Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (8 page)

Chapter 8. Preparing the Elves

AT THE FIRST DULL POP, Santa’s helpers looked up from their tinkering. Though muffled by the outer walls of the workshop, it sounded to Fritz like a pine knot exploding in a fireplace. Odd. But one couldn’t stop making toys at every peculiar sound. Fritz returned his attention to the clay gnome in his hand and dipped his horsehair brush into a pot of crimson paint.

Then came a louder snap and then the loudest, a great
crrr-ack,
as though the heart of a great old oak had burst for sheer joy.

Workers near the back windows rose to peer outside. One by one, others joined them, pointing and talking among themselves until their excited jabbering brought Fritz off his stool to find out what all the palaver was about.

Playhouses? On platforms? Absurd.

But when he reached the picture window, what he glimpsed through a bobbing sea of heads in a fresh field of fallen snow, were indeed three perfect pinewood platforms, twenty feet square. And upon each was...well that was difficult to describe. Furnished bedrooms. Modern American, one smaller than the others, which were master bedrooms with built-in sink areas to one side.

The view into them seemed odd. Then Fritz saw why. Though the bedroom walls were transparent, suggestions of wallpaper, posters, or paintings, or the backs of dressers, partly blocked the eye’s access to the interior.

“What’s all the fuss?” Rachel, having heard the commotion from Santa’s office, appeared behind them. “My goodness! Someone’s been slipping into magic time, I think.”

But no one had, and all were quick to say so.

“Let’s take a look,” she said.

The elves dutifully followed her outside and around the workshop. There they mounted the steps on all sides of the platforms and examined the bedrooms. Each ceiling had great steel hinges on one side. “Hey, look,” said Friedrich the globe maker. “The walls are on tracks.”

Indeed they were. At each corner stood a strong steel bar, twice as tall as the bedrooms themselves. The walls fit snug into well-oiled grooves in these bars. With the touch of a finger and slight pressure upward anywhere on the surface, each wall rose soundlessly along its runners and stayed upraised until similarly directed to descend. In the bright sunlight, twelve walls slid up and down, up and down, the elves standing on one another’s shoulders and stretching tippytoe to maneuver them.

Speculation ran rampant. Had Santa slipped into magic time and built them? He had, after all, built the cozy hut in the woods far off behind the elves’ quarters for reasons none of them could quite recall, though later it had served as a honeymoon retreat for Santa and his wives.

Who else could have done this? Rachel had no idea, and Anya, joining them from the cottage, came up blank as well.

Then Ernst, a thin-fingered button sewer with needle eyes and a nimble wit, raised a piping shout: “Here come Wendy and Santa, back from their walk. I bet they’ll know.”

And they swarmed off to accost the returning pair.

* * *

Santa and Wendy had chattered nonstop on their way home, bright with ideas as to how best to nudge those steeped in bigotry back onto long-abandoned paths of righteousness.

Through a copse of trees, they caught glimpses of the bedroom replicas and the buzzing multitude poking and probing at them. And when the elves saw them approaching and ran to meet them, Santa’s excitement redoubled.

Raising his hands as though to ward off an attack, he said with a laugh, “All in good time, lads. Talk to Wendy, why don’t you? It’s her doing.” Then he slipped through the crowd to kiss Anya and Rachel, encircle their waists, and draw them aside. Wendy began, “You’re not going to believe this,” at which the elves burst into babble.

Santa tuned them out. “Oh my darlings,” he confided, “we were visited by an angel, the archangel Michael, to be precise.”

Rachel put a hand to her face.

“Land sakes, Claus,” said Anya, “is it about your prayers?”

“It is indeed.” He repeated Michael’s every word, relating what stance he took, what expressions passed over his face, how unbearably beautiful he had been, how utterly sad and joyful they grew as the archangel left them. “But now I’d better address the troops.”

They returned to the buzzing throng about Wendy, who was laughing and clapping her hands and conveying, by mimicked word and gesture, the task the archangel had charged them with.

Santa bounded onto the central platform, where the sunlight struck bright and bold. “Friends, colleagues, brothers,” said he. “We have been blessed yet again by the Holiest of Holies. There are no guarantees in this business of salvation. But we will do our utmost to save the life of Jamie Stratton, a wonderful nine-year-old, gifted, thoughtful, as gentle and generous as one could wish. We shall bend all of our persuasive powers toward convincing four mortals to awaken, in an area where they wander blinded, bewildered, and astray, to the divine generosity that once burned bright at the hearth-center of their souls. They slumber, but shall be roused. They hurt the sinned against, but shall themselves be healed. They dare to denigrate God’s rich and varied creation, but soon they shall exalt it, they shall revel in it, they shall burst the bonds of wretched habit and form new behaviors, boldly challenging the waywardness of similarly straying mortals.”

Though the elves cheered often as he spoke, Santa sensed a kind of disquiet, or discomfort, perhaps even disunity among them. Not of course about sexual orientation. There wasn’t a prejudicial bone in their bodies. But something was in the air. Should he probe? Best not. Whatever it was, they would sort it out on their own. They always did. It always proved to be something trivial, blown out of proportion and quickly faded. Barging in might only fan the flames.

“What I have stated,” he went on, “is our grand goal, mine and Wendy’s. Aim high and your arrow hits a target far more distant than if your bow arm declines at a more modest angle. Or as Holy Scripture says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

“The bedroom behind me belongs to Matt Beluzzo, a twelve-year-old whose life is a war zone and who bullies children who have it better than he. Him shall we first visit. On my right is Jamie’s parents’ bedroom, on my left that of Ty Taylor, a preacher whose prejudicial lenses distort and discolor the truths at the heart of the gospel he pretends to preach.

“Fritz, you and your bunkmates are to head up a workforce to decorate and make magical these replicas, so that our visits carry more weight than our poor words can. Wendy and I will confer with you, in the days ahead, as to how we’d like them bedecked at each visit.”

Fritz, red-haired, gap-toothed, and ageless, beamed.

“But be inventive. Trust your creative instincts. Remember, all of you: We dedicate ourselves to saving the life of a good little boy. The delivery of Christmas cheer has always been our primary concern. This one small task, granted us by God himself, is a natural extension of that concern. Never forgetting to honor those we seek to persuade, we shall nonetheless not dilute our efforts to render more Christlike their view of their fellow man.”

Santa sawed the air as he spoke, so firm were his convictions. But truth to tell, this venture into grown-up territory frightened him, and now he brought his rhetoric down a notch. “Dear friends, let me confide in you. I much prefer making good little boys and girls happy. Adults, particularly the most egregiously fallen ones, so sophisticated and subtle in the mental prisons they construct for themselves, have ever been beyond the pale. I don’t like observing them. I don’t like thinking about them. I would much prefer a world without them.

“But for Jamie Stratton, I will venture outside my comfort zone. With gusto shall I confront his tormentors. And, God willing, Wendy and I will change a few minds, remove blinders from their eyes, and restore our visitants’ childlike grace this Thanksgiving Eve.”

Seeing the smile on his daughter’s face, Santa fell in love with her all over again.

“We must never forget that these grown-ups and the bully boy were once innocent babes not yet tangled in the prejudices of their elders. As I meet them, the image of their prelapsarian selves I shall strive to keep before me always.

“For we are not about simply saving Jamie Stratton. We are about saving these four as well. Be with me in this, my brothers. Set aside all petty bickering, embracing the warm glow of magic time and crafting the perfect environments for persuasion. This I ask of you, as you love me, as you love Wendy, as you honor your own generous natures.”

Santa ending on a resounding note, the elves rushed him and heaved him heavenward, passing him along, wrestling him to the snow, and tickling him without mercy, as they did each Christmas morning. And he threw off gales of laughter and pleaded for them to stop, while flocks of green caps jingled skyward in the crisp morning air.

But speeches punch up one’s resolve in the ringingest tones of which one is capable, setting aside for the moment whatever doubts might weaken that resolve.

Could he do it? Could he truly encounter grown-ups, those abundantly judgmental souls whose words were empty, whose hearts had shriveled into black fists, whose minds were blighted with canker and cant? These were creatures that lived in a hell of their own making. Could he really harrow the hell of even
one
such being, bringing him or her out of those blasted circles into the divine light of heaven on earth?

He had no idea.

But he would try.

If he failed, he would fail grandly.

This he vowed as his jelly-bowl belly bounced, and his cherry cheeks shook from his helpers' good-humored roughhouse, and the day shone grand and glorious all about them.

Chapter 9. A Bully Shaken to the Core

MATT BELUZZO FELL exhausted into bed.

Turkeys on classroom walls. Cartoon pilgrims with toothless grins and blunderbusses. And a steaming pile of crap, couched in cautiously non-denominational terms, about being thankful for one’s lot in life. Fat chance of that. His old man in the slammer, Mom boozing it up, stoking her lungs with cancer, stern-faced teachers cramping his style, holding him back for a second try at sixth grade with eleven-year-old pipsqueaks. Yeah, he had plenty to be thankful for.

Dirty clothes were strewn everywhere. Tomorrow he would yell at Mom to get her act together, haul her bones out of bed, and wash them. Damned if
he’d
do it. Women’s work. Shirts had three good days in ’em tops, bring his sweat smell into homeroom, stink up Whittier Elementary something fierce. But his underwear was starting to itch.

He’d deal with that tomorrow.

Day off. Small favors.

He slept fitfully, in and out of dreams, dead to the world, then waking to the moonlit bedroom with its slump-ugly dresser, a squeaky-hinged closet, a grimy window stuck an inch open, winter or summer, then back to sleep.

Somewhere in there, something changed.

There was a scent of...of baby oil, or ocean air. Or was it Mom before she’d gone blowsy and doused herself with cheap perfume? Whatever it was made Matt calm and sad and glad all at the same time. When he opened his eyes, someone had lit a candle. Several, actually, poking up everywhere he looked. Matt sat up, gawked at his surroundings, and released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

His bedroom, bathed in candle flame and some peculiar light, soft and coppery, was still the same room, yet it wasn’t at all. The stuck window had been flung wide, but the air was toasty warm, not the late November chill outside. The battleship gray walls had been painted a light rose color, girly stuff but Matt didn’t mind. His strewn clothing had been replaced by a plush, rich-bitch carpet, white like poodles, that looked as if, were he to leap off the bed, he’d sink in up to his waist. The mattress had misplaced its lumps and poking springs, the blankets were fresh, unpilled, and abundant with stuffing. I must be dreaming, he thought. Yet no dream had ever felt so real.

Then Santa Claus, tall and chubby, a wide grin blooming out of his beard, materialized at the foot of the bed. Beside him stood a little girl in a green dress, her face wise and kind, her eyes twinkling. And Matt
knew
he was dreaming.

“Huh,” he said, a gut punch of awe and wonder.

“Hello, Matt,” said Santa.

Matt sobbed at the beauty of his name.

“That’s right. Adjust. Take your time. You’re not dreaming, by the way. This is my stepdaughter Wendy.”

“I didn’t know you had one,” he managed, sounding as if he’d had the stuffing punched out of him.

“Hi, Matt,” said the girl. Her voice, high-pitched and loving, made his throat choke up anew.

“Hi,” he said.

Santa came around the side of the bed, sat close by, and pulled Wendy onto his lap. “Matt,” he said, “can you guess why we’ve come?”

In his heart, he knew. But he pushed the answer away. He played dumb so often, he believed he
was
dumb. That tactic had worked in the past to protect him, to keep away the pain of feeling anything. He shook his head, wanting these fantastically lovely creatures to go away, even as he wished they would stay forever.

Santa laughed. “Let’s see if you can figure it out. I’ll give you a hint. You’re a naughty boy. And if you don’t straighten up, you’ll only get naughtier. But your future’s for our second visit.”

They would be coming back. Two visits.

With the sweep of Santa’s hand, the bed lurched forward without moving an inch. Matt’s view of the room vanished, or more precisely, his surroundings receded and his old man, pacing his jail cell, came into view.

“It’s him,” said Matt, not concealing his distaste. As he said it, the sounds and smells of the prison arose. Harsh light gleamed on the bars and the stainless-steel toilet and sink. But what astonished Matt was that he could hear his father’s thoughts. He touched the old man’s mind, a rambling blither of resentments and dumb, dull rounds of pain and rage and sorrow, and a steel-plated resistance to regret.