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Mrs. Bott’s Finest Christmas

by Michael Thomas Smith

About the Author: Michael Thomas Smith is an Assistant Professor of the Polytechnic Institute at Purdue University, where he received his PhD in English. He teaches cross-disciplinary courses that blend humanities with other areas. He has published over 50 different works in over 20 different journals (mostly within the past year). He also has critical work recently published in Symbolism and Cinematic. He loves to travel.

Excerpt

It was the holiday season, and I really needed a glass of whiskey. That being unavailable, I settled for gin.

“I’ll tell you now,” my friend Georgie grumbled over his own drink. “He said he didn’t believe it, but I swear it’s the Lord’s truth.”

“You swear everyday.” I said back in modest dismissal.

Georgie’s mustache overtook the glass as he took another swig; a string of spit stretched from his chapped lips to the glass rim as he put it down. He looked up from under a mistletoe with a drunken pride. “Well, now I have the proof.”

It was the habit of those who frequented the Hog’s Head at the end of the week to recant those “stunners” of stories they encountered throughout their life—oftentimes repeatedly. The Yuletide festivities only added fuel to the raconteurs’ fire. And tonight, Georgie was hot with a new one:

You’ve all heard of the gunman Billy Jones no doubt (and so Georgie began). Billy Jones who knocked off five banks in the course of one week … Billy Jones who topped the most wanted list yet always slipped through the authorities’ fingers … Billy Jones of whom it was said even bullets were too afraid to meet head on and as such ducked and dodged every which way around his person.

Of course you have.

Well, it was late that night in December. It was Christmas Eve, in fact, when in through those very doors, those old wooden doors the color of scotch, who walks into the Hog’s Head but none other than Billy Jones himself.

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