Page 71 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

“What’s the idea here?” he asks.

I point to the back of the stall and the board covered in images of pig butts with curly tails hooked onto them. “You just have to fire the Super Soaker and knock as many tails off in your color as you can. If you knock off someone else’s color, it counts for them.”

“Time’s up,” Jerry announces from behind the stand. “I’ll count up the tails.”

“Is this here every year?” Gabe asks.

“Yup. Jerry never misses. There was one time, aboutfive years ago, when he hurt a hand in a cobbling incident and had to have some help. But he still did the announcing and ran the timer.”

“Cobbling?” Gabe looks like it’s a word he’s never said before.

“Yeah, he has the cobbler’s shop in town. He repairs shoes.”

“Sometimes this place makes me feel like I’ve been transported back in time to about 1957.”

“And the winner is…” Jerry pauses for effect. “Blue tails!”

He reaches for a hot pink plush piglet and hands it to the tween girl who’s jumping up and down.

When the space clears, Gabe and I step up for our turn.

“Anyone else prepared to take on these two gallant competitors?” Jerry cries, in true fairground roll-up, roll-up style.

“Oooh, let’s see if Gabe Woods aims as well at pig butts as he does at the Washington Capitals’ goal,” a voice behind us says.

“Gabe Woods?” says another. “As in the New York Apollos’ Gabe Woods?”

Quite a crowd gathers behind us amid a lot of murmuring while Jerry refills two Super Soakers, then hands them to us.

“Are you seriously going to play against me?” Gabe asks.

That smirk. Honest to God, the things that smirk does to me.

“Of course,” I tell him. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

“Fear of embarrassment?” He glances behind us. “Publicembarrassment.”

“The young lady is aiming for yellowtails,” Jerry declares like a nineteenth-century ringmaster. “The gentleman for green.”

He grabs his pig-shaped kitchen timer and twists it to one minute.

“Sixty seconds on the clock,” he announces.

“On your marks…”

Gabe makes a dramatic show of setting his feet as if he’s lining up for the perfect golf shot.

“Get set…”

We aim our water guns at the wall of pig butts.

“Go!” Jerry releases the timer and Gabe and I get to squirting at the tails.

He gets two right off the bat.

“Your gun is more powerful,” I complain as my water stream dips before it even reaches the board.

“A bad player always blames his tools,” Gabe says.

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