Don't Call Me Christina Kringle (18 page)

A throaty, rumbling engine—badly in need of a muffler—zoomed up the alley outside the shop's back door.

“What was that, little dudettes?” asked the spaced-out biker as he nibbled on the wing tips of a frosted angel cookie.

“Um, reindeer?” said Trixie, batting her eyes.

The biker nodded. “Awesome. Reindeer. Cool.”

And then Flixie blew a pixie dust straw in the bearded man's face so he wouldn't remember a thing come Christmas morning, not even the three dozen sugar cookies he'd eaten.

After loading up the motorcycle's saddlebags at the firehouse with dozens of toys, Professor Pencilneck charted a course for County General Hospital.

“The children's ward is on the third floor!” Christina shouted as they screeched into the parking lot.

She took off the helmet, grabbed a satchel filled with presents, and pulled on the fur-trimmed Santa hat she had planned on giving to her father last Christmas. The red velvet looked cool against all the black leather.

“Keep the engine running!” she said to Nails. “We'll be right back. Come on, Professor!” She held out her arm so the nimble little man could scamper up and perch on her shoulder, where he sat like an organ grinder's monkey between songs.

“I have six rounds of pixie dust loaded into my cane!” the professor reported.

“Excellent. If you see any adults …”

“I shall dust them!”

“Indubitably,” added Christina.

It was late at night on Christmas Eve, so the hospital was short staffed.

They had to deal with one security guard, two nurses, and a janitor.

But then they had the run of the floor.

“Merry Christmas,” Christina said to a happy little girl propped up in her bed. Her eyes were wide with joy when she saw the doll Christina delivered. She had no hair because of all the chemotherapy they were giving her to fight her cancer but, for the moment, she didn't care.

The doll was bald, too!

“She's so pretty! How'd you know exactly what I wanted?” the girl asked in a small, hushed voice.

“Easy,” said Christina. “We got your letter!”

“Are you Santa?”

“No. I'm just one of his helpers.”

The girl reached up, draped her arms around Christina's neck, and hugged her tight.

And so it went in all the rooms.

Every gift Christina pulled out of her leather saddlebag turned out to be exactly what the bedridden child had been wishing for.

In many of the rooms, Professor Pencilneck leapt down from Christina's shoulder to the rolling bedside table so he could dance a very funny, loose-limbed soft shoe number complete with leg splits and scissor kicks.

The last boy they visited was named Billy. He clapped so hard when the professor's dance number was done he almost ripped out the plastic tubes snaking into his arms.

“That was fun!” he said. “You're funny!”

“Thank you, Billy,” the professor said as he bowed.

“Are you ready for your present?” asked Christina.

Suddenly, all the joy drained out of Billy's eyes.

“I don't think you've got what I want. My daddy said they were all gone from the store.”

“Well, there's one toy left in the bag and it looks like it's for you. You ready?”

Billy nodded eagerly.

“Close your eyes.”

He closed them.

Christina pulled out the last toy she had packed for this run. A special gift that Gustav had banged out while Gizmo did the preliminary wiring on the motorcycle.

“Okay, you can open them.”

When Billy saw the brand-new, hand-crafted Dumping Dino, he almost yanked out his tubes again!

Back at the Engine 23 Firehouse, Captain Dave was carrying the last of the toys out to the curb so they could reload Christina's saddlebags one more time when she swung by on her motorcycle for the final round of gift deliveries.

The firefighter had some unexpected help.

The two police officers, who had been stationed at the firehouse to guard the truck, were now hauling out toys just like all the other guys working the night shift on Christmas Eve.

“So I lose my pension,” said Officer Reed. “It's Christmas!”

“That's the spirit.”

“Say,” said Officer Malloy, “does that little girl have her motorcycle license?”

Captain Dave draped his arm around both cops' shoulders. “What do you guys say we go back inside where it's warm and have some more of those sugar cookies Christina dropped off?”

“Wonderful idea!”

“An excellent suggestion!”

Then the three of them, wobbling slightly and sounding a little tipsy, strolled through the garage doors singing, “Deck the halls with boughs of holly.”

They were particularly loud and rowdy on the
fa-la-la-la-las.

It was getting late.

After ferrying gifts from the firehouse to hospitals and housing projects for hours, Christina pulled up to her final stop. A rundown apartment building where the boy who delivered his Santa letter to Grandpa's shoe shop lived.

Six very sinister looking thugs in hoodies and sagging baggy pants were clustered around a fire burning inside a rusty oil drum in front of the decrepit brick high-rise. The final stop on the Christmas Eve run was located in what everybody called “a bad neighborhood.” Most people wouldn't come to this part of the city during the day. Now is was nearly midnight.

Christina didn't care. The kid upstairs was counting on her.

She re-checked the return address on the boy's letter. Unfortunately, she was in the right place.

“Yep. This is where we're supposed to be. Nice job navigating, professor.”

“Well,” he said, tugging nervously at his cravat as he surveyed the shadowy men, “I must confess I now wish we had somehow lost our way. …”

“We're both goin' in there with you,” said Nails, balling up his hands into tiny fists.

“Fine,” said Christina. “Hop into the second saddle bag. It's empty.”

Nails and the professor climbed into the sack. Christina took off her helmet and pulled on her Santa hat. Fortifying herself with a deep, calming breath, she walked briskly up the crackled concrete pathway toward the building's dimly lit entrance.

She accidentally kicked a chunk of ice. Sent it skittering. The men heard her and stepped back from the blazing barrel. The flickering fire cast an eerie, quivering light across their menacing faces.

“Yo,” said a man with a scar running down his cheek who looked to be the leader of this gang. “You Santa Claus?” Some of the men folded their arms across their chests; others smiled hungry crocodile smiles.

Christina nodded. The white ball at the tip of her Santa hat bobbled.

The men laughed. The leader leapt out of the shadows.

“We're glad you finally made it! Thanks for coming! Virgilio's momma's waiting for you upstairs. Come on!”

And the six gangster-looking guys joyfully escorted Christina into their building.

The apartment was very small but tidy.

All the furniture was wrapped in thick vinyl. A spindly Christmas tree sat in the corner. It was a simple sprig of evergreen decorated with strings of popcorn and paper angels cut out of sheets of newspaper.

There were no presents under the tree.

“Merry Christmas,” said Christina as she slid a big box out of saddlebag. She had wrapped this present herself. She wanted to make it special since she had nearly lost the boy's letter completely! She set the other saddlebag down on the floor so Nails and Professor Pencilneck could watch.

“Gracias,”
said the woman who had waited up all night for Santa to arrive. “You are very kind. It has been a very difficult year. I could not afford to buy Virgilio a single toy. The food and rent, the doctor bills—they cost so much.”

“I know,” said Christina, who had learned an awful lot about how hard some people had it on her Christmas Eve run to all the places her father used to visit every year.

“I want him to have Christmas, but, well, other things … they are more important.”

“And that's why, once a year, we all need a little help from Santa.”

The woman smiled. “You are a very good and kind young woman.”

Christina blushed.
“Gracias,”
she said.

“Your mother and father must be very, very proud of you!”

Christina found herself staring out the barred window toward the fire escape and the twinkling night sky.

“Yes, ma'am,” said Christina, her eye fixed on two stars shining brightly near the horizon. “I think you're right. I think they are. Merry Christmas!”

“Momma?”

A sleepy-eyed boy in pajamas wandered into the living room.

“Um, hello, Virgilio,” said Christina. “I hope I'm not too late. Santa wanted to drop by himself but, well, about an hour ago, Rudolph caught the reindeer flu, so Santa and the whole bunch of 'em had to fly back to the North Pole. Anyhow, he asked me to drop this off for him.”

The wide-eyed boy pointed at Christina's hat.

“Are you Mrs. Santa Claus?”

“No,” she said with a laugh. “I'm just one of Santa's helpers. You can call me Christina. Christina Kringle.”

At that same dark hour, back in the neighborhood where Grandpa had his shoe shop nextdoor to Delores Dingler's year-round Christmas shoppe, Ms. Dingler and Tony Scungilli came stomping up the snow-crusted sidewalk.

“There it is!” she said, pointing toward Grandpa's brightly lit display window. “See all those hideous holiday decorations? That's their shop. I'll bet the thieving little brat has our brownies locked up downstairs in the basement!”

“Not for long,” said Scungilli, cracking his knuckles. “Nobody steals from the King of Toys! Nobody!”

As they hurried up the block, an angry cat leapt out of the shadows!

It hissed and swatted the air with its claws.

“That darn alley cat!” said Ms. Dingler. “It's always hanging around behind my store because that horrid little girl next door is forever feeding it!”

The alley cat prowled to the center of the sidewalk, sat down, and blocked their path.

“Get outta my way, cat!” said Scungilli. “Scat.”

Ms. Dingler tugged at his sleeve. “Um, Tony?”

“What?”

She gestured with her head.

They were surrounded. Fifty hissing cats came slinking out of the shadows to encircle them.

“This way,” said Scungilli, who saw an opening in the tightening noose of cats. He grabbed Delores Dingler by the arm and yanked her into the alley. “Run!”

They disappeared into the darkness.

The fifty cats, of all colors and stripes, waited a moment, then pranced away, yowling merrily, almost as if they were all wishing each other a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Two minutes later, Tony Scungilli and Delores Dingler staggered out of the alley with placid smiles plastered on their faces. There were flecks of sparkling powder glistening on the tips of their noses and all through their hair.

“Next year,” said King Tony, “I think I will donate a truckload of toys to that firehouse.”

“How sweet,” said Ms. Dingler. “I will donate fifty percent of all my profits.”

“Merry Christmas, Delores.”

“Merry Christmas, Tony.”

They parted company and headed home, neither one remembering why they had even come to this neighborhood so late on Christmas Eve while simultaneously forgetting everything they had ever known about brownies, which they no longer believed existed anywhere outside of the baked-goods aisle at the grocery store.

When the two humans were gone, Buckets, Mops, and Broom strode out of the alley twirling empty pixie dust straws.

“Pixie dust,” said Mops. “It's the name you can trust!”

“Was that another rhyme?” said Buckets, groaning.

“Not really. More like a slogan.”

“It's a Dumping Dino!” Virgilio shouted when he tore off the wrapping paper. “It's just what I asked for in my letter to Santa! Thank you!”

The boy hugged Christina's leg for an instant and then dropped to the floor so he could play with his shiny new toy.

“You are Christina Kringle?” asked his mother.

“Well, yeah, I guess. It's just something my dad used to call me.”

“Your father, he was the firefighter? Captain Nick?”

“Yeah. How did …”

Then Christina realized: the boy knew to bring his letter to the shoe shop this year because, last year, Christina's father told him to.

“Did Captain Nick come up here last Christmas Eve?”

“
Sí
. He brought Virgilio a toy train.”

Somehow, that made Christina feel awesome. She was standing right where her dad had stood, doing what he would have done. It was like her father was right there in the living room with her. Awesome.

“You wait here,” said Virgilio's mother. “I have something for you.”

She went into the kitchen.

“That's okay. You don't have to. Besides, I ate so many cookies last night …”

“Wait here!”

“Okay.”

She could hear Virgilio's mother rustling through cabinets, clanking pots and pans, searching for something.

While she waited, Christina watched Virgilio play with his remote-controlled dump-truck-slash-dinosaur, which, it seemed to Christina, did stuff the ones on TV and in King Tony's toy store did not. For instance, this one could talk. And it spoke English and Spanish. It seemed it could also help Virgilio with his homework because Dumping Dino was currently running him through his “9 times” multiplication table and ringing bells and blowing whistles every time he said the right answer.

“Looks like Gustav and Gizmo customized it a wee bit,” whispered Nails from inside the second saddlebag.