Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (15 page)

Nyx’s fingers twitched. A swirl of skin dust wafted up and fell into the creature’s eyes. “This ruined child,” said Nyx, “is my reason for helping you fight the Father God. My son never rests. He moves at random upon the earth. His mind is so addled, he has lost all memory of his mother.” The creature collapsed in slumber, curling up beneath a gentle snore. “Unfold, for a time, into your former selves.” From the sleeper, four majestic figures fountained up.

“You summoned us, Mother?” asked the tallest.

“Dolt,” she said. “Why else would you be here?”

The Tooth Fairy looked askance at him, for staring directly at Hypnos induced instant drowsiness. Several of her imps, Chuff, Faddle, Frash, and Prounce among them, sat down heavy-lidded and fell into a deep sleep.

Behind Hypnos loomed the gods of dream, Morpheus for human images, Phobetor and Phantasos for images of animals and objects. Nyx addressed them. “Zeus is up to new tricks. Tonight, he has granted four mortals a single dreamscape.”

The god of sleep peered upward, scanning the earth. “I see it,” he said. “An odd construct. But Zeus must have his reasons.”

“To hell with Zeus's reasons. You will allow Adrasteia and her imps free access to this dreamscape. At her whim shall she be free to alter and populate it as she desires. You, Hypnos, will grant her access, and your sons will bend before the winds of her fancy. Of this dreamscape and for this night alone shall she and her brood have free rein.”

“But mother, what of Zeus’s waked wrath?”

Nyx laughed. “For all his bluster, the Father God fears me.”

“Then we obey.”

“Of course you do,” said Nyx in anger. “Stupid boy.” She waved a dismissive hand and the creatures funneled back into the sleeping Sandman. He blinked, rose unsteadily to his feet, and protested with a somnolent stare, “I’ll never catch up.”

“So a million mortals suffer sleeplessness for a few minutes. Better get moving, boy. More interminable leapfrogging about the globe for you. No rest for the weary. Go!”

And he was gone.

“Give the state he’s in,” said the Tooth Fairy, “he’s bound to make mistakes.”

“He’ll stumble and overlook a few eyes, put a shoulder or leg to sleep instead. But routine will catch up with him. The poor boy never rests. He hasn’t rested since his creation, a renewer never renewed.”

The Tooth Fairy watched her imps awaken and gaze in fresh horror about the throne room.

“I believe your trespass on my time and property is coming to a close.” Nyx grinned. “Anything else?”

Before she could request a painless return to her island, Nyx lofted her head and said, “I didn’t think so. Off with you.”

At once the Tooth Fairy and her brood began the bone-shattering journey backward, agony driving out all but the will to survive and keep surviving.

* * *

When Ty Taylor woke to magic time, he found himself saddened to the heart. Some maddeningly elusive dream had loosed his hold on his beliefs. Dreams processed waking events, trying to unknot them or cut through the knots. So scientists claimed. Whatever he had dreamed, he knew it had something to do with vast improvements in humankind, with a shift in mindset.

The room was once more magically transformed, but Santa and Wendy hadn’t yet arrived, giving perhaps a contemplative fellow time to contemplate. From beyond the walls, a faint jingle of bells sounded. Mist-fine pings of snow fell against Ty’s cheeks and eyelashes, melting to pinpoints of moisture as they landed, then at once evaporating.

Were he not so becalmed by doubt, he would have laughed. But doubts there were. Deep ones. Despite Ty’s dig at Santa’s rage, the elf showed every sign of being God’s emissary indeed. Had not Christ himself turned righteously rageful against the moneychangers? And here, for decades it seemed, he, Ty, had been dealing in counterfeit coin. He recalled witnessing the effect of his words on his parishioners. And his own not quite clear-cut sexual orientation. Yet he felt pure and natural in his bones, a sinner surely, but not in that realm. No, nor would he be, were he to act upon those long-suppressed urges.

The latter feeling astounded him with its certainty. Was not the Holy Bible the final arbiter? And didn’t the Word of God unequivocally condemn homosexual acts as sinful? Something in the soft miraculous light surrounding him made him deeply secure, so secure that ferocious advocacy for the Bible seemed utterly beside the point.

In this silent sadness, he grew acutely aware of his unyielding stance toward so many issues. He had always wanted things clear-cut. Yet here he was, ready to embrace the obverse view and champion it just as vehemently and with just as fiery a voice. Could he not entertain doubt even for a little while? What a relief from tired old habit that would be.

Just then, Wendy passed through the bedroom door, which ought to have startled him but did not. “Hello,” she said like an old acquaintance. Santa Claus strode in after her wearing a forced smile. “Good,” said he. “You’re a little softer. So am I. Wonderful, isn’t it, what a cooling-off period can do?”

Santa’s less-than-complete acceptance of him brought back Ty’s stubbornness. Holier than thou. Besides, Santa looked, how to put it, like one given over to carnal delights, a lover of the flesh, generous to children yes, but generous in his appetites as well, a Henry the Eighth, a Falstaff, a walking advertisement for hedonism. And yet, a little boy. It was absurd to let such a creature influence him so profoundly. “Appetites,” said Ty, raising a finger to make the point. “Addiction to things carnal. I’ll grant you it’s inborn and not a choice. But the same could be said for alcoholism.”

Santa turned to Wendy. “You’re a genius, sweetheart.” Then to Ty, “It’s a question of instinct. I’ll tell you the truth, little Ty all grown up, my heart isn’t fully engaged in this task, because I’m afraid you adults are hopeless, stuck in habit, trapped in judgment—and your kind, you preachers, are the worst! But I must be generous, mustn’t I? Wendy believes in the possibility of change. And I believe in Wendy. So I too will strive to be open to change. Okay, darling, show Ty the scenes you showed me.”

Wendy smiled and nodded, then brought the church interior into view. “Mister Taylor, sir, see these two people sitting one right behind the other in your pews?”

“Of course,” said Ty. “That’s Bret Dornan and behind him Sarah Brand. He sells insurance. She works in a bakery, as I recall.”

“Now look closer.” Ty looked and saw how they were constituted, the deep desires in them. “They’ll both leave your church.”

“They won’t.”

“Watch.” Snatches of their lives passed before him. He saw Sarah Brand bolt down a snifter of whiskey, again, again, freshening her breath to cover how much, how early, and how often she drank. She fought her addiction, sought help, buddied up with a fellow alcoholic, kicked the habit, fell again, rose again, this time succeeded, admitted to herself she had to manage this thing lifelong, and did so. All the while, Ty was privy to the weakness in her will, places in brain and body where urges lurked and desires beckoned, especially when stress or anxiety were at their height.

Interwoven with those moments, Ty watched Bret Dornan age as well. But while Sarah’s urges ate away at her health, Bret’s had a different cast. He longed, as all human beings do, to be touched. But the touch he longed for happened to be male. Ty felt Bret’s guilt and shame, approved of them, then felt his own shame for judging him so. For he saw that Bret’s urges were as natural as Sarah’s were perverse. “He acts out of desperation at first,” said Wendy, as they watched Bret visit bars, hang out in parks, pick up and be picked up. “He tries to change.” Brett at a counseling center, subjecting himself to aversion therapy. “Then he finds a support group, they help him see how natural his impulses are, his desire to love and be loved. He learns to live alone, to love himself, see there, he finds a church which accepts and embraces him just as he is, he confides in the minister that a smile, a nod, and a kind word from him have helped Bret become whole.” Bret was now older, in his early thirties. Ty observed, as Wendy provided her narration, Bret’s pursuit of other interests, climbing in the Rockies, horseback riding, acting classes, attending the screening of classic films at the university and art theaters and, an hour north in Denver, at the Mayan, the Esquire. Ty saw him meet someone his age, pursue love, be loved. He delighted as love bloomed in his former parishioner. A moment later, it occurred to him that Bret’s love interest was male, but it no longer seemed to make a bit of difference. No, that wasn’t so. His own prejudices, drummed into him as a youth and adopted and promulgated thereafter, cast a warped light over the private moments Wendy showed him. But what this light illumined was not perverse at all.

“It’s love, isn’t it?” said Ty.

Santa replied, “The very thing that Christ urged. It’s just that mortals are polymorphous in how they express that love.”

“I’m sorry I caused Bret so much pain. But people tend to be pretty resilient, do they not?”

“Unfortunately, Mister Taylor,” said Wendy, “not all of them do.”

Santa’s voice grew harsh. “Especially the very young.”

Wendy gestured and there stood Ty at the pulpit. But beyond him, picked out by special light, were the children touched by the beguiling ribbons of his words, as before. But now, the boys and girls grew in time lapse, shifting pews—and always the ribbons pierced their hearts. He saw bored toddlers and older kids, Gayle and Tara Pine among them, absorb his lessons as they grew, devolve into haters, echo imperfectly in their minds his words against sodomites, not knowing precisely what a sodomite was, but learning soon enough to focus the misplaced fears that Ty had nurtured in them. There were three or four children, likewise putting on mass and stature under his gaze, who donned heavy cloaks of shame and guilt, who slumped as they grew, who knew—even as they denied it—that they were different, that it was
them
that Reverend Taylor railed against so often, or rather, that in their hidden hearts, Satan had established a stronghold.

The child whose inward slump was most pronounced was the younger Stratton boy. Ty watched him curl inward in worry and fret, then dare a little defiance. Jamie became an adolescent, and a spark of tentative pride grew. Ty found himself rooting for the child, even though it was against his sermons that Jamie struggled. Abruptly, Jamie vanished from the pews. A spotlight held on his empty place. Then the church dimmed and faded.

In its stead arose Grandview Memorial Gardens and a burial plot. Ty stood in a small circle of mourners. “Whose funeral is this?” he asked. Then he noticed that the Strattons held center stage, Walter, his wife Kathy, and their older son grown beyond his current age. “It’s Jamie’s, isn’t it?”

“He took his own life,” said Santa.

A chill rode up Ty’s back and scruffed him by the neck. “But it couldn’t have been my words that drove him to it. We just saw his spirit resisting them.”

Then Wendy showed Ty thundering at the pulpit. Phrases fell from his lips. Juxtaposed, Walter and Kathy Stratton berated their son in near-identical phrases, in biblical passages he had cited continually across the years. Ty watched Jamie’s spirit wither before the onslaught of his parents’ condemnation, of Ty’s condemnation, of the crushing drumbeat of societal condemnation—pounding into him the lie that not they but
he
was perverse, so that living grew gradually impossible.

There returned at last the funeral party and Ty’s face, mock-pious and filled with scorn, hating the child even in his grave. It made him nauseous to see himself this way. The bedroom with its enchanted snow and its distant jingle of bells replaced the graveyard scene, but Ty wept. “My God,” he said. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

Wendy patted his hand. “It’ll be all right, Mister Taylor.”

Her kindness made him weep the harder.

“I can change, I swear it.”

“You can,” said Santa, “and you will. I believe it with all my heart. It’s already begun. Now sleep. We’ll come by once more before morning. Pleasant dreams, little one.”

Ty wiped his eyes and said, “Thank you.”

But Santa and Wendy were already halfway to the door, and a deep sleep cradled Ty gently in its arms.

Chapter 16. Perversions and Reversals

FRITZ HAD ENTERED the workshop to retrieve a custom-made drill bit for work on the third replica of the Strattons’ bedroom when he heard Santa’s sleigh jingle in. Indeed, he saw it sweep by a picture window and come to an abrupt stop in the snow. So he wasn’t surprised when Santa strode in. What surprised him, to the point of shock, was Santa’s mood.

He looked stern and acted—how could it be?—grumpy. From workbench to workbench he went, snatching toys from the hands of one elf or another. As he reached the door, he looked back and said, “All of you, out by the replicas, now!”

The door slammed after him. At once, Fritz and the others hopped to. “I wonder what we did wrong,” he said to Herbert as they hurried outside. Herbert merely shrugged in puzzlement and followed him.

In the distance, Wendy was sitting in the sleigh stroking Snowball and Nightwind, who had picked their haughty way through deep snow from the cottage to greet her.

Santa surveyed the replicas, his eyes flashing here and there. When he came to the Strattons’ replica, he bounded onto the platform and set all but one of the toys down. “Don’t dawdle. Santa’s helpers do not dawdle. Can everyone hear me? Good.”

Fritz felt uneasy. He could not recall seeing Santa so agitated. Was that true? In the year of Rachel and Wendy’s coming, during that lapse of elfin memory, perhaps he had acted so then.

“Look at this doll. Shoddy construction, a half-hearted paint job. Brother elves, we have always prided ourselves on superior work. Craftsmen who don’t care or are distracted let defects go by, do they not? Take this dump truck. The action is less than smooth, the tires do not spin free, the tailgate sometimes sticks, not opening at all, you see? For all our age and experience, you and I are children at heart. It’s essential that our work be infused with such joy, the recipient feels it in his or her bones.