Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (24 page)

At first he thought he was only imagining the sound of sleigh bells. He assured himself this auditory chimera merely reflected his guilt over...what? Something that refused all recollection. Though his life brimmed with joy and contentment, there was a leaden underlay of sorrow, of not-right-ness, to it.

What could be the cause?

Then the high jingle of bells, silver ones rounded into spheres and punched with an open cross, grew more distinct. Panic filled his heart. Santa Claus was coming and, as before, he would not be pleased. As before? The Easter Bunny could not recall a previous visit of any sort, yet his tummy hurt where a stab of hooves had once raised blood. His cheeks, across which the tip of an antler had seared a line of fire, likewise gave an involuntary twitch.

The ground trembled, a ring of light flared open, and through it dashed Lucifer carrying the somber old elf on his back.

Santa dismounted. “No need to panic,” he said upon seeing the Easter Bunny’s fright. “I’m not angry this time. You have a chair? No matter. Straw will suffice.” He made to sit on the ground.

“Outside, perhaps?”

“Good. After you, sir.”

The Easter Bunny hopped toward the entrance and found open ground among the trees in warm sunlight. An outcropping of rock afforded his visitor a seat. Nearby, Lucifer grazed among the mosses.

“Now sir, to my agenda.”

It felt odd to be called sir, but he said nothing.

“First, my thanks for your part in saving the child. Do I envy you your skill with insufferably dense and wayward mortals? Of course. I admit it. But each of us has talents uniquely ours, and no one can be all things to all people. So thank you. Wendy’s pleased, I’m pleased, and I’ll wager the Father’s pleased too. It’s always good to be on the side of the angels.

“That said, something about last night’s collaboration troubled me. I sensed your hurt and confusion at my mood. And you, no doubt, were aware of my upset over you. Well, I think you deserve to know why I harbor such a deep—oh, call it what it is—distaste and loathing for you.”

The Easter Bunny choked up. “You loathe me?”

Santa nodded and went straight to the point. “You want to know why. I’ll tell you. You once had genitals.”

“I did?”

“But God erased them, along with all recollection of your misdeeds. Once not so long ago, you were lonely and lustful, you envied me my wives, my community of helpers, and my association with a cheerier time of the year than Easter; though in the end, of course, the underlying message of Easter is far cheerier and of greater import than Christmas’s.” He raised a hand. “No point in arguing that. I was told that you had been transformed, your crotch gone smooth beneath the fur, your hormones no longer raging, your memories of that time expunged. I was not told I could not stir up those memories. Therefore, open your eyes and see.”

Santa, an intensity to his look, gestured at the clearing. There the Easter Bunny saw himself stare hungrily into bedroom windows; engage in his burrow with a wire-mesh doll-bunny named Petunia; attempt to seduce Mrs. Claus by showing her the woodland hut Santa had built for his trysts with the Tooth Fairy, and then showing her the self-same lovers going at it. There then arose the Tooth Fairy’s island, where he heard himself snitch on Santa, who had jilted her for Rachel McGinnis, and witnessed the Tooth Fairy’s savage rape of him to enlist his services as her henchmen and spy.

But the ultimate horror came in what he saw next. While Santa made his rounds the following Christmas Eve, he had hopped to the door of Santa’s cottage, knocked, and tried to seduce his wives with the quincunxial egg which was to have remained in place until the final trump. When that attempt failed—God forgive him—he had attacked them, doing harsh but immediately healed damage to the immortal Anya, then forcing his way into the mortal wife Rachel and wounding her nearly to the point of death, before Anya groin-kicked him gone and applied her healing tongue to the dying woman’s body.

The Easter Bunny froze at the magnitude of his misdeeds. For an eternity, he could not breathe.

Then, at last, the clearing returned, sunny but sinister now, his innocence gone. Santa’s goads had been sufficient to unlock his memory of those times, kidnapping Snowball, wiring her down in the burrow, and Santa’s rescue of her when Lucifer’s hooves and antlers had drawn his blood. He even recalled God’s visit to the burrow, his revelation of the Easter Bunny’s origins, and being neutered in his soft, vast, all-forgiving palm.

“I did that?” he said, choked with revulsion.

“Yes,” said Santa.

“So that’s why—”

“Yes, why you’re not welcome at the North Pole. And why I will never forgive you; nor should you ever ask to be forgiven. Truth be told,” admitted Santa, “it’s all I can do to keep from attacking you right now. But I must remind myself, I am the soul of generosity, you have been altered, and if we do not make at least half-hearted attempts at reconciliation, our hatred for past wrongs is bound to eat us up.”

When Santa got to his feet, the Easter Bunny flinched. “No, I won’t attack you, though a good bloodletting would probably benefit us both. You needed to know what prompted my behavior. I needed to tell you. May that knowledge fester in you. May the guilt of having committed the ultimate sin against a mortal eat at your soul. No, that’s not mine to say, though I’ve just said it. It’s the punisher in me that wants you to suffer.”

The Easter Bunny felt numb.

Lucifer came at Santa’s whistle. His sturdy back took the elf’s weight. “Sit with it. Let it sting. Think on what you have done. Think on it for all eternity.” He gripped the reins. Lucifer’s hooves tore at the turf. “There’s no call for us to meet again. You will not attempt it, nor shall I.” With that, Santa dug his heels lightly into Lucifer’s sides. Instantly they bounded into the air, dashed up over the treetops, and vanished from sight.

In the clearing, all was calm. But inside the Easter Bunny’s heart, nothing lived for a time but agitation and shame, shock and sorrow, misery and memory intermixed in a tale of unending woe. Yet even as he replayed those memories, they began to fade. For that was the way God had reshaped him, knowing that he could not long function with the knowledge of his great shame.

Did Santa just visit me? he wondered. Why yes. And we had the most pleasant time together. Or did we?

* * *

One night not long after, Santa and his wives were sitting up in bed reading.

“Did you hear something?” asked Rachel.

Santa closed his book about one finger and raised his head. The soft weeping that came to his ears withered his heart.

“Is that Wendy?” asked Anya, dumbfounded.

“It is,” said Rachel, throwing off the covers.

Santa and Anya shrugged into terrycloth robes over their flannel nightwear as Rachel drew her blue silk robe from the closet and cinched it tight about her nakedness. When she opened their bedroom door, her daughter’s sobs sounded with greater clarity.

Rachel rushed down the hall, Santa and Anya close behind. Her knock was light and quick and perfunctory. She turned the knob and they went inside.

Wendy sat trembling in bed. Overlapping scenes filled the room, scenes of violence and rejection, of parental love refused in God’s name, of taunting and baiting, of making boys and girls feel small, inconsequential, less than human. Santa witnessed men and women executed for homosexual acts in the savage nations of Iran, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia. A Jewish mother and father sat Shiva for their lesbian daughter, proclaiming in public that she was dead to them. From the walls babbled many tongues, but the universal tongue was intolerance.

Before Wendy spoke, Santa recalled Anya’s comment that she was so good-hearted, she wouldn’t be content with saving just one gay child.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said, choking back her tears, “we’ve got to
do
something about this.”

Santa stood appalled in the midst of a vast outpouring of human misery. How could he have any truck with these distasteful grown-ups? His rage tugged so fiercely at the Pan inside him that he feared its revival, even as he determined to ease Wendy’s sorrow. “How can once-innocent children,” he said, “grow so monstrous? Is there no justice in heaven? No, I will not blaspheme, no matter how strong the temptation. And I will not give vent to my anger, I swear I won’t.”

Rachel touched his arm. Santa turned and hugged her, then drew Anya into their embrace. He sobbed as scene after scene assaulted them, the misguided who put words into the Father’s mouth; confused kids trying to understand themselves; adults who denied even the slightest hint that they might harbor one iota of attraction to anybody of the same gender, even those who, with regular zest, masturbated and made no connection between touching their own divine organs and those similarly constituted on the body of another.

“But Wendy, what can I—?” said Santa in a panic. “How can I possibly do anything to...”

Wendy simply repeated softly, “We’ve got to
do
something about this.” But her meaning was clear. This was a plea to her stepfather, who stood helpless in the face of it all.

“Sweetheart,” said Rachel, “please remove these horrors.”

The glut of snide voices, the outpouring of fear and hatred and moral superiority in communities large and small, in cultures backward and advanced, in schools and churches and families—all of it ceased, the bedroom thrown abruptly into moonlight and silence.

Rachel swept Wendy up in her arms. “You mustn’t expect the impossible of your stepfather. He can only do so much. What we all must do,” she said, as Wendy sniffed back her tears, “is to bear witness, be kind, and speak out when the chance arises.”

Santa could tell Rachel was just being the comforting parent, helpless, seeming wise, but feeling far from comforted inside, the situation beyond her control.

Then he and Anya joined them, and oh dear God, he found himself saying, out of innocent desperation, “I’ll think of something. I will, Wendy. Your daddy will think of something. You’ll see.”

He wanted to stop talking, but he kept babbling away. His wives sat on the bed stunned. Wendy gazed at him with renewed hope in her eyes. And panic rose in his heart and joy too, and on he babbled like the perfect fool he was.

Chapter 24. Might the World Be

Utterly Transformed?

AS TIME WENT ON, GREGOR FELT THINGS start to bend to his control. He and his brothers had observed fewer incidents of nosepicking. He suspected, of course, that the practice had gone underground, that the perpetrators of this outrage against respectability had become far more savvy about who might be watching. Eliminating the filthy habit must remain his goal. But dampening that peculiar pleasure by fear of exposure, keeping his fellow elves on tenterhooks, was a beginning.

Imagine, then, Gregor’s shock and dismay when the fates gave him the chance to observe Fritz and Herbert engaged together.

Thuswise did it happen.

Across the commons from the stables, past the skating pond, lies a stretch of woods especially thick with trees. Gregor had taken to making his circuitous way there, not beelining, for he did not want his prints in the snow to reveal his destination. So he proceeded roundabout. If the curious cared at all, they most likely suspected he headed toward the Chapel.

Thus it was that, perched upon his favorite boulder and concealed by generous pine boughs thick with needles, Gregor cogitated over power, how it could be extended, how he might claim still more of Santa’s unexercised authority—all the while picking his nose and meticulously cleaning his fingers with tongue and teeth. It was an utterly private exercise. No one need ever know. Besides, his mucus tasted good. And though he would never confess it to a soul, transgressing in secret was a thrill and a half.

Far off, a branch snapped underfoot.

Gregor froze. His busy hand shot to his lap. The sounds grew closer, softer sounds coming into his hearing as well, a voice, a throat being cleared. Then moving patches of green, exposed, hidden, exposed. There were two of them, not yet near enough to identify. He vowed not to move a muscle, lest he compromise his concealment. The approaching elves, after all, had sharp eyes too. And Gregor had no desire to be discovered.

“Nearer,” he mouthed. A face glimpsed, a turn of the head, and Gregor recognized Fritz and Herbert. Fritz, Santa’s favorite, who for no reason at all enjoyed the respect a leader deserves. They’re here to badmouth me, he thought. That’s what happens to the powerful. The envious tear us down. They rant and rave against us in the safety of backbiting isolation. What else would bring these two out here?

A snowball’s throw away, they stopped. Fritz glanced about nervously. Gregor could only discern part of him, so thick was the foliage. “It’s all right, Herbert,” he said. “No one can see us. Relax, okay? Good. You go first.” Then Herbert moved smack into his line of sight.

What Gregor observed next disgusted him.

Was there no end to the debauchery of these creatures? His gaze riveted on activities Fritz and Herbert had meant to hide from condemnatory eyes. As well they might. He was appalled and elated. God had set him here to sit in judgment on these elves. And judge them he would, Santa’s favorite and his mute companion in sin. Right here and now, unbeknownst to them, would he judge them; and then publicly, shaming them before their brethren.

Scarcely did Gregor breathe, so intently did he observe the unholy acts in which they engaged. Not a day would pass before he exposed them to public ridicule. He had always suspected Fritz of sowing dissension, of undercutting his efforts. Now the dissenter’s voice would be stilled, Fritz shamed into the silence his friend had been steeped in from birth.

When at last the two miscreants straightened their clothing and headed home, Gregory dared lift a finger to one nostril and cogitate with brutish ferocity, picking and tasting and cobbling together the withering remarks he would make on the morrow.