A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE IN PIRTLEVILLE

“This is too good to be true!” George swiped his shirt cuff at the tears streaming down his cheeks as his friends and neighbors stuffed wads of cash into a red Christmas stocking. Arms swarmed and swirled around him, stretching over shoulders, reaching around people, all of them extensions of joyful faces shouting “Merry Christmas George!” and “You da’ Man”.

         “I can’t believe it. Shucks folks.” Holding his daughter FooFoo on his hip, George blubbered, “It’s…it’s a Christmas miracle! That’s what it is!”

         “Merry Chrishmas George,” his wife Ginger said and raised her gin and tonic. “A toashhh!”

         George kissed Ginger on the cheek and made a mental note to talk to her about her drinking. He smiled until the front door opened and an arctic blast of snow and howling wind swept into the room. Hiram Wert, the Nashville bank examiner, glowered at him, his expression as cold and bleak as the wind battering the little town of Pirtleville this Christmas Eve.

That afternoon, Wert had snarled “well, well, well” out loud when he discovered a $5,000 shortfall in the credit union’s annual audit. Wert stepped into the crowd which parted like he was Moses walking into the Red Sea.

“Look Mr. Wert! We raised the money!” George didn’t need to shout. Except for the clink of ice cubes melting in cocktail tumblers, the room was silent.

          “This may be how they do business out here in rural America…,” Wert said, taking in the room and its celebrants. “…but in the big city we have a name for it. Embezzlement.”

          “Gee…” is all that George could say because Wert was the kind of man who already knew what you were going to say and didn’t wait around to hear you say it.

          “Not everybody has a bunch of friends with cash to burn to help him out when he gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”

          “I…”

          “Stole! Is that the word you’re looking for?” Wert had the personality of a drill sergeant in Genghis Khan’s army. “Your friends’ generosity does not excuse the fact that a felony has been committed. So…” That word slid out of the side of Wert’s mouth like the snarl that begins a dog fight. “What is it bunny rabbit? Cocaine? Painted women? Did you get some farm girl in trouble?”

          The crowd fell back even more, but this time away from George.

          “Listen big shot.” Wert poked George in the chest with his finger. “This is an old story.”

         “I swear,” George said. “I…I didn’t take the money.”

“$5,000 just got up and walked away,” Wert said, sweeping his arm over the room as if his sarcasm required theatrical emphasis. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Uncle Billy lost our deposit…” George said. Uncle Billy was absentminded; everybody knew that. He’d always been that way. George only let the dithering old man work at the credit union because he was Ginger’s favorite uncle. Most of his responsibilities were running simple errands and taking out the trash.

         “Well, well, well, if that don’t beat all. Is there no limit to your degradation? Trying to blame it on your half-wit uncle?”

        Everyone thought “half-wit” was a rude thing to say although an accurate description of the bumbling old man.

George watched Uncle Billy down his fifth whiskey of the evening and briefly wondered if it was not some kind of elder abuse to allow someone that simple minded to drink alcohol. The man needed a caretaker.

“Ting-a-ling!”

        FooFoo snapped her head toward the bell on the Christmas tree.

“Everybody!” she yelled. “An angel has just…” She didn’t get to finish her sentence because everyone was watching Wert who had just pulled handcuffs out of his pocket and shook them loose with a snap of his wrist which accounted for the bell-like sound.

         “Here I am on Christmas Eve dealing with your shenanigans.” Wert snapped the handcuffs onto George’s wrists. “Just because I’m divorced and my children won’t talk to me do you think I don’t want to celebrate Christmas Eve? You don’t think I have any Christmas spirit?” In truth, Wert had a lot of Christmas spirits given to him by the financial institutions he had audited over the past two weeks and he planned on drinking them over the holiday in his efficiency apartment in a seedy part of Nashville.

         “I’m not going to prison for you Uncle Billy!” George shouted as they passed through the front door. Stumbling down the sidewalk, he screamed: “I’m innocent!”

“Save it for the judge miscreant,” Wert snarled.

       “I’ll get you Uncle Billy!” George yelled as Wert shoved him into the backseat of his car. “I’ll get even you old fool!”

      George closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the car seat. “It’s Christmas.” George was near tears now. “We got the money together; we made it good.”

      “You’re forgetting the crime bunny rabbit,” Wert said and started the engine.

“But Uncle Billy had the money!”

The car began creeping down Maple Street, sliding a little on the packed ice as they rounded the corner onto Elm.

“Listen bucko, no one with any common sense would entrust $5,000 to a half-wit.”

George saw the logic in this. Would you send a 5-year-old to play on a busy highway? This was going to happen sooner or later. How could he explain this to a jury?

“What can I do to fix this?’ he asked.

“Fix it? Are you trying to bribe me now? Think you can get your friends and floosies to come up with a little more graft. Is that it?”

“No, no. I didn’t mean that at all…I…”

“It’s obvious you used Uncle Billy to steal the money. You and your uncle were in this together, am I right?”

Wert hit an icy patch and wrestled the steering wheel into the slide righting the vehicle.

“No…no…Everybody saw me hand the envelope with the money in it to Uncle Billy to take to the bank.”

“Back at that again?” Wert said. “I understand the bank is owned by your lifetime arch enemy. So…you bank with him? Again, that doesn’t make common sense.”

George had never thought about that.

“I’ll make a deal with you. If you’ll testify against your partner for his part, we’ll let you plead to a lesser charge and maybe we can go light on you it being Christmas and all.”

George said nothing.

“I’m thinking you spend the next two Christmases in the big house, meet some new friends, and we let Uncle Billy do the hard time,” Wert said. “He’s an old man, and he won’t miss a bunch of Christmases.”

 Uncle Billy would easily testify against him, George thought. That simpleton will tell them whatever they want to hear. I’ve got to protect myself. And he did get us into this mess.

“Okay,” George said. “I’ll tell you all about…Uncle Billy.”

“That’s the ticket…Save yourself…You’ve got a family to think of.” Wert looked at George over the seat and did not see the patch of packed snow and ice on the sloping roadway leading to the bridge into the town center.

“JEEPERS?” Wert screamed as the car slid out from under them and over the curb. They spun two times, glanced off of a Maple tree and crushed a display of elves gathered around a manger scene, gaining in acceleration toward the river as he pumped and jammed the useless brakes. George saw a plastic baby Jesus riding on the car’s hood, looking at him through the front windshield just before the car leapt off the embankment and into the river.

The river swallowed the car with a loud swoosh, and water began spurting in streams into the compartment from around the windows and through the vents. There was no light except the moonlight which reached down into the dark water. They were floating down into the deep, and George heard the “glug, glug, glug” of enormous bubbles of air like giant jellyfish rising up from the car and bobbing their way to the surface where they gurgled and belched. This is how he realized that he was upside down in the floor of the back seat. George groped for the front seat and thought he saw Wert unconscious and crumpled in the front corner of the compartment which was already a third of the way filled. “Wert! Wert!” he shouted but got no answer.

The water stung and burned him, especially his gloveless hands. Remembering Wert’s key chain, George clawed at the dashboard and eventually found the keys which were under water now. His fingers frozen stiff and numb, George raised his hands above the waterline which was at his neck now and began to poke the handcuff key at what he thought was the lock’s keyhole.

He got one of the handcuffs off a wrist but dropped the key before he could unlock the other. The water was entering too fast for him to search for them.

George did find Wert’s briefcase with its incriminating findings and drug it behind him as he squirmed out of a back passenger window. He rose up through the liquid ice and burst through the surface, gasping and vomiting water. He beat the water with his arms trying to stay afloat. His coat and clothes, soaked and freezing into ice, threatened to drag him under. George grabbed the floating baby Jesus and used it for a life buoy.

Bert the cop found George wrapped in blankets in the kitchen of a nearby house with a mug of hot coffee clasped in both hands. He was sitting on the briefcase concealed beneath the blanket.

“Terrible business. Terrible,” Bert said. “And on Christmas Eve too.”

“Yes,” George said, “and Wert had just admitted that he misunderstood…the situation and was bringing me back home.”

Back at George’s house, their guests were comforting Ginger. Some of them were drunk. When he opened the front door, he saw Ginger dancing in the arms of their milkman, Waldo, to the holiday classic “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”. Her head was on his shoulder.

“George!” she shouted and rushed to him. “You’re back!” George smelled the alcohol on her breath and noted that she did not have a coat on or appear to be prepared in any way to follow him downtown. Ginger hiccupped, “Have a drink!”

George told the gathering about his ordeal and explained that Wert had finally understood the way things were and was apologizing for trying to arrest him when the car slid and crashed into the river which claimed Wert but rejected George.

“Miracles do happen on Christmas! An angel…” FooFoo shouted and looked to the tree again, but no angels were being made apparently because the bell was silent. She’d mistaken the sound of the single handcuff dangling from George’s wrist for a bell.

No Divine angels anyway, George thought of Wert. No angels where he’s going.

“Merry, Merry Christmas George!” His friends cheered and began slapping him on the back again.

“We shull ne”ve forget how you was…were restored to us (hiccup) on Chrishmas Ev’,” Ginger said. “Ever’ Chrishmas we wull have something eshtra special to celerbate and remumber.”

“Yes…” George said, but without his customary enthusiasm. “Absolutely…can’t wait.”