3

T’was an Adams Family tradition to carol on Christmas. Bobby and Betty and Brucey and Bill joined Mommy and Daddy and Granny and Pap to tour suburb streets with songs of winter joy. But this year was different. Daddy had moved them to Society Hill for a cushy new city job. Then Daddy had the marketable idea to carol in Kensington. ‘We’ll lift the spirit of a neighborhood that could really use it!’, he said one night at dinner. Mommy dropped her fork. Pap brushed off his .357 magnum and, on Christmas night, packed the family in the caravan. They left, arrived, and parked. Billy and Brucey and Betty and Bobby heard a message from their guts, ‘bad bad bad bad.’ . Mommy hugged Daddy. Pap gripped the shaft at his back. Daddy knocked. The lady who answered was doddering, nodding in and out of consciousness with eyelids dipping and rising to reveal red, spinning eyeballs. ‘1..2..have your-seeeeeeelf a Merry..’ and the carol was on. All across Kensington front doors swung open and helpless home dwellers crab-walked to the streets to simmer in suburb song. Everybody grabbed a partner and danced a little diddly. Bloods grabbed Crips. Crips grabbed Granny. The police arrived. They danced, too. Pap held his scowl and coddled his weapon, and it stayed this way until the streets were strewn with exhausted, jubilant bodies and the doddering lady was cold snoozing on the patio of her ramshackle Kensington estate.

4

Geranimo Bailey, a PPA man, was assigned to the Rittenhouse route. ‘I am prepared to die for the service.’ ‘That won’t be necessary, Bailey, just take these slips and let ‘er rip.’ Geranimo arrived on the eve of Christmas, 9:00 a.m., to the Park where many pampered Santas fetched last-minute gifts for loved ones and lovers. ‘Stop right there!’, he hollered at 9:02. ‘That stop’s reserved for the city buses. Sign says.’ Beneath a sign warning cars not to stop was a parked black sedan. A thin red heel hung from the driver’s side door. ‘Come here, child’, came a soothing voice. Geranimo approached and a twenty dollar bill came fluttering out, pinched between the bone-tight leather gloves of a thin and wicked hand. ‘Twenty is all and walk away. Buy wife somethin’ nice, hm?’ But Geranimo was never married and had pledged his soul to the PPA, so that by 9:03 his 1st holiday ticket was punched and the holiday briber had a new year resolution to take revenge on the PPA man Geranimo Bailey.