Title:Skipping Christmas
Author(s): John Grisham
Publisher(s): Del
Pages: 227
Year: 2004
Format: EPUB
Language: English
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He waited as long as he could, though he had not a second to spare. Darkness would hit fast at five-thirty, and in the frenzy of the moment Luther had tucked away somewhere the crazy notion of hanging ole Frosty under the cover of darkness. It wouldn$prime;t work, and he knew it, but rational thought was hard to grasp and hold.
He spent a few moments planning the project. An attack from the rear of the house was mandatory-no way would he allow Walt Scheel or Vic Frohmeyer or anybody else to see him in action.
Luther wrestled Frosty out of the basement without injuring either one of them, but he was cursing vigorously by the time they made it to the patio. He hauled the ladder from the storage shed in the backyard. So far he had not been seen, or at least he didn$prime;t think so. The roof was slightly wet with a patch of ice or two. And it was much colder up there. With a quarter-inch nylon rope tied around his waist, Luther crawled upward, catlike and terrified, over the asphalt shingles until he reached the summit. He peeked over the crown of the roof and peered below-the Scheels were directly in front of him, way down there. He looped the rope around the chimney, then inched back down, backward, until he hit a patch of ice and slid for two feet. Catching himself, he paused and allowed his heart to start working again. He looked down in terror. If by some tragedy he fell, he$prime;d free-fall for a very brief flight, then land among the metal patio furniture sitting on hard brick. Death would not be instant, no sir. He$prime;d suffer, and if he didn$prime;t die he$prime;d have a broken neck or maybe brain damage.
How utterly ridiculous. A Fifty-four-year-old man playing games like this. The most horrifying trick of all was to remount the ladder from above, which he managed to do by digging his fingernails into the shingles while dangling one foot at a time over the gutter. Back on the ground, he took a deep breath and congratulated himself for surviving the first trip to the top and back.
There were four parts to Frosty-a wide, round base, then a snowball, then the trunk with one arm waving and one hand on hip, then the head with his smiling face, corncob pipe, and black top hat. Luther grumbled as he put the damned thing together, snapping one plastic section into another. He screwed the lightbulb into the midsection, plugged in the eighty-foot extension cord, hooked the nylon rope around Frosty$prime;s waist, and maneuvered him into position for the ride up.
It was a quarter to five. His daughter and her brand-new fianc? would land in an hour and fifteen minutes. The drive to the airport took twenty minutes, plus more for parking, shuttling, walking, pushing, shoving.