Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (16 page)

“These replicas are no less important than our toys. They may be more important. But you are falling down. You’re failing me. Every last one of you. Fritz, Karlheinz, Max, I entrusted this task to you, and it has been mismanaged. I will not allow such stumbling, do you hear me?”

The elves nodded and hung their heads, their doffed caps like limp leaves in their hands.

Fritz stood there in shock. Saint Nicholas had shamed him and his bunkmates before the community. Not that they didn’t deserve it, but this was most unlike their master. What was preventing him from seeing the damage Gregor was causing? Why didn’t he step in and set things right?

“You had
better
hear. And heed! Now Wendy and I are going to head out for one last visit to our mortals. I want every inch of these rooms spotless, perfectly jointed, flawlessly painted, done to a turn. These final replicas are intended to evoke childhood memories. A child’s sensory recall is vivid and well-nigh impeccable. Every detail must be exact. I want nothing that spoils the effect, no wood shavings scattered about, no loose screws, none of that. Do you understand?”

“We do, Santa,” said Fritz and the others. Herbert, wide-eyed, beside him, nodded vigorously.

“Now, I have no idea what sort of bug has burrowed its way up inside you. If I need to, I’ll handhold you through it. But you’re responsible elves. You can work out whatever problems are percolating through this community. Do it. Resolve them. Gather your scattered wits, bend every effort to producing work that is nothing less than superb. Start with these replicas. Then bring your renewed resolve back into the workshop. You are not mortal grown-ups; you are not slackers on the job. So stop pretending you are. Now clear the way. Wendy and I have mortals to visit.”

And he strode through the crowd, pressing toys into their makers’ hands and setting his course for the sleigh. Snowball and Nightwind hopped down from Wendy’s lap as Gregor and his brothers stepped away from the reindeer. A vicious whipsmack asterisked the air above their antlers, and up they rose. Though Santa did not wave farewell, Wendy gave a tiny finger-twiddle when he wasn’t looking. Then they headed back the way they had come, until the sleigh was a smudge and a speck and then nothing at all.

Fritz felt numb. In the moments just endured, something seemed to have died. He had the feeling Gregor was gloating.

“Let’s go, Herbert,” he said.

But it quickly became clear that no one was going anywhere.

* * *

“All right,” said Gregor, bounding onto the platform Santa had vacated, “gather ‘round, all of you.” They had been shamed, and Gregor wasn’t about to lose a chance to hammer home his message.

His brothers emerged from the workshop carrying Santa’s lectern. They brought it to the platform and set it up before him, then stood at his left and right with folded arms.

“Now,” said Gregor, rapping the lectern sharply with his fist. “You heard what Santa said. Time and again, I have railed against a vile habit, a habit that has run rampart through our community and at last degraded our work. Our esteem in the eyes of the good saint who relies upon our labor has eroded. Barring a miracle, it will soon be washed away entirely. Is that what you want? Is it?”

“No, Gregor,” they mumbled.

“Nor do I. But you, unlike me, lack self-control. Do you think Gregor is never tempted to sneak a finger up his nose? I am not so impervious to temptation as that. What I am is ever vigilant, vigilant to a fault.”

This of course was nonsense, and he knew it. But getting away with it thrilled him. And perhaps claiming so in public would make it true. If nothing else, it established his moral supremacy and brought Fritz into further disrepute.

“At the merest hint of temptation, my brothers, I squelch it, I pulverize it, I toss its ashes into the dustbin of never! Never shall Gregor sully his fingers with the vile snail-stuff of mucus, never shall that germ-riddled gloop pass the sacred portal of my lips, never profane my tongue, never outrage my taste buds, never slither down my throat. For I, and you, and all of us are meant for nobler things.”

Inwardly he preened. I’m a far better speaker than Santa Claus, he thought. Perhaps toppling Fritz and imposing stricter order on his helpers will sufficiently elevate me, that taking Santa’s place enters the realm of possibility.

“To some of you, Gregor may seem obsessed, a johnny-one-note, ever harping on this single problem. Do you know why I do it? Anyone.”

The watchmaker raised his hand. “To make us better elves?”

“That’s right, Franz. Perfectly expressed. To make us better elves. You've been worse elves lately. You have been horrendous elves. By God, a lesser guardian of your moral well-being would have thrown in the towel long ago. Shame on you. Shame on you all. I point out one shortcoming and what do you do? You come even shorter! You
increase
the frequency of your misbehavior. In the back there, you know who you are, keep your hands away from your face! Our skilled watchmaker says, to make you better elves. And he is right.

“But what does that mean? It means being less like grown-up mortals, those post-childhood slaves to habit. A wise man named Sam Beckett once said, habit is a great deadener. And so it is. Habits deaden. But practices freely elected enliven. Let one habit in, open the door a hairline crack, and its brother habits swiftly follow. They buzz about, they distract, they eat up time and energy, focus and intent, championing sloth where diligence and industry once reigned. We cannot allow it, my brothers. For the sake of the children, we must not allow it. Henceforth I shall redouble my efforts on your behalf. My eagle eye, beaming restraints as sturdy as leather, shall help rein you in. If such be obsession, why then Gregor is obsessed. He freely admits it.” Gregor opened his hands in appeal. “But to be obsessed in so worthy a cause is nobly to be obsessed. It is to be touched, dare I say it, by the hand of God Almighty himself. The tip of God’s gargantuan finger has found his servant Gregor and conveyed him to his mouth; down through God's digestive tract travels Gregor, transformed, brought forth as divine waste and returned to you with renewed purpose. I shall be your harness, dear friends, I your traces, I the whip that keeps your attention focused in the proper direction. Under my guidance shall your hooves beat with confidence against the wind, your antlers loft high in proud purpose. Together, as one, nostrils flaring and unprobed, shall we traverse eternal night, our ever-replenished sleigh gliding through unimpeded atmosphere. Together we will beat this obsession, together trample habit in the dust, reviving once more our finest selves. Do it, said Santa. Do it, say I. We can, my brothers, and we will!” He finished with a flurry, his audience entranced.

Good, he thought, but I won’t allow them to raise me up, as they do Santa. No telling where those hands of theirs have been. The elves kept a respectable distance as he and his brothers cut a swath through them and made for the stables. No, he thought, they shall not raise me up, though the idea had in fact occurred to none of them.

* * *

Kathy awoke on a sunny mountain trail standing beside the other dreamers. It was a warm fall afternoon, the trees riotous with yellow and orange, among russet hawthorn and defiantly blue-green spruce.

Robed in white as before, they held hands in a circle. A smiling Ty Taylor said, “Let us give thanks for God’s blessings. He has given us the opportunity for radical change, in the place where prejudice and ill will take root. He has shown us one of our sins, its consequences, and how we might abandon it and move toward true righteousness.”

“I’ve changed,” said Matt. “That’s for sure.”

A nearby stand of aspens rustled its thin gold coins. “I think we’ve changed as well,” said Kathy, and Walter agreed.

They seemed to be somewhere in the Rockies. Down the mountain, vistas opened into people’s lives. “Marvelous,” said the preacher, and Kathy knew that, as before, their vision was shared. The conversations that came to their ears, though they overlapped a hundredfold, were in all cases clear and easy to  comprehend. The words were mundane, full of jokes and topical references—yet they connected people, and those connections were buoyed by undercurrents of love. Love was something Kathy prized in her life, and here it was, man to woman, man to man, woman to woman. This was no ordinary dream. It would not fade into forgetfulness, or if it did, the essence would burn in her, day by day. It was a blessing, one she marveled she had been chosen to receive.

Then Kathy gasped.

An arctic breeze rose to chill them to the bone. Fire seared their hands, which they at once drew in. The sky grew dark and split open. Down dropped a leering crew of man-sized toad-like creatures, bald, naked, three-fingered, blunt-browed, and stinking of gutted fish. These slumped hunched things herded Kathy and the others further apart, and into their midst appeared a hard-eyed nymph wearing nothing but a blood-flecked necklace of teeth. Woman-shaped she was, but no woman at all. Still, her breasts were firm and tipped tight and pointed, her legs long, her thighs muscled, her hips and buttocks perfectly curved, her sex smooth-haired and wide with invitation. The creatures, Kathy had no doubt, belonged to the nymph. Leering at her, they stood hard between the legs.

Her serenity yielded to panic. “Foolish mortals,” the nymph said in a voice that made Kathy’s throat seize up. The nymph’s cold beauty, her beguiling scent, had opened forbidden places in Kathy’s soul. This was not the gentle persuasion of Santa, but an invasive wrenching into dark and shameful realms.

“You really think the creatures who have invaded your bedrooms are what they claim to be?” As much as Kathy had resisted Santa Claus, she wished him truly to be an emissary from God. “Wish away.” The nymph could read minds. “But he is not that.” Kathy concentrated on the twenty-third Psalm, valley of death, fear no evil. “Nor the girl. Behold them.”

And the nymph brought up Santa and Wendy as Kathy had last seen them, the soul of generosity, innocence, and caring. Then Kathy’s eye was drawn deep beneath the façade to a place foul and brackish.

“Heaven protect us,” said Reverend Taylor.

Kathy was alarmed at Walter, whose eyes flitted between the demon wearing the Santa mask and the nymph’s naked allure. When he saw her watching him, he lowered his eyes in shame.

“Hear them,” commanded the nymph.

“We’re almost home,” the Santa demon was saying.

“A little further,” said the other. “One more visit, and their souls will drop like fruit into the Master’s hand.”

“How easy it is to fool them. A smile, the scent of fresh pine, the jolly old elf and his darling whelp—their perceptions are paper thin. The devil wears a pleasing face.”

Kathy trembled at the menace their voices concealed. She began again to recite the psalm.

“They’ll return,” said the nymph. “But now you’re armed against them. You have heard the lies behind their feigned generosity. They have thrown your own good sense into doubt. Hold fast to your beliefs and their satanic mission will fail.”

The conversations from the plains below returned. But now, the love they had heard turned sour. In some cases, the words changed; in others, Kathy tasted bile beneath the treacle. She caught Walter’s covert leer at the nymph and knew, as she had always known, that his professed love for her was calculated and opportunistic. Save for God’s mercy, they were damned. The preacher, the bully, her husband, herself.

And down the mountainside, all were damned. But damned beyond redemption were the unrepentant sodomites. Their skin was poxed and pustulant, their organs of generation disgusting. Their minds rioted in the urge to perform revolting bedroom acts. They were unknowable, unfathomable, beyond the grace of the Lord, who was all-forgiving but for these willful servants of Satan.

Kathy had no doubt that the nymph and her offspring were demons as well. But just as angels were mutually supportive, so demons tore at one another in envy and hatred. It took a thief to catch a thief, one Judas to betray another. But Kathy resolved to cling to the old rugged cross. Her Savior’s unwavering truth would be her bulwark in time of trouble.

The ground shook. Fissures appeared. The sky grew dark and troubled. And in her mind, balance went awry. Unable to stand, she fell to her knees on the path, which split wide and tumbled her down into hellfire, her companions close behind screaming.

Kathy could hardly hear Walter’s screams for her own.

Chapter 17. A Recruit Leaps Into the Fray

“SCOLD THEM, WENDY? I read them the riot act,” replied Santa. “This time, the bedrooms will be perfect.” He cracked his whip above the heads of his team, who pretended to pick up speed but really simply maintained the swift pace Lucifer had already established.

“Maybe I should ask Fritz what’s going on,” said Wendy.

“They’ll work it out. They always do. A wise master sets his workers loose on a task and leaves them be. Mine are highly skilled, good-natured, and industrious. But what a dull world it would be if everyone was perfect.”

“I suppose so,” said Wendy. Then, with a sigh, “It’s such a lovely night!”

“It is indeed,” said Santa, gazing at the canopy of stars and the slumbering planet below. He really ought to fret less about things, he thought. Coming into contact with grown-ups and bad kids only stirred up the Pan in him, and dwelling on their faults made matters worse.

“They’re dreaming together, the Strattons, Ty Taylor, and Matt Beluzzo,” she continued. “In a little while, we’ll visit them one last time. This will be the bestest night ever!”

Santa had an idea. “Let’s look in on them, shall we? It’ll give us a bead on their progress.”

Wendy clapped her hands. “All right,” she said. But when she scanned the foursome, her face went white. “Jeepers.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Just look at them.”