maggie. “Hunter and the kids just up and disappeared. She supposedly went to live with her parents in Tennessee, but damn if I can get a phone or address out of anybody.”

  Maggie stares into her coffee for what seems fifteen minutes or so; I’m wondering if the same fear is crossing her mind as it did mine.

  “Maggie! Earth to Maggie!” I snap my fingers in front of her face, which normally irritates the hell out of her.

  She looks up at me with this warm look, like a kid who just found an abandoned wolf pup and wants to keep him for a pet. “You gotta find him, Marv!”

  “What the hell for?” She looks back at me like I’ve just said the stupidest thing she’s ever heard.

  “We have to help him.”

  “Help him! I hate that guy and, on top of that, he’s a crook. Good for him, he got what you get when you cheat and steal.” I stand with my arms crossed in a defiant gesture, but my wife looks back at me as if that mangled, muddy wolf pup is already sleeping in her arms. So now, on top of this holiday being number one on my nuisance list, I have to help a guy I hate or risk the fate of marital breakdown, and of course, as always, it will be my fault.

  Like a defeated mongrel pup, my head hangs, and I mumble something unpleasant under my breath. Maggie says a sharp, “What was that!” Boy, she moved quickly from puppy rescuer to Joan of Arc. I stay silent, and want to keep my head attached to my shoulders.

  “Okay, first I’ll find him and then figure out what to do.” I shiver my shoulders and steel my nerves. Maggie and every other woman alive loves a take-charge attitude in men brave enough to chance it. I wasn’t brave; I was faking it.

  She drops the mangled wolf pup look and becomes once again my sexy Maggie.

  For the next week, I scoured every street corner, alley, and drugstore within five miles of the one where Joe popped up. In my street clothes on Saturday, I ventured under bridges, carrying a pocket full of ones and fives to grease the wheels of the homeless denizens.

  These were the same streets Maggie and I had once roamed, but never as cheap-ass panhandlers; it’s a wonder we weren’t in jail now. If the corporation I worked for knew even a snippet of our former lives, I’d be canned faster than Joe was. After all, Lahey and Lahey had an image to uphold, no matter how much destruction they reaped on the environment.

  Maggie and I both came from broken, dysfunctional, and downright poisonous families. Our teen years were spotted with the typical drug and alcohol use, but in our senior year in high school, we just lit out and hit the road. The road ended for us, sick and addicted in a cheap motel room. It sickened me that she walked the streets for money. We looked down at the 9mm pistol I used to rob tourists near Disneyland and seriously considered using it to end our lives.

  That was exactly when there was a serendipitous knock on the door from a guy inviting us to a Bible study held in one of the other rooms at this dope-fiend motel. He looked like us – rough, longhaired, and tattooed – the only difference was his eyes. You couldn’t miss the peace and happiness that radiated from within those hazel eyes. We desperately wanted what he had.

  So, we took a risk and went to that Bible study, but were too sick to pay much attention. Rick, the man who first knocked on ou
r door, got us into a Salvation Army treatment program. The rest is really history. We ended up reasonably happy and moderately educated. Then I landed at Lahey and Lahey, and whatever I touched, turned to gold. I rose quickly to the top.

  Yes. Joe Skives deserved some sort of chance, no matter how I felt about him.