The Poacher
It was so damned cold outside he couldn’t feel his toes or his nose. He didn’t know why the owners of the tree lot even bothered keeping the place open. Christmas was in four days. Anyone who hadn’t bought a tree yet wasn’t going to buy one at all. Besides, the only trees left were small, sparse, and dry. They’d make lousy Christmas trees. The only thing they’d be good for was firewood. To hide their decrepit condition, the boss had handed him a case of flocking spray and told him to cover the trees with the fake snow.
While the lot’s owner watched television, drank whiskey, and kept warm in his RV, the Poacher was out here like an idiot in a Santa hat with a plastic sign that read ALL TREES 50% OFF! He’d tried spinning the thing like his boss told him to, but the sign had gone as haywire as a helicopter hit by enemy fire. It whirled into traffic, nearly causing an accident. After riding half a block on the windshield of a pickup truck, the sign had blown off and promptly been run over by a city bus, another pickup, and some hipster in a Prius with a handlebar mustache, a flannel shirt, and five cat decals on his back window. The Poacher had risked his life retrieving the sign from the road, wiped the tread marks off as best he could, and settled for moving the sign left to right in his hands.
A rattling sound came from the RV and his boss stuck his head out the window. “Don’t just stand there!” he hollered. “Trying dancing or something!” He slid the window shut with a slam.
Dancing? What did the guy expect? The only dancing the Poacher had ever done was at the high school prom, pressed up against Vicki during a slow song with his hand cupped over her butt cheek. But if that asshole wanting dancing, the Poacher would give him dancing.
He started by doing his best impersonation of Kevin Bacon in Footloose, and segued into Napoleon Dynamite. When he was done with that, he went full-on John Travolta, starting with the pointed disco finger from Saturday Night Fever, moving on to a Grease montage, attempting a one-person two-step à la Urban Cowboy, and ending with the dance he’d performed with Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, making a V with his fingers and sliding it past his eyes while shaking his butt. The warden in charge of movie night had been a huge Travolta fan. The Poacher had seen every one of his movies at least three times.
When he tired of the Travolta shtick, he grabbed a couple cans of flocking spray and danced around, shaking them. The metal balls inside gave off a clankety-clank as he shook the cans. Cars slowed as drivers tried to get a better look at him. A couple honked, and one issued a wolf whistle out his window. “Shake it, baby!”
The burner phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. He was moving so fast he hardly noticed at first. He stopped and closed his eyes, both grateful and ashamed.
He pulled the phone from his pocket and jabbed the button to take the call. “Yeah?”
Two minutes later, he hurled the sign toward the RV like a Frisbee. As the sign slid under the vehicle, he climbed into his pickup and started the engine.
His boss poked his head out the window again. “Where in the Sam Hill do you think you’re going?”
The Poacher ripped the Santa hat from his head and tossed it out the window. “I quit!” Not that it much mattered. The job was scheduled to end in four days anyway. He punched the gas and roared out of the lot.