Down the backroads, deep in the forest outside of Oxford, Tula's Larry Brown carved out his place in Literature with Grit Lit. It's not that his hardscrabble tales of survival are not without hope (maybe Santa will drop "Fay" or "On Fire" beneath your tree.) It's that the protagonists of Grit Lit normally live without nearly everything and you hope they will make it out of the proverbial woods.
The last short story Brown ever wrote, "Merry Christmas, Scotty," is one of those tales that functions as both an enlightening Christmas story and a veiled lesson. Opening with his protagonist Nick sitting at the bar on a snowy Christmas Eve is apropos. As he curls his lips around the last of the delicious eggnog, you know it is time for him to move on. Where will he go? He cannot leave just yet. There is still more to consider, even as Mother Nature coats the earth outside with a fresh white blanket. So, Nick does what any of us would do when we do not want the party to end: plead with the bartender for just one more and gaze in wonder at the emptiness around you.
As he takes in the warm surroundings in contrast with the frozen tundra outside "turning cars into igloos," he reminisces about the "bundled-up brood" that was present just a few minutes ago. Of course, he sees right through them with their hastily obtained gifts from the drugstore that bought them just enough time to celebrate with a little libation and a lot of friends. As the bartender buys a little more time searching for Christmas music on the jukebox, something catches his eye.
And you see things and you try not to think about them too much, but some bald-headed white-bearded guy had had his head on the bar but a few stools down for quite a while, and it was a cinch he wasn't Santa Claus. Santa didn't wear Gucci loafers or lambswool sweaters, and he didn't pass out in bars. Santa was a retired biker, a Tough Love old dude who lived up at the North Pole, and worked hard.
Whether this is post-eggnog clarity or just willing yourself to stay in a dream state as long as possible, Brown throws a lot at you. The magic of a tale like this is making the detail just as necessary as the story. Brown's conversational tone makes most of that possible as "Scotty" feels like something recanted after the party or during one of those soaked late nights at the bar.
What haunts me dear reader are the circumstances of where Nick is bound for once la fête est finie. Nick knows that the bartender, Sammy, probably has his girlfriend waiting patiently at home for him. Brown even quietly implies that this undiscussed partner shares Sammy's sympathy for the last patron of the night. Yet Nick says he has "a pretty good spot" at the Hotty Totty Motel (likely the Ole Miss Motel.) However, it's not "really a room." In fact, they have run out of rooms (a biblical allusion? you decide.) and set Nick up in a tent in the parking lot. So at the end of carefully run extension cords, Nick has an electric blanket to keep warm under and "regular room TV" which he has adorned with a $2 Christmas toy tree that he found at a rummage sale. Nick thinks fondly of this temporary set-up. He has even bought himself a couple of small gifts that sit at its tiny feet. "Christmas kept coming around because it had good reasons for coming around," Nick opines to himself, "and it was hard even if you had little not to be a little bit happy."
Back at the bar, Sammy is looking for a good while for Christmas music on the jukebox. So long that Nick's feeling settled with himself and his Christmas plans allow him to turn his thoughts to the bearded old man with his head on the bar. In true self-examination fashion, Nick puts himself in the old man's shoes. Waking up in a stupor and wandering the streets of Oxford in a blizzard will not end well. Even as he staves the end of the night with one more song request to Sammy, it is only to absorb more about the life of this passed-out patron.
Reflecting on the pain of his memories, Sammy plays Al Green (since there is not a single Christmas song on this contraption) as an anodyne. They talk about how cruel the world is outside. "Hey man," Sammy says to Nick, "I heard they had so many fistfights with people trying to get inside (WalMart) they had to put the mall cops on skateboards." However Nick cannot lose focus of the sleeping bar patron - strangely, it even dulls his pain of being alone. So, he formulates that the only move he has is to take the bearded snoozer back to his tiny tent. As long as he can find him some coffee at the Hotty Totty and he does not steal too much of the electric blanket, everything should be alright. Nick offers to Sammy to help him with "the old dude."
Sammy perks up, "What are you talking about, Nick?!"
"That's my Uncle Kris from Crystal Springs. He just flew back from Australia for Christmas and he had to drive through all that snow from Memphis right before they closed the roads. He's got jet lag."
Sammy wakes up Kris from Crystal Springs (nice alliteration and a tie in to another monker for a red-suited jocular fellow) who it turns out just purchased a balcony apartment right across the street from the bar. As Nick gets ready to shuffle off the parking lot of the Hotty Totty, Sammy invites him to join them over there for the real Christmas party.
"We got plenty of eggnog over there, all kind of stuff to eat, and I know we've got some Christmas songs. There's about thirty people over there just waiting on me to get off work."
It is a simple story. You may even need to read it twice to extract all the excellent details. Nick is just hanging on to that last ember of joy and camaraderie before doing the polite thing of letting everyone else go to their families, their loved ones. Yet, there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting a little more time to be with others on this festive occasion. Especially when every ounce of your optimism is trained on making the most of sleeping in a rented tent in a parking lot. It would be far too easy for Nick to look at this man sleeping on the bar and think "I bet I've got it much worse." But, he does not. Instead, he reaches inside himself and prepares to share his meager accommodations with a stranger. For good karma? For the season? Because of the dangerous weather? Maybe.
I would like to think, it is because Nick is human. Nick knows that while his circumstances have placed him in the precarious lodging position that lies ahead - he will make the most of it. Because of that, he will also see to it that others will as well.
In the words of the late, great, never-to-be-forgotten Larry Brown, "Merry Christmas, everybody."
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Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
