Holiday Heat: Heartwarming and Bottomwarming Stories for the Festive Season

by April Hill

  “Jeez, Dad! It looks like you shot an anorexic turkey.”

  “It’s name is Harold,” said Amber, who has the sensibilities of Francis of Assisi about all living creatures, and likes to name them all.

  “There!” I cried triumphantly. “You see! Its name is Harold, and you can’t eat things when they have names. It would be like barbecuing a pet hamster.”

  Hank sighed. “Then what the hell are we going to do with it?”

  “Don’t look at me, Daniel Boone,” I muttered. “I’m not the one who dragged home a half-dead anorexic turkey that needs a nursing home instead of sage dressing and a roasting pan.”

  When all of this merry chitchat finally ended, the men in the family went off to watch yet another football game, leaving me alone with the turkey problem. There I was, standing in my kitchen, with a bird that looked like it had lived a life of desperation and want, and my youngest child’s eyes drilling into my back.

  “What are we going to do about poor Harold, Mommy?”

  You see what I mean? I’m the mother, so everything comes down to what Mommy is going to do. Not dear old Dad, despoiler of the forests and murderer of hapless wildfowl, but me!

  “We’ll find him a home,” I said weakly, already knowing in my heart that good, loving homes for creatures as ugly (and edible) as Half-Dead Harold were probably few and far between.

  “Do you promise?” she asked, sniffling.

  Okay, I promised. What else could I do?

  Which leads up to how I finally got that Traditional Holiday Spanking, after all.

  Not far from our home (twenty-two miles, precisely) is a zoo. It’s quite well-regarded zoo, that gets written up in the newspapers on a regular basis. We have often visited this zoo as a family, and been impressed by its natural surroundings and the apparently excellent care provided to all of its fortunate residents. Because of the zoo’s location, surrounded by public woodlands, it’s also home to a lot of the less-exotic species, like squirrels and raccoons, who apparently live in the environs of the zoo on the unintended largesse of the taxpayers.

  Now, even I am not dumb enough to think that these zoo people, however kind and well-meaning, are in the business of providing lifetime shelter for unwanted, half-dead holiday turkeys. Which meant that no one would welcome Harold’s arrival at the zoo with open arms.

  This as going to have to be a covert operation.

  I would simply smuggle Harold into the zoo, where he would cavort about with all of the other little woodland creatures, at public expense and under public protection. If there were no other turkeys, of course, he—or she (I had not investigated this subject thoroughly)—would be forced to live a celibate life, but it was either that, or be roasted and eaten. Given this unappealing choice, even I would probably choose celibacy.

  Getting Harold into the zoo, of course, required first getting him into the car, which in turn required getting him into a large pull-along suitcase—with a hole punctured so Harold wouldn’t pass on from lack of air. I had no animal carrier, and besides, an animal carrier would look suspicious, whereas a haggard woman dragging a large, gobbling suitcase through the zoo’s gates would draw no curious glances at all, right?

  Okay, on to Plan B. I would transport Harold to the outskirts of the zoo, remove him or her from his or her suitcase, and toss him/her over the fence, hopefully not into the waiting jaws of a pen of alligators, polar bears or other predators. I chose the side of the zoo where the enormous aviary was located, which was also, as my luck would have it, where the enormous field of mud was located.

  The plan was going well. After traipsing two city blocks in mud up to my freaking knees, I was now standing on a fallen tree limb, trying to hoist Harold over the six-foot high chain link fence into what I hoped was turkey paradise. Harold, being all feet and legs and no brain whatsoever, was doing everything he could to foil my plans, including relieving himself all over my head and shoulders—at which point, we were suddenly interrupted by these chilling words.

  “What the hell you think you’re doin’, lady?”

  I turned my poop-covered head to see a uniformed security guard, with a warning hand on his holster.

  I smiled and said a polite hello. “I found this escaped bird…on the road,” I explained sweetly. “I think he lives in there.” (Pointing into zoo.)

  “That’s a fuckin’ turkey,” he said. The man was obviously a highly trained naturalist.

  I expressed shock at this information. “A turkey?” I inquired innocently.

  “You can’t leave that turkey here,” he said.

  “But it lives here,” I insisted.

  “No, it don’t. I seen you take the sucker out of that suitcase.” I ask you. For all the taxes we pay, wouldn’t you think the state could hire people with better grammar skills?

  “All right, officer,” I confessed. “The truth is, I found this bird down the road, and merely assumed that he had escaped from here.” I was beginning to get annoyed, now.

  The officer nodded at Harold. “It looks sick.”

  “I know, but he’s recovering.”

  The officer seemed to find that funny, and guffawed. “So you decided to take it on a trip to the zoo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?

  “Because it’s already seen the new exhibits at the Museum of Science and Industry, you moron!” I shouted. “Look, this one little bird isn’t going to bother anything.” At that point, rather than argue any further with an obvious idiot, I simply boosted Harold to the top of the fence.

  Did you know that turkeys can fly? Not well, as it turns out, but well enough to give it a shot to avoid being arrested. Harold opened his ragged wings and flopped away.

  Which is when the guard pulled out his gun and shot Harold—well, at Harold. He missed.

  “What are you doing?” I screamed, flailing my arms so hard I slipped off the limb into the mud.

  The guard ran to the fence and tried to crawl up on the branch I’d just exited. Harold had disappeared into the woods, narrowly escaping the second attempt on his life in one week.

  “That thing might have rabies!” The guard yelled.

  “Turkeys don’t get rabies!” I shrieked back.

  “Bats get rabies, lady, and bats are birds.”

  Okay, now I lost it. “Where did you go to school, you mindless asshole? Bats aren’t birds! Bats are…something else!”

  By now, the guard was racing for the gate, presumably to apprehend Harold before he infected everyone in sight with rabies. I took advantage of his absence to slog through the mud, back to the car, and make my own escape.

  An hour later, I was home, warm and clean in my robe and jammies, and basking in the glow of a good deed done.

  Which was when the doorbell rang.

  Harold was never found, and I vigorously contested the guard’s version of the episode, explaining that the bird in question had not gone over the fence, as reported, but flopped away into the brush. I don’t know whether the handsome state trooper at the door believed me, or simply didn’t give a rat’s ass that there was a criminal turkey on the loose somewhere, endangering the public welfare. Anyway, I didn’t get arrested. All that happened was that I was given a stern reprimand.

  And, of course, the Traditional Holiday Spanking. Not by the trooper, of course, but by a not as gullible Hank. He did look up whether or not turkeys carry rabies, first, though, in order to assess the severity of my sentence, and when it appeared that I probably hadn’t set off an epidemic, the spanking that ensued was more or less ceremonial and perfunctory, as opposed to hideous and unbearable. Pants down, over the knee, and twenty pretty good, stinging swats on my bare behind with Hank’s bare hand. Not too bad.

  But then, it apparently occurred to Hank that there were still quite a few shopping days left until Christmas, so he rummaged through the bedside drawer for the dreaded hairbrush, rearranged me slightly, and added another ten—as a preemptory strike, he explained. After all, a tradition is
a tradition.

  THE END

  “She Won’t Be Home For Christmas”

  On December 23, at the age of thirty-four years and some months, Abigail Chadwick received an early Christmas present that would change her life. The gift was from a fellow named Lucas McLaughlin, who eventually turned out to be—against astonishing odds—the man she had been waiting for all of her life. As gifts go, Luke’s gift was a fairly odd one, unlike any Christmas gift Abigail had ever received before, and certainly not the sort of thing the average women would tack onto her Yuletide wish list. But, then, Abigail wasn’t your average woman. She was Abigail Bailey Chadwick, daughter of multi-millionaire Benjamin Hogarth Chadwick, of Chadwick Residential and Commercial Properties, Inc., and though she didn’t know it at the time, Luke’s simple, fairly odd gift was the very thing she needed most, and maybe even wanted.

  A further clue, for those readers trying to guess the precise nature of the mystery gift, was that it was totally without cost to the giver, and not a tangible object. It was more on the order of what might be called a significant and transforming life experience.

  Yes. As devotees of this particular literary genre have probably already concluded, the fairly odd Christmas gift in question was actually a spanking. Not an especially popular or frequently requested present, but in Abigail’s case, a very well-deserved one. It was delivered by Luke himself, on a cold, crisp evening shortly before Christmas, in what might have been, under different circumstances, an extremely romantic setting. During the actual spanking, Abigail didn’t seem at all pleased with her gift, and apparently didn’t find it in the least romantic. She found it embarrassing and painful, the way anyone might, sprawled over a wooden sawhorse with her bared behind on fire and the rest of her freezing. It took several days for her to fully appreciate Luke’s unusual gift, and to understand its significance, since most of her attention immediately following its delivery was focused on trying to sit down comfortably without emitting embarrassing and audible yelps whenever certain portions of her bottom came into contact with any firm surface.

  When she was finally able to sit down and ponder quietly what had happened, Abigail came to believe what Luke had once told her––that the best Christmas is where you get two kinds of gifts. The one that you want, and one that you need. Even if you don’t always know which is which.

  The spanking that changed Abigail’s life did not come unannounced, or without warnings. It was just that she didn’t take the warnings seriously. And why would she? Abigail had never been spanked before by anyone, anywhere, for anything. Which was remarkable, since she had spent much of her childhood being as obstinate, demanding, and willful as she was as an adult. Abigail wasn’t a bad person, in the truest sense. She was generally honest, frequently considerate and helpful to others (when she thought about it) and extremely affectionate with animals. But like many adored and indulged only children, who have had their own way about almost everything from birth, she had grown to adulthood fully expecting life to continue as it always had. Without limits, and without disagreeable consequences. As she entered her third decade, though, Abigail began to be troubled by a vague feeling that something about her life wasn’t working as well for her as it once had. Doing exactly what she wanted to do, and saying everything she wanted to say simply wasn’t as much fun as it used to be.

  * * * *

  It had all started because Abigail both wanted, and needed, to get out of the chilly New York City weather for the holidays. She had just agreed to marry Edward Harlow, and she wanted to do that as far away from her father as possible. She would then need a safe place to hang out until the dust cleared. Her father, the aforementioned B.H. Chadwick, had made it very clear in the preceding months that he did not see Edward as suitable son-in-law material. Which was ironic, considering the fact that Mr. Chadwick’s only child had already accepted and publicly broken four engagements, to four equally unsuitable fiancés, with the result that she was now widely regarded as “difficult,” and a less than ideal catch.

  Abigail had two interrelated problems as a bride-to-be. She had been on the market much too long, and a semi-scandalous item in the social columns much too frequently. The result of all this was that the chances of her ever marrying anyone newsworthy was now seen by the sort of people who decide such things as highly dubious. Abigail was learning that socialite brides, like real estate and mayonnaise, have a limited shelf life. She would have hastened to point out that it was she (the seller) who had done the rejecting, and not the four prospective buyers, but that didn’t seem to matter to the people who matter. And there was always the matter of her temper.

  There is always a certain amount of unpleasantness inherent in a woman dumping the number of grooms that Abigail had dumped, and the attendant shopping and publicity surrounding her cancelled weddings had made her extremely irritable. Her irritation, in turn, had earned her a reputation along the entire length of the Eastern seaboard as a sort of serial Bridezilla. Abigail had more wedding dresses in her walk-in closet than most women have shoes, primarily because she had always had trouble making up her mind—which the reader may have already noticed. At this stage, her only remaining value as a trophy wife were her family’s name and her own potential fortune, and at the moment, the fortune part was in some question. Mr. Chadwick had recently reached his limit, fiancé wise, and had begun to threaten retaliation in the only way he knew how, by cutting off the flow of money.

  “Where do you keep finding these stupendous nincompoops?” Mr. Chadwick bellowed, when he learned that Edward had just stepped up to the plate as fiancé number five.

  “Edward is not a nincompoop,” Abigail protested, without much enthusiasm. “He’s very smart, actually. He’s in investments, or something at Gannon-Harlow. And for your information, he makes an extremely attractive salary.” This was true. Edward had gone to Yale, maybe even graduated, and he did seem to do something or other at his family’s investment firm that justified an expansive office with a mural, burgundy leather upholstery, gilt bathroom fixtures, and a nice view of the filthy sidewalks of Wall Street.

  Mr. Chadwick scowled. “Money has nothing to do with it, and you know it. I taught you better than that, damn it! To look at people for what they are, and not at their bank accounts. This is a big country, Abigail. Why the hell can’t you find yourself one decent man in it. A man with integrity and common sense? A man who knows what it’s like to work for his own living? Why the blazes do you keep settling for these lowlife nitwits who can’t do anything but sponge off their damned families?”

  Abigail had heard all of this before, and found it endlessly amusing, since her father had inherited most of his money from his father, who had gotten it from his father, and so on. The family fortune had come from railroads, back when railroad barons still made money the old fashioned way—by stealing from everyone in sight, and by snatching up millions of acres and billions of tax-free dollars in government kickbacks. Abigail herself had dropped out of college in her third year, and would probably have spent her nights sleeping in a cardboard box and scarfing down cat food if Mr. Chadwick hadn’t quietly paid the rent and the grocery bill every month. It’s not that Abigail was lazy, exactly. She was an artist. She just wasn’t the starving kind. And yes, Edward’s father was a partner at Gannon-Harlow, and very well-fixed, financially. Not as well-fixed as her father, of course, but Mr. Chadwick was fond of pointing out that having money isn’t that important, which is a common misconception among people who have always had far too much of it.

  Anyway, after what turned into a very long, nasty argument about values and responsibility and about spoiled, stubborn daughters who wouldn’t know Mr. Right if he showed up with it tattooed across his damned forehead, the daughter flounced out the father’s office, determined to show him that she could make it on her own, given half a chance. She even had the beginnings of a plan—a real estate venture in which she could make a quick and extremely tidy profit, enough to live on for a couple of years
, at least. And the best part was that she and Edward would be escaping the dreary winter weather at the same time. A sort of working vacation, followed by a simple but festive Christmas wedding—in Las Vegas.

  Abigail owned a house. A mansion, from what she’d been told, and a legacy from her maternal grandmother, whose dying wish had been that the house where she’d come as a new bride would be “restored to its former grandeur.” Sadly, the reputed mansion wasn’t on Long Island, or in Newport, but in a dusty little Texas town called Hockworth.

  After Abigail’s great-great grandfather had laid enough railway track to ensure that none of his offspring or their offspring would ever have to seek honest employment, he had built a seventeen room Victorian ranch house for the bride he’d married “back east.” When the great house was finally finished, he brought her by private railroad car all the way from Massachusetts.

  “It was just like Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, in Giant,” Abigail’s now deceased mother had explained to her, with a deeply emotional sigh. Giant was Mrs. Chadwick’s all-time favorite movie, and it had been necessary to sedate her when she was informed that Rock Hudson’s romantic leanings weren’t precisely the same off the silver screen as they were on. And now, the Giant house was Abigail’s, to do with as she wished. She’d never seen the house, but it was the only asset she could call entirely hers, since even her car was in her father’s name, for insurance purposes. But Abigail didn’t want to live in her ancestral estate, or restore it to its former glory. She wanted to unload the crumbling monstrosity, as quickly and profitably as possible.

  * * * *

  The argument that brought an end to Abigail’s fifth engagement began halfway across the George Washington Bridge, but it dragged on for close to two thousand tedious miles, and most of the way across Texas. The driving vacation had been an unmitigated disaster. Essentially, the final argument was like all of the other quarrels she and Edward had; it was about absolutely nothing. Like their earlier arguments, this one had been heated, exhausting, and ultimately futile. Having been engaged for less than a week, Edward and Abigail entered the twilight of their relationship around the same time they crossed the Mississippi. And as she usually did, Abigail made certain that their final parting would be neither amicable, nor without fireworks. She threw a full-blown tantrum forty miles short of Hockworth, and then did the most monumentally stupid thing she could have done.