Elmore Leonard's Night Before Christmas
Elmore Leonard’s Night Before Christmas
Author’s Note:
This short story is the result of a writing challenge. A close friend of mine, who likes to throw these challenges out there to his writer friends, asked me if I would be willing to do a rewrite of Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit From St. Nicholas” using the writing style of a favorite author. I told him that one of my favorite writers was Elmore Leonard. He said cool, do that. Hemingway was already taken anyway.
He showed me the Hemingway version that someone did and it was pretty much a straightforward rewrite using Hemingway's prose style. That was way too boring for my tastes so when I got home I sat down, started doodling, and when I was about four hundred words in I sent my friend a message on Facebook letting him know that I hadn’t even bothered to re-read the source material yet.
That’s just how I roll, ya’ll. We both thought it was pretty funny.
Anyway by the time I had the story more than halfway finished I did manage to read the poem but by then, of course, it was too late.
The character Raylan in this story resembles Elmore’s Raylan Givens in name only, to be honest, because that’s where the similarity ends. I could have used another name and almost did, just to avoid the fan fiction label if anything.
Still I’m kinda happy with the results. As far as I’m concerned Elmore Leonard is one of a handful of true Grandmasters. I hope I did him justice.
But, really, I kinda doubt it.
It was Christmas Eve when they left the rest stop. Raylan let the perp ride shotgun this time. It was easier to hear him that way. He’d had him cuffed in the back when they crossed the county line but that was twenty miles ago and the dude hadn’t stopped talking the entire time and he was starting to get on Raylan’s nerves but Raylan decided to just roll with it anyway.
It wasn’t that he was interested. It was just a way to pass the time. They had another sixty miles ahead of them so he even let him take the cuffs off for a while just to give his hands a break.
The perp was going on and on:
“Me and my cousin Vinnie we had this thing we did every year like a holiday tradition. We’d go up on the mountain wait til just about sundown and go shooting skeeters with our .45 magnums.”
“You mean mosquitos?”
“Yeah you ever try to shoot one?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“Well you should try it sometime. Anyway we would sit on his porch and get shit faced and try to keep count of who could hit the most.”
“What were you drinking?”
“Jim Beam dawg.”
“Good choice.”
“Damn straight it is.”
He’d picked up Raymond Daniels - Ray Dog to his friends - for missing a court date on two counts of domestic violence. Serious stuff too. He’d messed his old lady up pretty bad. Raylan knew the type. Just a country type with more pride than priors but this wasn’t Ray Dog’s first time in county lock up.
“So who won?”
“We never could find out. We were too shit faced by then.”
“So how do you know you actually hit any?”
“That wasn’t really the point. We just wanted to get fucked up and shoot our guns.”
“Oh.”
“So anyway about two years ago we were halfway through our second bottle when we got held up by some guy in a Santa Claus costume on Christmas Eve.”
“You got held up on the mountain?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“I’m not following you.”
“I thought you country boys had dogs and shit.”
“Nah, Vinnie doesn’t like dogs. Says he’s allergic.”
“Oh.”
“We just thought it was kinda fucked up getting hit by Santa Claus on Christmas Eve ya know what I’m saying?”
“On the night before Christmas?”
“Yeah.”
“Like the story right?”
“Yeah like the story only this really happened.”
“So you got held up by Santa Claus on the night before Christmas?”
“Fuck man weren’t you even listening?”
Raylan just let it go.
“Anyway this lady comes by walking her dog so I said skeeters are gettin bad ain’t they and that lady just went white as a sheet so I kept shooting just to see what she’d do cause she could tell we were both drunk as hell and you know what she did?”
“What’d she do?”
“She fuckin high tailed it dude.”
Ray Dog slapped his knee laughing like he’d just told Raylan a good one.
Raylan kept a corner of one eye on Ray Dog’s hands and kept the other on the white lines flashing by on the highway.
“So is that the story?”
“No.”
“Ok.”
“Nah, what happened next is we saw a pickup coming up the road with some guy in a Santa Claus suit behind the wheel. It was getting kinda dark by then.”
“I thought those houses on the mountain were kinda outta the way.”
“They are.”
“So why was that lady walking her dog on your property?”
“Really? You think people in the country don’t walk their dogs?”
“OK, fair enough.”
“So anyway they came riding up in a pickup, eight of them riding in the back and when they come to a stop they shined the headlights right in our eyes and the first one hops out with a shotgun and says nobody fucking move, name’s Donner and I come here to chew gum and kick ass and I’m all outta gum or something like that.”
“Ok.”
“Then the other ones jump out and they’re all packing heat, shotguns mostly, and they’re introducing themselves. Dasher, Dancer, Vixen I think and a buncha other bullshit names. Thing is they were all dressed like reindeer.”
“Huh. Wonder why they did that?”
“So we wouldn’t see their faces dumb ass. I thought you were a cop.”
“I have my moments.”
“I guess they thought it was funny naming themselves after Santa’s reindeer or something.”
“Huh.”
“So Vinnie gets smart and says where’s Rudolph and that’s when the guy in the Santa Claus suit gets out looking all pissed off and says who’s fucking asking? He’s got a shotgun too only his is sawed off.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh is right. But we knew all the time it was Johnny’s gang.”
“How’d you know that?”
“You don’t sling on the mountain Johnny Skiles don’t get a cut.”
“Really? So what were they looking for?”
“The weed mainly. Somebody musta tipped em off. You’re not very smart for a cop are you?”
“Never knew you were slinging weed.”
“Never got caught that’s why. Hey I got my moments too.”
“So what happened next?”
Ray Dog started to fidget in his seat. They always did that. Raylan could read them like a book.
“Donner fuckin shot me that’s what happened.”
“He shot you? Where’d he shoot you at?”
“Got me in the leg. He just grazed me. Guy was surgical, like he was just warning me, but still it hurt like a bitch.”
“So what happened then?”
“Well then they raided the house and Vinnie didn’t do shit to stop em.”
“They find anything?”
“Yeah they found the weed. We had it stuffed in Christmas stockings. We thought it’d be fun to sell it that way.”
“So where’d you get it at?”
“Where the fuck do we think we got it at?”
Raylan adjusted the cruise control turning it up a notch. Then he worked it up again. The engine revved a little. Then it settled down again.
“So you’re telling me you robbed Johnny’s gang so they robbed you back?”
“OK I take it back. You’re not as dumb as you look after all.”
“Like I said I have my moments. So what happened next?”
“Well next Santa Claus gets back in the truck with all his reindeer and all our weed, guns the engine and says merry fucking Christmas have a good night motherfuckers. Then he ho ho ho’s and I seen his taillights disappearing up the road and that’s the story of how I got this scar right here on my leg on a Christmas Eve just like this one.”
The sun was almost gone now. Raylan kept watching him from the corner of his eye. Ray Dog was about to make his move so Raylan leaned back a little bit just to his left on the driver’s side, giving himself room and working at the seat belt while he did it, making sure it was good and tight.
Ray Dog reached down and hitched up his pants leg like he was trying to show Raylan his ankle. Raylan saw a beam of light catch the hilt of Ray Dog’s shank for just a flash as they passed a set of orange overhead warning lights at the bypass and then it was gone, just like that.
He’d pretended not to notice it earlier when he patted Ray Dog down.
“See here it is.”
His hand going for the shank now thinking Raylan wouldn’t notice.
Raylan pretended not to, checking the rear view mirror to make sure no was behind him.
Raylan had the cruise control set for seventy-five on the dot. The white lines were just a blur now and he was thinking this was gonna be fun teaching this punk a lesson.
When he slammed on the brakes.
Ray Dog’s head came forward like a jack in the box.
His face hit the dashboard hard. It sounded wet when it did it and Ray Dog started screaming.
Raylan pulled over onto the shoulder and came to a stop. He reached up, flipped a switch, turning on the interior light, Ray Dog making noise and kicking his legs the entire time. He was holding his nose and bleeding like a stuck pig. The front of his shirt was black in the interior light.
“Motherfucker! You just broke my nose!”
“I told you to buckle up,” Raylan said, opening the door. “You shoulda fuckin listened.”
Then Raylan hit the trunk eject and got out of the car walking around back like he didn’t have a care in the world.
He opened the trunk, fished around for the Mossberg.
Then he came back around the car on the passenger side.
He looked at Ray Dog in there as he opened the door. Then he gave the Mossberg a soft little pump, aiming it right at Ray Dog’s face.
“You never told me how the story ended.”
“Asshole.”
“Well?”
Ray Dog took a deep breath covering his mouth.
“Well the next day we drove out to Johnny’s place cause we was pretty sure it was them and you know what they told us?”
Raylan waited.
“He said the same guy hit us hit them too.”
“And you believe that?”
“Do I look like somebody that’d believe that kinda bullshit?”
“Yeah, actually you do. Now get out of the car so I can cuff you again.”
When he got him cuffed they got back on the interstate. This time Raylan made him sit in the back.
“There’s something I never told you,” Raylan said, looking at Ray Dog in the rear view mirror. “I used to sling weed up on the mountain myself.”
Ray Dog didn’t say nothing.
“Couple years ago I did a hit on some good old boys. You know that story Johnny told you? He was telling you the truth. So merry Christmas dude. Now you know what really happened. Think of me as Santa Claus and think of that as the Christmas present I’m giving you before I take your hillbilly ass back to lock up.”
“Shit. I thought you was a U.S. Marshall.”
“Oh, I am,” Raylan said. “I’m just the kind you don’t wanna mess with.”
And for the next sixty miles Ray Dog didn’t say another goddamn word.