Xmas Eve
Casey Wiley
This special edition of Works Progress comes to you a few days early this month with Casey Wiley’s timely “Xmas Eve,” a frigidly poignant story about an amateur wrestler’s trek through his Christmasified neighborhood in search of a little companionship, and maybe a dinner, if he can only find Killer Sheila’s house.
Wishing you a joyful holiday season,
The Editors
After stepping unsteadily from the bus crossing town, wet snow falling on hard packed old snow, Russet wiped at his eyes and tried to read the faded address on the envelope in the cold wind. But before he could ask the driver, wearing a limp elf hat, about Killer Sheila’s place, the door slapped shut. His jacket too thin and too small, vision shifting, tears on his cheeks, Russet grabbed a sign to steady himself (NO PARKING SNOW REMOVAL), the metal pole frigid in his bare hand. He was sure he was late for the dinner. Had Killer Sheila said exactly when? The houses here all appeared the same: the color of sand or concrete, thrift shop leather shoes, shedding siding. Packed close together, they were like one long house with hundreds of exits. How could anyone know which house was theirs? Did just anyone come and go then? Sleep here, sleep there. Never sleep.
It was dark and growing darker. Russet took a few tentative steps down the icy sidewalk where a trimmed fir tree lay on a nub of frozen front lawn like someone had forgotten to bring it in or had just plumb given up, close enough, the thought that counts. Or maybe they had tossed it out the door. Clutching the envelope, he reversed on the sidewalk and limp-slipped several blocks in the other direction in falling snow, sliding on cracked ice mirrors. He passed bowing porches stuffed with couches, road cones, MAGA signs, hula hoops the faded colors of tropical ideals. A fish tank filled with boots, Styrofoam candy cane hooked over the edge. Highchairs, barking dogs, bowling balls, screen doors torn off. An inflatable snowman the size of a car hummed on an iced lawn, a deflated Rudolph next to it, a pressed imagination. Russet’s basement apartment across town was no better. He hadn’t even decorated, not one thing. It was empty but for a mattress before the TV and a plastic kiddie pool for icing his knees and back after matches. Flattened Sheetz plastic ice bags floated in the tepid water like lifeless jelly fish.
Russet knew he was late, he had to be late. And what time was it anyway? His back hurt. His neck hurt. His eyes, or just behind his eyes, hurt, his vision blurring, shifting. The world was both real and an image of itself, a haunting ghost. The only time Russet’s head wasn’t pounding was when he slept and he didn’t sleep much on nights he spent in the ring. Tugging the jacket around him, he limped faster, snow falling, slipping. Many of the houses were dark. Where was everybody?
At a sagging duplex, Russet thumped up the steps to ask for directions but paused at a child’s drawing of a grinning Christmas tree flapping from the storm door. He tried to smooth the paper, the green and red marker bleeding in the wet snow, but a dog’s bark tore from inside, the sound chasing him slipping down the block and up another where he eventually slowed, gasping and hacking, before a nativity scene, the third one he’d passed. The wind whipped. He couldn’t find the envelope with the address. It wasn’t anywhere. He gazed desperately down the sidewalk, another. Where had he come from? He called, “Sheila?” Glanced down a side street, one after, like Sheila’s place would be lit by the star of Bethlehem.
How could all those figures in the manger before him seem so content in this world? Christ, two doors down was a house with the top caved plum in like an upside-down roof in a cartoon. Snow fell into the house. Like if that’s the only house you saw, you would think: War. Staked on the iced lawn before it was a faded, hard-plastic Santa, red cheeked, the size of a child. A bulb shining within. Plastic reindeer were tipped before Santa. See, life isn’t so bad now, is it kids? And then the roof falls on your head.
But every plastic figure in the nativity scene was so focused on the baby lying in the manger. He was wrapped in a blue sweatshirt with a snarling white lion or tiger emblazoned across his little chest. Not one figure in the scene was spacing out like people do, wishing perhaps they were somewhere else. Not even the cow resting on dirty snow beside the manger, nor the faded plastic flamingo. Certainly, not Mary. It was like every being in the world was waiting on that kid, the only kid that mattered, and Russet had to look away. His Mama had walked out when he was six. He hadn’t seen her since. He’d hated her for leaving him with a monster, and eventually that hate had hardened within him. She could be dead for all he knew. But recently, the tears had snuck up on him like a cheap-shot in the ring, a folding chair to the back of the head, and he desperately wanted to see her.
Russet called out again, spotting half a block down a glassed bus stop shelter (SEE IT SAY IT poster), where a figure lay twisted in a tattered sleeping bag. Hurrying over, Russet slid hard on ice into the bench, cracking his knee. The figure didn’t move, the eyes closed. Of course, it wasn’t his Mama. How would he recognize her anyway? She certainly wouldn’t know him. Before crossing town earlier this evening, he’d first checked the bus station for her and then the bus, pacing the center aisle, tears on his cheeks, like a crazy person.
Bending close, Russet smelled the acid of the man’s breath and offered to buy him a cup of coffee at a gas station—just did he know where one was? The figure unmoving, Russet grabbed the man’s cue ball shoulder through the sleeping bag. He was colder than cold. Russet didn’t even have a phone for help. It was hard to keep the man’s image together in front of him like he was fragmenting to two people. His nose was split plum down the middle like two noses, the gash starting to crust over. When Russet leaned close to try to feel for breath again, the man twisted suddenly, nearly toppling off the bench.
Russet grabbed him. “I won’t hurt you.”
“The hell?” His voice sounded like a construction site.
“Are you okay?”
The man in the sleeping bag coughed. One eye remained squeezed shut. He pushed up to his elbow. He wore three winter hats tugged down hard but he had on this beautiful pair of eyeglasses. Bright blue tortoise shell and not bent or anything. And clean-shaven. His front teeth had been knocked clear out.
“…That what happened here?” The man pointed a finger with a cracked nail at his own eye, the open one, bloodshot. “You’re looking at me while the other one’s watching for the bus.”
“Got hit once and it broke.”
“Just like that?”
Russet tried to snap his fingers but they were too cold. First grade. With his Mama long gone, Russet’s father had turned on him.
“Champ?”
“Yeah?”
“Step away.”
Russet realized he was hugging the man in the sleeping bag. All of him cold.
“Sorry,” Russet said hastily, releasing him, wiping hard at his eyes, and asked again if the man was okay, which was as empty as working for no pay and told him, “Nice glasses,” set a couple ones on the bench and then a few more, and limp-slipped off, not looking back.
—
Russet passed a brightly-lit gas station, backtracked and went inside where it was never nighttime. He had to shade his eyes, light crashing about his head. Christmas Muzak played, some synthesizer Jazz thing. He thought back to the house with the caved roof. Santa and the reindeer had probably been long staked on the lawn before the roof collapsed, he thought. But then who tonight had turned on that light inside Santa?
At the counter, Russet tried to focus on the clerk, splitting to two people. He asked if she had ever seen a lady in her mid-sixties come in, named Cherry.
The young woman working squinted at him. She wore puffy winter gloves like cartoon hands, but it wasn’t cold inside. Short, wild hair colored like a rainbow, T-shirt like one too. Nametag: Bo.
Then he asked her about what he could remember of the address on the envelope. 5th or 6th, maybe. He didn’t know why he was still asking about this dinner, as late as it was. “Or is there a Seth Street?”
“You okay?”
He grabbed the counter.
“Should I call someone?” Bo reached for something under the counter. Then she looked closer. There were freckles even between her eyes. The freckles were splitting before him. “Do I know you from somewhere?” She looked away suddenly like trying not to stare. “Are you okay?”
“…I cry all the time.”
She stepped back like the words had pushed her. “I’m gonna pretend I did not just hear that.”
“Sorry,” Russet mumbled, squeezing his eyes shut. “Comes out of nowhere.”
“Do you want to now?”
“When I want to, I never can.”
He’d never cried like this before; he’d never cried, period, but of course he had, all those memories stuffed away like a tube sock balled in a wrestling boot. He grabbed a sleeve of powdered donuts the size of chaw cans, and by the register, Slim Jims.
“Do you have something to cut with?”
“Step back.”
He backed into a metal rack. “Sorry, to slice that like fancy salami, I mean.”
“No amount of slicing’ll make that fancy. You gonna do it here? Or just walk off with my knife? Say if I give it to you.”
“Sorry.”
Eyeing him, Bo removed a glove. Her hand was thin and pale like a doll’s hand. She dug in her jeans’ pocket and produced a chunky Swiss Army knife. She pulled her glove back on, then held the knife out over the counter. When Russet stepped forward, she closed her gloved hand over the knife.
“Sorry,” he said again, feeling stupid.
“You don’t have to keep saying that.”
Thinking suddenly of Killer Sheila’s daughter, he said, “Do you have kid toys?”
Bo withdrew her hand. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I cry all the time.”
“You said that.”
With his eyes shut the two of everything faded, or usually. Two knives, four winter gloves. His father, raging. But there were never two Mamas.
When he opened his eyes, Bo had torn open the Slim Jim and was slicing it on the counter. Little processed meat discs like scattered pain pills. Bells jingled from the Christmas Muzak. Bo had short arms too. He noticed people’s arms. Not so much muscle, but length. He imagined how people would grab him, whip him around. Bearhug him. Drop him. Other than in the ring, Russet couldn’t remember the last time anybody had touched him. Hugged him or held his hand, let alone brushed past him at the Weis or leaned a shoulder into him on a crowded bus. But in the ring, the feeling of another body crashing against him was glorious. The weight of another body pressing down on him, sweat-stink and chaw breath, the sparse crowd roaring. Never stop.
“The toy for your kid or something? They sleeping?” A new-age version of Silent Night was playing now on the radio. “I used to love Christmas, now I work it, get time and a half. Now I like it about half as much.”
“You should have some,” Russet said, eating a meat disc from the counter.
“Just after you pay.”
He dropped his few remaining bills on the counter. Bo had trouble collecting any meat discs with her puffy glove fingers, so Russet picked up several for her. When she held out her gloved hand, he dropped them into it and stepped back.
“I swear I know you from somewhere,” she said, chewing.
“I’ve been going to churches Sundays.”
“I do not go there.”
“I’m only looking for my Mama. Soup kitchens. Bingo, everywhere.”
“Only?” She removed a glove and popped a few more discs into her mouth.
“Last couple weeks, it’s all I’ve been doing. I used to not think about her. She got me this squid comic one day when I was a kid, and she was gone the next. That was forty-one years ago.”
“Jesus, how old are you?”
“I’ve been crying a lot.”
“Stop telling me that.”
He squeezed his eyes shut again. “She was scared of him, my dad. I was. Am.” The monster was dead somewhere in Ohio. “Do you sell medicine for headaches? She was really skinny.”
“Drugs?”
“No thanks, or—”
“No, her.”
When he opened his eyes, Bo was still split. He clutched the rack behind him. “I was six.”
“Just the skinny ones, usually, see them in here. Twitchy, seen it all,” Bo continued. “Some nights? Wandering like zombies, licking Gatorades. What do I do with that? No offense to your mom. And Merry Christmas, or almost, by the way.”
“AA meetings, thrift shops, the library, checking every old lady sleeping at desks, but I don’t even know what she looks like. I never forgave her for leaving. Bus stops, diners.”
Bo grinned suddenly. Her teeth had these little gaps between them like a kid’s teeth growing in.
“You’re a wrestler!” she exclaimed. “Seen you at the Shriners. You wrestle Friday nights, right?”
He nodded.
“Seen you lose, no offense!”
A week back—or was it two?—Randy the Clown had dumped Russet on his head on concrete outside the ring. When Russet came to in the locker room (really a janitor’s closet), his head pounding, the old clown, leaning over him, was splitting to two clowns. Both clowns were whooping, face paint glopped like cottage cheese. They were going on about how the (sparse) crowd had gone wild. Splayed on the locker room floor, Russet had felt tears on his cheeks and realized he was crying. He was thinking of his Mama reading him that squid comic. He leaned into her warmth. Her smell, what was her smell?
In the bright gas station, Bo mock flexed. “Hell with it, I’ll just drive you around, this party can’t be far. But damn, a wrestler. Just two problems: No car and I cannot be near a party and not go in.”
“Who’d watch the store?”
“Distant third problem.”
Russet slid the remaining meat discs into his pocket. Grabbed the donuts, backing away. “See, I don’t know if my coworker intended it as a party?”
Bo was already rummaging through stuff on a low shelf behind her, below the cigarettes. “Wait. Terry Thunder? Linda Legs? Amy T-N-A?”
“Her name’s Sheila.”
“Killer Sheila?” Bo did a little dance behind the counter. “She’s so hot!”
“She’s the best wrestler I’ve ever seen.”
“And you’re going on a date with her!”
“Nothing like that.”
Bo glared at him. “I will never kiss you tonight no matter how drunk I get.”
“Sorry, I like…the other ones.”
“What are you saying?”
He hesitated. “Men.”
“Do I need to call the manager?”
The store was so bright like some police interrogation room. “Sorry, I—”
“I’m just fucking with you, you have no idea when somebody’s fucking with you, do you, Russet Pipes? Can I call you that? And where’re you going? I’m cool. I always thought I could be a wrestler. Thought I could be a lot of things. Make movies. But do I ever film anything on my phone? I gotta meet her!”
“At least I should call ahead.”
“Tell her I’m cool.”
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”
“I told you I—”
“Yeah, yeah, just where’d I put mine, you can use it.” She pulled a puffy coat from under the counter and tugged it on, digging her hands around the pockets.
“I don’t have her number.”
“She invited you, right?”
“And I’ll take this.” Russet plucked a keychain of a cat with a diamond-studded bowtie off a rack by the exit. He backed into the door. “When I get there—”
“Where’d I put my phone, did you take my phone—”
“…I’ll ask her about you coming along.”
“And some friends!”
—
A block away, gasping and hacking, Russet slipped and fell hard, cracking his cheekbone on the icy sidewalk. He didn’t move. Maybe this is how it would end. No one would find him until Christmas morning—the anonymous, local wrestler, sometimes plumber. He was never champ, but he could take a hit, people might remember; he made other wrestlers look good. Maybe a little Suzy would find him on the way to church Christmas morning. And it would be too late. What if his Mama tottered past and didn’t even know him? The pain in his cheek dull at first and then stinging like a great hand squeezing the side of his face, he pushed up and looked back. The gas station was lit bright. Snow falling, kind of pretty. Out front, someone stood on the sidewalk smoking.
“Russet!” the figure called, flexing. “Pipes!”
Eating the rest of the Slim Jim discs along the way, tugging his jacket closed, Russet again spotted the man with the split nose sleeping on the bus stop bench, wrapped in the sleeping bag.
“Here,” Russet said and tucked the donut sleeve under the man’s arm.
The man didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. Leaning close, Russet could hear his rough breathing, like a car scraping a building. The man didn’t resist when Russet lifted him up over his shoulder. It was like lifting a child, the weight of him. Like he was barely there.
“…I’m gonna save you, I’m gonna save you,” the man with the split nose repeated quietly, over Russet’s shoulder. The words like breathing.
“Thank you,” Russet said as they trudged on.
—
The snow was picking up. It was late. They moved slowly, unsteadily. The man with the split nose smelled sweet, not quite like candy. Here and there, cars were parked diagonally across snowy front lawns like someone had veered off the street, skidding toward a house, ducked and rolled, absconded on foot. Let the Neon be somebody else’s problem, only starts half the time anyway.
A sedan rattled by with these big plastic antlers on either side of the roof.
“Rudolf!” the man draped over Russet’s shoulder called hoarsely.
—
In front of the house with the caved roof, Russet took a break on the icy sidewalk, setting the man with the split nose down.
“Your friend has a beautiful home,” the man said, adjusting in his sleeping bag. His legs weren’t strong and he leaned against Russet.
“That’s not it at all,” Russet said. “But who do you think turned the light on?”
“There isn’t one on. Nobody lives in that dump.”
“In Santa here, I mean.”
“Is that a trick question?” the man said. He pointed a crumpled hand at the plastic Santa. “You?” he said.
“No,” Russet said. “Who?”
The man shrugged. “It was always on.”
—
His head pounding, Russet carried the man slowly past a trimmed fir tree dropped on an icy lawn—the same tree where Russet had gotten off the bus, or different. But the man patted at Russet’s back repeatedly until Russet stopped.
“This is my house,” the man proclaimed, hanging over Russet’s shoulder like a sack of tools. A wreath adorned with holly berries hung on the door.
Russet’s wheezing breath was tiny cries. He could feel the tears. He couldn’t remember anymore where he had come from and where he was going. They’d walk forever. Maybe they had been. He could live in this between space. This nothing space, with a stranger.
“But if you want to save me?” the man with the split nose continued. “Do not bring me inside.”
—
The two men finally stood outside a tall house painted three different colors, like one for each story. A kid’s bike with training wheels was tipped on the porch. Russet stuck the fir tree in a snow pile next to the driveway.
Standing uneasily next to Russet, the man with the split nose offered a bite from the donut he was eating. His cracked lips were dusted in powdered sugar as if two Pennsylvania hills converging. His legs, now emerged from the sleeping bag like a calf’s legs at birth, knocked out at the knees as if someone had jerked them that way. Socks were pulled over his sneakers.
Four metal mailboxes were nailed beside the door. “I don’t know which apartment,” Russet said. “I don’t even know if this—”
“I’m glad at least I have some donuts to bring,” the man with the split nose interjected, eating another donut, swaying in place now. Russet took his arm. Even through his sweatshirt, the arm felt like grabbing a bingo marker.
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Killer Sheila.”
The man with the split nose didn’t even blink at the name. “Sheila!” he called, knocking his head back. “Killer!”
A dog barked somewhere. That car with the antlers rattled by again, or one like it, slowed, and rattled on. The house’s front window by the porch was framed in tinsel and colorful Christmas lights. Half of them blinked. It was dark inside. All reasonable people were asleep by now. Two cars were crammed in the driveway, their bumpers kissing. The driver-side window was plumb open in the car closest to the house, snow wafting in, takeout garbage strewn on the seats. A photograph of a cat was taped to the dashboard. Snow covering all of it.
“Killer!” the man called again.
“Shut up!”
The two men looked up. Some guy had poked his head out a window way up there, the third floor or an attic. Even from here he was tan, or it looked that way in the light from inside his apartment.
“Killer Sheila?” the man eating donuts called.
“Shut up!”
His buzzed hair was frosted with blond dye or snow. He had this little head, kind of itty-bitty, no bigger than a child’s. He couldn’t have been very big. In the locker room, Russet had seen the bruises on Killer Sheila’s neck and chest, and probably these were from wrestling, but he’d heard the rumors from Randy and Linda and Maxx about her boyfriend. One time in the locker room, Sheila saw Russet watching her, shirtless, those bruises impossible not to notice on her broad back, one dwarfing her muscled forearm, and she barked at him to turn around or she’d make him. And but she really was the best wrestler Russet had ever wrestled, and lost to. She had to know that, right? She was graceful in the ring, strong, she fell hard and sold it, and she was good on the mic. She could take anyone. So, if this boyfriend knocked her around, why didn’t she defend herself? Maybe she had and none of it made sense.
How long had Russet’s Mama put up with the beatings before she broke?
“Are you going to let us in?” the man eating donuts called up, his words slurred. “We brought a tree!”
“The fuck?”
“For dinner!”
“Dinner?” the man shouted down. He didn’t need to shout. Somewhere a dog barked.
“Is she okay?” Russet offered.
“Who the hell are you?”
“See, I was supposed to come here,” Russet offered. “Is my understanding? And I realize I’m—we’re—several hours late.”
“Technically,” the man eating donuts offered, “I’m not late because I came as soon as I heard. But I am hungry.”
“Is that a sleeping bag? Fuck are you two?”
“Russet Pipes? And—” He looked to the man eating donuts.
“…Wind.”
“Did you hear that?” Russet called up.
The man in the window shook his head.
“Wind, he said.”
“Don’t give a dump who you are, there’s no dinner!” the man shouted. “Do you know what time it is? Or there was, for me and my lady and definitely not for Russet Whatever-the-shit and Wind and a sleeping bag! Fuck your tree! You’re both all bloody, hell’s wrong with you!”
Russet looked down at his hands. The right one had dried blood on it. He felt the side of his face, tacky and cold. He was bumped suddenly by Wind scouring the icy ground.
“Just my hat, have you seen my hat, we lost my hat.”
The third hat wasn’t on the snowy lawn or the cracked walkway or the front sidewalk or anywhere. When Russet looked up, the man in the window was gone. A pickup truck passed. Another. Christmas music played somewhere, Russet thought from the truck, but when the truck was long gone, the music continued.
Wind sat gingerly on the front steps, moaning, “Oh god, oh god. I used to be married,” he moaned into his crumpled, dirty hands. “Oh god, oh god. She was beautiful, or not beautiful, you saw my house.”
Russet nodded tentatively then shook his head no. “We’ll find your hat or I’ll get you one.”
“But more,” Wind continued, sliding to two people, “she was perfect.” One of the two Winds offered Russet the last donut from the sleeve. The other of him dropped his gaze. “I was no beauty either. And my kid, I had a kid, or she said we did, and I believed her. I believed everything she said.”
Standing there in the cold before the house, Russet offered, “I cry all the time.”
At that, Wind knocked his head back and grinned, flashing those missing front teeth like he knew something good would appear above. Perhaps an angel, a Christmas one, Gerald, or whatever his name is. Who wouldn’t want two of those? The angels would fly the two of them up through that window to retrieve Sheila or fly them home or perhaps there was someplace better.
“I want to thank you for carrying me here,” Wind said.
“I miss my Mama.”
Wind thought for a moment. “Those tears you cry? What if they’re hers?”
Russet wanted his Mama to hold his soupy head for as long as it took. Perhaps, there would be two of her to make up for lost time. No, that’s not fair: two of him. One old and limping and bald and lonely and one only six years old. Just a kid. They’d all cry together. He’d tell his Mama about the sudden tears, about looking for her everywhere recently, and he’d tell her about still having that squid comic. About how when she’d left he’d read it over and over safe under his bed. He’d tell her about first grade, the worried looks and the look-aways. About summer, every summer since, and about how sorry he is that she took the beating for all those years. How could he have hated her for that?
He had so many questions for her. Maybe she’d left the state. Maybe she sang—sings. Maybe she dances. Maybe she likes squids too, or never thinks about them. Maybe she wouldn’t even like him very much. He was nothing special. But he wanted to show her something; holding her hand—the feeling like birth—he’d take her to wrestling Friday night at the Shriners. He’d assure her that the pain, the pounding was okay.
Again, from the porch steps, Wind offered the donut, just a nub now.
“…And I’m scared she’s dead,” Russet said.
“I said there’s no dinner!”
That man with the tiny head was glaring out the upstairs window again, this time smoking a cigarette. Wind pushed unsteadily to standing and tottered and fell into Russet. For the second time, it was like catching a child. His Mama had caught him, over and over, until she couldn’t.
“Look,” the man said from the window above, more calmly. “If I listed off everything I’m scared of….” He trailed off as he blew smoke into the cold night and gestured with his hand as if that explained everything. Then his face twisted. “Christ, you crying?”
“The funny thing is I can never cry!” Wind called back.
“The bald one!”
Russet was still holding the other man up, and when Wind’s legs gave, the two men toppled to the cold walkway like empty beer cans. Just look at them, the two of them balled together on this holy night. Wind, pinned under Russet, clutching the bawling man.
“He is crying!” the voice shouted down from the window, sounding joyous, like people had to see this. A Christmas miracle. That dog barking. Jingle Bells played.
“It’s okay!” Wind called skyward. “I’m gonna save him.”
“That,” the voice boomed down, “I would like to see!”
—
After the man upstairs had thumped the window shut, Russet climbed the steps and rattled the locked door.
“Which mailbox?” he asked, fishing the cat keychain from his pocket.
“Three,” Wind declared, without hesitation. “My lucky number.”
Russet dropped the keychain in.
Wind peeled the second hat from his head and tossed it to Russet. “Let’s go home.”
But instead of following Wind, Russet peered into the dark glass of the door. All he could see was his pitiful reflection. He looked away, tears on his face. He could search for his Mama forever, and maybe he would, but this house was right here. Would he ever find it again? He tugged at the handle a second time, the glass rattling.
“Hey!” he heard Wind hiss behind him.
Russet pounded on the frame, shouting, “Sheila!”
That’s when he noticed the two little boys standing just on the other side of the glass, like spirits appearing. They wore matching snowman PJs. The older one was saying something lost to the glass.
“What?” Russet shouted. “Are you hers too? Is she okay? Are you?”
The older kid looked confused like he was expecting someone else, perhaps Santa. The younger one started to cry.
At that, the downstairs lights blazed, and some big guy in boxer shorts with a shaved head tore down the hallway toward the front door and the bloody figures beyond, one in a sleeping bag tugging the other—screaming something about the best wrestler he’d ever seen—down the porch steps. The man in boxer shorts eased the kids aside like curtains and grabbing a bat, fumbled at the locks, shouting.
When Wind went for the fir tree, Russet scooped him up and scrambled out to the street, running in the slush and ice and the cold Christmas early morning stinging like hundreds of angry whips, dogs barking, the man in boxer shorts shouting after them.
—
Back across town, upon entering Russet’s basement apartment, a sheet tacked over the regress window, hot dog singed to a hot plate, (“You even got yourself a pool,” Wind commented, toeing the plastic), some infomercial for knives was on the TV. An old, tan guy in a Santa hat chopped carrots fast-fast on a cutting board, proclaiming, “Zow!” with each chop. “Zow! Zow!”
“This,” Wind declared, “is a castle.”
-30-
Casey Wiley’s work has been published in Pinch, Salamander, Passages North, Hunger Mountain, Epiphany, Hobart, Barrellhouse, Gulf Stream, Salt Hill, The Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. A recent story was selected as a finalist for the Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction. Casey loves gardening and exploring Pennsylvania with Rachael and Oscar. You can read some of his work at caseywiley.com.