The Fat Man_ A Tale of North Pole Noir - Ken Harmon [27]
If Dingleberry’s comic score was the big news, then the papers had not yet learned of my outlaw ways. I imagine Rosebud was sharpening her poison pen, and a special edition was rolling off the presses, lots of ink and hard words telling of the awful thing I had done. But for the moment, I was still free. I had a chance to change how the story ended.
As soon as I heard that a BB to the eye is what put Raymond under the white sheet, I had a hunch that I was being framed. Someone from Kringle Town knew I had roughed up Raymond. They also knew that I would be the prime suspect if something happened to him. Even if Bert had heard the examiner say that someone had shot Raymond’s eye out, he and every other Kringle Town citizen would have said that I chose the whole BB angle as a cover.
So I ran.
I figured running was the only chance I had. It was the only way I could find out if Ralphie had his hands on the trigger of an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model BB Gun with a compass in the stock. It didn’t sound like something Ralphie would do. Ralphie was a good kid, a bit of a potty mouth, but a good kid. Either someone made Ralphie shoot Raymond, or Ralphie was another fall guy. Either way, I had to get to Ralphie before anyone else did and make sure he would tell the truth.
I ducked into the human world and hid in a tree outside the Hall house. When Bert arrived with Cane’s posse and saw me gone, they took off the way they came. They thought I doubled back on them and stampeded away to cut me off. I let them get good and gone while I watched the cops take Raymond’s body away. Raymond was a rotten kid and not much of a dad until the end, but I still didn’t want to see him dead. A prayer for Raymond hung in a lump in my throat for a while, not because I didn’t think he deserved one. I just wasn’t sure I deserved to pray it.
When it was safe, I jumped back into Kringle Town and headed for Ralphie. Though he was always going to be around eleven years old, more or less, Ralphie was wise beyond his years. Behind the big round glasses was a guy who knew something about the heartbreak of wanting something so bad you could taste it. He also knew that once you got it, the thing that you wanted wasn’t what was missing in the first place. That’s what Ralphie’s job was in Kringle Town, to remind us all to look beyond what we crave and take joy in what we have.
Still, Ralphie was a kid and I suppose that if someone made using Raymond Hall for target practice sound like an adventure, Ralphie might have gone along with the idea. There was only one way to find out, so I knocked on Ralphie’s door.
It was late and the dull glow of the leg lamp in the window didn’t do much to cut the gloom. The house was as dark as a bat’s gut. My knock was the only sound and nobody was stirring inside. Since Bert, Cane and the mob could be on me in a matter of minutes, I decided to forget my manners and let myself in. Actually, I just walked through the door. Elf magic comes in handy.
The place was a mess. Dishes with half-eaten meals covered most of the flat surfaces in the front room by the radio and the floor was a carpet of newspapers, clothes and crumbs. Propped up in the corner was Ralphie’s prized Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model BB Gun with a compass in the stock. Its dark barrel winked in the low light, which meant it had just been cleaned. I hoisted it up and was giving it the once-over,