Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (30 page)

“We’ll bide our time,” said Fritz, pondering whether payback was a worthy elfin impulse, but having a feeling that in this case it was. “The ideal moment is bound to present itself.”

As indeed it did.

Chapter 30. Disaster Looms

THE WEEK LEADING UP TO HIS special holiday, the Easter Bunny flew into a tizzy of last-minute preparation, his brain abuzz with frenzies of bliss. As for Santa’s recent visit and the horrendous memories they revived, they had been utterly forgotten; for so had he been reinvented eight years prior, God knowing he would otherwise be useless, come Easter.

The hens, used to his pre-holiday hyperactivity, paid him little heed. Steady and reliable industry was their watchword. Nor was it in their nature to speed up a process calibrated to produce exactly the number of eggs he would need by Easter Eve.

The remaining processes were likewise engineered to a tee, the cutting of shreds of fake grass, the continual clatter of jelly beans down distant chutes, the orderly sweep along conveyor belts of yellow marshmallow chicks with perfect black eye-dots, chocolate poured into and painstakingly removed from bunny molds by well-oiled machine arms—everything assembled into baskets and kept as fresh as the day of their assembly in cool, dark, well-nigh limitless caverns.

But the Easter Bunny was one excitable creature. And excited he grew. A few more days would usher in his moment in the sun, or to be more precise, in moonlight as the world slept. He vaguely recalled a time when he had resented and envied Santa Claus for being associated with Christ’s birth while he, the Easter Bunny, had been saddled with the Savior’s suffering and death. That vague recall had surely to be a delusion.

For Easter celebrated rebirth, new beginnings fresh-wrapped, all sufferings past, forgiven, and forgotten. What though the day had been adapted from pagan fertility rites? As far as he was concerned, this day was a day equal in generosity to Christmas. Equal? Nay, Easter
surpassed
Christmas in that wise. Not that he was competing, mind. He shook his head so emphatically that his ear tips snapped like fresh sheets on a clothesline. But this day, to which mortals would wake joyous and spring-fresh, celebrated the generous earth opening its fecundity out of the frozen months of winter, seeds germinating in riot and sprout, fresh buds tremulous and green wherever the eye chanced to light. On this day, people were kinder to one another. They wore pastel, the women and girls. As for the men and boys, though their ridiculous façade of ba-rumph and macho zombie-ism slipped but a fraction, yet it slipped indeed. And behind it could be glimpsed the randy zest of gentle goats, not the grasping of satyrs but the full bloom of vigor and vitality. Tamed, to be sure, by Mother Church. Such goatishness could not frisk too boldly in the sun, oh no indeed. For where would commerce be, where war, where the gladiatorial thirst for blood, both virtual and real, if all decorum were tossed aside and an unfettered celebration of rutting life were to sweep the globe?

For an instant, the Easter Bunny’s heart leapt. Then
he
leapt, high in his burrow so that his ears brushed the earthen dome. Deftly landing, he scurried about the exercise area, burning energy at once renewed. In tip-top shape. That’s what he’d have to be three nights from now. Through the air he would fly, tumbling silently into homes frozen in magic time and pulling out just the right Easter basket for Joey or Jane, setting it down, straightening the red ribbon about its wicker handle, then dashing off through wall or window toward his next destination.

With joy he chittered, scurrying so fast that his feet rose up along and pounded the cylindrical walls, which grew warm and then hot from the repeated friction of his passing. In the distance, he heard and delighted in the white-noise click and clatter, the hum and buzz, the clip and rustle, the rump-roll of ovoid wonders in all their glory down innumerable chutes.

Readiness was all.

And the Easter Bunny, Christ love him, was raring to go.

* * *

Two days later, as brilliant sunlight burnished the edge of Good Friday’s gathering dawn, Santa Claus summoned the entire community to their favorite forest grove. Fritz had looked up in surprise from his workbench, a moo-box in his right hand, a plush empty-bellied Guernsey in his left. There before them all stood Santa and Wendy, looking more radiant than ever.

“If I may have your attention,” said Santa, not raising his voice one iota, but cutting straight through the stitching and hammering and sanding and packaging, so that all activity at once ceased. “Leave off your industry for awhile, lads. We have something to celebrate, and we shall do so this glorious morning in the Chapel. Our special Christmas Eve deliveries are nearing fruition. To mark this moment, Wendy will project scenes from humankind’s altered future.”

Fritz had nearly forgotten that miraculous night, so deep into the delights of toy manufacture had he immersed himself. Now, called to mind, its memory brightened him. Setting the cow and the moo-box aside, he slid off his stool and shared a moment of speculation with Beckmesser, the bushy-browed elf who tinkered beside him at the workbench.

Gregor and his brothers had taken to sitting in shifts, off to one side, observing. When Santa had asked what they were doing, Gregor replied with a shrug, “Quality control,” an answer Santa had accepted without further probing. Now Fritz saw Gregor leap from his stool and draw Santa aside. Nearby, master weaver Ludwig canted his head. When Santa nodded assent, Gregor bowed perfunctorily and went his way.

Fritz made his way swiftly to the master weaver. “Ludwig,” he said, “what’s up with Gregor?”

Ludwig started, mulled, and squinted. “Why, old Buttinski Bushy-Brow there wanted the chance to address our gathering first, a matter of great urgency, he said, and Santa agreed to it. Some fool harangue, I imagine. Up to no good. Ranting in front of Santa and his family. First time he’s done
that,
eh? Us weaver folk, we call it Gregor’s warped woof. Behave, he tells us. By which he means cower before my whip, set me on a pedestal, and bow so low you breathe dust bunnies. Well, my lad, maybe our purblind master elf will finally figure out what’s up and put Gregor in his place. End this infernal nonsense so Gregor and fat Josef and Engelbert can devote full time to tending the reindeer, as they’re meant to, and not getting high and mighty with the rest of us.”

Fritz waited until Ludwig paused for breath, then thanked him and slipped away. He spied Herbert wrapping things up at his workbench and revealed his idea even as he hatched it. “It’s our golden opportunity. We couldn’t have planned it better.”

“Your eyes are so bright, Fritz. I like that. May they always glisten so. But I wonder if Gregor’s will dim.”

“Dear Herbert, always considerate of others. Usually I am too. But Gregor has brought this on. I’ve given it lots of thought, and if we do this in the spirit of fun and not with vengeance in our hearts, I’m convinced it’s the right path.”

“May God be with us then,” said Herbert.

Quickly, they enlisted Gustav and Knecht Rupert to help haul equipment on sleds, snowshoeing along a shortcut as the winding train of helpers made its predictable way to the Chapel.

The first elves to arrive did not question their presence there, and soon the Chapel filled, and Santa and his family stood before the gathered multitudes.

* * *

Santa had no idea what bee might be frantically buzzing beneath Gregor’s bonnet. Whatever bit of gristle had stuck in his craw, to hear him harrumph about it would doubtless provide a few light moments to set the mood for the main event. Gregor’s feints at meanness tickled Santa’s funny bone. Call it a peculiar flirtation with crossing less than acceptable lines of decorum. Whenever it was, it made for good theater and had never, to his knowledge, harmed a soul.

“Friends, colleagues,” he began, “before Wendy and I launch our celebration, Gregor has asked to say a few words. Now, now, none of that hissing and booing, lads. It isn’t elflike. I’m sure whatever the master of the stable has to say is of great import, and we will all benefit from hearing him out. Gregor, lad, you have the floor.”

Gregor marched boldly out of the crowd, nodded to Santa, took his place at the lectern, and cast a cold eye upon his brethren. “I stand here today,” said he, “because it’s high time a certain jolly old elf understood the depths of deviance and degeneracy which have befallen our number and led directly to our shoddy work of late. Good master Santa, you have told us we have it in us to solve our own problems. Until a few days ago, I concurred in that judgment.”

Wherever was this leading? Santa wondered. Tone often told the tale long before words. This felt like a different Gregor, for whom there
were
no lines that couldn’t be crossed. This was no feint at meanness, but the thing itself, and alarm bells sounded in his head.

He was on the point of taking the stablemaster aside for private conference, when he noticed Gustav and Knecht Rupert shimmying up two young oaks and dropping a pale-yellow bedsheet between them, pulling the corners tight so that only their heads and their bloodless knuckles could be seen above the horizontal stretch of fabric.

“Over yonder are two of the malefactors I was about to name, Santa, up to no good. They hope to divert us with some nonsense, but they shall not stop me from exposing their perversity to all and sundry. These two, and the other four, Fritz, Herbert, Franz, and Johann, have been caught or confessed to the vile practice of...of—”

Bold upon the bed sheet, from a suddenly switched-on projector, were thrown images of Gregor and Comet and Cupid, images in quick succession which left no doubt what they were doing. Swells of disbelief and then laughter rippled through the crowd. Gregor turned absolutely white, his jaw moving but his lips lax and incapable of forming words. His eyes grew wide and his neck took on a pronounced blush. The crowd’s nervous titters turned to giggles, then to guffaws and belly laughs. It was all Santa could do to suppress his own jolly outbursts, though he was, at the same time, appalled at the breakdown in civility he was witnessing.

This smacked of payback. Gregor had pushed the elves, had beaten them over the head with some utterly harmless little habit—nosepicking it appeared, something Santa himself occasionally indulged in—and now the stablemaster had been exposed as a hypocrite.

This had to be stopped. But before Santa could take his first step forward, Gregor found his voice. “I’ll see you all in hell for this,” he shouted. “You have no call to humiliate a fellow elf thus. I declare this community stone-cold dead, its bonds of fealty shattered.” With these words, his exasperation broke and he fled the proceedings, snow kicking up at his heels as he dashed between the trees and fell and righted himself, a diminishing figure in green, his cap’s jingle bell ringing sharp and high as it jounced upon his head.

A few elves jeered after him, but mostly, and all at once, they fell silent. Knecht Rupert and Gustav let the sheet drop and climbed down from the trees, caps in hand, acting sheepish and ashamed.

Wendy gave Santa a look of anguish.

“No need to doff your caps, lads,” said Santa, stepping forward. “I sense you were driven to extremes. I sense as well that Gregor had it coming.”

“He did, Santa,” said Fritz, “though I regret it went so far.”

Santa nodded. “Your behavior, as his, I find very odd indeed. Later, you will unfold the tale to me, I will meet with Gregor on my own and smooth things over, after which I will apply myself heart and soul to fixing what I hadn’t known was broken. Meanwhile, I want you and Herbert to pursue Gregor. Find him, ask his forgiveness, entreat him to a peace. Bless him, Herbert. And give him my assurance—the assurance of all here assembled—that he shall not for more than one brief hour be outcast from this community, but be welcomed warmly into its fold and brought most gently to see the error of his ways.”

“We will, Santa,” said Fritz, and he and Herbert headed off along the erratic snow trail blazed by Gregor’s hasty departure. Other elves clustered about Engelbert and Josef to comfort them.

For a moment, all was gloom about Santa’s heart. But he shook it off, determined that the celebration would proceed as planned.

* * *

As Wendy listened to Santa’s fresh recounting to his helpers of their recent extraordinary Christmas Eve and his introduction of her, she vowed to make Gregor and Josef and Engelbert a special dessert, chocolate mousse perhaps or crème brulee, delivered with the kindest words of which she was capable. Gregor had always frightened her a little. But now she had seen, as had they all, the confused little boy beneath the bully, and she felt the need to comfort him in some way.

Applause broke out, more vigorous than was strictly warranted. Good. They weren’t about to bear Gregor a grudge. Wendy expected no less. “Thank you,” she said, raising her hands to quiet them. “Santa, of course, made all those millions of insertions. My role was merely to hold the divine egg-seed; Santa’s, to shape and place its clone just so in their hearts, knowing them with a quick intimacy, flaws and all, so that the implant precisely met their needs. Applause, please, for the good Saint Nicholas.”

Again the crowd thundered their approval.

Santa laughed and blushed and waved it away.

“All right, then,” said Wendy. “The egg-seeds have taken a dog’s age to germinate, have they not? But our patience is about to be rewarded. Easter morning, when our visitants wake, we shall taste the first fruits of our labor. But this day, Good Friday, their growth is sufficiently advanced to allow us to glimpse the future.”

Then Wendy touched that place inside her, unvisited for months, where her powers of projection dwelt.

“Jamie Stratton first. Recall, he was fated to throw himself into oncoming traffic. Let’s see what he’ll be doing instead on that day at that precise moment.”