A Newfangled Christmas (3 page)

“Maybe I can get them to listen,” I said.

“Hey, guys! Buddies! Yoo-hoo!” I called.
“Listen up, would you?”

I might as well have been spitting into a
blizzard for all the good that did. I’d never seen the Elves so
riled, and I don’t mind telling you it made me feel uneasy. I
needed these guys. These good buddies of mine. Without them, not a
single boy or girl would get a present from Santa this year.
Christmas would be ruined!

I raced to the red dinner bell hanging by the
front door. It always got their attention. Surely it would now. I
rang it as loudly as I could.

BONG! BONG!

This time all the Elves got quiet. One by one
they stood up straight, twisted around and looked at me.

I couldn’t help noticing how angry their
expressions were. That sent a prickly feeling racing up my back
bone.

“Thanks,” I said, grinning and nodding at the
same time. I hoped they wouldn’t notice how nervous I was. “I’d
like to introduce Nerdly. He teaches The Missus all about
computers. And that’s not all. He’s been to a lot of technology
schools and he belong to MESS.”

For a second, I thought the Elves would break
out laughing. Their faces looked startled. Their eyes opened wide.
Eyebrows flew up. Then I realized what I had said.

“Wait a minute,” I said hurriedly. “You don’t
understand. MESS is a very important organization. It
means...um...Monsters of....”

Thank goodness Nerdly came to my rescue. “It
stands for Masters of Electronic Structural Success!” he blurted.
“And it means I know how to make robots, among other things.”

The Elves looked at Nerdly with their faces
stern again. Then they looked a me the same way.

Finally, Edgar, their four-hundred seventeen
year old leader, stepped forward. He took a deep breath and said,
“Santa, the Elves and I have talked this over and have only one
thing to say.”

“Okay, Edgar. Have your say,” I said, not
knowing what would come next.

Edgar blinked a couple of times and looked
around for reassurance. The other Elves all nodded.

“All right, then,” Edgar said. “Santa, we’re
going on strike!”

And they did.

What was I going to do? How could I save
Christmas?

The techie was pulling the diagrams and
graphs and charts off the walls and packing them in his briefcase.
Next he gathered up all the electronic toys and stuffed them in,
too. I suppose he was thinking his services wouldn’t be needed
now.

I thought about all the e-mail messages
waiting in my computer. And all the snail-mail letters that I’d be
getting soon. I couldn’t disappoint all those boys and girls, no
matter what I had to do!

“Nerdly! Don’t pack everything up!” I
shouted. “We have work to do!”

I flew into action. I put The Missus in
charge of reading the e-mails and entering all the wishes in my
ledger. Then I started learning all about making electronic
toys.

Nerdly couldn’t have been happier. He
launched into a whirlwind lecture on circuit boards and terminals.
On diodes and electronic chips. On whatchamadoodles and
doodawhitchies. My head was spinning. My eyes were crossing at all
that information.

“Hold your reindeer!” I shouted. “Don’t you
know you’re talking to an old-fashion kind of guy?”

Nerdly looked sheepish. “Sorry,” he said. “I
guess I just got carried away.”

This time he started more slowly. First, he
pulled an aardvark out of his briefcase. “This isn’t just any
aardvark,” he explained patiently. “It’s a ROBOT aardvark.” Then he
took it apart, starting with the long nose, to show me how it had
been put together. Next he demonstrated how the electronics were
wired. Then he assembled it again, tossed a handful of plastic ants
on the workshop floor and clapped his hands.

The aardvark took a few halting steps
forward. Then it swept its long nose back and forth on the floor,
sucking up the ants.

“That’s all there is to it!” the techie
shouted triumphantly.

I gave him a weak smile.

“Think you can do it?” asked Nerdly.

“Sure,” I murmured. I hoped he couldn’t see
how hard I was trembling. The truth was, I didn’t have a clue how
to make a dadblasted robot aardvark. Maybe he would show me how to
make something else.

Then I remembered the very first e-mail I had
gotten. The one from Micah Mason, who wanted an Electronic Spy
Night Scope so he could spy on his sister in the dark.

I shook my head sadly. An Electronic Spy
Night Scope would probably be harder to make than an aardvark!
Maybe there was something else I could start with that would be
easier.

When I admitted my situation to the techie,
he nodded excitedly and chirped, “Not a problem.”

He reached into his briefcase again and
pulled out a cuddly brown teddy bear. I did a double take. It
didn’t look like it was electronic. In fact it looked just like the
ones the Elves make every Christmas.

“Meet Hug-A-Bear,” said Nerdly, thrusting the
bear into my hands. “He’s a one function robot. All he does is
hug.”

As if on cue, Hug-A-Bear spread out his arms
and wrapped them around my neck. Then he gave me a gentle hug. I
couldn’t help but smile. My heart was smiling, too, because I knew
that I could learn to make a lot of these bears. And a lot was just
exactly what I would need.

The techie patiently explained how to make
the bear. I said good-night to Nerdly and set to work. My big old
clumsy hands got comfortable making soft teddy bears right away. I
hummed a little tune as I wired the robot mechanism for each chubby
bear and stuffed it inside. Then I would sew the final seam and put
the bear up to my neck to test his hug.

I was feeling pretty proud when I hung up my
apron at the end of the day. I counted the bears I’d made. Six
Hug-A-Bears were sitting in a row.

Then my gaze shot to the calendar. Tomorrow
was November 1
^st
. That meant there were only fifty-four
days left until Christmas Eve. Fifty-four days times six
Hug-A-Bears was--I counted on my fingers--three-hundred
twenty-four.

Three-hundred twenty-four toys for millions
of girls and boys! Maybe I hadn’t saved Christmas after all!

When the sun finally came up I dragged myself
into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee. The Missus was
sitting at the table, frowning into space as if I wasn’t even
there. Suddenly she looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

“You have to talk to the Elves right now,”
she snapped. “You’ll have to go straight to their village,” she
went on before I could say a word. “Explain to them that what
today’s kids want most of all are electronic toys,” she went on
before I could say a word. “Tell them to shape up! Get with the
program!”

I shook my head sadly. “I don’t think it will
work. You should have seen how upset they were yesterday when that
techie tried to tell them how to make newfangled toys.”

“Then beg them to come back to the workshop,”
she said. “Get down on your hands and knees, if you have to. Do
what ever it takes.”

I couldn’t argue with The Missus. I knew she
was right. I hustled out the door as fast as I could. Didn’t even
finish my coffee.

I raced past the workshop and into the woods
where the Elves village was. No one was in the streets when I got
there. All the houses were quiet. Smoke curling from the chimneys
was the only sign of life.

Stepping up to the first house, I knocked on
the door. This was where Edgar lived with his three-hundred
seventy-five year old wife Sue. The Missus and I had been friends
with Edgar and Sue for as long as I could remember.

No one came to the door.

I knocked again. Louder. Still no one
answered. I sighed and went to the next house. No one answered my
knock there, either. The more I trudged through the snow, knocking
on doors that didn’t open, the more discouraged I got.

Why were the Elves being so stubborn? I must
have asked myself that question a hundred times. After a while I
was too discouraged to knock on any more doors. I headed back to
the workshop and all those Hug-A-Bears waiting to be made.

I unlocked the door and went inside. The six
Hug-A-Bears I’d made yesterday were exactly where I’d left them. I
put on my apron and got right to work. First I laid the pattern on
the soft, wooly fabric and cut out the shape of a bear. Then I
stitched on the face and put most of the stuffing inside. The next
thing was the really important part. Attaching the electronics that
made the little bear hug.

All of a sudden I had the feeling that
someone was watching me. Had The Missus come down from the house? I
looked around the workshop. There was no one there.

I sewed the last seam. The bear was finished.
I put him up to my neck and felt his gentle hug. I chuckled to
think of how happy he would make some child and then I hugged him
back.

I worked as fast as I could. I made four
Hug-A-Bears before lunchtime. Every so often I’d have that feeling
again. The one where it seemed that someone was watching me.

When The Missus brought my lunch down from
the house, I asked her.

“Have you been checking up on me this
morning?” I wondered silently if she thought I was falling down on
the job.

She looked startled. “Me? Spying on you?” she
asked. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

I shrugged and took a bite of my peanut
butter and jelly sandwich. Then she proceeded to tell me about all
the e-mail messages she had read that morning and all the wishes
she had entered in my ledger.

By the end of the day I had made eight
electronic bears. That was two more than yesterday. But now there
were only fifty-three days left until Christmas Eve. Eight times
fifty-three was--I counted on my fingers again--four-hundred
twenty-four bears.

That was a hundred more bears than yesterday.
But there was no way that it would ever be enough!

One morning when I came down the hill from
the house things seemed different. The first thing I noticed were
footprints in the snow. Dozens of them. All around the front door
to the workshop. There were so many that it looked like there had
been a dance on that very spot.

I looked in every direction. Nobody was near
the reindeer’s barn. Or out by their take-off and landing strip.
The woods were quiet, too. I glanced at The Slippery Slope, where
the Elves test ride sleds and toboggans. Nobody there, either.

“Don’t have time to stand out here all
morning just gawking,” I muttered in the frosty air. I went inside
the workshop and got busy making bears.

When I got the first one finished, I took it
over to put it on the stack of bears I’d already made. Even though
I’d lost count of how many I had put together, I was proud of
everyone of them. I was beginning to feel like a first class techie
myself.

But when I got to the spot where the bears
should have been, they were all gone! Missing! Not one single
Hug-A-Bear was there!

“A thief hit the workshop!” I gasped. Panic
was setting in. “Who would do such a terrible thing?” My scalp
started to tingle. It felt like spiders were dancing in my hair. My
legs got wobbly.

I peered around the shadowy workshop. With
the Elves away, I hadn’t turned on all the lights. Could the thief
be lurking in a dark corner? I wondered.

I tiptoed around the workshop. I peered into
dusky corners. I looked under the skate board assembly-line. Behind
Barbie’s Dream House and behind her Grand Hotel. Over the rows of
bikes waiting for their wheels. I looked everywhere, but I didn’t
find the thief.

Finally I sat down beside a sewing machine
and sobbed. Who would do a thing like this? Who could possibly ruin
Christmas for all the boys and girls? I didn’t have a clue.

Or did I?

I remembered the footprints around the
workshop door. Dozens of them. Did they belong to the thieves who
stole all the Hug-A-Bears?

Slowly I got to my feet. I’d follow those
footprints and catch the thieves, by golly. I’d get those low down,
dadblasted criminals if it was the last thing I ever did. They were
not going to spoil Christmas. Not if I had anything to say about
it.

I threw open the door and started to step
outside. But instead, I stopped stone cold in my tracks.

There stood the Elves--all seven-hundred
twenty-two of them--with huge grins on their faces. But that’s not
all.

They were holding seven-hundred twenty-two
Hug-A-Bears in their arms.