Christmas Bourbon

We were at the mall when everything started to unravel. Brooklyn, my little brother, wanted a Rock 'em Robot game. I told him to shut up or we wouldn't get anything.
"But it's Christmas," he whined. "And I want the robot game, ass face."
I slapped him and he pretended it hurt way more than it did. Just then ma came around the corner. She'd been in the bathroom.
"Oggy! What did I tell you about hitting?"
"I didn't touch him!"
Brooklyn ran to my mother and grabbed her.
"That's a lie! He was hitting me the whole time you were gone."
Ma looked at me.
"Just wait 'til we get home. You just wait. Your ass is gonna be red 'til the new year."
I'd heard that before. I mumbled something, just to keep my pride.
"What did you say? You little shit."
"I said 'Give it your best shot'"
I knew better than to provoke her, especially on Christmas Eve, especially when she was sober. It gave her an excuse to drink.
"Oh, I'm gonna enjoy giving you the belt."
Brooklyn peered out at me from the folds of her trenchcoat, his evil smirk a cruel punchline. Then he looked up at ma with his begging eyes.
"So can I get the Rock 'em Robot? Can I?"
Ma hesitated.
"Maybe Santa will bring it. If you're good."
Brooklyn smiled and flipped me the finger on the sly. I mouthed the words, "You're fahking dead." Then my mom said it was time to go home so we walked outside and found the old station wagon near a pile of plowed snow. It was windy and the sky was full of a fine powder. While my mom pushed Brooklyn into the station wagon I started to climb up the mound of snow.
"Get your ass in the car. You can play on your own time."
I kept going.
"Oggy, if you don't get in the car in five seconds you're in big trouble."
I was already in big trouble so I reached up for another handhold.
"Five..."
Some snow crumbled under my foot, filling my sneaker with chilly crystals. My fingers were getting raw.
"Four..."
"Oggy..." Brooklyn called out. "Oggy, come on!"
I turned around and pointed.
"You shut your mouth you rat."
"Three..."
It would take me more than two seconds to get back to the car now. My fate was already sealed.
"Two..."
I scrambled up the last few feet of snow and looked back over the parking lot of the Toys R Us. A Santa Claus was ringing a bell near the door with a pot full of change. The highway thrummed with holiday traffic. If I could reach the highway then I could hitchhike somewhere. It didn't matter where.
"One..."
On the other side of the snow mound was a drainage ditch where a broken toy helicopter lay on top of the snow. I was about to go down there and get it when I felt a cold hand on the back of my neck and sharp nails dig into my skin.
"When I tell you to do something then you do it."
Ma pushed me down the hill. I bruised my elbow on a buried shopping cart.
"Ha, ha! Oggy's in trouble!"
Brooklyn clapped his hands in the back seat. I was going to punch him in the face but ma got to me before I could. She grabbed my neck again.
"Your nails! Quit it!"
She dug them in deeper.
"What? You tell me what to do? I can't hear you, Oggy."
She dug those nails in deep. I fought back the urge to cry but the tears still started running down my cheek. The cold wind flooded through my open jacket.
"Not another word," she said as she pushed me into the car.
It took a while to warm up that old boat so we sat in silence until the idle evened out. The radio played The Carpenter's "White Christmas". I could feel the blood run down my neck and into my shirt.

Back home I didn't even wait for ma to tell me to go to my room. As soon as we got in the driveway I jumped out of the car and ran up to my room. I checked out the wounds on my neck. It looked like a vampire had bitten me. Pretty soon, Ma came up and opened the door.
"Thought I forgot about you?"
I looked up at her from an old Red Sox yearbook. She was holding a glass of bourbon. Here we go, I thought.
"Hey, Mr. smart mouth! I'm talking to you."
"What do you want? Why do you keep bothering me?"
"You and me are gonna have it out right now."
"What did I do?"
"Your smart mouth did all the damage."
I could hear the ice cubes bang against the glass as she took a sip.
"Whatever," I said as I read some more about how Red Sox pitcher Bob Stanley spent his off-season. He lived in Florida. That's where I'd go. Kurt was always asking me to go with him to Florida. Why not?
She grabbed me by my hair, just about tearing it from my skull. The pain was blinding. I tried to grab her hand but any move I made just hurt me worse. Then she dug her nails into my side, pinching my skin.
"Is that the best you can do?" I said.
She twisted me around and I stepped right on my Red Sox yearbook, tearing the pages in half. That made me angry enought to give her a good elbow in the stomach. She let go of my hair.
"I'm doing this because I love you," she said and suddenly had a belt in her hand.
She was like a magician sometimes with her weapons, producing them out of thin air. She swung the thick metal buckle in the air. Her aim was never very good, but when she'd been drinking it was even worse. Her first attack missed me so badly that it ended up spinning around and catching her in the leg.
"Look what you made me do!" she cried.
"I don't care! I hate you!"
She was smarter with her next try and I had to block the buckle with my hand. It didn't hurt as much as leave my fingers numb. I bolted for the door and heard the buckle slam against the wall.
"Son of a bitch!"
Brooklyn got in my way down the hall and I punched him in the side of the head. I was going to run outside but I saw my father coming up the walk with the kid he had in his first marriage. The girl's name was Meredith and she only spent about three days a year with my father. I had to think quick as I heard my mother coming down the hall. She had to slow down to check on Brooklyn. There was only one place I could go: the basement.

I ran into the basement and locked the door behind me. That was one good thing about the basement. There was no way they could get in. The bad thing was that it was only about thirty degrees down there.
My mother tried to get the door open with a butter knife. Then my father tried banging it down but gave up.
"Get your ass up here, Oggy!" I heard him yell.
Sure, fat chance I'd go up when he was at the peak of his fury. Instead I sat down under an old blanket my dog had used for a bed when he chewed up a pair of shoes or pissed on the carpet and was banished to the basement. The blanket still smelled like Mutt. I figured I'd let them cool down upstairs and then go up. It was better to have my father punish me then my mother. Any fool knew that. Then I saw something in the corner of the basement, something hidden under a plastic tarp. I shuffled over to it, still wearing the old blanket, and carefully pulled the tarp off. There were about half a dozen presents, each with a small name tag. I chuckled to myself. How ironic that this night would lead me here, locked in my own basement with the presents I was supposed to be getting the next morning.

I picked one up and looked at the tag. "Mom"
I shook it and it sounded like a liquid. I was about to put it back when I heard my mother say, "He's gonna get what's coming to him." It wasn't so much a decision to open the present, as an act of god. All of a sudden I was holding an unopened bottle of ten year old bourbon. Then I was opening it. Then I was taking a good tug at the bottle. Just like the buckle on my hand, the bourbon didn't sting my throat as much as make it numb. That was fine. Numb was what I wanted so I took another tug and wrapped that old blanket around my shoulders. I'd have Christmas right now.

The next box was for me. I didn't even want to know what was in it because I knew I'd never get to keep it. The next box was for Brooklyn. I tore the wrapping off it and found, of course, Rock 'em Robot. That little bastard was going to get the game after all...or was he?
I pulled out an old box full of paint cans and laid that Rock 'em Robot game on it. I took another tug off the bottle of bourbon and sat down.
Rock 'em robot looks like this:




it's meant to be played by two people, but I learned it's kind of fun just beating up on the other robot. Every time I made the other robot's head pop up I took another swig of bourbon. After a while I didn't stop punching that robot even after it's head popped up. I kept pressing those buttons and swigging off that bourbon. I don't know how long I'd been playing but at least half that bottle was gone. I stood up to get another present to open and fell flat on my ass. I couldn't even feel the cold anymore. Those two robots sitting there, I don't know, they looked so pointless. I reached down and grabbed the beaten robot with my hand. It hardly took any effort to break it off the board. Then I broke it into little pieces. Then I dropped the little pieces on the ground and stepped on them until they were ground into the damp cement.
"How do you like that? You got what was coming to you." I said.
I reached for the bottle again, almost as a reflex, but couldn't keep my balance. I must've fallen into the box of paints because that's where I was laying when my father woke me up.
His eyes went from my face to the leaking bottle of bourbon to the broken Rock 'em Robot toy. He didn't even have words for what he was feeling. My head felt as heavy as a bag of concrete. My throat was raw. My hair, where my mom had torn at it, was sore. If Mutt's blanket hadn't fallen over me I'd probably have caught pneumonia. Good old Mutt.
"You're fahked, Oggy," said my father. "You can just kiss your presents goodbye."
I guess I wanted to hurt him because I said, "Good. You never get me nothing I want anyway."
"You really make being a parent a tough job."
I looked him and said, "You've made it this far without being a parent...why start now?"

Brooklyn had crept quietly down the stairs behind my father. He was looking at me with an expression of awe and wonder, like a kid on Christmas morning. He smiled again because I'd be taking a lot of heat off him for the next few weeks. He smiled because he liked seeing me in trouble. Or maybe he had his own reasons for smiling. Then my father shifted his feet and a sound caught Brooklyn's attention. It was the sound of shoes grinding a Rock 'em Robot into the concrete. Even before he fully comprehended what the sound was, his smile was gone. Rather, his smile had transferred to my lips. Brooklyn saw and he opened his mouth to cry.
"Hey, Brooklyn," I said, "Merry Christmas."