Deft scoop, smooth swivel, and Brent was sprinting back toward us, deified infant likeness tucked under his arm like a misshapen football. Yet even as he approached, porch lights ignited behind him, and the front door of the house swung inward, vague male form emerging, waving its arms and shouting something incoherent.
“Woooooooh!” Brent hollered, redoubling his pace, stoked by this new element of peril.
I cheered him on, identical yawp answering his, half my torso protruding from the Blazer’s rear passenger window, before shifting my attention to the house.
“Merry Christmas!” I bellowed at the newly dispossessed homeowner.
“God dammit!” screamed the man-form shrilly, voice suddenly coherent on account of its having ascended an outraged octave, “I’ll shoot every last one a y’all sons a bitches!”
Turning, he scurried back through the door in a crouched loping manner reminiscent of a hunchback or some half-crippled simian beast, blubbering, apparently incoherent with rage, probably in search of his shotgun.
But already we all were beginning to laugh, for Brent, though winded by the cold air and his drunkenness, had reached the Blazer, Guy flooring the accelerator before the passenger door was even shut, jerking us into the next curve, forcing me to bang my head on the window as I withdrew it back inside. Yet I barely even felt the blow on account of all the liquor and laughter. And indeed the whole Blazer seemed full of it at that moment—alcohol and chortling, that is—in addition to its small new divine occupant.
“Haha,” gasped Brent when he could breathe again and give voice to his mirth once more, hefting the faux infant one-handed like some newly won athletic trophy. “What do those fuckers have to celebrate now?”
Then, cradling the baby Jesus in the crook of his arm, he leaned forward and punched it hard in the face twice, grunting as he did so, before tossing the doll over his shoulder into the backseat.
It landed face-up in my lap, sullenly peering up at me with its paint-chipped black eyes: weather-faded, misshapen likeness of some disillusioned deified offspring—swaddling gold towel bleached by the elements to a urine-colored yellow, head dented slightly from Brent’s formidable punches. I lifted it before me, grinning into its face.
“Mm, mm, mm,” I chided Brent. “Beatin on little Baby Jesus.”
“Shit, Clabough,” he sneered, head half-turning back toward me, profile a silhouette against the green glow of the dash lights. “You got no room to talk. I heard one of the old ladies in my church call you a demon a couple Sundays back. You believe that? A demon from hell. Said she’d never let her granddaughter go out with a hellion like you.”
“Yeah?” I said, mildly interested on account of the fact I could sense Brent wasn’t lying. “What’s the girl’s name?”
“Missy Robinson. That sophomore with the nice rack.”
Then me, smiling, trying not to crack up. “Too late.”
And then we were all laughing again as the Blazer sped and wove onward through the night, bearing us toward a place which required none of us to utter its name—where we wouldn’t need the services of the Chevy and might restock our stores; reload, as it were—while mingling with friends and strangers alike. A place to serve as harbor and haven for our wasted crew of teen land pirates—that had done so more than once before. That understood destination where all the county’s young revelers, partygoers, no-good-doers, and ne’er-do-wells eventually assembled on a Friday night. A place known to them—to us all—as Willy Mann’s Uncle’s House.
***