boogieshoes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
boogieshoes) wrote2010-05-17 07:59 pm
boogieshoes) wrote2010-05-17 07:59 pm
Entry tags:
OBSong Fic: A Twice-Told Tale
Title: Obligatory Song Fic: Twice-Told Tale
Fandom: Mag7
Universe: Mercy-verse
Pairing: No Pairing
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it ain't mine. I'm just having fun here, and mean no disrespect to various sandbox owners.
Summary: Some traditions are better in the re-telling.
*************************************
My Warnings Policy Post is here.
Warnings:
Kinks:
Rating: G
Archive Information: Feel free to archive, just drop me a note if you do so.
Additional Links: Universe Notes - Universe Set-up. Universe Notes - Character Sheet. Additional Story Notes.
****************************************************
Christmas Eve, 1950s
It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house… JD sighed contentedly. The apple-wood fire flickered gently in the fireplace, banked to last the night. Obie lay against him, snoring the cutest little-boy snores he had ever heard. In the master bedroom, JD could hear his wife Shawn turning over in her sleep, heartbeat slow and steady. Outside it had begun to snow again, the night winter-silent, the flakes big and fluffy.
It was a full moon night, though the moon had been hidden by the gathering clouds, and so JD had changed into wolf-form early in the day; it was simply easier, less painful, to make the Change by choice, rather than let the moon pull it from him. Little Obie loved his playmate ‘Papa-wolf’, and they had spent the day in the foot and a half of snow that had been dumped on Denver in the preceding weeks, building snow-forts, chasing each other, wrestling. Obie had been so worn out he had nearly fallen asleep in his plate at supper. Now, the little red-head lay against JD in his wolf-form, head pillowed on JD’s flank, in a parlor lit only by the fire and the multi-colored lights on the Christmas tree.
It was the night before Christmas, the line from the poem ran through JD’s mind again. And all through the house, not a creature was stir –
THUNK!
JD’s ear twitched. Not a creature was stirring, he thought dryly, except for that damned squirrel. He’d known when they’d cut down the tree at Chris’s ranch that there had been a squirrel nest in it some time in the recent past. It wasn’t until they’d fully decorated it, with lights and ornaments and gilt silver star on the top, that he’d realized it was still home to one of the little critters.
THUNK! THUNK-THUNK!
He’d tried a couple of times to lure the squirrel out so he could set it loose outside, but he hadn’t tried very hard, and he hadn’t had much luck. He figured he could put up with the rodent for a little while, and it just seemed cruel to dump the little thing out in the cold at Christmas time. Time enough to get him out of the house when they took the tree down.
THUNK! THUNK!
Although he may have to do something about the squirrel sooner rather than later – the thing had been defending its territory for the past few days, raiding its own nut stash for ammunition. JD hadn’t worried before now, since nothing had been anywhere near hitting Shawn or Obie, but that last missile had come perilously close to – ow!
He jerked his head up in surprise at the stinging swat near the base of his tail, growling at the tree, eyes narrowed, determined to – THUNK! Ow! Dammit! That one had gotten his neck!
He could see the little bastard now, chittering at him angrily, and he growled his most menacing growl. He was a predator, dammit, and that cheeky little thing didn’t know what he was – OW! JD sneezed in astonishment. This last insult had pelted him right between the eyes, and that was the last straw.
He lunged right at the tree, barking and growling, focused entirely on the furry little menace. The squirrel zipped up to the top, standing on the star, continuing its harangue. So mad was he, JD didn’t even think as he rushed up the tree right after it.
Now a squirrel, of course, is a light thing, and can be supported by the thinnest of wires. Full-grown male werewolves, however, are heavily built, much heavier than normal wolves.
The tree up-ended with a resounding crash, the beautiful silver star tree-topper sailing merrily through the air to land somewhere on the other side of the couch. JD had picked up that star, somewhat literally, for a song during the years of the Great Dust Bowl. That flash of memory was JD’s last coherent thought as the enraged wolf part of himself took over, chasing the squirrel around the room, destroying ornaments nearly as old as himself, smashing furniture, tearing up the wood flooring all in an effort to get one sneaky little rat-bastard ball of fluff squirrel.
He didn’t hear his son cry out for his mother. He didn’t hear his wife rush into the room. He didn’t hear either of them as they pled for him to stop destroying the decorations they’d put so much time in. He did hear it when his wife finally lost his temper.
“JONATHEN DANIEL DUNNE!”
He froze, immediately going into a cringe. He knew that tone of voice, and it boded him no good at all. He glanced at Shawn sideways, and lowered himself further – that expression wasn’t going to do him any good either.
“JD, look at yourself! Look what ye’ done!” She shouted at him in a heavy Irish accent.
For the first time, JD took stock of his surroundings – they were a disaster. The floor was torn up, great gouges from his claws marring the wood. The couch was a total loss, the back broken, the stuffing coming out of the cushions. Fragile ornaments were smashed to smithereens. Presents wrapped and set out just a few hours ago were completely destroyed. He wasn’t even sure where the stockings that had been hung on the mantle had ended up, but streaks of chocolate smeared the hearth and he thought he saw some of the tinfoil-covered candies melting in the fire. It certainly smelled like it. Wallpaper once hung with loving perfection now dangled in jagged, shredded strips. As he watched, one of those strips just sort of collapsed, pulling the rest of itself off the wall in a tired slump.
Worst of all, his son was crying like he’d never be happy again.
JD tentatively made a soothing sound, a sort of a groan-y hiss, but Obie cried even harder. “I hate you! You ruined Christmas!”
Shawn caught him up, hugging him to her. “Hush now, laddie, it’ll be ok.”
“No it won’t,” Obie wailed, “it’ll never be ok again!” At that, JD tucked his tail between his legs, head down, back hunched, completely ashamed. All he’d wanted to do was get that stupid squirrel.
Shawn glared at him over their son’s shoulder. “You,” she freed a hand to point at him, “stay right there.” She turned around and stalked down the hallway to the bedrooms. JD whimpered – this was very, very bad.
When Shawn came back, she opened the door to the backyard. “Out.”
JD whined pathetically.
“Och, don’t even think about it, you. Get out!”
JD left, slinking and whimpering on his way out the door, thinking that the snow looked very cold indeed.
****************************************************************
Chris glanced at Buck over Ruth’s head as he pulled the black Dodge pickup into JD’s driveway. The kid’s house was unnervingly silent for a Christmas morning, although they could hear someone in moving around in the right front – the kitchen area.
“Papa?” Ruth said, squirming, “I really need to go the bathroom.”
Buck grinned. “Little too much cider, darlin’?”
“Never!” Ruth grinned back. “But it has been a long drive.”
It had been – JD lived in Denver proper these days, and it was a good hour and forty-five minutes’ drive on a clear summer day. The snow, while admittedly beautiful, had made travel on the back roads near the ranch treacherous to drive at speed, and travel time to the little craftsman bungalow had more than doubled. It was still much faster than going by horse – much warmer, too – but sometimes Chris still yearned for days gone by, with horses and buggies, when a few miles out of town was the middle of nowhere, and when there just wasn’t so much stuff involved in living.
He slanted a glance at his partner as the three of them scrambled out of the cab – Buck loved this new world, and loved the indoor plumbing that came with it. Ezra liking the new American wealth and culture was to be expected, the man would have his comforts, after all. But Buck had taken to some of the new-fangled technology like a duck to water. Some things, Chris supposed he could like – the better housing, with heated air for the winter, the electric lamps so he could read late into the night by good light, this very truck which had helped him pull some of those blasted tree stumps out of Josiah’s garden plot. Some of the stumps and trees they cleared every so often were far too heavy even for draft horses, although he still kept a pair at the ranch to work in the steeper, rockier terrain the trucks couldn’t go.
Other things, he thought he could well do without – telephones, for one, connecting your private abode with the networks of the world, making it so people could call you any time they liked. The new sewage systems, though he well appreciated the increase in the general population’s health they brought, smelled horrible, the concentration of wastes of all kinds and the rotting vegetation that lived off it making him wrinkle his nose every time he came into the city. And the airplanes! Man wasn’t meant to fly, and he sure as hell wasn’t meant to fly so high, so fast, so far in such flimsy structures. Fifty years after Kitty Hawk, and Chris still shuddered every time an airplane soared over-head. He’d seen balloons in the War – his War, the Civil War – but he’d never thought it would come to those metal birds overhead. His dislike of them was not just because he was afraid of them coming down on his head – an unrealistic fear, according to JD, who understood the physics that were as far over his head as the planes themselves – but also because he didn’t like the idea of people able to spy on him from such heights as he couldn’t get to. It was getting hard enough to get and stay lost for a few days of privacy, he didn’t need random people peeking in on his doings, too.
On the other hand, those same airplanes had brought his niece home from the fields of France after Buck and JD had taken a tour together in ’42. He wouldn’t have let them go at all, but he’d never been one who’d kept his men from doing what they felt they needed to do, and JD, still very much a Sheriff protecting his town, had bluntly told Chris that he knew evil when he saw it, and wasn’t going to sit on his ass and wait for someone else to take of it. Buck had gone along to keep JD out of trouble, as Chris had known he would, and Chris was grateful beyond words to the big man’s loyalty. JD was as safe as any man in a war could be, with Buck.
Still, he’d worried endlessly while they were away, and was ridiculously relieved and happy when they returned. So much so, that he hadn’t even growled much at Buck for effectively kidnapping a foreign child and bringing her to a country where she didn’t even speak the language. Ruth was a war orphan, and Jewish, and neither Buck nor any of his men would have left the child in the shattered French hamlet where they’d found her, all alone and desperately trying to survive. Buck had put a stop to the more outrageous schemes to get Ruth back to the States, but had determined to bring Ruth back and adopt her himself, and Chris had cause again to be grateful to the man, because spoiling Ruth rotten was some of the most fun he’d had in ages.
Having Ruth around certainly made it easier to adjust to settled pack life, as opposed to the group of nomadic mountain men they’d been as late as the ‘20s. They’d roamed so constantly for so long that Chris and Vin had both had a rough time with the thought of staying in one spot for more than a season, at most. Come to that, Vin still took his tepee out sometimes to camp the whole summer on the stream bank in the upper pasture. But Ruth needed stability, needed to know that ‘home’ wasn’t going to be the constantly changing and scary environment it was back in France, and her need had settled Chris down enormously, and through him, Ezra and JD became less edgy as well. JD was apparently inspired to start a family of his own, met and married Shawn O’Donal in ’48, and gave him a nephew, Obediah Kevin Dunne, a few years later.
Like most little boys, Obie was a rambunctious little ankle-biter, and Chris knew he and JD should surely be raucously shouting and laughing and playing with Obie’s Christmas presents by – he glanced at his new wristwatch – 11 in the morning. So it was with some trepidation that Chris raised his hand to knock on the door.
Shawn answered the door, dressed in the luxurious lace-and-silk dressing gown Ezra had bought her 3 Christmases ago, and greeted them tiredly. “Hi Chris, Buck,” she essayed a smile at her youngest visitor, “Ruth. You might as well come in.”
“Thank y-“ He didn’t even manage to complete the sentence before he halted abruptly, silenced by the sight of the parlor.
“Mon Dieu!” he heard Ruth exclaim as the young woman came in behind him. “What happened, Aunt Shawn?”
Suddenly, Buck started laughing. “I told him! I told him that squirrel smell was too strong – the thing finally pissed him off didn’t it?”
“Hmph!” Shawn sniffed disgustedly. “Like you’re any better, ye’ Lúdramán!”
Chris couldn’t help it, he started to grin. “You don’t really have a leg to stand on, Buck. I remember a certain someone who somehow manages to lose an epic battle with those light strands every year.” He winked at Ruth, and she giggled.
“Buck and I will clean it up, Shawn,” Chris reassured her. “Ruth, why don’t you help your aunt get brunch started?”
“By the way, where is he?” Buck asked, grabbing a dustpan and broom.
Shawn glanced over at the door to the backyard, where JD, still in wolf-form, watched them hopefully through the glass.
“In the doghouse, eh, JD?” Buck grinned at JD, knowing the kid could hear him just fine through the glass. JD flattened his ears and lowered his head before whining piteously at Chris.
“Oh, no,” Chris said, grinning, “Don’t look at me - I know better than to get between a man and his – OW!”
Chris spun toward the mantle and glared, rubbing the back of his head. A small squirrel chittered angrily at him, already gathering up another nut to throw in his direction. “Watch it, buster. JD ain’t the only wolf in this house!”
He could have sworn that damned squirrel just laughed at him – Buck certainly did.
The – OW! – End
*****************************************
Random Universe Note: Chis's truck in this story is a 1953 Dodge 1 ton pickup, and is the same truck Buck drives in the ATF era in this universe. Buck couldn’t bear to see it leave the ‘family’, so he bought it from Chris when Chris decided he needed a new truck, and then painted it red. Other than that, it’s been kept in mint condition.
Dedication: This story is lovingly dedicated to my grandpa, M.O. “Buck” Beeman.
Additional Story Notes: This little ficlet was written for the 2009 Christmas challenge on the Dunne’s Darlings list, which asked for a drabble about holiday traditions, but I’ve never been able to be quite so succinct. The tradition in question – that is, completely destroying the Christmas tree – is one I’m sure happens to every family on occasion. In my family, it usually happens in a rather spectacular, and spectacularly funny, manner. In fact, my grandfather, M.O. “Buck” Beeman, wrote the lyrics below about one of the Beeman family Christmas tree failures. “A Twice-Told Tale” is based on Grandpa’s song, and is how I see it happening to JD’s family in the 1950s, with a young Obie, still awed at the magic of Christmas.
Song Title: The Night the Christmas Tree Fell Down!
Music and Lyrics: Buck Beeman, 1972
Lyrics:
(chorus):
Oh, the silver star went sailing out the door,
And the popcorn balls went rolling on the floor!
The nut bowl on the shelf fell down all by itself!
The giant candy cane crash'd through the window pane!
All the ornaments were smash'd to smithereens,
And everything was going 'round and 'round!
I laughed until it hurts, disaster at it's worst -
The night the Chistmas tree fell down!
(Repeat the chorus and continue to bridge):
We had finish'd putting up the decorations -
Ev'ything was beautiful beyond compare!
Mommy tried to plug the lites into the socket,
and she touch'd wire that happened to be bare!
(Repeat chorus)
-bs
Fandom: Mag7
Universe: Mercy-verse
Pairing: No Pairing
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it ain't mine. I'm just having fun here, and mean no disrespect to various sandbox owners.
Summary: Some traditions are better in the re-telling.
*************************************
My Warnings Policy Post is here.
Warnings:
Kinks:
Rating: G
Archive Information: Feel free to archive, just drop me a note if you do so.
Additional Links: Universe Notes - Universe Set-up. Universe Notes - Character Sheet. Additional Story Notes.
****************************************************
Christmas Eve, 1950s
It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house… JD sighed contentedly. The apple-wood fire flickered gently in the fireplace, banked to last the night. Obie lay against him, snoring the cutest little-boy snores he had ever heard. In the master bedroom, JD could hear his wife Shawn turning over in her sleep, heartbeat slow and steady. Outside it had begun to snow again, the night winter-silent, the flakes big and fluffy.
It was a full moon night, though the moon had been hidden by the gathering clouds, and so JD had changed into wolf-form early in the day; it was simply easier, less painful, to make the Change by choice, rather than let the moon pull it from him. Little Obie loved his playmate ‘Papa-wolf’, and they had spent the day in the foot and a half of snow that had been dumped on Denver in the preceding weeks, building snow-forts, chasing each other, wrestling. Obie had been so worn out he had nearly fallen asleep in his plate at supper. Now, the little red-head lay against JD in his wolf-form, head pillowed on JD’s flank, in a parlor lit only by the fire and the multi-colored lights on the Christmas tree.
It was the night before Christmas, the line from the poem ran through JD’s mind again. And all through the house, not a creature was stir –
THUNK!
JD’s ear twitched. Not a creature was stirring, he thought dryly, except for that damned squirrel. He’d known when they’d cut down the tree at Chris’s ranch that there had been a squirrel nest in it some time in the recent past. It wasn’t until they’d fully decorated it, with lights and ornaments and gilt silver star on the top, that he’d realized it was still home to one of the little critters.
THUNK! THUNK-THUNK!
He’d tried a couple of times to lure the squirrel out so he could set it loose outside, but he hadn’t tried very hard, and he hadn’t had much luck. He figured he could put up with the rodent for a little while, and it just seemed cruel to dump the little thing out in the cold at Christmas time. Time enough to get him out of the house when they took the tree down.
THUNK! THUNK!
Although he may have to do something about the squirrel sooner rather than later – the thing had been defending its territory for the past few days, raiding its own nut stash for ammunition. JD hadn’t worried before now, since nothing had been anywhere near hitting Shawn or Obie, but that last missile had come perilously close to – ow!
He jerked his head up in surprise at the stinging swat near the base of his tail, growling at the tree, eyes narrowed, determined to – THUNK! Ow! Dammit! That one had gotten his neck!
He could see the little bastard now, chittering at him angrily, and he growled his most menacing growl. He was a predator, dammit, and that cheeky little thing didn’t know what he was – OW! JD sneezed in astonishment. This last insult had pelted him right between the eyes, and that was the last straw.
He lunged right at the tree, barking and growling, focused entirely on the furry little menace. The squirrel zipped up to the top, standing on the star, continuing its harangue. So mad was he, JD didn’t even think as he rushed up the tree right after it.
Now a squirrel, of course, is a light thing, and can be supported by the thinnest of wires. Full-grown male werewolves, however, are heavily built, much heavier than normal wolves.
The tree up-ended with a resounding crash, the beautiful silver star tree-topper sailing merrily through the air to land somewhere on the other side of the couch. JD had picked up that star, somewhat literally, for a song during the years of the Great Dust Bowl. That flash of memory was JD’s last coherent thought as the enraged wolf part of himself took over, chasing the squirrel around the room, destroying ornaments nearly as old as himself, smashing furniture, tearing up the wood flooring all in an effort to get one sneaky little rat-bastard ball of fluff squirrel.
He didn’t hear his son cry out for his mother. He didn’t hear his wife rush into the room. He didn’t hear either of them as they pled for him to stop destroying the decorations they’d put so much time in. He did hear it when his wife finally lost his temper.
“JONATHEN DANIEL DUNNE!”
He froze, immediately going into a cringe. He knew that tone of voice, and it boded him no good at all. He glanced at Shawn sideways, and lowered himself further – that expression wasn’t going to do him any good either.
“JD, look at yourself! Look what ye’ done!” She shouted at him in a heavy Irish accent.
For the first time, JD took stock of his surroundings – they were a disaster. The floor was torn up, great gouges from his claws marring the wood. The couch was a total loss, the back broken, the stuffing coming out of the cushions. Fragile ornaments were smashed to smithereens. Presents wrapped and set out just a few hours ago were completely destroyed. He wasn’t even sure where the stockings that had been hung on the mantle had ended up, but streaks of chocolate smeared the hearth and he thought he saw some of the tinfoil-covered candies melting in the fire. It certainly smelled like it. Wallpaper once hung with loving perfection now dangled in jagged, shredded strips. As he watched, one of those strips just sort of collapsed, pulling the rest of itself off the wall in a tired slump.
Worst of all, his son was crying like he’d never be happy again.
JD tentatively made a soothing sound, a sort of a groan-y hiss, but Obie cried even harder. “I hate you! You ruined Christmas!”
Shawn caught him up, hugging him to her. “Hush now, laddie, it’ll be ok.”
“No it won’t,” Obie wailed, “it’ll never be ok again!” At that, JD tucked his tail between his legs, head down, back hunched, completely ashamed. All he’d wanted to do was get that stupid squirrel.
Shawn glared at him over their son’s shoulder. “You,” she freed a hand to point at him, “stay right there.” She turned around and stalked down the hallway to the bedrooms. JD whimpered – this was very, very bad.
When Shawn came back, she opened the door to the backyard. “Out.”
JD whined pathetically.
“Och, don’t even think about it, you. Get out!”
JD left, slinking and whimpering on his way out the door, thinking that the snow looked very cold indeed.
****************************************************************
Chris glanced at Buck over Ruth’s head as he pulled the black Dodge pickup into JD’s driveway. The kid’s house was unnervingly silent for a Christmas morning, although they could hear someone in moving around in the right front – the kitchen area.
“Papa?” Ruth said, squirming, “I really need to go the bathroom.”
Buck grinned. “Little too much cider, darlin’?”
“Never!” Ruth grinned back. “But it has been a long drive.”
It had been – JD lived in Denver proper these days, and it was a good hour and forty-five minutes’ drive on a clear summer day. The snow, while admittedly beautiful, had made travel on the back roads near the ranch treacherous to drive at speed, and travel time to the little craftsman bungalow had more than doubled. It was still much faster than going by horse – much warmer, too – but sometimes Chris still yearned for days gone by, with horses and buggies, when a few miles out of town was the middle of nowhere, and when there just wasn’t so much stuff involved in living.
He slanted a glance at his partner as the three of them scrambled out of the cab – Buck loved this new world, and loved the indoor plumbing that came with it. Ezra liking the new American wealth and culture was to be expected, the man would have his comforts, after all. But Buck had taken to some of the new-fangled technology like a duck to water. Some things, Chris supposed he could like – the better housing, with heated air for the winter, the electric lamps so he could read late into the night by good light, this very truck which had helped him pull some of those blasted tree stumps out of Josiah’s garden plot. Some of the stumps and trees they cleared every so often were far too heavy even for draft horses, although he still kept a pair at the ranch to work in the steeper, rockier terrain the trucks couldn’t go.
Other things, he thought he could well do without – telephones, for one, connecting your private abode with the networks of the world, making it so people could call you any time they liked. The new sewage systems, though he well appreciated the increase in the general population’s health they brought, smelled horrible, the concentration of wastes of all kinds and the rotting vegetation that lived off it making him wrinkle his nose every time he came into the city. And the airplanes! Man wasn’t meant to fly, and he sure as hell wasn’t meant to fly so high, so fast, so far in such flimsy structures. Fifty years after Kitty Hawk, and Chris still shuddered every time an airplane soared over-head. He’d seen balloons in the War – his War, the Civil War – but he’d never thought it would come to those metal birds overhead. His dislike of them was not just because he was afraid of them coming down on his head – an unrealistic fear, according to JD, who understood the physics that were as far over his head as the planes themselves – but also because he didn’t like the idea of people able to spy on him from such heights as he couldn’t get to. It was getting hard enough to get and stay lost for a few days of privacy, he didn’t need random people peeking in on his doings, too.
On the other hand, those same airplanes had brought his niece home from the fields of France after Buck and JD had taken a tour together in ’42. He wouldn’t have let them go at all, but he’d never been one who’d kept his men from doing what they felt they needed to do, and JD, still very much a Sheriff protecting his town, had bluntly told Chris that he knew evil when he saw it, and wasn’t going to sit on his ass and wait for someone else to take of it. Buck had gone along to keep JD out of trouble, as Chris had known he would, and Chris was grateful beyond words to the big man’s loyalty. JD was as safe as any man in a war could be, with Buck.
Still, he’d worried endlessly while they were away, and was ridiculously relieved and happy when they returned. So much so, that he hadn’t even growled much at Buck for effectively kidnapping a foreign child and bringing her to a country where she didn’t even speak the language. Ruth was a war orphan, and Jewish, and neither Buck nor any of his men would have left the child in the shattered French hamlet where they’d found her, all alone and desperately trying to survive. Buck had put a stop to the more outrageous schemes to get Ruth back to the States, but had determined to bring Ruth back and adopt her himself, and Chris had cause again to be grateful to the man, because spoiling Ruth rotten was some of the most fun he’d had in ages.
Having Ruth around certainly made it easier to adjust to settled pack life, as opposed to the group of nomadic mountain men they’d been as late as the ‘20s. They’d roamed so constantly for so long that Chris and Vin had both had a rough time with the thought of staying in one spot for more than a season, at most. Come to that, Vin still took his tepee out sometimes to camp the whole summer on the stream bank in the upper pasture. But Ruth needed stability, needed to know that ‘home’ wasn’t going to be the constantly changing and scary environment it was back in France, and her need had settled Chris down enormously, and through him, Ezra and JD became less edgy as well. JD was apparently inspired to start a family of his own, met and married Shawn O’Donal in ’48, and gave him a nephew, Obediah Kevin Dunne, a few years later.
Like most little boys, Obie was a rambunctious little ankle-biter, and Chris knew he and JD should surely be raucously shouting and laughing and playing with Obie’s Christmas presents by – he glanced at his new wristwatch – 11 in the morning. So it was with some trepidation that Chris raised his hand to knock on the door.
Shawn answered the door, dressed in the luxurious lace-and-silk dressing gown Ezra had bought her 3 Christmases ago, and greeted them tiredly. “Hi Chris, Buck,” she essayed a smile at her youngest visitor, “Ruth. You might as well come in.”
“Thank y-“ He didn’t even manage to complete the sentence before he halted abruptly, silenced by the sight of the parlor.
“Mon Dieu!” he heard Ruth exclaim as the young woman came in behind him. “What happened, Aunt Shawn?”
Suddenly, Buck started laughing. “I told him! I told him that squirrel smell was too strong – the thing finally pissed him off didn’t it?”
“Hmph!” Shawn sniffed disgustedly. “Like you’re any better, ye’ Lúdramán!”
Chris couldn’t help it, he started to grin. “You don’t really have a leg to stand on, Buck. I remember a certain someone who somehow manages to lose an epic battle with those light strands every year.” He winked at Ruth, and she giggled.
“Buck and I will clean it up, Shawn,” Chris reassured her. “Ruth, why don’t you help your aunt get brunch started?”
“By the way, where is he?” Buck asked, grabbing a dustpan and broom.
Shawn glanced over at the door to the backyard, where JD, still in wolf-form, watched them hopefully through the glass.
“In the doghouse, eh, JD?” Buck grinned at JD, knowing the kid could hear him just fine through the glass. JD flattened his ears and lowered his head before whining piteously at Chris.
“Oh, no,” Chris said, grinning, “Don’t look at me - I know better than to get between a man and his – OW!”
Chris spun toward the mantle and glared, rubbing the back of his head. A small squirrel chittered angrily at him, already gathering up another nut to throw in his direction. “Watch it, buster. JD ain’t the only wolf in this house!”
He could have sworn that damned squirrel just laughed at him – Buck certainly did.
The – OW! – End
*****************************************
Random Universe Note: Chis's truck in this story is a 1953 Dodge 1 ton pickup, and is the same truck Buck drives in the ATF era in this universe. Buck couldn’t bear to see it leave the ‘family’, so he bought it from Chris when Chris decided he needed a new truck, and then painted it red. Other than that, it’s been kept in mint condition.
Dedication: This story is lovingly dedicated to my grandpa, M.O. “Buck” Beeman.
Additional Story Notes: This little ficlet was written for the 2009 Christmas challenge on the Dunne’s Darlings list, which asked for a drabble about holiday traditions, but I’ve never been able to be quite so succinct. The tradition in question – that is, completely destroying the Christmas tree – is one I’m sure happens to every family on occasion. In my family, it usually happens in a rather spectacular, and spectacularly funny, manner. In fact, my grandfather, M.O. “Buck” Beeman, wrote the lyrics below about one of the Beeman family Christmas tree failures. “A Twice-Told Tale” is based on Grandpa’s song, and is how I see it happening to JD’s family in the 1950s, with a young Obie, still awed at the magic of Christmas.
Song Title: The Night the Christmas Tree Fell Down!
Music and Lyrics: Buck Beeman, 1972
Lyrics:
(chorus):
Oh, the silver star went sailing out the door,
And the popcorn balls went rolling on the floor!
The nut bowl on the shelf fell down all by itself!
The giant candy cane crash'd through the window pane!
All the ornaments were smash'd to smithereens,
And everything was going 'round and 'round!
I laughed until it hurts, disaster at it's worst -
The night the Chistmas tree fell down!
(Repeat the chorus and continue to bridge):
We had finish'd putting up the decorations -
Ev'ything was beautiful beyond compare!
Mommy tried to plug the lites into the socket,
and she touch'd wire that happened to be bare!
(Repeat chorus)
-bs
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yeah. i love world-building almost more than i love story-telling. possibly, it's my engineering geekery showing through here, hee.
:)
-bs
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my own family has had issues with squirrels in the trees in the past... and dogs pulling down the trees and of course the song is based on a real incident, i'm told. :-D
-bs
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-bs