Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (4 page)

“But I looked deeper into his future, and what I left out was pretty disturbing. Since Christmas, I’ve gone back and looked again. I don’t like what I see.”

Santa guessed she had ventured into his teen years, or worse, his years as a grown-up. He wanted no part in these visions, but Wendy’s well-being trumped his distaste. “Perhaps,” he said, “you should show me.”

“Yes,” said Wendy, relieved. “I’d like that.”

She nodded toward the far wall. Out sprang Jamie as he was, an eight-year-old on a banana bike, pumping through his neighborhood, the deafening scatter of dead leaves beneath his wheels. He was bright, wiry, and full of energy. It was clear why he had made Wendy’s list. There followed short scenes that buttressed that view: Jamie playing a halting violin piece for his mother’s birthday, astonishing his third-grade teacher with the wisdom of an answer, soothing a little girl with a scraped knee until her parents rushed to her aid.

“Okay, now watch.”

Wendy gave a barely perceptible nod.

* * *

In the moments that followed, Wendy watched Santa lose his innocence. It was heart-wrenching. She berated herself, yet she went on, needing to share her terrible knowledge and to seek her stepfather’s guidance.

First she showed him a schoolyard skirmish, more hurtful to Jamie emotionally than physically. “Sissy Jamie, Sissy Jamie,” taunted the boys. A fifth grader, Freddy Maxon, held him down and pinched his ears.

“But I visited little Freddy’s house,” said Santa, the wind gone from his sails. “I visited all their houses.”

“There were more such incidents,” said Wendy. “Then this.”

Dusk. An older taller Jamie, carrying a bag of groceries, walked past a vacant lot. “He’s twelve.” The lot wasn’t so vacant after all. “These three kids hang out together. The one in front is Matt Beluzzo. Held back twice, a ninth grader here, sixteen.”

Jamie looked up, startled. When he made to bolt, the two others grabbed him from behind and his bag spilled onto the sidewalk. Matt jabbed a finger at Jamie’s face. “You’re a queer boy,” he said.

“I’m not,” protested Jamie.

“Yeah, that’s it, only a queer boy would brownnose the fuckin’ teachers like you do. You got a queer boy’s name. Not like me. Matt. A good, solid name, as solid as my fist. You like lessons. I hate ’em. But I got a lesson for you. Right here and now.”

Then the beating began.

Wendy shut it off. “Daddy? Are you all right?”

“You see why I prefer the company of young children.” He pulled out a handkerchief, blew his nose, and dried his eyes. “But I can take it. Show me more.”

Wendy told him that Jamie’s face was bloodied and bruised and he walked with difficulty for days, but no bones were broken. Beluzzo had threatened worse if he told, and Jamie hadn’t told. Wendy brought up Jamie’s father, red-faced, standing before his son, shouting at him, “You gotta stand up to bullies. They’re cowards. They deserve reform school is what they deserve. You tell me their names and I’ll sic the cops on them.”

“Walter Stratton, all grown up,” said Santa with scorn.

“He means well,” said Wendy, “but he’s...he’s distant from Jamie. A sports fanatic. Closer to his other son.”

“The older brother. Kurt’s a great kid.”

Wendy agreed. Then she said, “There are three critical factors that lead to...to what I’ll show you at the end. The beating was one of them. The second was the cumulative effect of hearing this next man Sunday after Sunday.”

Before them thundered a tall, thin, white-haired preacher, mute now, behind a podium. “Ty Taylor. Over there, seventh pew on the right, are the Strattons, Kurt on the aisle, then Dad, Mom, and Jamie.”

“Ty was a nice little boy, very neat, happy, and obedient. I put a rocking horse, a cowboy hat, and a cap pistol under the tree when he was seven. What’s he all worked up about?”

“This.” Wendy turned up the gain.

“I see before me a vast multitude of families,” said Ty Taylor, “the proud bulwark of the church and of what’s left of virtue in this sad secular society. But the family is crumbling. And upon the sand of weakened families, the house known as the United States of America shall crumble and fall. Unless, my friends, unless righteous followers of Christ hold back the floodwaters and shore up the levees of this nation’s moral might, unless we renovate and rebuild in God’s image.

“Gays and lesbians, they call themselves. But call them what they are. Sodomites, sinners, sheep strayed into the wolfish wilds of homosexual misbehavior. They have the temerity to tout their ungodly ways, strutting and preening like peacocks, and setting up so-called churches of their own. But creatures of Satan can only worship Satan, no matter how hard they pretend otherwise. They prattle in vain, these deviants from the straight and narrow. Come Judgment Day, they shall be harshly judged. In the days of glory, they will not be with us in heaven. No, for they shall burn eternally in the bowels of hell, the all-consuming fires of their infinite suffering declaiming the glory of their creator and redeemer, whose words they heeded not, though they were given every chance to repent and reform.”

Wendy muted the preacher. “There’s lots more.”

“They suffer this man to preach?” There was an ache in Santa’s voice that touched Wendy’s heart.

“They can’t get enough of him,” she said. “His is the best-attended evangelical church in their community. But look.” Wendy gestured, and she and Santa and the bed glided down the center aisle. Jamie’s family came closer and then his face. It spoke volumes.

“I’m guessing,” said Santa softly, “the Strattons are faithful churchgoers.”

“Every Sunday without fail. Tearing down homosexuals is Ty’s favorite tactic. It fills the coffers twice as fast as his railings against abortion. Daddy, you’re so pale. I have to show you two more scenes, but I can do it another time.”

“No, go on. You see why I have no truck with grown-ups. How far they fall from childhood. It’s an eternal mystery to me, why they fail to remain wrapped in divinity, turning away from creativity and kindness. Go on, Wendy. Show me the rest.”

“All right.” The church vanished. “Four years pass and Jamie’s in the eleventh grade.” The den where Wendy had watched him practice the violin appeared, an easy chair, a couch, a TV set, and a paint-by-number harbor scene on a wood-paneled wall. Jamie, a handsome sixteen, sat in shame on the couch, his hands clasped between his knees. His parents stood over him.

“You are
not
gay,” his mother said, rigid and pasty-faced.

“Come to your senses, son,” said his father. “Don’t upset your mother with such talk.”

“It’s disgusting,” she said. “
You’re
disgusting. Who recruited you? Some older boy? I’ll claw his eyes out. You are
not
this way. You’re my son, you hear me? God will hurl you into hell and you’ll burn forever. Do you want that? Answer me!”

“No, Mom.”

“Walter, talk some sense into your son.”

Wendy let the scene play on in pantomime.

Santa’s voice was husky and soft. “Kathy’s her name. Her last name was MacLaren when I visited her house, Christmas Eves long ago. She loved floppy dolls. She hugged her stuffed cat Jeffrey until he was lumpy and faded. Back then, Kathy wore pigtails and beamed with joy.”

“In her own way, she loves her sons. But she loves God more.”

Santa laughed. “Some God.”

Wendy replaced the den scene with an overpass across a highway. The traffic below was busy and fast, the sound muted.

“They took him out of school and sent him to an intensive one-week cure-all in the Adirondacks. A stern-faced counselor berated him, threatened hellfire, and mocked his tears and protests.”

Jamie appeared along the sidewalk. When he reached the center of the overpass, he shrugged off his backpack, unzippered it, and removed two apples.

“The cure-all people starved him. Several times a night, they woke him with harsh lights and barked orders to get down and do fifty push-ups. They showed him photos of attractive boys and slapped him hard. They showed him prim-faced girls in their Sunday best and gave him ice cream. In the end he pretended conversion. They let him go.”

Jamie stared intently along the interstate. He dropped an apple over the side, following its fall.

“What’s he doing?” asked Santa.

“He’s gauging when to drop the apple so it hits the roadway just in front of an oncoming big rig.”

Jamie raised the second apple, that same intent stare. He held it over the parapet and let it go.

“You don’t mean he’s...”

Jamie hoisted himself to a sitting position facing traffic and watched the flow. Wendy floated herself and Santa over the parapet and down into traffic. They were peering into the cabin at a driver, whose body tensed as his eyes went wide. Then she wiped away the screech of brakes and the expletive coming from him and his muscular arms stiff on the steering wheel. “That’s Ernie Strauss, barreling toward New Mexico with a cargo of washer-dryer combinations behind him. By some miracle, he didn’t die. Nor did he cause a pile-up.”

“I should have come to you sooner.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“No, it’s okay. I—”

“I’m so sorry.” Wendy could no longer keep from crying. Santa seemed broken, like her old neighbor Mrs. Fredericks’ husband. She had done this. She had taken him from joviality to shock and despair.

He held her tight. “You mustn’t blame yourself. Whatever is bothering you you’ve got to share with me or Anya or your mom. Always, always. That’s all we want.”

That freed something in her and she sobbed against Santa’s chest until her throat hurt. “We’ve got to
do
something to rescue him. Can we, Daddy? Can we save his life?”

“Yes,” said Santa, without hesitation. “We’ve got to. But I don’t see how. We’re up here. We deliver toys and wonder. What can we do? I don’t yet know the answer, but we will do something. I’ll discuss it with Anya and Rachel. We’ll put our minds to it. We’ll devise a plan.”

Santa’s resolve touched her. To him, every life was precious. In her heart of hearts, Wendy knew he could work wonders. She trusted him to find a way to alter Jamie Stratton’s future. But she also steeled herself for disappointment. Though she and Santa touched the lives of children intimately in many ways, there seemed an unbridgeable gap between this world and the world of mortals.

Still, for a time, Wendy took comfort in the assured embrace of her father, and hoped for the best.

Chapter 4. Parental Discussions and Mullings

RACHEL HAD NEVER SEEN SANTA so distraught, pacing before them in the bedroom. His red robe flapped impatiently against his ankles.

 “Oh, Claus,” said Anya, “you promised to do something?”

“That was foolish, wasn’t it? Yet somehow I felt, beyond all reason, that a door will open, a path unfold. I haven’t been shown such horrors for nothing.”

Rachel wisely held her tongue until Anya was done. She was the reconciler. She patched things up in their threesome. Not that Santa and Anya had violent disagreements. But Santa’s Pan side flared up, as did Anya’s fir nymph, more frequently than either of them liked to admit.

“You’ll disappoint her,” said Anya, propped against a pillow in her flannel nightgown and wire-rimmed glasses. “Wendy trusts the great Santa Claus to figure out how to spare this little boy his fate. Well, forgive an old lady her frankness, but preventing the suffering of one child among millions is not what you’re here for.”

“Anya, please.”

“You make and distribute toys. You’re the scent of pine needles and the glitter of tinsel. You’re anticipation, the jingle of bells and the brief sorrow at just missing your visit because they can’t keep their eyelids open. But really, Claus, saving a teenager from suicide? How? Why?”

“Because Wendy pleaded. And because I knew right then that it’s possible. If I had shrugged and said, ‘I’m sorry, Wendy, I can’t,’ it would have been a lie.”

Anya glanced at Rachel for support, then back at Santa. “It defies logic.”

“Precisely,” he said. “There’s no logic to it at all. Might she be disappointed? She might. But I don’t think so. I think, against all logic, that there’s something Wendy and I can do to save this boy.”

“Even supposing you can, where will it end? Do you think Wendy will stop at one? No, there will be scores, hundreds of little boys and girls whose futures need brightening. Perhaps you should promise to make everything rosy for all the people in the whole world, now and to come, in perpetuity. Perhaps
you’re
the Savior after all; it isn’t the Son of God at all. Forgive me, I’m being sarcastic. Sarcasm isn’t much help.”

“No,” said Santa, “I understand.”

The argument’s sharp edges had started to dull, and Rachel saw her entree: “I’m concerned mostly, I guess, about Wendy. Then I remind myself that inside she’s seventeen. And for all its heartache, seventeen's pretty resilient. I agree, Anya, that there’s no way Santa can do anything.” She looked at her husband. “But, I also agree with
you
that something must be done.”

The hint of a smile played upon Santa’s face, not in triumph over Anya but in appreciation for Rachel.

“It seems to me,” she went on, “that you and Wendy are too close to the shock of what you’ve witnessed to arrive at an easy conclusion. These are future events. If indeed there
is
a way to avert them, you have time to figure out how.”

Santa, considering her words, approached the bed. He sat on its edge and took his wives’ hands. “You’re right of course. And Anya, you’re right too. Nothing either one of you has said hasn’t already occurred to me. This question needs sleeping on. Maybe I’m deluding myself. But I’m going to bang my head against the heavens anyway. I’ll either have a breakthrough or give up in defeat. But I’ll be okay, and so will Wendy, if it comes to that.”

“If it’s any consolation,” said Anya, “I hope I’m wrong.”