Don't Call Me Christina Kringle

by Chris Grabenstein

  The burly bears needed to guard King Tony’s Toy Castle because the waiting line started forming at three a.m. the morning after Thanksgiving. Every child in town had to have what King Tony had to sell. His toys were that good—remarkable really, almost magical—and nobody else in the whole world had them. Not even people in China and Taiwan, where most toys were made. King Tony’s toys, however, were built right in the store, down in the basement—but nobody except King Tony and a certain lanky Scotsman knew about that.

  Mr. Kasselhopf, the candy-cane factory owner, was very thankful the day after Thanksgiving! As promised, red-and-white-striped candy canes were tumbling off the assembly line at his factory—faster than they had tumbled in fifty years.

  Mr. Kasselhopf beamed as he reached into an overflowing bin to sample his wares.

  He peeled back the cellophane, admired the marvelously symmetrical swirl pattern expertly painted into the curl-topped stick. He sniffed the cane the way a bee sniffs a flower. Then he sniffed it some more.

  “Mmm, most exquisite bouquet,” he muttered. “A refreshingly piquant, pithy, and potent peppermint.”

  When he ran out of adjectives, he took his first lick.

  Joy shuddered through his body.

  “Delicious.”

  The little man had never tasted a better-tasting candy cane in his whole life and he had been tasting candy canes ever since he was a little baby bouncing up and down on his German grand-papa’s knee while listening to the local oompah-pah band playing “Stille Nachte (Silent Night)” on tubas in their lederhosen.

  Everything was also going wonderfully well back on Christina’s side of town in one particular store, a place called Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe, which spelled “olde” with an E and “shoppe” with two Ps plus another E at the end so everybody would know just how high its prices were.

  Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe sold ye olde Christmas ornaments all year long. They never closed. Not even on Christmas Day, because you never knew when one might need one more outrageously expensive ball, bauble, or bangle to hang on one’s tree.

  Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe had the most spectacular selection of hand-blown glass ornaments. They sparkled and shimmered and seemed to glow. People called them “magical” and “enchanted” and, to tell the truth, they weren’t exactly wrong.

  The Shoppe was, as usual, doing a brisk business on the Friday after Thanksgiving but it had a problem—the same problem it had every day, all year long, Thanksgiving, Christmas or Groundhog Day.

  It was located right next door to Guiseppe’s Old World Shoe Repair Shop—only one P, no E at the end.

  The store with the ugliest, most horrendous, most hideously gaudy gaggle of Christmas gewgaws ever displayed in a shop window anywhere except, maybe, on Mars.

  Six

  “Where are your customers, Guiseppe?” asked the man in the dark-blue suit.

  “Shopping?”

  “Exactly. Shopping in other stores!”

  Christina didn’t like the man in the dark-blue suit. He was a banker. Mr. Bailey. From what she could make out from the words he tossed around—words like “mortgage,” “payments,” “arrears,” “default,” “bad credit risk,” and “eviction notice”—Grandpa Giuseppe had forgotten to pay the bank some money he owed them. He had forgotten for several months. Maybe all year.

  “Please, Mr. Bailey,” said Grandpa, practically begging, “I work here forty years. This same location.”

  Mr. Bailey snapped his briefcase shut. “Then you’ve earned a vacation. Move to Florida. Retire.”

  “Retire? But I am too young. …”

  “You’re seventy-three. You should’ve retired years ago. Pay what you owe or we will repossess this property. Good day, Mr. Lucci.”

  Mr. Bailey opened the front door. The jingle bells jangled but they sounded tinny; a rattling string of empty cranberry cans.

  Grandpa, who had always been trim and spry and full of vim and vigor, never actually looked all that old to Christina. But today he suddenly seemed ancient. His big red holiday sweater swallowed him up and made him look shrunken and frail. Defeated.

  “Hungry, Grandpa?” Christina asked with the happiest voice she could muster. “I made cold turkey sandwiches with cranberry jelly.”

  Grandpa turned and smiled at Christina. He always had a smile for her, no matter how much hurt he had inside.

  “I think maybe I eat later,” he said softly. “Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “I think maybe I take a little nap, now. The decorating—it always wears me out.”

  Grandpa shuffled around the counter and headed for the small curtained-off back room where he worked on the shoes. He had an old army cot back there, too.

  “I’ll keep your sandwich cold!” Christina joked.

  “Grazie. Tutto bene. Thank you, Christina.” Guiseppe pulled open the heavy curtains and disappeared.

  “Mind if I watch a little TV?” Christina called after him.

  Guiseppe didn’t answer.

  So Christina switched on the black-and-white television with the five-inch screen they kept on the front counter. When business was slow, Grandpa would watch baseball games on the TV. Given the current state of his financial troubles, Christina guessed he caught every game last season. She lowered the volume so the television wouldn’t disturb Grandpa’s nap.

  When the screen finally filled, it was a commercial.

  “Great,” said Christina who had been hoping for a cartoon. Maybe an old movie. Instead, she got two hyperactive Hollywood kids playing with what looked like a dinosaur crossed with a dump truck.

  “It’s a dump truck,” said one of the boys.

  “No, it’s a dinosaur!” screamed the other.

  “Dump truck!”

  “Dinosaur!”

  That’s when Santa Claus strolled into the scene.

  “Ho, ho, ho,” he said. “You’re both right, children! It’s a dinosaur and a dump truck! It’s the new Dumping Dino Truckasaurus.”

  “I want Dumping Dino!” the kids shouted with glee.

  “Then tell your parents to hurry down to King Tony’s Toy Castle, the only toy store that has a Dumping Dino this holiday season.”

  “Is that because King Tony is the King of Christmas?” asked the boy who happened to be the worst actor.

  “He sure is!” said the hard-sell Santa. Then he turned to talk directly into the camera. “Remember moms and dads: to make sure your children have the merriest Christmas ever: Forget me, go see King T!”

  The two kids started tugging on the toy.

  “I want Dumping Dino! I want Dumping Dino!”

  “And I want you both to disappear.” Christina clicked off the TV. “Wow, my Christmas wish actually came true.”

  She unwrapped one of the turkey sandwiches she had fixed earlier. She always liked Thanksgiving leftovers better than the main event, the big deal dinner on Thursday. This year, since it was just Grandpa and her, she bought the turkey in slices from the corner deli. Everything else came in cans. Except the mashed potatoes and gravy. Those came from the fried-chicken place up the block.

  As Christina took her first bite, the store bells jingled.

  A very angry man in a tan trench coat stormed into the store.

  “Where is he?”

  Seven

  Christina held up her hand to ask for just a minute to finish chewing the turkey and cranberry and mayonnaise and bread currently in her mouth.

  “Where is he?” The man actually stomped his feet on the floor. He looked to be thirty-something but was acting like he was two and had a dirty diaper.

  “Who?” Christina said, even though it sort of sounded like “moo?” because her mouth was still full of mashed food.

  “The old imbecile who runs this so-called shoe repair shop!”

  “May I help you?” Grandpa came out from behind the curtains, rubbing at his weary eyes. Christina guessed Mr. Trench Coat’s temper tantrum had woken him up from that nap. “Is there some pro
blem?”

  “Problem?” The man pretended to laugh. “Ha!” He clunked a pair of shoes down on the counter. Christina could see the problem immediately: the soles were attached to the wrong feet. The one curving in from the left was on the right shoe pointing out and the one on the left shoe was curving out to the right.

  Christina tried not to giggle: the shoes looked totally ridiculous. Like clown shoes.

  “My cleaning woman picked these up on Wednesday,” the man said. “I opened the bundle this morning. Look what you did!”

  “I did this?” Grandpa asked sadly staring at the weirdly warped shoes.

  “You ruined them! Do you know how much these shoes cost?”

  Guiseppe shook his head.

  “More than you make all year!” the man sputtered.

  Christina was impressed. “Really?”

  The furious man fumed. He was probably exaggerating and didn’t like ten-year-old girls pointing it out.

  “Well,” said Grandpa, “if you don’t mind me asking, sir—why would you spend so much money on a pair of shoes?”

  “Because I can. Because I can.”

  “I will fix,” said Guiseppe. “Come in tomorrow. I fix good.”

  “Tomorrow? Tomorrow? I am supposed to attend a very important function this evening. A Christmas party!”

  Yet another reason for Christina to hate Christmas: it brought out the jerks who yelled at Grandpa.

  “Several very important people will be at this party and it is very important that I wear my most important shoes! So hurry up and fix them!”

  “Oh, no,” said Grandpa. “I cannot rush this job. …”

  “Why not?”

  Christina knew the answer: Grandpa was slowing down. His hands were seventy-three years old and couldn’t move as nimbly as they once did. He wasn’t a motorized window display elf you could just plug in and watch him hammer away.

  “The party is tonight!” As the angry customer screamed, his face turned redder than Rudolph’s nose.

  Thinking fast, Christina came up with an idea.

  “What size shoe do you wear?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “What size shoe?”

  “Nine and a half. Why?”

  Christina went to the cluttered shelf behind the counter, studied all the bundles stacked there.

  “Here you go,” she said, pulling a pair out of the pile. “Nine and a half.”

  The man was mortified. “Those aren’t my shoes.”

  “Pretend you’re at a bowling alley,” Christina suggested.

  “A bowling alley?” The man sounded horrified by the thought.

  “Fine.” said Christina, putting the bundled shoes back on the shelf. “But these shoes are way more important than your shoes.”

  “Impossible.”

  She shrugged. “They belong to Prince Oblongata.”

  “Who?”

  “Prince Medulla Oblongata. From Nimbusia.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s in Africa. The royal family always sends Grandpa their shoes. …”

  Christina, of course, knew that the medulla oblongata was a region of the brain that controls organ functions like respiration and heart rate. And Nimbus was a type of cloud. She was betting that Trench Coat man wouldn’t know either of these things because he’d long-since forgotten everything he ever learned in fifth grade. She was right.

  “Prince Oboevonglotto?” he said, sounding impressed.

  “Yep.”

  The man adjusted his tie. Composed himself.

  “Will his highness mind if I borrow his shoes?”

  “Not at all. He’s a prince. Very generous.”

  The man rubbed his greedy fingers together. Christina could tell: the guy wanted to grab the shoe bundle from Christina—he wanted tear off the brown wrapping paper and slip the royal leather over his quivering, shivering toes!

  “I’ll take them!”

  When Christina handed the man the bundle, he hugged it like a baby.

  “Come back tomorrow,” said Christina. “Your shoes will be ready.”

  “Tomorrow? You’re open on Saturdays?”

  “ ’Tis the season.”

  “Give my regards to Prince Obie Won Ganata!” The man said as he bolted out the front door clutching his treasure.

  It slammed shut. When the strap of jingle bells stopped tinkling, Grandpa sighed.

  “Tomorrow? Oh, my. How will I ever fix all these shoes by tomorrow?”

  He pulled a big cardboard box out from under the counter. It was crammed full. Pairs and pairs of shiny, expensive shoes. Black and brown, wing tips and loafers, saddle shoes and mukluks.

  Every single pair had its soles nailed to the wrong feet.

  Eight

  Over on the other side of town, Mister Fred sashayed out of his Fine Footwearerie lugging a small leopard-print pet carrier, the kind you’d use for a very fancy cat with bows in its fur, to the long stretch limousine waiting at the curb.

  “Good evening, sir,” said the driver, clicking his heels smartly.

  “Yes,” tittered Mister Fred. “It is a good evening, isn’t it? The cash register has been ringing and jingling all day long!”

  “Did you sell many shoes, sir?”

  “Scads! Oodles! Dozens!”

  “Well done, sir.”

  “I’ll say. Average price per pair? Four hundred and forty-four dollars.”

  The driver did some quick math in his head.

  “Bravo, sir.”

  “And this was only the first shopping day of the season!” Mister Fred giggled merrily. “I’m ready to celebrate! Take me to the party!”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. The very important holiday party, sir.”

  “Do you know the address?”

  The driver, who wore a black uniform and chauffeur’s cap, clicked his heels again. “Yes, sir. I know the address, sir.”

  “Is there gas in the gas tank?”

  “Indeed there is, sir. I personally filled it up myself just this afternoon, sir. I went to the filling station, sir.”

  “Then we’re all set to go?”

  “Indeed we are, sir.”

  “Good. Then I have only one more question. …”

  “Of course, sir.” The chauffeur stiffened his already steel-girder-straight back. “Fire away, sir.”

  “Why are we standing out here on the sidewalk in the freezing cold?”

  “Excellent question, sir. Very excellent, indeed.”

  “Well?”

  “Sorry, sir. Haven’t a clue. It is, as I stated, a very excellent question. One of your best. Quite a brain teaser. Why are we standing here? Why, indeed.”

  “Jenkins?”

  “Sir?”

  “Open the dang-dong door!”

  “Of course, sir. Excellent suggestion, sir.”

  Jenkins opened the door.

  “Shall I place your cat carrier in the trunk, sir?”

  Mister Fred gasped. “The trunk, Jenkins? Are you completely insane?”

  “Interesting question, sir. I have never been diagnosed as such. However I am certainly willing to undergo further testing if—”

  “Oh shut up and open my door!”

  “Right away, sir.”

  Jenkins clicked his heels yet again.

  “Now!”

  “Excellent suggestion, sir.”

  Finally, the driver opened the limousine’s heavy rear door. Mister Fred slid into the plush backseat, cradling his pet carrier on his lap.

  “Shall I close the door, sir?”

  “Yes! Close it!”

  “Right away, sir,” said the driver. Only he had to click his heels before he actually shut the door so, technically, he didn’t do it right away.

  “Shut the dang-dong door, you doofus!”

  The driver saluted with one hand, shut the door with the other. This time, he clicked the toes of his shoes together.

  Mister Fred exhaled loudly. He sometimes wondered why he kept his t
hick-skulled driver on the payroll. Then he remembered: he liked Jenkins calling him “sir” all the time. Made him feel like a Duke. Duke Fred. Lord Fred. Fred the Mighty and Magnificent.

  With the door finally shut and the tinted divider window scrolled up to shield him from his slow-witted but satisfactorily slavish driver, Mister Fred peeked through the mesh opening at the front of his fancy pet carrier.

  “Put you in the trunk? Jenkins is such a silly nilly. You’d freeze. Yes, you would. Yes, you would. Oh, yeshy-yesh. Oh, yesh-indeedy-do.”

  Mister Fred was babbling baby talk. Gobbledygook. Gookle-dee-gobble.

  “You two are simply too precious to stow in the trunk. Oh yesh you are. Yesh-indeedy-doody. You’re my precious iddy-biddy babies!”

  He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out two little hand-knit sweaters. One red. The other green. Both decorated with snowflake patterns stitched across the back.

  “Look what I bought for you! Aren’t they pretty? Wittle, iddy-biddy doggie-woggie poodle-woodle sweaters!”

  Mister Fred unzipped the front flap of the carrier and reached inside the bag to put the sweaters on his two pets.

  That was his big mistake.

  Nine

  Back on the other side of the city, back where things weren’t so bright and cheery, Christina sat behind the counter in Giuseppe’s shoe shop, doing her homework.

  The store was mostly dark. The only light came from a small gooseneck lamp aimed at her textbook and notepad, and whatever spilled in from the front window where blinking twinkle lights and Rudolph’s tomato-red nose still blazed in all their glory.

  “Math,” she mumbled, flipping forward a few pages in her textbook. “Something I hate almost as much as Christmas. …”

  The store bells jingled. A whoosh of cold air swept into the room.

  Christina looked up and saw a Hispanic-looking woman and a very small, timid boy standing in the open doorway. The two looked to be mother and son. Their clothes were kind of shabby and sort of mismatched but their dark eyes twinkled with joy.