Texanation

For those who missed it, this is a little bit of drivel I wrote for a contest.  To my dismay, it won.

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“You stupid red-neck sonofagun! What have you done?”

The fat goober in the fur-trimmed, red velvet track suit screamed right up in Jimmie Don’s grill, like he was about to pop a blood vessel. His face matched his suit for color.

“Wacthew think I done?” Jimmie Don yelled back. “I shot me a deer. Nice one, too, prolly go ‘bout eighteen point.”

“You inbred moron, do you not know who I am?”

“Well, you look like a fa- -“

“I’m Santa Claus, you nimrod!” The fat man stood up on his toes and got right in Jimmie Don’s face, stabbing him with a sausage finger. “St. Nick! Father Christmas! The Jolly Old Elf!”

“Santie Claus, huh? Well, you don’t act like no Santie Claus I ever seen. Where’s the Ho-Ho-Ho and shit?”

“The hoe? I’ll tell you where the hoe is,” Santa said, blowing hard in the cold, still air of the Missouri forest. “Your momma is the hoe and she’s turning tricks for my elves.”

“Hey, now.” Jimmie Don chambered a round into his Remington. “You may be Santie Claus, but you about to be a dead fat man in a red suit, you don’t watch yourself.”

“Well shit, boy. What’d you expect? You shot Blitzen!” He pointed at the team of reindeer, seven still hitched and standing in the hock-deep snow. The lead one on the left in a crumpled heap, fast becoming deer popsicle.

“That were nothin’ but an instink,” Jimmie Don said, then cocked his head and glared at Santa with one beady eye. “Watchew doin’ out here, anywho? Shouldn’t y’all be a-goin’ down a chimbly or sumpin’?”

For the first time, St. Nick started to look uncomfortable. “Well, I…uh, I was…”

The reindeer shuffled around, nervous at the smell of blood, bells jingling on their traces. A small face popped up from the back of the sleigh, sleepy-eyed and yawning. A boy, about nine or ten, with blond hair and rosy cheeks.

“Hey, Santa, are we there yet?” the boy asked. “Remember you promised to teach me how to drive a stick shift.”

“What the heck?” Jimmie Don eased the barrel of his rifle until it indented the fat man’s belly. “So that’s how this is?”

“No, no, wait!” The jolly old elf backpedaled, black boots scuffing at the snow. “It’s not what you think. Timmy there, he’s a…he’s a present! For this guy in Pennsylvania. Sandusky’s his name.”

“Yeah, right!”

XXX

Christmas morning, Timmy woke up to the smell of venison cooking. His new friend Jimmie Don stood in the kitchen, wearing his overalls and nothing else.

“Where’s Santa?” Timmy rubbed his eyes and looked around the tiny, backwoods cabin.

“Santie? Well, Santie is right there.” Pointed.

Timmy saw a row of reindeer heads mounted on the wall. In the middle, the chubby round face of St. Nicholas himself, florid and bloated, stared with sightless eyes from the wall.

“Now,” Jimmie Don said, shucking out of his overalls, “let me teach you how we’uns take a bath out here.”