Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (9 page)

“It’s him all right,” said Santa. “Pete Beluzzo, grown up and gone bad. His smile at three months was just like yours at the same age. But his parents didn’t want him and they let him know that, by looks first, then by word and deed. Pete wasn’t about to deprive his son, when he had one, of that gift. Take a look at him, Matt. Tell me what you think of him.”

Matt’s first impulse was to blast the grizzly old bastard with curses. You could heap blame on him all day long and barely cover the bases: smacking his mom around, backhanding Matt across the face and taking him down a whole lot of pegs, the whiskey, the dead-eyed buddies he brought home for beer and football, his open carousing with barfly bitches, and finally his botched attempt at armed robbery.

But having Santa Claus there, and the little girl, changed all that. “He’s connected to me, isn’t he?”

“Yes, and you to him.”

“I think...he’s sad. His mind runs in such tiny circles. He could have been, I don’t know, magnificent. But he’s small. A bunch of choices, one day at a time, brought him down. He let every else’s view of him tell him who he was.” From bed to toilet to bed his dad paced, muttering at the guards, at the lowlifes around him, sucking death into his lungs from a Marlboro, running his hand over stubble.

At Santa’s gesture, the bedroom loomed back up to shut out the prison cell. “Remember him. Remember how you felt about him. Now, Matt, before I show you a certain child, let me tell you something.”

Santa whispered into his daughter’s ear, and she said, “Yes, of course it’s okay, Daddy.”

Then he said, “I’ve got to confess, I dreaded visiting you, Matt. I thought to myself, Matt Beluzzo is a bad boy on his way to becoming a worse grown-up. But now that we’re here, I see, under the rottenness you’ve walled yourself behind, a far better Matt languishing. He pines for life. I hope you’ll give it to him.”

Santa’s words made Matt feel empty but not put down at all.

Again Santa gestured. A kid was riding his bike in the sunlight. “Now
this
is the sort of boy you could be. But I’m not showing you him for that reason.”

Matt had never seen this kid before, but the neighborhood seemed familiar.

“Another part of Colorado Springs. The boy's name is Terry Samuelson. He’s ten.” Matt’s bed felt as if it were on wheels, tracking the boy’s bike. As his tires crunched crisp leaves on the streets and sidewalks, the kid grinned ear to ear. He would pedal, stand tall, then crouch and pedal some more. Matt thought he must be some goody-twoshoes, a smart little face on him, well treated, and Matt began to resent him. Then night fell, the bed stopped moving, and the bedroom rose again before him. “What’s with the runt?”

“You’ll see him again in other visits.”

More than two visits, thought Matt. He glanced at the clock. The hands hadn’t moved. “Some kids have all the luck,” he muttered.

“Matt,” said Santa, “some kids make their own luck.”

That choked Matt up. But Santa raised a finger. “No self-pity.” He wasn’t blaming Matt. He was only observing, cutting through the crap. That same finger swept beyond the bed. “Yesterday at school.”

Before them clustered bunches of kids in the playground, shouting at something. For a moment, Matt was disoriented. Then he recognized them and the sequence of taunts. “Lunchtime.” He caught a glimpse of the two boys tussling on the ground. “Hey, that’s me.” Seeing himself was freak city, like when you passed a store window and caught your reflection and it didn’t look like you at all. “I’m pounding the crap out of that sissy boy. He’s nothing but a loser wimp.” As he watched himself smack the kid, he felt ashamed before Santa, even as he thrilled to the relived surge of power. “I’ve got him on the ropes.”

“He’s no match for you,” said Wendy.

“Right,” he said. Then softer: “Right.”

Matt felt the kid’s fear as if it were his own. A second shove, harder, and the fear billowed. The kid’s mewling protests gave way to calls of “Sissy!” and “Way to go, Matt! Beat him to a pulp!”

Then a teacher barged in, as Matt scrambled to pin the kid to the ground. An army buzz-cut grown-up, Mr. Harvey, grabbed Matt’s arm, shook him, hustled him out of the circle, you kids break it up, the fight’s over; Beluzzo, you’re coming to the principal’s office. Stupid teacher’s face barked, I’m better than you. Matt wanted to kick him in the nuts.

“Meddling bastard,” he said.

Santa flared, which made Matt feel terrible. “He’s protecting a powerless kid who never did you any harm.” Wendy touched Santa’s arm and he backed off. “This is very hard for me,” he said, not looking at Matt. “Look, and learn.”

Now Matt saw himself sitting in front of Principal Longsworth, who was drilling those pastry-punched beady eyes into him, making the back of Matt’s neck burn. “You called him a sissy? Well,
you’re
the sissy, you little brat, picking on safe targets. You bullied that boy. You will not—you hear me?—you will not bully anyone as long as I’m principal of this school. You try this crap one more time and you’re history. You got me? Do you? Answer me.”

The heat at the back of Matt’s neck raged fierce again. But now he could hear Mr. Longsworth’s thoughts. He understood what the glint in his eyes meant. “Damned sissies,” the principal was thinking. “Closeted faggots bring it on themselves.”

“Hey, Santa, he’s just like me, only he’s pretending not to be.” Then, noting Santa’s alarm: “He’s got problems too, hasn’t he?”

“That’s right, Matt. Sometimes grown-ups do the right thing for the wrong reasons.” Santa lifted Wendy to the floor and stood up. “Sleep now. We’ll be back.”

“But wait, I—”

Santa put a finger to the side of his nose, gave a tortured wink, and was gone. Gone too the improvements in the bedroom, the paint job, the restored dresser which slumped there as ugly as ever with its stuck drawers and missing knobs. Gone the inviting aromas and the warmth and the candles and the coppery light.

But drowsiness drew Matt away from disappointment, down into the strangest dreamscape he had ever known.

Chapter 10. Dogma Erodes a Family

PART WAY INTO HER ROUNDS that same Thanksgiving Eve, the Tooth Fairy stopped to sniff the air. She had just harvested a molar from beneath Missy Wenner’s pillow in Boise and left a smattering of dimes. Benign in the bedroom she was, but furious as soon as she left. Zeus’s suppression of her anger made it flair with greater ferocity when she was free of his restraint.

But as she flew from the Wenner home to the Carters across town, she paused, sniffed, and sensed at once that Pan and his whiny little girl were out of their domain. They had dropped in on a mortal child off-season, some older boy, a bully with a prominent place on Pan’s naughty list.

“Gronk,” she called.

On her island, Gronk raised his head in mid-snore, instantly awake. His brothers slept on. Waves lapped at their bodies, draping ribbons of seaweed over hairless heads, over shoulders and buttocks, then drawing back into the sea. Apart from them, bruised black and blue from his latest beating, Chuff whimpered in his sleep.

Into magic time and up through cloud cover, Gronk bumblebee’d, homing in on his mother’s scent. Tens of thousands of miles flew by in an instant and there she was, hovering above stuck traffic. Moonlight bathed her nakedness, painting blood-flecked highlights on her necklace of teeth.

“The goat god,” she said, “has left his lair and roams the earth, his brat in tow.”

“But he...but Christmas is—”

“That’s why I summoned you, dolt. They dropped in on a twelve-year-old in Colorado Springs. Now they’re headed for another home there. Sniff them out. Observe them. Find out what’s up and report back at once, no matter where I am.”

“Are you still upset about Santa’s having jilted—?”

The Tooth Fairy shot over to him in fury and smacked his face so hard she drew blood. “Always. The fat fuck threw me over for his bag of a wife and that McGinnis whore. Thanks to Zeus’s meddling, he’s denying the best part of himself. I won’t have it. What’s the randy old satyr doing away from the North Pole? Whatever it is, we’re going to put a stop to it. We’ll crush the goatish giftgiver. We’ll smash to smithereens his happy little community. Now get moving.”

“But I—”

“Go!” She grabbed a shoulder and buttock and spun him high and far away in the direction of Colorado. Gronk zoomed off, his nostrils flaring to catch Santa’s mistletoe and candy cane scent.

* * *

Gronk and his brothers worked their Christmas mayhem beneath a cloak of invisibility. This cloak Gronk now donned as Santa’s sleigh touched down before a home not three miles from the Garden of the Gods. He had never seen Santa and Wendy and the sleigh and the entire team of reindeer before. They took his breath away.

When the pair alighted, Gronk shook off his awe and sped after them through the locked door and up the stairs.

They’re on a mission, thought Gronk. Mom’ll disrupt it. She calls him Pan and I guess that’s who he is, but I sure don’t see it.

Through a closed door they passed, all three. As they crossed the threshold, the bedroom shed its darkness to take on glow and wonder. At once there appeared strews of ivy, a host of ancient lanterns casting parchment light into every corner, and a magnificent diamond-studded bedspread surging up along the bed to the chins of the slumbering couple, who stirred and blinked and sat up in astonished disbelief.

Gronk hunkered down on the dresser, intently watching, awaiting his chance to whisper nasty notions in their ears.

* * *

Kathy Stratton instantly awoke. She was always a little anxious about burglars, but the warmth and wonder that infused the bedroom disarmed her. Her husband blinked beside her, sitting up and wiping away sleepy dirt with a couple of fingers. “What’s—?”

“Look, Walter,” she said, “it’s Santa Claus.” She knew at once that this was no dressed-up man but the real thing. “And a delightful little girl.”

“Hello, Kathy,” said Santa. “Meet my daughter Wendy.”

Santa’s voice thrilled her in ways that seemed a teeny bit, well, sinful.

“Hello,” said Wendy. “I’ve met your son.”

“Kurt?” asked Walter, wild-haired in his pajamas.

“Nope, Jamie.”

Kathy panicked. “There’s nothing wrong with him?”

Santa laughed. “Not at all.” Then: “Not for a long time.”

Her alarm increased. “But eventually?”

“We’ll come to that. Jamie’s well-being depends in large part on the two of you. Adjustments must be made.” She sensed that Santa was less than comfortable around them and it made her feel slightly out of sorts. “But first, let me show you scenes from the day just past.”

The bedroom fell away.

“Jeepers,” said Walter. As well he might, for they were sitting up with a magnificent bedspread draped over their laps, watching Walter at the sports bar he and his colleagues frequented after work. “That’s me and Joe Flynn, belting down a few beers. Joe’s our support guy.”

Their mouths moved soundlessly.

“Wait,” said Kathy. “Isn’t he...?” Kathy could see deeper than normal. Her husband there at the bar, all sorts of thoughts and impulses flitting through his mind, lay open to her. And his co-worker, a nice young man. But what was that beneath the façade?

“You’re telling a joke. Do you remember it?”

“I joke a lot,” said Walter. “It could have been anything.”

“I think you know which one it was.”

“Sure,” he confessed. “The one about the two...the two gay guys walking into a bar and ordering a couple of screwdrivers.”

Walter laughed silently and slapped Joe on the back.

Joe laughed too.

“Listen to what you said next,” said Santa, flicking a finger to turn up the gain.

“Good old Walter can spot ’em a mile away,” said the Walter at the bar, tapping his temple twice. “Queers’re different from us regular guys. You know, I don’t get it. They’re pervs and proud of it, no shame at all. They used to hang their heads. Nowadays, the media laps it up and shoves it down our throats. It’s enough to make you gag.”

Santa muted the conversation.

“I must be blind,” said Walter.

“We’re seeing deeper, I think,” Kathy said.

“Joe’s a homo, and I’m a chump. But they say alcoholics hide it too, even from their friends. And smokers use breath mints.”

The bedroom rushed up around them. Kathy patted Walter on the back. “Calm down, honey.” Then to Santa: “Is this proper for your little girl? Why show us this anyway?”

In reply, Santa gestured and Kathy’s workplace came into view. The dyke from down the hall had dropped by for feedback on an article she had written, Jane Miller, her hair that shocking short crop of red that alerted other lezzies to her propensities. Jane was bold and shameless. She pressed every wrong button.

Kathy stiffened. “Are you suggesting, you are, aren’t you, that I should accept this creature—who does unspeakable things with others of her ilk—as normal?” She was having a hard time. Here stood this miraculous elf, the epitome of goodness, long associated with the season of her Savior’s birth, confronting her with one of the most distasteful elements of the secular world.

“Take a closer look,” said Santa.

She did. And Jane Miller’s thoughts and impulses too were open to her. Anticipation of being with the boyfriend she lived with. Her complete lack of religious feeling, yet a fundamental decency at her core. A view of life Kathy could not parse.

“Why,” said Kathy, “she isn’t a lesbian at all. She’s one of us. But then why does she make herself look so...so spartan? I’ve been narrow, haven’t I? I shouldn’t be so quick to judge or assume.”

“Don’t judge,” said Santa. “Don’t assume at all.” The frown marks about her mouth were the last things Kathy saw as the work scene faded. “Simply love. It’s what Christ commanded.”

“You know, Santa,” said Walter, “I’m starting to notice a thread in what you’re showing us. All this homo stuff. Listen, we’re just a normal family living day by day. I’m a good provider. We’re active in our church. We have two great kids. Kurt’s a killer athlete. And Jamie...well, Jamie excels at school. You’re trying to make us change, aren’t you? But why should we? These people have no right to special privileges. They ought to crawl back inside the closet, cover themselves in shame, and rein in their ungodly tendencies. But whatever they do, it has nothing to do with us. We’re upstanding Christians, we pick our friends carefully, and we’ve chosen to lead a life of righteousness. What more can be asked of us?”