Chapter 18
Stu: Ho Ho Holy Shit
After he bumps into Curtis Freeman, Stu makes his way to the Winter Festival. He’s dimly aware that he fucked up, but the alcohol makes it hard to think clearly and while he knows he did something to be ashamed of, he’s not sure just what it was or why he should be ashamed about it. As he walks toward the town center, he takes note of the blue sky. Interesting. Blue skies on festival day. No snow. Interesting, ain’t it? He feels this should bother him more than it does. He’s all clogged brain and cloudy thinking and he’s more stumbling toward town than walking toward the town center. Any outsider would think he was a drunken bum on his way to no good. They’d mock him and move on. But any Greener Valley resident who saw him would spend the rest of the night whispering to anyone who would listen. “Stu McLundy was god damn drunk today! In broad daylight! Walking into town!” and everyone would cluck their tongues and say disapproving things and then go home to their own homes where they would drink or gamble or do whatever it was that made them no better than Stu, except they hid it from everyone.
But this is no ordinary day. There’s no one out on the street to give Stu even a sideways glance. They’re all at the festival site and they already know that Stu’s drunk. In fact, his “motherfuckers” still hangs in the air, as if it’s waiting for him to come over to the festival and claim rightful ownership to it. He has no problem with that. Stu suddenly remembers saying that word and remembers why he is supposed to be embarrassed, but he’s not. He’s glad. He’s proud. He’s going to go over to the festival and stand up on the podium and say motherfuckers right into the microphone. Because he knows. He knows they are all motherfuckers. He knows the minute the new radio format takes over, they’ll all listen to it. They’ll forget about him in a split second and enjoy their modern bands and heavy rock music and Stu McLundy will be nothing more than a $20 spot on the Greener Valley version of Monopoly. Because none of them know what Stu McLundy means to Greener Valley. None of them know what has been unleashed. None of them know what Stu knows.
By the time Stu gets to the town center he’s irate. He’s mad at himself for making such a clusterfuck of things, but he’s consumed with anger toward Maurice Fetterling for selling him out like he did. The day before the winter festival. No warning. No respect for the man who kept that radio station relevant for 15 years. And certainly no inclination of the hellish scenario he inadvertently caused by selling the station.
As he enters the center through the back gate, coming up behind the stage, which is really just a trailer, Stu is intent on exacting revenge upon Maurice Fetterling. Part of him wants to kill him. He wants to tie him up against a pole and throw records at him, fast and hard, and those records would cut him and slice him and it might take hours or even days but eventually it would be a death by a thousand cuts. Then Stu would put on “Heartbeat” and dance around Fetterling’s body. Another part of Stu, the lazy part that is also the drunk part and knows his motor skills are not in any shape for a death-by-vinyl marathon killing, that part wants to at least humiliate Fetterling in front of the whole town. Well, didn’t he just do that? Didn’t he, by telling everyone the station was sold and then acting like such a buffoon on air, didn’t he already humiliate Fetterling?
Stu stops for a moment, right before he reaches the back door of the stage/trailer. He tries to remember something. He’s got a feeling like he needs to remember something and it’s throwing him off, shaving little pieces off of his nerve until he’s unsure what he wanted to do in the first place. It’s like he left his wallet in a hooker’s hotel room. Like….fuck. Fetterling. He knocked him out and left him for dead at the radio station. Someone, or maybe everyone, is bound to notice that the town’s de facto mayor is missing from the Winter Festival.
Maybe on any other day, Stu would go back and take care of things at the studio. But this isn’t any other day. This is a day where Stu has been drunk since last night. It’s a day that finds him unemployed for the first time in 15 years. It’s a day where everything seems fucked up and he can’t think straight or even see straight for that matter, because right now he’s seeing Hank Hoffman come toward him and Hank’s wearing a Santa coat and boxers and seems to be foaming something green at the mouth. Stu right then and there swears to God and Jesus and Mary and any saint who’d listen that he’ll give up alcohol forever if they will just make this hallucination go away. But it doesn’t go away and Stu’s sort of glad because he’s never been good at keeping that promise to anyone, even Jesus, and damn he wants a big old bottle of Jack Daniels right now. Hank gets closer and Stu hears him mumbling, something about shadows and everyone being fucked. When Hank gets about two feet from Stu, he passes out. Just like that. One second he’s sputtering nonsensical shit about devils and children and the next he’s a pile of red, white and boxers on the ground.
Stu bends down, checks to see if Hank’s still alive. He is. He peels the Santa jacket off of Hank and puts it on himself. It’s snug. It’s more than snug. It’s really, really small. He takes it off, peels off his own shirt and puts the Santa jacket on over his bare torso. Stu’s gut sticks out and the sleeves only come down to his elbows but in Stu’s mind it fits and he’s Santa. There’s a certain clarity forming in his brain now. The drunk is wearing off and it’s being replaced by a feeling. Something pulling on him, tugging at him, telling him what to do. He’s supposed to be a hero. That’s what he’s feeling. That’s what he knows. But the extent of what he knows is muddled and just not enough. He searches his brain for some sort of clarity but comes up empty. He knows what’s going on, he just can’t remember what it is he’s supposed to do now. Or did he ever know what to do when this situation came up? Probably not because this here clusterfuck of a situation was never supposed to happen. What the hell is going on? Holy fuck, I’m going crazy. This is what it feels like to lose control of your mind. Someone or something else is in there and he surprises himself by not being frightened by this. He thinks whatever voice is in there is a good voice and he needs to listen to it. He’s going to march into the town center and save the townspeople from themselves.
He walks around to the side of the trailer and there’s the Santa pants and Santa boots. He struggles into the pants and they only come up to the bottom of his hips and he can’t work the belt all the way around so he takes them off, removes his pants and puts the Santa pants back on. They still don’t fit. The belt hangs on either side of his hips like loose strings on a puppet. The pants scrunch up right above his crotch. In his haste, he’s taken off his boxers with his pants so anyone who looks at him will get an eyeful of Santa Stu pubic hair. Stu then squeezes his feet into the boots. They don’t really get all the way down to the bottom and his arches are straight up, like a woman in ten-inch heels.
He pulls the fake beard off the comatose Hank. It’s one of those cheap deals with a string that goes up around your head and he covers that with the Santa hat he takes from Hank’s head. As with the rest of the suit, it’s too small. It sits lopsided on his combed-over hair.
If Stu could see himself he might be scared by the half naked man decked out in a too small Santa suit. He’s 250 pounds of Christmas stuffed into a 100-pound sack. He’s drunk, he’s leaking pubes out of his pants, he’s sweating and red faced but god damn, he’s ready to save the town.
He walks around the trailer into the town center, where everyone who showed up for the Winter Festival is standing around, already bewildered by the day’s events and unsure what to do next. He walks to podium, grabs the microphone and coughs. Heads turn.
That’s when Stu sees what’s been going on. The shadows, the frightened adults, the rabid, screaming children.
He breathes into the microphone and says “Ho ho holy shit.”