All the following is true as it was told to me and from the evidence that I saw after the fact. It is about a couple. We'll call the guy Jim and the girl Kathy. She was an architect and built her own house, from the design and drafting right down to the general contracting. The two hooked up when Jim rented a room from Kathy, but it only lasted perhaps a year. They went their separate ways, had other partners, then came back together about a decade later.
By that time, Jim was building his own house, way in the woods as opposed to Kathy's in-town residence. They became a couple, even having children together. Kathy went so far as to add a second floor to Jim's cabin. Jim barely had a chance to move in, and they were raising a family together at Kathy's place. So he often tried renting his cabin.
They each had families who wanted to see the grandchildren but had very different traditions. Kathy's was large, old, and southern, opening up the big house just for the holidays for a big gathering. Jim's was smaller, more intimate, and this could lead to conflict, as they never had the grandchildren over for Christmas. The compromise was that the kids spent some time on Christmas Eve with Jim's parents, but that didn't always go over well with Kathy. She wanted that day for her and the kids.
So, in the late 90s, Jim took the kids over to his parents for a couple of hours, but Kathy was determined to cook the big meal for that day, staying home instead. It was dark out, as it is that time of the year, so she lit candles to make her custom-built house even more festival. She lit a lot of candles; later the estimate was somewhere between 50 and 250. Then she discovered that she was missing some ingredients for supper, and ran to the store quickly.
When she returned, the house was engulfed in flames. The fire department was called, as was Jim's parents. It was too late; the house went up, in no small part aided by all the flaming tapers. So Jim and Kathy had the distinct pleasure of spending that Christmas day boarding up the windows of her house. I know, because I helped.
Kathy spent the next year fighting the insurance company, suing the Chapel Hill Fire Department, and rebuilding her house. This time, it was even bigger and better. The family moved to a tiny basement apartment that she usually rented, since it was undamaged. She couldn't stand Jim's place, even though she designed the upper floor, turning it into a spacious house.
All families have that special Christmas when everything goes wrong; it's the one we tend to forget about, instead eternally hoping for that perfect Norman Rockwell moment. Jim and Kathy were unique; they had more than their share go kablooie. The very next year, disaster struck again, in a very different way. This time, it was Jim's house way out in the woods. To make some money and keep the place from being ransacked, he rented it to a long string of tenants. His neighbor was the general contractor who built the place; he helped keep an eye on the place. It was an interesting bunch of people.
First, the house was way off in the woods, over a dozen miles from town, so only certain types liked it in the wilderness. Second, Jim had standards, so that made things even more difficult. There were slobs, weirdos, deadbeats, and a few who just disappeared just before the rent was due. Renters came and went in a steady stream until the general contract neighbor had three Latino laborers rent the place, as a favor to Jim. They were good tenants; the place was clean, they paid on time, and their were no wild parties.
In fact, these three guys sent most of their money back to their families in whatever countries they had came from, so there was little left over for mischief. But it was the holiday season; on Christmas Eve they decided to go out and celebrate in some country establishments. What happened next has never been established exactly, but it seems an argument ensued. The three left the bar but were followed. Shots were fired into a moving car. The two in the front were okay. The man in the back was struck and killed.
The survivors fled back to Jim's shack in the woods and started packing. They dragged the body out of the back seat and onto the front wooden porch. Ready to leave, but they were owed one last paycheck by the general contractor who had arranged for the trio to rent the cabin. So at midnight Christmas morning they banged on the door, asking for their money. The contractor was happy to write their checks - after all, disappearing back south of the border was not uncommon, especially around the holidays - but asked enough questions to get a confession out of the two.
'If you leave now,' he told them, 'All suspicion for the murder of your friend will fall on the two of you. If you are truly innocent, as I believe that you are, you must call the sheriff's office.' With that, the two decided to stay and the 911 call was made. He also called Jim, the owner of the residence.
It was two in the morning. It can be presumed that Jim was nestled in bed with visions of sugar plums floating in his head, rudely awakened from his slumber. Vaguely told that there was trouble at his place. He had to get out there ASAP. Dressed, he made the dark trip in his cold Volkswagen Beetle. Arriving before dawn, the woods were filled with flashing lights from patrol cars and ambulances. He stumbled through the woods, made his way past the outer police tape, and found his neighbor.
Jim tried to get some information from his neighbor, who instead put his arm around him and led him to the steps of the house, leading to the porch. The body was gone, but behind the second layer of police tape was the chalk outline of a body, with a red stain sitting in the middle of the torso. Jim was both confused and horrified, looking to his neighbor for some explanation.
All the man said was, 'Merry Christmas.'
It might seem somewhat crude to remember these harsh incidents at this very moment. Kathy died in a car accident half a dozen years later, and Jim recently joined her due to a heart attack. None of that's the point of this story. Frankly, they are both beyond being embarrassed.
The moral is; their bond survived these calamities. Events like these could have broken them apart, but it only seemed to make them stronger. And today, that bond, that love lives on, in their children, with their family, and with all the friends who have gathered. That is something worth celebrating and remembering in these fractured times.
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