Free The Closer by Donn Cortez

Sam? Who’s going to take care of him?”
    “He’s smart. He can learn to forage for nuts and berries.”
    She yanked the pillow away and hit him with it. “I can’t believe you’d say that about your own son,” she said, pretending to be indignant.
    “ I can’t believe I married someone who’s coherent before nine A . M . ”
    “I bet you weren’t like this when you were a kid,” she said, lying down beside him. He eased an arm under her head.
    “Not at Christmas, anyway,” he chuckled. “I was a lot more like Sam—couldn’t sleep the night before, up at five-thirty Christmas morning. So hyper I swear I vibrated.”
    “So what happened?”
    “I discovered masturbation. Calmed me down a lot.”
    “Well, Sam’s only six—I think he’s got a few hyper years left.” Janine sat up and swung her legs off the bed. “Come on. I’ve got coffee made.”
    “Caffeine? Why didn’t you say so…”
    He got up and had a quick shower, whistling an old Devo song while he shampooed. He threw on some black sweat pants and a white T-shirt when he was done and padded downstairs in his bare feet.
    “Dad! Just one more sleep!” his son announced from the living room. Sam had his mother’s narrow face and upturned nose, but his father’s wavy brown hair. He’d made a point of counting down the days for the last two weeks.
    “You got it, Sam,” Jack said as he headed for the kitchen. His son followed him, waving a comic book in one hand.
    “Look! Marshall gave me a Spawn number one for Christmas! Know why?”
    “Uh—because he bought seven copies when it came out?” Jack poured coffee into a black mug with a green alien head emblazoned on it.
    “No,” Sam said in exaggerated exasperation. “It’s ’cause I’m his best friend.”
    “I thought I was your best friend, buddy,” he said, getting cream from the fridge. The fridge was covered with magnets Janine had collected from tourist traps. The one that caught his eye every day when he grabbed the door handle was from a ghost town in Arizona: a skull wearing a cowboy hat grinned at him, with “Yahoo, Buckeroo!” printed underneath.
    “Yahoo,” Jack said, pointing a finger and cocked thumb at the skull and firing an imaginary shot.
    “Dad?”
    “Yeah, buddy?” He pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and sat down.
    “How come you’re always shooting the fridge?”
    Jack laughed. “It’s just a thing I do when I’m in a good mood. A ritual, I guess.”
    “What’s a rich-yule?”
    “It’s what you’re gonna have, once Grandma and Grandpa get here.”
    “Oh. Okay.” He grinned in that completely accepting little-boy way he had, and ran back into the living room. Jack shook his head and grinned himself; he couldn’t remember a time when he’d had that kind of complete confidence in his father. It was heartwarming and a little scary, all at once.
    Janine came into the kitchen and sat down at the table with him. “Well, the guest room is ready. All we need now is your folks.”
    A double honk sounded from outside, the greeting Jack’s father always gave when he arrived. “And there they are,” Jack said.
    Mr. and Mrs. Salter walked through the front door with their arms full of packages. “Merry Christmas!” his mother shouted. She was a tall woman, with curly hair dyed aggressively red. “Look what Santa dropped off at our house by mistake!”
    “Wow!” Sam said, running up and hugging his grandma around the waist. “Are there some for me?”
    “Oh, I think there might be a few in there,” Jack’s father said. He was a short, bullish man, with a square jaw and gray hair he kept cropped short. “Hey, there’s my twin!” he said with a laugh, getting a hug from Janine.
    “Merry Christmas,” Jack said, accepting an armload of packages while Janine got their coats. “Oof. You buy out Toys-R-Us again this year?”
    “Ixnay on the Oystay,” his father said. “Antasay, got me?”
    “Huh?” Sam said.
    “Never mind,”