The Gift That Keeps On A Givin'

By Tony Ruggiero

She looked at the box, her eyes darting about in embarrassment. The thought had never entered into her mind about buying...Ray a gift. He was so...strange. And she didn't really know him. They just worked in the same place, her answering the phones to assist people with their computer problems. And he washed cars out back one day a week.

"It's just a little somethang for ya ma'am. Don't ya'll worry about not having a gift for the likes of me," he said in his heavy southern accent, which reminded her a bit of Fog Horn Leg Horn.

Then smiled a big tobacco stained grin, that made her stomach lurch.

"I's kinda' got used to it. Ya know Ma and Pa was right poor...."

"Well this is very thoughtful, Ray," Joan said, not able to stand his leering grin any longer.

She didn't know why, but there was something about him that she didn't...feel comfortable with. He was a country boy, plain and simple, right down to the dirt under his fingernails and his ball cap with the confederate flag.

The clock announced the one minute warning that their break was almost over and that it was time to return to their telephones. Joan sighed an inward sigh of relief, saved by the bell.

She turned to give a polite "bye" to Ray, and the smell of his breath assaulted her as he had moved in close, too close for her comfort.

"Don't ya'll go andit, gotta hold on till Christmas," he said and smiled with his yellow teeth, turned and shuffled away.

Joan unsettled by his closeness, willed her body to walk back toward her station. The gift in her hands felt unusually warm to the touch, in fact her whole body felt flushed from the close encounter. She shrugged, it was probably a little embarassment mixed with the fact that Ray made her skin crawl.

As Joan listened to her phone calls, the usual one after another of the daily onslaught, she found that she kept picking up the gift. She turned it over and over, her nails slowly slicing at the loose wrapping paper that encompassed it. She studied it, as she answered questions in her clear and annunciated English, that left no mistake what the person at the other end of the line needed to do to solve their problem.

The paper was becoming shredded and would fall off the box soon if she kept up the rough handling.

What was it Ray had said? Don'tit till Christmas, ma'am. But, Christmas was only two days away and Joan was curious of its contents. Besides, she still had time to get him something so that it would not seem so one sided, or that she was not considerate. She could hit Dollar General on the way home.

Finally she gave in andd the box.

"What the hell?" she said, shaking the box furiously.

"It's empty!" she said aloud, perplexed.

Her eyes narrowed, as she imagined she suddenly saw flames licking at the edge of the so-called gift. She dropped the box on the floor between her legs and just stared at it. She looked at her hands expecting to see singed flesh, but saw nothing. Her phone rang snapping her back to reality.

"Customer Support. Can I help you, sir or Ma'aaaam," she said, clutching her throat.

Had she actually just drawled "ma'am" like some country bumpkin? No, that was not possible. She had spent years getting rid of that accent!

It was the box, it had shaken her up that's all. And listening to that Redneck Ray.

She handled the customer call and politely hung up. Her phone rang again.

"This is Customa Support...can I help ya'll ?" Her voice! Oh my God! What was happening?

She stumbled through the call and finally finished with it. But, not before telling the customer "ya'll call back again, if youins should have any little old problems whatsoeva'."

This was like a nightmare.

She whispered the word "dog" under her breath, and nearly screamed as it came out "dawg".

The box! It had to be something with the box. She looked at the box again, there was a piece of paper in it that she had not noticed before. She grasped it andd it so that she could look at the print that was on it.

She read the print, "You know you're a Redneck if youpresents before Christmas."

It was one of those sheets from one of those supposedly funny calendars that gave the reader three hundred and sixty five days of such gems as "you know you're a redneck if you've ever cooked spam on the grill."

But, part of it had been lined out in red and replaced with other words. "You know you're a Redneck" was replaced with, "You will become a Redneck".

At that moment, Ray stuck his head into Joan's work area and smiled his huge grin. This time, Joan found his smile quite enticing.

Originally appeared in The Door to Worlds Imagined.

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