You better not cry, you better not shoot...

Every year Jackie’s Cold Day Inn has a special night a week before Christmas. Jackie called it “Good Lord, I can’t wait for Christmas to be here and gone.” She welcomes the townspeople to her bar to take a break from “getting ready for Christmas.” There aren't any big stores in Panhandle so they have to shop in Amarillo or Lubbock, the big malls, wall to wall people, nasty as hell, full parking lots, high prices, and non-stop Christmas carols as soon as you hit the city limits.

Too many people, not enough space

For the people of Panhandle shopping in the big stores is especially stressful. They're used to browsing slowly through Les’s General Store, Milo’s Hobbies & Crafts, or Laurie’s Gift Shop, taking their time to choose the perfect gifts. Getting pushed and shoved in overcrowded aisles at J.C. Penney and Sears in Amarillo so you didn’t have time to do anything except read the damn price tags made for high stress; and please stop with Frosty and Rudolph, for god’s sake. Everybody KNOWS Santa Claus is coming to town. Enough, already.

So on “Good Lord, I can’t wait” night the regulars and other townsfolk go to Jackie’s to unwind. Christmas songs are banned. If you say Merry Christmas you have to put a dollar in bowl on the bar, the collection going to the old folks home.

No one remembers exactly how “Good Lord, I can’t wait,” went from a night of complaining about Christmas to a night of old stories retold, new ones put up for examination and improvement for next year. The changeover was gradual. There were some who kinda liked to bitch about the holiday season out of habit. Old Pastor Michaels, a few drinks in, would bemoan about how Christmas had become a commercial event rather than a commemoration of the birth of his Savior. One year he even held rallies in front of some stores who mixed manger scenes with modern characters like Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus. It was a sacrilege, he said, and called down the wrath of God on the shopkeepers. Eventually he conceded that the War on Christmas wasn’t a real thing so he gave up the histrionics, settling instead for sacramental Irish coffee at Jackie’s.

I’d been to four or five “Good Lord, I can’t wait” gatherings in the past. I always tried to arrange my sales route so that I could be in Panhandle that night. This time my boss believed me when, pinching my thumb and index fingers together, told him that I was this close to selling Jess Elliot on a new tractor. The truth was that in all the years I’d been visiting Elliot I’d never sold him anything at all. He kept a tight fist around his money and used his tools until there was absolutely no utility left in them. His ranch hands used to joke that the tires on his pickup were so thin you could see the air inside. I’d pitch Elliot again if he showed up at the bar.

True to his promise, Sheriff Tom saved me a chair at his corner table near the front door. Les, Doc Harris, and Doris, Doc’s receptionist, were already there. Mike and Gary from the Conoco station were at the next table laughing it up with their girlfriends, Debbie and Tanya, paralegals at the courthouse who preferred honest, straight talking guys to the lizard lawyers they fought off every day. A story went around for a while that one day when Debbie, all primped up in a sharp business suit, and Mike in his greasy coveralls were talking on the courthouse steps when an out of town lawyer came up, puffed up his chest and said, “Miss, is this man bothering you?” And Debbie says, “Not yet, but I’m hoping.” Then, just for grins, Mike put his finger on one nostril, turned his head sideways and blew out the other nostril.

I spotted Jim & Angel at the far end of the bar with two older women. It was unusual for them to be at Jackies. It wasn't their kind of place, not rowdy enough, no jukebox, no live band to get their blood up. Tom explained that Jim & Angel had taken their moms shopping in Lubbock for the day and brought them here for hot cocoa and cookies. I noticed Jim & Angel were drinking out of mugs, too. “You better take a picture. You won’t see that again,” said Doc Harris. “Those two might make it past middle age but I’m not making book on it.”

Tom said, “Oh, they ain’t so bad. They skate awful close to the line but they been that way since they were kids. Angel was 12 or 13 first time I pulled her in.”

Doc Harris stirred his drink with his finger. “I remember that. Not sure what lesson she learned but it wasn’t the one Tom intended.”

Tom continued, “Milo, Les, and Laurie at the gift shop told me they’d been hit by a shoplifter. Curious thing was the only thing stolen was angels, any kind, figurines, pictures, stuffed toys, and such. Then when that was picked clean, other animals started disappearing including flying pigs, cows, anything with wings. Shoplifting’s no surprise to any retailer, expects to lose some, cost uh doing business. But this was peculiar. Wasn’t any break in the case until I went to see my granddaughter at the school’s Christmas Pageant.”

Gesturing with his arm, looking over the crowd in the bar, he said, “A town this small, anything involving our kids is a big deal, sports, band, school plays, and decorating for Christmas. Well, we always have a Christmas program at school. It’s the same show every year. Sometimes the costumes are better, sometimes worse, but the story stays the same like it is in the Bible. So there I was sitting in the gym admiring the future of this city, listening to the chorus singing the same songs we all grew up with. The curtains pull back and there’s the kids in costume, Mary, Joseph, Jessie’s donkey, Tim’s calf, Baby Jesus doll in the crib, and one angel hovering over the scene, hanging off a rope, showing the shepherds and the Three Wise Men where the manger was. Everybody drew a breath at that angel. Seemed to me and probly everybody else right then and there that all angels were redheads in flowing white robes, light as air… and silver wings.

She looks like an angel

“Next morning I call Angel’s mom. I say take a peek in Angel’s bedroom and tell me what you see. She says, ‘K’ wait aminit.’ Comes back on the phone, she says, ‘Sheriff you better come on down here. I’ll make sure she doesn’t leave.’

“I don’t have to tell you what I found but I will anyway. Every surface in her room covered with angels and anything with wings – all the ones she stole, price tags still on. She had a little Christmas tree on her nightstand, angels hanging off every branch. Les and the others said just bring the stuff back and apologize and that was that, she’s just a kid.”

Doc Harris rubbed his eyes and said, “She and her sister, Gina, were always on the wild side. Never did anything really bad, like they just didn’t wanna be like everybody else. Go their own way in their own time. Later on, Angel met Jim, they been Jim & Angel, going their own way ever since.”

The bar was pretty full by nine o’clock. Ever so often there were loud cheers and choruses of “Put in a dollar, put in a dollar, dollar, dollar” whenever somebody violated the no “Merry Christmas” rule. The tip bowl was almost full. It took me a minute to understand that the goal was to fill it up and do some good for the old folks’ home.

Every time you say Merry Christmas an angel coughs up blood

The Sheriff motioned Jackie for another round of drinks and said he remembered a Christmas prank from years ago. “Never solved it. I had my suspicions but I couldn’t prove it. The DA called it pretty thin circumstantial evidence. Not enough.

“We were getting calls that somebody was shooting paint balls at the Christmas displays in folks’ front yards. At first it was random shots at houses then it got particular. Santa’s reindeer became targets. The first to get it was Rudolph. Clean kills, shot through the heart. Nothing got damaged, the paint balls were water color but attacking the Rudolph just weren’t right, making the little ones cry and all. I concluded that the shooter had to be a pretty good with firearms to make shots that accurate which meant that 95% of the men and women in the county  were suspects.

Just point and shoot

“The people of Panhandle take Christmas decorations seriously, a lotta peer pressure to fix your place up better n’ anybody else on the block. Competition gets silly sometimes but what the hell. I didn’t pay much mind to the paintball shootings. Holiday pranks are usually harmless.

“But this one got worse. The next attacks took out all the reindeer. Sometimes people stayed up all night hoping to catch the shooters. Nobody ever saw ‘em. All they knew was next morning on somebody’s lawn, Rudolph and his buddies were down, each one shot through the heart.”

Les rested his forearms on the table, leaned in a little, nodded towards the next table and said in a low voice, “Anybody meets Mike over there sees his coveralls, dirty fingernails and underestimates him right off. Even back in high school his teachers looked him over and steered him to the manual trades, sent him on to learn auto mechanics. Now, he’s a damn good mechanic. There’s not many engine problems he can’t fix but he’s a lot more than a motorhead.”

“Les is right,” the Sheriff added. “Understand that when the paint ball killings were going on I was busy with the white boys raising hell at Billy’s Last Stand and the Mexicans doing the same at Chato’s. Me and my deputy were busy every night. So one morning I bring my cruiser to Mike. I tell him change the oil, top off the other stuff. He sees the red paint on my shoes and says he’s been thinking about the paint ballers. I say, yeah, not paying much attention.

“He says, ‘Sheriff, I been thinking about those guys. They have a pattern and know what it is. I’m pretty sure I know where they’re gonna hit next.’

“So, maybe a little snarky, I tell ‘im, ‘Sure, Mike, gimme the time and place when you’re sure.’

“Two nights later I’m on patrol out by the train station, the dispatcher tells me there’s a problem at the Moore place, paint ballers but this time there’s gunfire. I turn on my siren, tell the dispatcher get my deputy, tell him meet me at Moore’s house ASAP.

“Dave’s Santa display is lifesize. Santa’s sleigh and reindeer go all the way across the front yard. From a distance they look like the real thing. Easy target I’m thinking. But gunfire? I’m hoping nobody’s injured or killed.

"The deputy and me get to Moore’s at the same time, sirens going, lights flashing. There’s people peeking out their windows, too scared to come out. I see the reindeer still standing, no paint splatters, look over on the porch and there’s Mr. Moore giving Santa a beer, laughing. Mrs. Moore laughing too, doubled over, holding her sides.

“Me and the deputy run up and say what’s going on. It’s Mike in a Santa suit.

“He says, ‘I told you, Sheriff. I figured out the pattern. Mr. Moore believed me and we set it up so I would sit in the sleigh and wait for the paint ballers, surprise ‘em when they showed up. I musta sat two hours in the sleigh, so still my legs were cramping. Plus I had to pee real bad. Anyways, I held on and they come creeping up in my line of sight. There’s two shooters, one bigger than the other. And I wait till they get close. They take aim at Rudolph but I pull up my shotgun, yell ‘ho, ho, ho, suckers’ and shoot over their heads.

“’Tell you what, my triple-aught 12 gauge makes some powerful noise when you shoot both barrels at once, specially here in the city. Those two kids, yeah, they were kids I could tell, probly and boy and a girl, couldn’t bail fast enough, they stumbled, tumbled, and really took off when I racked my shotgun and shot two more blanks at ‘em.’”

Guess who's on the naughty list

“Well, after that, the paint ball shootings stopped but I never found out who the shooters were.”

I saw Jim & Angel empty their mugs, get up and walk arm in arm towards the door, their moms in the lead. As they passed by our table Les called out, “Jim, calling it a night already?”

Jim stopped, tipped his hat, “Nah, we’re taking our moms on a tour of the Christmas displays. They’re bigger ‘n ever this year. I heard Dave Moore’s got new reindeer. Gonna have a look.”