Burned On Christmas

It was what someone looking from the outside, might think of as the ideal little Christmas house to celebrate in. Looking back, I'm guessing it to between maybe 1500 square feet.Two levels.

Lights ran all along the little yellow house and trailed the white picket fence. It was just one of many middle class homes that comprised the housing development I will give the pseudonym "Heavenly Vistas." Though the name was fancier and the vistas were hardly that...
it was brown, parched, desert flat lands with a low hanging cloud of smog from a nearby factory.
When it wasn't raining water, it was raining ashes.

No one suspected, Bernie ( a pseudonym and raging alcoholic) had taken up residence in Heavenly Vistas. He was just another working class schmuck driving another American-made lifted pick-up with big tires, hot rims, a loaded gun rack and a carton of brewsky in the cooler. Back at home, there was enough Jack Daniels in the basement to outlast any apocalypse.

Both he and the missus, paid their taxes, though not without his annual rants and raves. They kept their yards mowed, their wood decks sealed every two years, their sidewalks swept, their delivered newspaper picked up at precisely 8:00 am every morning by the missus in her fuzzy baby blue robe, her hair in pink curlers, her feet in bunny slippers.
Their garbage cans hid in their own little sheds. They had two children, one 11, a girl and one 15, a boy ---who took the garbage cans and school buses to and from the curb.

In this true but sad tale, I take you back a few Christmas years ago, when said wife tried to make everything perfect for her husband, said Bernie -- who unfortunately had one too many shots of Jaggermeister on his way home from the construction site at the local bar.
And who could blame him? It was Christmas Eve.
I could blame him, however, for his next moves...
like driving home loaded instead of calling his wife.
Or stopping at his mistresses' house. She knew how to work his mistletoe. And she gave him a few more shots for the road.

About midnight, the Bernie decided to call his wife and said he was almost home.
He claimed he had car trouble and then lost his cell under the car so there was no way he could call earlier.

"Liar liar, pants on fire!" her son heard his mother tease her Bernie as the son secretly listened to her phone conversation from his doorway.

The wife said later, on her death bed, she could tell Bernie was buzzed when they spoke.
When the investigator asked why she knew he was "buzzed,"she said he kept referring to the Christmas tree as the Christmas Bee. And he was totally lit.
While the police investigator -- and I -- found our usual brand of sick humor/irony in her statement, we were certain the wife did not.

Regardless. Back to the car. Christmas Eve.
The husband, A.K.A. Bernie, hung up the phone with his wife and decided to light up a cigarette at a red light just one last time for St Nick's sake.
He told his wife he quit at Thanksgiving, though he lied.
He could say he picked up the odor at the company party.
He could say he couldn't help himself and bought those one-tubers.
He told all his fellow renegade smokers all the excuses he told his wife.
Worse case scenario, he'd fess up, tell the truth. He had a million freedoms and not a worry in the world.

"What's she gonna' go do.... kill me?" he may have thought, as he lit that last cigarette and dragged deep.

The red light turned green just as the lit cigarette dropped in his crotch.
That crotch of his pants rapidly ignited.
Under the pants was a pair "christmas grinch" boxer shorts, (made in china, go figure).
The boxer shorts blew up like a firecracker just about the same time the front end of the car entered the Bernie's family's from living room tree with the tree in it.
The car hit it all..branches, ornaments, lights and the very old fashioned candles with real flames attached to the fragile arms of the trees.
Fuel linked from the tank of the car.
Bernie flew out of the car, stopped, dropped and rolled....
but it was too late.
Bernie went up in flames them smoke.

Between the Christmas light trails outside and inside... the lights that ran along gutters, doors, up the staircases and mantles...pools of gas on the floor...the house was a total loss.
Even if the firetrucks could get there sooner they probably couldn't have helped the property.
The good news is... the kids lived.

In this investigator's opinion, nothing could saved the Bernie or his wife once Bernie drank and drove.
Bernie's wife was also helpless despite the airlifted after being impacted by the car while she placed a cashmere sweater for Bernie beneath the tree.
She died three days later.
I will spare you the details of her slow death because I have to sleep tonight. And so do you.

Bernie died immediately. However, he might have survived longer. Or never ignited at all, had his blood alcohol not been over three times the legal limit.
The M.E. told me, "he self-immolated"

The two remaining children, who were mercilessly upstairs when the hit happened, received survivors benefits thanks to the attorneys who fought the insurance companies. More important they found refuge in the loving arms of the dead mother's sister and her husband. Neither of whom drink or smoke.