Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes Read online

  Coming in, Gronk ripped off his blood-caked Santa suit and dropped to the beach. “Mother!” he exclaimed. So too Cagger and Clunch. So Quint and Bunner and Bay. So Prounce, Pum, Frash, Faddle, Zylo, and Zest. So likewise lackluster Chuff, her fattest, ugliest, and least engaged son, scorned by the others for his tepid embrace of evil. Each had brought her the leg bone of a child.

  With their mommy they tumbled, suffering the pain she meted out and turning the sand red. When they had had their fill, they hunkered about her, dumb as posts.

  “Boys,” she said, “I’m hungry for tales of mayhem.”

  “Me first,” said Pum, “me first.”

  Gronk socked Pum in the eye. “Firstborn first,” he insisted. “I bagged fifty urchins, Ma. I tackled the scurrying rats on the run and sucked terror from their skulls. In Bombay and Berlin, in Topeka and Tangiers, I grabbed them, tormenting and torturing and shoving them screaming down my gullet. The first was a big-boned beggar boy.”

  The Tooth Fairy savored the details, repelled by the teller but caught by the tale. Chuff sat on the sidelines as usual, waiting his turn as the last teller while his brothers roughhoused for position. Eyes were blacked, flesh flayed, arm bones snapped and mended. “Hurt him,” she shouted as they tore into one another. “Hurt that scum bum.” She didn’t care who doled out or suffered injury. Violence trumped the niceties of identity.

  At last the tales were told, including Chuff’s meager three child killings, which drew jeers and beatings about the head from the others. “Splendid, boys. Pain and death are the just deserts of every child. Theirs from the womb are the seeds of nastiness. The so-called good ones are simply better at concealing the blackness of their hearts. We’ll get to them, fear not.

  “Does Mommy love you?”

  “No!” they shouted.

  “Do you love Mommy?”

  “No!”

  “Love is a fable,” she said. “What force binds us?”

  “Hatred!”

  “Rightly do we fear and hate our differences. Sink your claws deep enough into them and you reach a common denominator of blood. Cling to mayhem. Adore the fist. Gullet and gore first, then sleep. Right, boys?”

  Brutish concurrence befouled the air.

  “Pan’s got it good now. But we’ll seek out cracks in his smarmy little community and shatter it. We’ll goad his elves. We’ll destroy Wendy’s respect for him. Gone all harmony there. And gone all harmony on earth, what meager amount exists. Generosity of spirit? It shall scarce be remembered, let alone felt and acted upon. We’ll continue humankind’s well-advanced corruption. Do I want to avenge myself upon Pan, to goad his hidden nature into the open? Of course. But more than that, I would shatter the Sky God’s complacency, undermining his faith in his own creation. Do these goals seem too ambitious? I tell you, they are within reach. The time is coming. I can feel it. The time when the earth turns, when we topple the big blowhard in the sky and take control. Gone all hope, gone charity, fragile myths of goodness and redemption exploded everywhere.”

  Dull though her boys were, at this their eyes glowed.

  “So nurse your bile. Bicker and brawl. Stay in shape, my sons, stay attuned. This is thy nature, this the destiny of humankind.”

  At that, they rose up and retackled their mother. And mayhem most foul again stained the strand, as rain fell upon them in smacks and stabs from a gray-black bank of clouds.

  * * *

  One of Santa’s helpers never frolicked on Christmas Day.

  That one was Gregor, who sat slumped and glowering at his spotless desk. Engelbert and Josef were out there somewhere, compromising the dignity of their family. When they were gone from the stables, Gregor often sat here, his lantern casting its emerald glare across a clutter-free desktop and its foursquare, precisely positioned blotter. Sitting bolt upright in his office chair, he muttered and mulled.

  “Something isn’t right with us. We’ve changed, and I don’t know why. It’s connected with the arrival of Rachel and Wendy. That much I know.” Gregor wrestled with eight years of memory loss, a loose tooth he was forever niggling at before turning to whatever currently vexed him. “Something very...untoward went on back then. I was okay. I kept my virtue. But aren’t all the elves virtuous? Hah! We are not. They were not. God robbed us of our untoward memories. But I sense a nasty lurker, around a corner my mind cannot turn no matter how vigorously it tries. They were sinners, their cover of simpering innocence blown.

  “Happy? Of course, we’re happy. Servile, vapid, and bubble-headed happy. Why, if it weren’t for good old Gregor, chaos would reign. I’m the linchpin. Old Saint Nick, he’s just a big baby, fascinated by children and childhood. See how he looks at Wendy, a perfect age on the outside, but he’s not so sure about her growing up in her mind. He’d rather she remain an ideal eternal little girl. Anya and Rachel? Blindworms who encourage their jolly old hubby’s boyish nature. Well, if Santa won’t lead, I will. Step into the vacuum of guidance, impose order, regiment the busy bees, marshal our forces to take back those stolen memories.”

  Gregor brooded.

  An index finger moved toward his nose.

  I will not, he thought.

  But he did, a slave to habit.

  Infuriating!

  “We’re all doing this. The fools think they’re unobserved. But Gregor knows all. The nervous tic crept in about the time Rachel and Wendy showed up, after the untoward whatever-it-was. I watch them do it. Fingers that probe. Nose. Mouth. It’s disgusting. But I do it too. Heaven help me, I’m doing it right now—Gregor, the moral compass for this wayward band of elves. No one has seen me sinning, of that I’m sure. I’ve admonished some of them. Stop doing that, I insist. Keep that finger away from your nose. For the love of God, pay attention to what you’re about. Do they listen? Does it stick? It does not.

  “Something more is needed to whip them into shape. But what?”

  Gregor mulled in torment, rooting for a booger even as he berated himself.

  Be strong, he thought.

  Then the idea blossomed. Gregor thump-fisted his blotter. “I can do it. But wait, can I really? Or am I deceiving myself? This deserves careful cogitation.”

  His eyes narrowed. There in the harsh lantern light, he dug and indulged, both his tormented thoughts and his probing finger. From fresh-strewn stalls came the shifts and settlings of Santa's slumbering team. But Gregor, deeply ensconced in fierce brooding, noticed it hardly at all.

  Chapter 2. Things Ever So Slightly Awry

  THE NEXT MORNING Santa was in fine fettle. At each workbench he had placed a copy of the year’s plans. They were ambitious, as always, but his helpers’ ability to reach and exceed whatever goals he set had never come up short.

  He spoke extempore at the lectern, his note cards before him in a neat untouched pile. “Welcome,” he said, “welcome each one, you of skilled hands, gentle hearts, and great good humor. My multitudinous crew of cheerful companions, in this divine endeavor we are brothers all. There exists no greater joy than to be generous to children and so encourage generosity in them.”

  Santa had become adept at hiding fear and anger since the day the Father had suppressed his Pan side. Fear that the goat god would reemerge or that the Tooth Fairy would once more try his virtue. Anger at her past outrages against his loved ones. These emotions were at times great within him, but always under his control. Still, he played the jolly old elf now, and was jolly indeed, inspiring his helpers and getting off to a grand start the new year of toymaking.

  “So rev up those engines,” he concluded, “stoke the fires of your enthusiasm, and let us bring smiles to the faces of good little children everywhere next Christmas.”

  For months, Santa’s life was bliss. Wendy helped keep his elves focused. His wives enriched his life, both in the bedroom and out of it. And he maintained a healthy balance between work and play. He especially cherished walks in the woods, by himself in the hours before dawn, and with Rachel, Wendy, Anya, or all three, at ot
her times of the day. But his favorite pastime was reading to Wendy, snuggled against him on his lap or, more often, tucked in and listening enthralled.

  The community, as always, dove joyously into the task of restocking their shelves, for it took precisely a year of diligent effort to prepare for the next Christmas delivery.

  Still, undercurrents of unease flowed within him that winter, spring, and far into the summer. In all that time, Santa’s feeling that something had gone awry never quite lifted. Lately it had returned in full force. Many were the nights he lay abed between Rachel and Anya, wide awake under moonlight, trying to seize by the arms the elusive problem and stare it full in the face.

  One August night in his workshop office, with his helpers tucked snug in their beds and midnight long fled, Santa removed a Coke bottle from the squat red dispenser in the far corner of his office and sat down to focus on what had changed since Rachel and Wendy’s arrival.

  “Must take stock,” he murmured.

  To be sure, they had brought an abundance of grace and joy into his life. How splendid it had been to befriend and grow to love these mortals, how satisfying to overcome his Pan-inspired lust for the Tooth Fairy, to beat back her attack against them, and to see them resurrect, through miracle, from horrendous deaths unto immortality. How beyond the blessings one could wish, to be wedded by God Almighty himself to Rachel and Anya in the forest, as the elves marveled and sang and made merry.

  Santa set these wonders aside. “If I’m to address the Problem That Resists Detection, I’ve got to focus on what must be accepted—here in this private sanctum—as my failings.

  “First,” he said, ticking the issues off on his fingers, “I’ve been drinking far too much Coke. It’s become a mindless habit.” He lifted the bottle to his lips, stared at it, and set it aside. One a day had become half a dozen. Sometimes he could not recall retrieving the bottle from the dispenser, so automatic had the habit grown. “I’ll wean myself, go gradual into diminishment.”

  This simple resolve pleased him. “Second, I’ve been giving my helpers far less guidance than they’re used to. Not that they’re not completely competent without it. They simply need more engagement than I’ve afforded them lately. A wink, a nod. There’s a childishness about me these days, a tendency to avoid the serious, even when it would be appropriate.” Was that where the problem lay? He pondered in his heart, shook his head, and ticked off another finger.

  “Third, Rachel and Anya.” Santa smiled. Simply grand having two such loving helpmates. No problems there. “I’ve never been happier. And I know they’re happy too, because they tell me so, often, in many ways.” Was he tempted by the Tooth Fairy, once the fierce ash nymph Adrasteia, who had been willingly ravaged by Pan more frequently and with greater gusto than her sister nymphs? Not in the least. “She’s monstrous.” He wondered what he had ever seen in her. As far as he was concerned, their trysts were ancient history.

  “Ah yes, fourth, Pan.” He put a hand to his lips, dreading that having uttered the name might once more summon that side of him, might awaken that voice of savagery and disrespect for all civilized norms. “I fear him, a dark rumbling terror that never quite leaves me.” Hmm, could that be it? He didn’t think so, but it would reward revisiting. Though God had tucked his Pan self deep inside his psyche, Santa sensed the goat god lurking.

  He shuddered and went on.

  “Fifth, my own intolerance.”

  Ooh, warm indeed. He glanced at the thick book resting on its special podium in one corner of the office. Bound in black leather, it shifted and changed during his weekly survey of the globe, editing or deleting entries when naughtiness, adulthood, or death claimed a child. The niceness section of the book had grown noticeably slimmer, in number of pages yes, but also in commentary. “And the annotations on my naughty list have become more acerbic these past many years. Used to be simply a name and a phrase.” Talks back to her mom. Cheats on tests. Thinks mean thoughts about his little sister. Torments the cat.

  “Now I go on for paragraphs, berating them for falling away from the innocence of toddlerdom.” Maybe that’s why he had been overdoing the jolly old elf, to counterbalance his increased outrage at the sorry state of modern children. Still, that wasn’t based on misperception. The world had indeed grown grimmer. Grown-ups and wicked kids hurtling tail-over-teakettle toward adulthood deserved his scorn. “Hmm,” he said, stopping himself from getting worked up. “Perhaps Pan isn’t so dead in me, after all.”

  Another issue to revisit.

  He turned down his fifth finger and raised his other thumb.

  “Sixth and last, there's Wendy.” A high soft chime sounded in his brain. “My dear, darling girl. All seems to be well with her. But oh, that...hesitation as we flew in.” In his mind’s eye, he sat in his sleigh, looking over at her, asking about her visits.

  Surely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, that momentary pause. But he saw now, eight months after the fact, that it was anything but inconsequential. “There was a certain tonal shift when she mentioned—what was the boy’s name?—Jamie Stratton.”

  He hunched forward in his chair. “That’s it. I minimized the signs. Wendy hesitates to speak of uncomfortable things, not wanting to deflate my buoyancy. But if I can’t—”

  He choked up. If he couldn’t get right with his own little girl, how could he hope to get right with all the world’s children? That was the most pressing problem. The others would wait.

  “Tomorrow, when I tuck the covers about her, I’ll assure her I’m okay with whatever discomfort she throws at me. Like the caring dad I am. Not some silly jokester who holds off sorrows with a jest.”

  That was it.

  He replayed the moments in the sleigh and kicked himself for not seeing it sooner. “But I see it now.” And he would address it, give comfort to his child who looked nine but was seventeen inside. It was time to grow up, take the reins of parental responsibility firmly in hand, and offer his counsel or condolence for whatever was troubling her. For he saw now, replaying the months since Christmas, how many other signs there had been, looks, sighs, shrugs. How could he have missed them all?

  “No need to berate or browbeat.” He took a deep swig of Coke, the bittersweet bubbles gassy in his belly. “I recognize them now. Must lay my cards on the table and ask her to do the same. Yes, that’s what I’ll do.”

  * * *

  Eight years had elapsed since Wendy’s mom had passed horrendously through the guts of the Tooth Fairy into the likeness of a huge coin and, by God’s grace, become Santa and Anya’s immortal mate; eight years since Wendy herself had been blessed with immortality. She took delight in helping Anya cook and sew, in learning elfin crafts, in being read bedtime stories as her eyelids grew heavy and an invisible Sandman made his nightly visit to sprinkle sleepy dust into her eyes.

  But she took special delight in choosing one hundred deserving boys and girls to visit on Christmas Eve. These she woke one by one, giving them world-revealing rides in her sleigh, projecting into their bedrooms highlights of their futures, and leaving them with a kiss on the forehead and memories which, though they faded into dream, helped keep their destinies focused ever after.

  Earlier on the day Santa agonized in his study, Wendy took Fritz and Herbert aside and posed the question.

  “Why are they so mean?” Fritz repeated between wee nibbles on a hollyberry croissant. “Maybe they convince themselves they know best; and so great are their convictions, that they force things, bad things that seem good to them, upon others. Ooh, this croissant is delicious. Take a bite. No a bigger bite! Truth to tell, I have no idea. Other than you and Rachel, I’ve never seen a mortal, up close in real life. And you two are as far from meanness as a smile is from a frown. What about you, Herbert? Any ideas?”

  His companion looked blank, shrugged, and said nothing as usual, though his mouth moved in half-hearted guppy puckers and his wide eyes begged pardon for his ignorance.

  “Herbert doesn’t kno
w either. Have you asked Santa? I’ll bet he’d have an answer right off.”

  Wendy said she hadn’t, but would definitely consider it. Then she thanked them. “Hey, Herbert,” she said, “Don’t look so glum. No one can know everything. And I think you make the bestest cameras in the whole wide world.”

  Herbert brightened at that, which cheered Wendy too.

  Months before, she had posed the question to her mommies, tossing it off as casual as could be. “Don’t you go fretting,” Anya had said. “Mortals are just that way.”

  Which was no help at all.

  Rachel had been a little better. “Some people,” she said, “are drawn to be selfish or hurtful, to play power games that one-up themselves and one-down everybody else.”

  Wendy had asked why they were drawn that way and Rachel danced around the issue in a tone more suited to a nine-year-old.

  Wendy thanked her and went her way.

  On the very day they returned, as she brushed Galatea in the stables, she had asked Gregor. Harrumphing in the grand Gregor manner, he said, “By ‘mean,’ you’re referring no doubt to the wars, the lies, the cheating, the posturing, the violence, the twisted warps of their minds down countless rat holes of rottenness, all that nonsense.”

  And when she said yes: “They’re no damned good, that’s why.” He gave a sharp nod and a hmmph, as though he had solved the riddle of the Sphinx. “Your good little girls and boys? They’re not all they’re cracked up to be. Relax the whip hand and they stray. You’ve heard of gravity? As they bulk up, gravity drags them down into mischief. Babies are light as feathers, more angel than beast. Ah, but put on flesh, let hormones flow, and excess carnality moves them to crime and lies, backbiting and bad habits, just like certain elves I could name. Tight rein must be kept on the lot of them!”

  Gregor had amused but not enlightened.

  Why not ask Santa Claus? When matters took on great urgency, one had to speak or explode. But her stepfather was such a wonderful grown-up little boy, beaming with mirth at good little children, but so disappointed with the bad ones that he never spoke of them. How could he possibly help with poor Jamie and the mean people in his life? How could she think to wound her father’s spirit by bringing them up?