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A Shermer Christmas Carol
Chapter Seventeen
By Chris Fulmer
"Here you guys are, Cincinnati," Mack the trucker said, pointing out the
window of his truck at a large sign over the interstate announcing their location,
"where do you want me to drop you off?"
The Greyhound bus terminal on River Street about, oh, I guess it's about two
exits from here," Del said, surveying the interstate ahead of them.
"That's fine with me," Mack said, shifting the truck's gears. "And listen,
if you're ever in a fix in this part of the country again, just give me a call at Danson
Trucking."
"We'll keep that mind," Neal said with a smile.
"Hey, I can see The Great American Ball Park from here!" Clark said, looking
out the window. As he shifted around in his seat to better look at it, his hand
absentmindedly hit one of the buttons along the side of the seat. Instantly, the entire cab
began tilting ominously forward.
"Holy God, don't tell me you touched the magic button!" Mack cried out in fear.
"What's the magic button?" Del asked.
"It does that!" Mack pointed out the windshield. The only thing visible was
the road itself now.
"How the hell are we supposed to drive this thing like this!?" Neal shouted.
He had visions of a bad wreck dancing in his head.
Before anyone could answer him, the truck slammed into the car in front of it. "Hey, watch what you're doing, you damn drunk!" yelled the car's driver.
"Pull over!" Neal was screaming at the top of his lungs He grabbed hold of
the truck's horn and began blowing it repeatedly.
"Don't worry, Mack, I think if we stay in this lane, we'll be fine!" Del
said, trying as hard as he could to remain calm.
"Maybe if we..." Clark started to say, but he was cut off as the lane they
were in came to an abrupt end, and the next thing the men knew, the truck hit an
embankment and proceeded to fall down it, flipping over about seventeen times on the way,
before landing right-side-up in a parking lot.
For a few minutes they all just sat there looking stunned. Del was the first
to recover. He leaned over Clark and stared out the window. "Hey, wouldn't you
know it, we're here!" he exclaimed. "Well, it's a good thing we were all wearing our
seatbelts back there, otherwise we might have been killed. Come on, we might be late if
we don't move quickly."
He took hold of his trunk and squirmed his way out onto the pavement. Mack
didn't respond to this. Instead, he reached blindly into his shirt pocket and
pulled out a bottle of pills. He dumped several into his hand and swallowed them. "Pass
me some of those, will you Mack?" Neal said blankly, extending his hand. Mack obligingly
shook some into his palm.
"Well, you heard Del, Neal, let's get going!" Clark said, sliding out the
door to the street. Neal snapped back to the world and slipped out of the tilted cab to
the parking lot. "Listen Mack, I'm terribly sorry about this, my, uh, associate there is the
most accident-prone man on earth. He does this all the time," he explained to the
trucker.
Mack merely nodded, then slid over, closed the door and, waving blankly
goodbye and with an expression of shock still welded to his face, backed out of the
parking lot with the cab of his truck still tilted. Neal waited until the truck was out of sight,
then stormed over to where Clark was standing and grabbed him roughly by the collar.
"What the hell was that all about?" he snapped.
"Oh for God's sake, Neal, do you honestly think I did that on purpose!?"
Clark pleaded to him.
"It doesn't matter if you did it on purpose or not!" Neal shouted. "You've
been with us for just an hour and already you've almost killed us! I can't wait
to...!"
"Neal, Neal, please!" Del pulled his friend's hands off Clark's shirt.
"Del, you saw what he did!" Neal protested. "He...!"
"Why don't we just go in and get the tickets?" Del said quickly, gesturing
toward the bus terminal.
"All right, but," Neal turned back to Clark, "when we're in there, just wait
by the door, and please, for the love of God, don't touch ANYTHING!"
"All right, all right all ready!" Clark snapped back at him. "You don't have
to get so punchy!"
"You know, Neal, he does have a point there," Del told his friend as they
entered the station and headed for the ticket window.
"Del, he causes disaster every time he goes on vacation!" Neal argued. "Believe me, I know firsthand."
"Now how would you..." Del started, but then realized something. "...oh
yeah, Susan and Ellen are like best friends or something."
"Yes," Neal said, "and the Griswold family vacations--or the travesties that
pass for vacations, may I say--get talked about a lot when she calls. You've only
been here a year, so you haven't heard about them too much. But they're the definition of
the word disaster. Remember a couple of years back when Stonehenge got totaled and the
Statue of Liberty's arm was broken? That was all Clark's doing."
"It was?" Del frowned. "That's interesting. All this time I thought it was
the wind that did that."
Neal gave the salesman a strange look. "Among the other highlights of his
vacations," he continued, "are the killing of his aunt's dog, the breaking of
Hoover Dam, the wrecking of a truckster he bought for a trip to California, a stint in San
Quentin when he nearly crashed a plane heading for Atlanta instead of Chicago as he
planned..."
"He nearly crashed a plane?" Del asked.
"Yeah, he was on his way back from Walleyworld in California, and he booked a
plane for Atlanta instead of Chicago, and when they announced it on the PA
system he stormed the cockpit and demanded they turn around. He spent three weeks in
jail before they let him out."
"Good thing I'm not unlucky enough to do that," Del commented.
"Whatever," Neal said. He leaned in closer. "But the worst was about four
years ago when he decided to have a 'fun, old-fashioned family Christmas,'" he
continued. "I was a direct victim of that one."
"What happened?" Del asked.
"Well, all Christmas Eve night, I'm trying to have a nice quiet Christmas
with my family, and there's loud noises coming form his place up the street all
night," Neal explained. "I was going to call the cops on him, but someone else thankfully
did the favor for me. But just when I thought it was over, there's this massive explosion
from the sewers, and the next thing I know, the Santa and reindeer from in front of his
house come crashing through my window and set the curtains on fire. It took me two whole
minutes to put them out, and cost me nine hundred dollars in repairs to the window. I
wanted to sue him, but Susan talked me out of it." He sighed. "And to think that
Sparky was once class valedictorian!"
"Wait a minute. He was valedictorian!??" Del exclaimed. Although he had a
higher opinion of Clark than Neal did, he'd never really considered Clark the
smartest of men.
"Yes, actually, at one point in fact he and I were 1-2 in the class," Neal
told him. "We were once practically inseparable. But that was before..." his voice
trailed off.
"Before what?"
"The Accident."
"What accident?"
"We'd gone on an economics field trip to the Chicago Stock Exchange," Neal
explained, "and we were walking down Wacker Drive on our way to lunch, and as
we were passing this construction site, the wind blew Sparky's hat off. He ran
over to get it, and at that moment the crane overhead broke and this thousand pound steel beam
came crashing down on his head."
"Ouch!" Del grimaced, "that had to hurt!"
Neal nodded. "He recovered a couple of weeks later," he continued, "but his
intellectual skills and logic capacity weren't the same. I found that out the
hard way in chemistry class when he added the wrong ingredients together in this mixture
and blew up half the science wing, not to mention bleaching my hair permanently white in
the process!"
"Even so, Neal, I think you're being to hard on him," Del countered. "Maybe
you should give him more of a chance on the rest of the trip."
"I'll keep that in mind," Neal said, not very convincingly.
They'd reached the ticket window. "Good afternoon, Gerald," Del called to
the man behind the counter. This man brightened when he saw Del. "Well, well,
Del Griffith, long time no see!" he exclaimed, shaking the salesman's hand. "How've you
been?"
"Well, I'm still a million bucks shy of being a millionaire," Del chuckled. "Gerald, I'd like you to meet a very close friend, this is Neal Page from Chicago;
Neal, meet Gerald Schranz."
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Neal said, shaking Schranz's hand.
"Likewise," Schranz told him. "How can I help you guys?"
"Gerald, I'd like three tickets on your next bus to Chicago," Del told him.
"Three tickets?"
"Yeah, we've got another guy with us, he's over by the door..."
"Neal? Neal Page?" asked the woman standing next to the marketer in line
suddenly. She was of medium build with dark red hair.
"Yes," Neal frowned. "How'd you...?"
"How could I ever forget, those summers on Juniper Street, with you peering
in the window every other day watching me undress," the woman said.
Neal's face lit up with recognition. "Nancy Vickerella!" he exclaimed,
slapping his forehead in surprise. "I don't believe it! I'm running into everybody
today!"
"You know her, Neal?" Del asked him.
"Of course I do, this is Nancy Vickerella from my street when I was a kid,"
Neal explained to him. "Nancy, I'd like you to meet my good friend Del Griffith."
"Nice to meet you," Del said, shaking her hand. "I always enjoy meeting one
of Neal's old friends."
"Well actually, Neal and I weren't really friends exactly," Nancy admitted.
"He was deeply in love with me at one point."
"Whoa ho! Neal Page you fox!" Del gave Neal a giddy look.
"This, this was before I met Susan," Neal said quickly. "She's been the love
of my life since, and she knows about Nancy before I met her, you, you get the
drift."
"Okay, right," Del turned back to Nancy. "So, what brings you here to Cincinnati?"
"Actually, Mr. Griffith, I'm going to Green Bay for the holidays," Nancy told
him.
"Family?"
"No, I've just bought a low-rent building there. It's a lot less than what
I've been used to lately," she told him with a sigh. "You see, I've just divorced my
second husband, and..."
"What happened to you and Jack?" Neal cut in.
"Jack?" Del asked him.
"Jack Walsh, you know, on the other side of the tracks..."
"Oh yeah, 68 Harrison Avenue," Del realized. "I sold him some rings for his
curtains about four months ago; I remember he didn't have enough money, so I
let him have it on credit until he paid me back..."
"Get ready for a long wait, Mr. Griffith," Nancy cut him off, "because Jack's
too lazy to ever come into enough into enough money to pay for, what is it that
you sell?"
"Shower curtain rings."
"Shower curtains rings. The man is..."
"You were saying about your..." Neal started to say, but Schranz cut him off.
"Here's your tickets, gentlemen," the ticket agent announced out loud, handing
Del three tickets. "The bus leaves at twelve-thirty from out front."
"Wait a minute, I've got an idea," Del said to Nancy. "If you're not going
anywhere in particular, how'd you like to come with us?"
"Now why would I want to do that?" Nancy asked, confused.
"Well, it's Christmas, and nobody should be alone for the holidays, and
besides, you'd get to see the old neighborhood again," Del explained.
"I don't think..."
"Oh come on, it's Christmas."
Nancy thought this over for a minute, then nodded slowly and said, "All
right, I guess you do have a small point there."
"Make that another ticket, Gerald," Del said to Schranz.
"Now, uh, just so you know, Clark's with us," Neal told Nancy. "It wasn't my
idea at all, he just sort of popped up with us, and I can't really get rid of
him, so just grin and bear him."
"Is he still the same Clark he was when I was last in Chicago?" Nancy asked,
suspiciously.
"Damn it!" came a loud shout from across the terminal. Clark was hopping
around by the front door, a plant pot stuck on his foot. Neal put a hand over his
face. "Yes, I'm afraid he is," he muttered.
"This flight is three minutes late," Kate said sternly to the lady at the
gate.
"Madam, please, the airline system is not perfect," the attendant protested.
"If it's more than three more minutes behind schedule, I'm filing a formal
protest against the airline!" Kate shouted. Security agents nearby were eyeing her
closely.
"Wait a minute, I think I see it coming in now," Brooke said, looking out the
window. Sure enough, the flight, a sleek Delta, was taxiing toward the gate.
"Wonderful, great," Kate relaxed up. The way things had been going over the
last forty hours, she had been worried that things would go even farther wrong with
this vacation. "Okay everyone, get your stuff ready," she told everyone as the
door to the ramp was opened up.
"Promise this will be the last detour?" Buzz quipped as he gave the attendant
his boarding pass.
"Yes, Buzz this will be it," Kate told her oldest child with forced optimism.
"It better be," Buzz muttered under his breath.
"What was that!?" Kate demanded.
"Nothing," Buzz gave her a big false smile.
"Once we get Kevin back and get home to Chicago, Mom, I think we'd better
give Buzz a grounding," Megan whispered to her mother as they boarded the plane.
"The way he's been behaving lately, I wouldn't rule it out," Kate whispered
back. Although she loved Buzz, she had been upset by the way he'd treated his
youngest brother lately.
"I hope this is the last of our problems," she confided in Aunt Leslie as
they took their seats in first class.
"Trust me Kate, it can't possibly get any more worse than it's been," Aunt
Leslie told her. "I think the worst is behind us.
"We're going to have to operate on a fixed schedule though," Uncle Frank
said, examining the travel itinerary he'd drawn up before the vacation had begun.
"Frank, we're not going to Los Angeles," Kate told him, "we're going back to
Chicago."
"What!??" Uncle Frank shouted. "But we put all this money aside...!"
"Frank, I'm not going to take anymore chances. We're going to spend the rest
of the holidays at home," Kate said firmly. Uncle Frank looked miffed. Then he
blurted out, "Fine then, we'll just go on to L.A. without you! We don't need...!"
"Uh, Frank, I think we'll just stay at Kate's for the rest of the holidays,"
Aunt Leslie admitted to him. Frank stared at his wife in shock. "You're actually
siding with her!? After everything that's happened!?" he gasped.
"I'm sorry, Frank, but she's got a point."
"Ladies and gentlemen, in order for the captain to push back from the gate,
we need your seats and tray tables to be in their upright and locked positions,"
announced the stewardess over the intercom.
"Ah, here we go," Kate said, reclining back in her seat. "Now
everything's going to be fine. No more problems from here on."
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome about Delta flight 117, non-stop to Canton in
the People's Republic of China."
Kate's expression abruptly went south. "Did-Did-Did she just say China!?"
she said weakly.
"Kate, please don't get mad!" Aunt Leslie pleaded.
"That's right, nothing to worry about," Kate said, her look not changing.
"I'm calm, I'm perfectly calm..."
The plane taxied out toward the runway and accelerated toward the end.
"...nothing to get upset about, no reason to get angry..."
They lifted off and soared into the afternoon sky. Within minutes they were
at thirty thousand feet.
"I am perfectly calm..."
"Ladies and gentlemen, the captain his turned off the seatbelt sign. You are
now free to move about the cabin."
"NO I AM NOT!!!" Kate jumped up and stormed toward the cockpit. She shoved
open the curtain dividing it from he cabin. The pilots looked back at her.
"May I help you?" the co-pilot asked.
The words boiled up from Kate's throat like a geyser erupting: "TURN THE
PLANE AROUND!!!!!!!!"
"Is it just me, or are we slowing down?" Kayla asked.
Kevin was jerked out of a semi-slumber. "I don't think it's just you," he
said, "we're definitely stopping." He frowned. I don't think we're in St. Louis
just yet!"
"Nope," Skylar said, checking a watch, "it's definitely not St. Louis!"
"Well then why are we stopping?" Danny posed.
"I don't know but..." Kevin was cut off by the sound of someone fiddling with
the lock on the car. "Hide!" he whispered frantically. They all dove behind
several crates as the door was thrust open. "How long do you think this is going to take,
Nick?" a railroad worker could be heard saying.
"Only about fifteen minutes, the engineer said," his companion told him.
"Right now, let's just get some of this milk out into the lockers so it doesn't
spoil."
The two men began unloading several of the crates. They were rather close to
where the children were hiding. Thinking quickly, Kevin picked up a stray
bottle lying on the floor nearby and tossed it up against the refrigerator against the far
wall, where it shattered. This got the railroaders' attention.
"How the hell'd that happen?" one of them asked.
"I don't know," the other said walking over to the shattered bottle. "I
thought all these were locked down!" As they examined the bottle, Kevin waved for the
others to follow him. They slid to the ground before the men saw them.
"Wow, for a rich kid, you sure know how to get out of jams easily!" Kayla
exclaimed as they made their way toward the station.
"Well, I've had a lot of experience with this type of situation," Kevin told
her. "And I'm not rich, I'm just upper middle class."
"So what are we going to do now?" Danny asked him.
"Eat," Kevin said. It had been almost seventeen hours since he'd had any
food, and he had a feeling his companions had gone even longer between meals. "Like
those guys said, we have about fifteen minutes, so we'll get a quick bite to eat,
then hop back on board."
"What if they don't have a restaurant?" Skylar asked, sounding a little
sarcastic.
"No, they do, I can see it in the window," Danny said, looking into the station.
"Good," Kevin smiled. "Now like I said, I've only got fifteen dollars, so
we've got to make the most for the money. What are you guys hungry for?"
"Anything that's filling," Kayla said. The other boys nodded.
"Okay, let's go order then," Kevin led the into the restaurant. It was
crowded for the midday hour, and as a result it took quite a while for them to actually
reach the front of the line, making Kevin a little nervous that they'd miss the train. The
counter was a bit above the children's reach, but they still were able to see the woman in
charge at the counter. "Hi," Kevin said to her.
"May I help you?" the woman asked, a bit surprised to be faced with four
young children without an adult visible nearby.
"We'd like to order, uh..." Kevin scanned the list of food on the back wall,
"four cheeseburgers."
"Are you here all by yourself?" the woman asked them, clearly suspicious.
"Madam, we're only ten years old," Kevin told her. "We can barely even reach
over this counter. Do you honestly think we'd be in here alone? I don't
think so."
"Then why are you ordering on your own?" she asked him.
"Our parents are in the bathroom right now," Kevin explained, putting to use
the first reasonable excuse that came to his mind, "and they told us to go get
what we want, and then sit down at our table and wait for them. It's only a two minute wait
at most. And trust me, we've all had some experience getting food on our own before."
The woman still didn't look like she totally believed this story, but shook
her head and said, "All right, will there be any drinks with that?"
"Um, how much does your water cost?" Kevin asked.
"It's free," the woman told him.
"Then I guess we'll take four of those as well."
"Very well," the woman rang up the total on her register. "It comes to nine
dollars and forty-two cents."
"Here's ten," Kevin said, handing her a $10 bill."
"Sixty-eight cents is your change," the woman poured the coins into his hand.
"Enjoy your meal."
"Oh we will," Kevin gave her a wink. "Oh and by the way, what city is this?
I kind of fell asleep on the train."
"Kansas City, Missouri," the woman told him.
"Kansas City, all right, thank you," as Kevin turned away with the meals, he
noticed something amiss. "Hey, where'd Skylar go?"
"Beats me," Danny frowned. "He was here just a minute ago."
"Maybe he went back on the train," Kayla suggested.
"When I'm about to buy him what's probably his first decent meal in a long
time?" Kevin paused. "My guess is that he had to use the restroom or something,
so..."
"Let's keep walking, the lady at the counter's looking at us weird," Danny
whispered.
"Sounds fair," Kevin started toward the door. He checked his watch. "I
guess we can give him about three more minutes, or otherwise we'll have to..."
Just then Skylar came running into view. He was clutching something in his
hand.
"So where've you been?" Kevin asked him.
"Running an errand," Skylar said, out of breath. "Listen, I was able to get
enough money for us to get dessert, too."
He opened his palm, revealing close to sixty dollars. Kevin frowned; this
was too much money to have been gotten cleanly.
"Where did you get this?" he asked.
"I snatched some rich guy's wallet over by the ticket booth there," Skylar
pointed across the station. "Let's order quickly and..."
"Oh no, no, no, no, no, no!" Kevin waved his arms in the air, "I'm not going
to be a party to theft!" He extended his hand. "Give me the money."
"What! You're not going to...after all I..."
"NOW!"
Skylar sighed but gave Kevin the money. "Thank you," Kevin said firmly.
"Now who exactly did you take this off?"
"There's the little brat, officer!" came a loud shout from across the
station. A well-dressed man was pointing a police officer toward the children's
direction. "All right, hold it right there, you!" the cop shouted at them.
Him!" Skylar pointed at the man. "Let's get out of here while we still can!"
He took off running. Kevin slapped his face. "Here we go again!" he
muttered to himself. He'd hoped to avoid run-ins with the law after having been chased by
the cops the last two years after he'd been the victim of misunderstandings, but
apparently his luck wasn't going to last on this matter either. "Here's the money back!" he
shouted at the cop, flinging the cash at him. The cop kept coming without noticing the
greenbacks. "I think we'd better put the pedal to the metal and get back aboard the train!"
he shouted to Danny and Kayla, waving them out the door after Skylar.
"I think we might me able to lose him in the yard!" Danny yelled, motioning
toward a large group of parked trains over to the left.
"Works for me!" Kevin said, hoping this tactic wouldn't put them in the path
of a moving train.
"Hey wait up!" Kayla was starting to lag behind a bit. The cop was gaining
fast. Kevin jogged back, took her arm, and starting running as fast as he could.
"Thanks!" she told him, "I've never really had the chance to do much exercise!"
"Any time," he told her.
They weaved their way through various parked trains. The cop managed to keep
a strong pace, through. Finally, after about two minutes of chasing, the
children simply dove underneath one of the trains and waited until the cop ran by.
"That was close!" Skylar exclaimed as they crawled back out.
"Yes," Kevin said, feeling very enraged at him, "and we wouldn't have been in
this mess in the first place if SOMEBODY hadn't decided to be a petty thief!"
"Oh that's a nice thing to say, especially coming from someone who ran off a
thousand dollars on his father's credit card at the Plaza Hotel!" Skylar shot
back.
"But I didn't STEAL it!" Kevin yelled, "It ended up in my bag by accident!
I'd never...!"
"Hey, there goes our train!" Kayla shouted, pointing down the track. Sure
enough, the train to St. Louis was now steaming away.
"Oh please, not now!" Kevin thought to himself. He took off running after
the train. "Wait for us! Come back!" he yelled after it. It was no use; the
train kept going, and before long he was out of breath.
"Now what do we do?" Danny groaned once he and the others had caught up with
Kevin, "I've never been in Kansas City before."
"Neither have I," Kevin sighed. This was definitely not how he'd hoped the
trip back to Chicago would go. "This is bad. Very, very bad."
On to Chapter 18
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