Be My Santa Baby

by Frank Zafiro

I drew back the hammer and it got tangled up in the fake beard.

“Shit!” I muttered and struggled to pull the white material free. That's when I noticed it was caught in the cylinder, too.

“Shit!” I said again.

The cashier was staring at the gun. A smile touched the corners of his mouth and some of the fear in his eyes melted away.

“What's the matter, Kenny?” Jake asked.

“Fucking beard is all caught up in the gun,” I told him.

“What?”

I looked over at him, all done up in the same ridiculous red and white costume I was in, complete with stocking hat and fluffy white beard. Goddamn beard.

A nervous chuckle escaped the cashier's lips. I turned back to him and jabbed the barrel of the revolver in his direction. The beard pulled away from my face with each punctuated motion.

“You shut the fuck up,” I told him. “You think this gun won't work just ‘cause there's a little bit of beard tangled up in it?”

The cashier was forty and thin enough to look unhealthy. He clenched his narrow jaw and turned the corners of his mouth down, but I could see his eyes were still dancing with laughter.

“You wanna die, Mr. Funny Man?” I asked, poking the barrel at him and making my beard dance.

He shook his head. His greasy hair flopped from side to side, but his eyes refused to lose their humor.

“Take it easy,” Jake said. “Just get the money.”

“You heard him, Chuckles,” I said to the cashier. “Empty the register.”

He may have had laughing eyes, but he was no dummy. He punched a button and the cash drawer opened with a ding.

“Let's go!” I said, poking my gun barrel at him. “Faster!”

The cashier's hands were shaking as he drew out the bills from the register with a practiced motion.

“In a bag,” Jake said over his shoulder.

Without pause, the cashier jammed the wad of cash into a MI-T Mart bag and held it out to me. I snatched it from his hand and leaned in, touching the end of the gun barrel to the tip of his nose. That sapped most of the laughter out of his greasy little eyes.

“Not so funny now, is it?” I said.

The cashier made shuddering shaking motions with his head.

“Let's go,” Jake grunted at me.

I nudged the cashier backward with a slight push. Before I turned away, I winked at him. “Ho-ho-ho, motherfucker.”

The old Dodge was running when we hopped in, but the heater was broken and blew only cold air.

“Punch it!” Jake told Charmaine from the back seat, slamming his door.

The big-bodied woman wrinkled her nose at him. “You got the shit?”

“Drive, bitch,” Jake said. “I got the fucking money.”

Char clenched her jaw, but nodded at him, her heavy black curls bobbing and bouncing against her shoulders. Then she turned her attention ahead, put the gar in gear and drove calmly northbound.

“Not too fast, neither,” Jake told her.

“I know how to drive a getaway car, motherfucker,” she snapped.

I dropped my hand onto her meaty thigh and she shot me a glance. It was a hard look at first, but it softened after a moment and then she turned forward.

“Y'all are some heavy breathin' motherfuckers,” she muttered, wiping away the foggy condensation on the inside of the windshield.

I rolled down my window to clear the fog.

“That's freezing,” Jake said. “Roll it back up.”

I looked back at him. He was already almost out of his Santa suit, shrugging off the suspenders and pulling the floppy pants down over his hips.

He looked back at me. “What's your problem? Roll up that window and get that Santa shit off.”

I left the window down, but pulled off the red hat and the beard.

“Leave on the hat,” Char cooed at me. “It's sexy.”

“It all goes in the trash,” Jake insisted.

Char ignored him, winked and blew me a kiss with her thick lips. I tucked the hat under the front seat and concentrated on tearing the little white strands of beard out of the hammer and the cylinder of my revolver.

“Whachoo doin', sugah?” Char asked me.

“Unfucking his gun,” Jake said.

I ignored him and tore at the stringy white stuff. “Damn beard,” I muttered.

We drove north for ten minutes. I managed to get some more of the beard hair out of the gun before we pulled into the parking lot behind Costco.

“Why aren't you done yet?” Jake barked at me.

I didn't answer. Instead, I put my gun on the front seat and scrambled out of the rest of my Santa suit. Then I balled it up and handed it over the back of the seat to Jake. He gathered up his own suit and climbed out of the car. Char and I watched him scamper to the dumpster and toss it in.

“I should leave his ass right here,” Char murmured, more to herself than to me.

I glanced into the back seat and saw that he had taken the bag of money with him. I thought about telling Char that, but she kept the car in park until he returned and clambered back into the rear seat again, so I just kept quiet.

“Go,” Jake ordered her.

“Go?” she repeated. “ Go fuck yourself.”

She put the car in gear, though, and headed back out onto the arterial.

The rustling sound of the plastic bag came from the back seat. I looked over my shoulder and saw Jake counting out the money from the MI-T Mart.

“How much?”

He ignored me and continued to count. When he'd finished, he sighed. “Shit. One hundred and eighteen bucks.”

“That's it?”

“I knew we should've made that skinny bastard open the safe,” he said.

Char shook her head. “No, they can't. It's on a timer. Once they put money in, it don't come out ‘til the manager gets there in the morning.”

Jake stared at Char and I knew he wanted to rip into her. He wanted to because she used to be his girl and now she was mine. He wanted to because she didn't show him no respect, too. But mostly, he wanted to rip her because she was right. She used to work at one of those stores and she knew when the cash register would be the fullest, right after two in the morning. And, Jake knew, she was right about the timers on the safe.

“So what's one eighteen divided by three?” I asked.

Jake turned his gaze to me and snorted. “Fifty-nine bucks.”

I nodded, then stopped and did the math. “That's not right.”

“That's because we're not splitting it three ways. We're splitting it two ways.”

I thought for a frantic second that he and Char were back together and that they were going to whack me over my cut of this measly take. But when I looked at Char, she looked just as confused as I was and a little pissed.

“What are you talking about?”

“You and me did the job,” Jake said. “So we split it even between the two of us.”

Char jammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a stop right in the middle of the street. I looked frantically up and down the road. It was empty this time of night, but a cop car could come along any second. They wouldn't think anything of a car cruising along at two-fifteen in the morning, but one stopped in the middle of the roadway was another matter.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jake demanded.

Char shook her head at him. “You and Kenny did the job all by yourself? So who the fuck drove the car, huh? You got Tupac Shakur as a wheel man or something?”

“Shut up, you wanna-be-black white bitch,” Jake told her.

Char's face turned red with fury. “My great-grandmother was black, you racist son of a bitch! My family is descended from Harriet Tubman!”

“You got the tub part right,” Jake snapped. “Now get this car—”

Char clocked him with her hefty right hand. The shot was on the corner of his jaw, right on the knockout button. He flew back in the seat and didn't move.

We both stared at him and then at each other.

“Get his gun,” Char told me.

I clambered over the seat and took his automatic. When I returned to the front seat, Char turned back to the roadway and started driving again.

“What are we gonna do?” I asked her. “When he wakes up, he's going to be hella pissed.”

“Motherfucker called me fat,” she said, not hearing me. “Just ‘cause I'm a real woman and not one of those skinny anorexic bitches on TV.”

“Char—”

She turned to me. “You think I'm fat?”

I looked her in the face, but my eyes flicked down to her right hand where it rested on the steering wheel. “No, baby. You're full-bodied. You're beautiful.”

Her features softened and a smile rose on her cheeks. “You my baby,” she crooned at me.

“What're we gonna do?” I asked her again.

Her smile faded and her face took on a pinched look while she thought. “Where'd he get the guns?” she asked me.

I shrugged. “I dunno. He rented them from some Italian guy. Don or Dom or something.”

“Does he know you?”

“Jake?”

“No, this Italian guy. Does he know you?”

I shook my head. “Jake would never introduce me to him.”

“So if the guns don't get returned, he won't be able to look any further than Jake?”

“Not returned? Char, this guy's connected. I know that sounds strange for this town, but—”

“That's not strange at all,” she said. “Gangstas are everywhere.”

We drove in silence for a few moments. I wondered how we were going to calm Jake down when he woke up. “How hard did you hit him?” I asked her.

“Hard as I could.”

That was pretty hard, I figured. Jake was still slumped in the back seat, his face pressed against the door and his mouth hanging open.

“You better cover him, sugah,” she said. “If he wakes up before we get where we're going, you're gonna want to have gun on his ass.”

“Where are we going?”

She didn't answer. I waited a few more seconds to see if maybe she was just thinking about a good answer, but when none came, I raised my revolver over the top of the back seat and pointed it at his chest. Little white strands of fake Santa beard whipped in the wind that blew through my open window.

Char didn't speed, but she drove directly to her destination without any missed turns or detours. We hit some ice on the way up Cedar Street to the top of Five-Mile Hill, but she held the car steady. Once on top of the hill, she drove to Palmer Court . Seven houses lined the cul-de-sac in various stages of completion. The closest one had everything but a driveway and a shingled roof. The furthest one was nothing more than a skeletal frame sketched with lumber.

“Nobody lives up here,” I said and then I realized what she was planning.

Char parked next to one of the houses in the middle of the block and turned off the car. She looked over at me. “You gotta go inside, baby. Tell me if the basement floor is still dirt or if it's already concreted in. Okay?”

I stared at her.

“You understand?” she asked me.

I nodded. “But Char…”

“But what, baby?”

I motioned toward Jake with the pistol. “We can't kill him over a hundred and eighteen bucks.”

“You did a robbery over that much,” she said. “That'll get you a dime in Walla Walla .”

“But killing a guy…they hang you for that.”

“He's draggin' us down,” she insisted.

“So we'll go our own way.”

“And have him dropping our names every time he gets pinched?” She shook her head. “No thanks.”

“Char—”

But the look on her face was immovable. Besides, he'd called her fat and called into question her noble ancestry and those were two sins she would never forgive in a man.

I handed her the pistol and got out of the car. The air seemed cleaner up here in River City 's ritzy neighborhood, almost like the rich people were getting a better quality of Christmas right down to their weather. My nostrils stuck together with every breath as I hustled into the partially constructed house.

The first one had a concrete basement floor, but the second one was still dirt. At Char's direction, I flipped Jake over my shoulder and carried him into that basement like a soldier rescuing a fallen comrade. She followed with a flashlight. Once inside the house, she cast around for some tools to dig with and found a shovel next to the back door.

“You start,” she said, “and I'll finish.”

I dug.

Even though it was cold, I had a pretty good sweat going after only a few minutes. The ground was soft and I made good progress. Char kept moving the flashlight back and forth between me digging and Jake. He lay propped up against a framed staircase, his body slack.

With every shovel-full of dirt that I tossed, I imagined what it might be like for Jake to wake up to darkness, then light, then darkness and always the unmistakable sound of a shovel biting into the earth and scooping.

Once the hole was big enough, Char told me to toss Jake down into it. I paused again.

“Char,” I said. “You sure about this?”

“You scared, baby?”

I was and with her, I wasn't afraid to admit it. “This is way beyond a stick-up job.”

“What if one of those jobs went wrong?” she asked me. “You've got your piece on the guy and he makes a grab for it. What would you do?”

“Shoot him.”

“Same motherfuckin' thing here,” she said.

But it wasn't.

I thought about tackling her and getting the gun away until I could talk some sense into her. I thought about how Jake and I played cards and how he always shared his bottle.

“I dunno…”

“Look, baby,” Char said. “Let's just finish this shit, okay? We'll get rid of this motherfucker once and for all. Then we'll get back in the car, we'll go through the drive-through at Jack-in-the-Box and get some food. Then we can go home. You can put on that Santa hat that you hid under the front seat and I will rock your world.”

She reached out and stroked my crotch with the flashlight.

I felt some stirring in my groin at her words and her touch. One thing about Char was that she may have been a big girl, but she could definitely rock my world.

“C'mon, sugah,” she said, her voice breathy. “Be my little Santa baby.”

I gave in. “Okay.”

A strange smile came across her lips and she moved her flashlight onto Jake's body.

His open eyes stared up at both of us.

I started and Char yelped. The flashlight beam jumped in the air, then came back down onto Jake, who was already in motion. He slammed into me and we both fell backward into the small pit I'd dug. I landed hard on my back and the air in my lungs whooshed out. I struggled to breathe and the pungent smell of wet earth filled my nose.

Jake grunted and threw two short punches into the side of my head, but there wasn't enough room for him to pull his fist back far enough to put any power behind the blows. I drew my knees and elbows in, tucked my chin to my chest and tried to push him away.

He punched me again, a glancing blow that ricocheted off my forehead and into the dirt.

Light flooded the shallow grave.

There was a loud crack and a flash from a gun muzzle.

Another crack and another flash, then a third.

With each gunshot, I felt the concussion of the bullet as it blasted into Jake's back. He shuddered and moaned and went slack. The weight of his body collapsed on top of me. Warm wetness spilled onto my middle.

With an effort, I slipped out from underneath him and stood up. The burning odor of gunsmoke hung over us and when Char held the flashlight on me, tendrils of smoke slowly dissipated in the yellowing light.

“Jesus,” I rasped. “You shot him.”

“He was killing you,” Char said.

I coughed once, wetly.

“I was going to kill him anyway,” Char said. “So what's it matter?”

Another cough rose in my chest, this one a gurgling, rattling sound. Jake's blood was still spreading across my middle and dripping from my belt buckle onto his still body. Nausea washed over me.

“I don't feel so good,” I told Char.

“You're just scared,” Char said. “And hungry, too. Get out of there and we'll head home. We'll get some burgers and you can wear the Santa hat and—”

Dark walls rushed in from both sides of my vision and I fell to a knee. Nausea gave way to weakness. A dull throb started in my belly.

“Baby?”

There was a tickle of pain in my chest and my breath rattled. I spat onto the ground next to Jake's leg. In the wavering light from Char's flashlight, I saw that I'd spit blood.

“Fuck,” I gurgled.

My hands groped my chest and warm blood flowed over my fingers.

The dark walls narrowed further. I felt like I was drunk.

Then I fell face first into the ground and dirt went up my nose.

“No, no, no!” Char shrieked.

I tried to speak but couldn't. The rays of light from the flashlight took on an deeper yellow tint as the batteries waned. I lay still, warm wetness spreading beneath me and biting cold air above me. Then I was just too tired, so I closed my eyes.

For a while, I was able to listen to Char's sobbing. I thought that might be the last sound I heard. But then there was a shuffle of movement above me. I forced my eyes open. The dying beams of the flashlight jiggled, danced and finally steadied. I heard the stabbing sound of a metal spade driving into loose earth, followed by the thud of heavy dirt all around me. On top of me.

Char snuffled and sobbed while she worked. I thought of her beautiful lips and her meaty thighs and of the hundred and eighteen bucks in the car. I thought of the Santa hat under the seat.

Darkness closed in as dirt piled on top of me and blood pulsed out of me. Char's sobs grew fainter.

You start, she'd said, and I'll finish.

“Merry Christmas, baby,” I tried to say, but no sound came out.

And then I let go.

END