A Game of Gin Rummy

written for the "Holiday Disasters" contest. True story.

It’s Christmas Eve and there is a roaring fire in the grate, and I am sitting down at the table with my fiancee, Dwayne, and his sister Nicole. We are wrapping last-minute Christmas gifts. It has been a very lean year, and I am winding paper towels around a hand-painted glass ball ornament and shoving it into a tissue box. I will wrap it in tin foil and cover it with paper snowflakes cut from copy paper. We are laughing and generally having a great time.

 

Dwayne’s best friend Rob comes over, and Dwayne’s mother steps out into the small kitchen to welcome him. I hide the ornament- I painted it for her, after all! This is a bittersweet Christmas for Rob, as his father passed away quite suddenly and unexpectedly the previous Thanksgiving. This will be his first attempt to celebrate a holiday of any kind since then. It is a peaceful scene, more or less. Exactly what you’d expect of Christmas at your boyfriend’s family- the scrutiny, the offhand comments, the nervous posings. There is a pie in the oven, and we are settling in for a quiet night of caroling, church, and gifts.

 

Enter Dwayne’s stepfather, Dale. Dale staggers through the door and announces he just backed the tractor into the hay barn wall. Dwayne’s mother, Barbara, looks at him sharply, and asks, "Are you drunk?"

　

"Mind you own damn business!" Dale shouts and stomps off to his room. Rob looks at Dwayne, and without being asked, they bundle up to go look at the barn. Again.

 

I remain sitting at the table with Nicole, not knowing what else to do. If the cows needed to be fed I’d be out there, but there’s not much I can add to two men staring at a wall and assessing whether the inevitable hole needs to be repaired now or spring.

 

There is an unmistakable sound from the living room of a bolt being clicked in a gun of some sort. Dale comes out, wearing his pajamas, brandishing an open bottle of whiskey in one hand and a loaded shotgun in the other.

 

"Give me three good reasons why I shouldn’t blow my head off right now and be done with it!" he shouts.

 

Barbara is acting like this is nothing unusual. "Dale put the gun down and go lay down. You don’t have to go to church tonight."

 

Dale sits down at the table, and takes giant swig from the bottle. "Don’t you tell me what to do woman!"

 

She sighs, and gets out a deck of cards. "Wanna play gin, girls?" Nicole and I nod, and we start playing cards. Dale eventually pitches forward face first into the table and promptly falls asleep. When she is done dealing her second hand, Barbara picks up the bottle where it fell on the floor and cleans up the spilled whiskey with a paper towel.

 

She checks her watch. "Will be time to go to pap-pap’s soon", she says to us. "Hope them boys come back in not too long"

 

We play another round. Rob and Dwayne come home. As soon as they come through the door, Dale awakens, and points the muzzle of the shotgun squarely at Dwayne’s chest. "Boy, you always hated me" he says, "and I’m gonna shoot you like a dog!"

 

Rob grabs hold of the gun and says something to the effect of "Have you lost your f*****g mind?" Nicole calmly deals another hand.

 

Dale grips Rob by the collar and says, "Nobody understands me. Nobody respects me. I lost my best friend last year and nobody cares!"

 

Rob punches Dale in the face, and he falls over backwards. "How dare you pity yourself, Dale!" he screams, "Of course I care you f*****g idiot- YOUR BEST FRIEND WAS MY FATHER!" There is a brief ensuing tussle over the gun, and Dale starts yelling that he is going to shoot everyone, one at a time, and then finish with himself.

 

Barbara says to me, "it’s your turn to deal"

 

Nicole gets up, and opens the back door. She shoves her father outside, and closes the glass panels, locking them. Rob locks the front door. Dale stomps around on the porch, breaking bottles. There are a succession of rapid shotgun blasts into the air. Barbara calls her father, and says, "Go on ahead to church without us, we’re going to be a little late"

 

Dale leans against the door, sobbing. Barbara lets him back in, takes the shotgun, and hands it to Rob, "Put this where he cannot find it" Rob disappears.

 

Ten minutes later, we bundle into the van, and head to church. Dale sleeps through the candlelight service and "Silent Night" We return home, finish wrapping gifts, and complete our game. It is decided we will open presents in the morning. Not a word is said to the grandparents.

　

　

Author's Note

Harford County Maryland. Need I say more?

Reviews

[Through the Gateway]

They don't make Hallmark cards for this kind of Christmas.

Well...maybe one from my home state:

"Merry Christmas from the city of Llano. Water pappa's whiskey and hide the ammo."

Sounds like you're due for a good Holiday, or at least one without ordinance.

[Wicahpi]

WOW! I didn't expect this kind of story.

[Jess]

LOL< now this is one I haven't heard before! Nice to know all of the people surrounding Dwayne were as messed up as he is!

[Mark]

Sends a cold shiver of remembrance right through me, when I recollect how blase we had become, mt brother and I, once we were teenagers, to the erratic behaviour of our fighter pilot father: home too little when we were kids, home entirely too much by the time we were teens!

[cest la vie]

And I thought my exploding turkey juice was something.
Hilarious, and it could actually be the scene from a movie.
With Billy Bob Thornton playing Dale..
Love this!!