“Why you old satyr,” said Anya in mock scold. “You’re always ready, aren’t you?”
“For my darling nymph and my once-mortal lover, yes yes and yes again.”
Anya smiled. Then, leaning to her nightstand, she blew out her lantern, as Rachel did hers. And for a time, naught but giggles and sighs, gasps and caresses, and the sweet intimacies of love held sway in the Clausean marriage bed.
Chapter 5. Innocence and Shame
WHEN HE ISN’T DELIVERING BASKETS on his special night each year, the Easter Bunny has time to kill. The colored eggs his hens lay roll down long ramps to be stored away, never spoiling or cracking, but hardboiled as they emerge. Likewise his well-lubricated, maintenance-free machines turn out an abundance of jellybeans, marshmallow chicks, chocolate bunnies, and clear, thin shreds of shiny green plastic. Without intervention of any kind, ingredients appear and are processed, their end products stored in spotless bins or upon shelves, to be miraculously assembled at unfathomable depths into baskets as Easter approaches. Come the night of delivery, into magic time he vanishes, reaching a paw into the void and pulling out just the right basket for the mortal whose life, at that moment, he graces. Then a tumble across carpet and a quick dive through permeable windows brings him out into the night air where he speeds to his next destination.
So goes the Easter Bunny’s divinely decreed routine. Content he is, and more than content, with this.
What then does he do after each morning’s look-in at the hens? He roams the earth, searching for loving couples in their moments of intimacy. Now you are not to think his voyeurism unholy, as indeed it had been before the Father’s neutering transformation of him. Though he recalled none of his past, he had been monstrous then, steeped in lust and envy and capable of monstrous deeds. He had sold his soul to the Tooth Fairy, tormented Wendy, attacked Anya, and violated Rachel. Then had God visited his burrow and reached back in time to the moment of his creation to eradicate his sex organs.
Nowadays, he sought the most loving couples instinct led him to, blessing, by observing them, their intimacies. At the moment, he was sitting on his haunches in a high-fenced backyard where, between two trees, a hammock was stretched. Within it lay an Australian man and woman, upon a temperate afternoon, wiling away the time in marital bliss. As Ray gripped her inner thigh, Penelope pleasured herself. Her face went taut and Ray told her she was beautiful.
In the Easter Bunny’s opinion, both of them were paragons of beauty—not simply in the skin or limbs or musculature, but in their hearts, which lay exposed to him. Penelope and Ray were recent newlyweds, second marriages both, childless their first, by design in her case, by low sperm count in his. They had spoken of adoption, though they much preferred spawning a child of their own. This, in fact, was the other criterion that influenced the Easter Bunny’s choice of lovers to visit.
For he was able to observe the liquidity of their letting-go, to guide eggward the jet of sperm, and with a twitch of his nose and a bit of body English to propel one hearty spermatozoa into the great plunge, thereby setting into motion the wondrous process of incubation. Once he had accomplished that task for Penelope and Ray, he leaped for joy, splitting the sky with inaudible yips of delight.
Then he settled down to bask in the afterglow and listen in on their sweet converse. Penelope said she felt as if some benevolent god had spread a canopy of divine approval over their coupling, and Ray agreed.
Even so, despite his chittering joy, the Easter Bunny felt a decided lack of something. This lack wasn’t connected to the aforementioned lust or envy, for he no longer suffered under their spell.
Shame was what he felt, vague but ever present.
He knew not why. To his knowledge, he had done nothing to be ashamed of. Still, there the shame was. He felt a need to make restitution, to recover something that had been lost.
Now you are not to suppose that this recoverable something was his penis and testicles, for he missed them not at all. God’s makeover had been thorough, and an envy of mortal organs in no way figured in his sense of loss.
If pressed to say what precisely he had lost, the Easter Bunny would have paused and pondered and said, “I guess it’s the pastel goodness of Easter, the happiness of the hunt for eggs in tall grass, the contentment of sunny spring days with the air fresh and quiet, and the companionship loving, familial, and free.” For his shame had in some small measure dulled for him the sensory delights of Easter. Scents were a tad muted, colors not quite so intense, textures less distinct.
The sheen upon the eggshell of life had dimmed.
He sighed. Even so, it contented him to observe the Rays and Penelopes of the world and to usher along the regeneration of life, womb-whole and poised to drop squalling and perfect into the world.
Into the sky over Brisbane he bounded, shooting north and east toward a humble home outside of Santa Fe, a few miles along Artist’s Way yet not quite as far as Ten Thousand Waves.
* * *
The next day, Santa’s distraught looks were bruited about from workbench to workbench. Something in him had changed, but no one dared ask what. They observed him sighing and pacing in his office, sitting jittery-legged on a tall stool downing Coke after Coke, worrying over a cuckoo clock with wee little screwdrivers beneath an intense pool of light. He seemed older, more frazzled, far less sure of himself than usual.
Why don’t I just ask him, Fritz wondered. It isn’t as if he isn’t approachable. He’s very approachable.
But Fritz knew nobody was about to ask him. If Santa had something to tell them, he would choose his own time to do so.
So far had the buzz spread that Gregor and his brothers, Josef and Engelbert, dropped by from the stables, ostensibly to pitch in where they were needed. But Gregor’s fierce eyes, darting everywhere at once, told a different tale. It surprised no one when his brothers spread word of a meeting at the Chapel after lights out.
The day having fled, Fritz and Herbert trudged through moonlit snow, past the stables and up into the woods behind the workshop. In twos and threes traipsed Santa’s helpers, threading past boulders and clusters of pine trees. They carried lanterns, held high or swinging from lax hands. The long line of elves snaked its way to the Chapel, a bowed configuration of trees where God had joined Santa and Anya and Rachel in holy matrimony eight years before.
As the final stragglers found their places, Gregor strode to the fore. The moonlight was most intense where the Almighty had stood, and into it stepped Gregor. He planted his feet firm, crossed his arms in a tight harrumph, and glared over the sea of elves, saying nothing. He nodded. Again. A third nod. Laughter rippled through the crowd. But Gregor did not crack a smile and the laughter died down as quickly as it had begun.
Fritz leaned to Herbert. “This must be about Santa, don’t you think?”
Herbert shrugged and nodded, shook his head no, and shrugged again.
Gregor pointed sharply into the crowd. Stabs, as if to say, Caught you! Caught you! He would point, then withdraw his hand and tuck it decisively back into the crook of his opposite elbow.
“I see you,” he said at last. “I see you all. You think Santa has changed? We have changed. We all saw Santa in his office, looking older. Some weight has been dropped on the big baby’s toes. I have no idea what. Tomorrow, it may vanish. He’ll be his same damned cheery old self. But you and I have changed in the years since Wendy and Rachel arrived, since Knecht Rupert played the organ for the wedding while Johann and Gustav worked the bellows. Our hands stayed at our sides, or busied themselves with making toys, or buried themselves in our pockets, or gesticulated to match our words, or little-boy’d behind our backs, or tossed our caps into the heavens at Santa’s return on Christmas morning.
“But more and more our hands have begun acting shamefully. It has become habitual. I notice it. I marvel that no one else notices it.”
Fritz wondered what Gregor was talking about. He thought himself fairly observant, yet he had seen nothing special
. He stared at his hands and let them drop.
Gregor extended his index fingers as though making a point. His elbows were bent at perfect right angles. “Observe these fingers. They have never, not once, known sin.” He stood erect and fierce. “Fingers find nostrils, do they not? They root about in them. They ferret out certain...prizes. Certain soft foul discolorations that gloop up into shameless droppings at a fingertip’s end. Sometimes these prizes—”
(again he put a nasty spin on the word)
“—are smeared on sleeves or handkerchiefs or workbench surfaces, to dry and crust and be brushed away. But in the extreme, certain as yet unnamed miscreants eat what they find. I have seen it. In the workshop, I have seen it. In the commons, I have seen it. Tonight, at this very gathering, here in this hallowed place, I have seen it. Over and over and over. The practice squanders our energy. It vitiates us. The act is vile, disgusting, bestial, self-abusive, and downright unelflike.”
Fritz looked at Herbert, who no longer smiled but stared at him from beneath a cloud of shame. In truth, Fritz felt shame of his own, though he was not sure why. Did Gregor have a point?
“The nose,” continued Gregor, tapping his bulbous proboscis, “is a wondrous organ. Sensitive to mere hints of aroma, capacious and wide of nostril to welcome in fresh air, capable of issuing sharp sniffs of disapproval—and there is so much in this world to disapprove of. What a wondrous organ is the nose.”
He paused to impale them on his glare and to set up, by silence, his next point, as a tennis player lofts his ball before serving it.
“Mucus. Properly respected and unfingered, mucus has been designed, by God and his angels, to capture and conglomerate germs and bodily grit. Its tasteful removal is the function of the handkerchief, not the finger. Pray observe. I take a folded red kerchief from my back pocket. I shake it out. It is clean, notice. I double-fold it—no thin fabric shall expose these fingers to the accidental taint of distasteful liquid—then I drape it over one hand. Now I bring it to my nose and close one nostril as I blow the other clear, back and forth, like this.”
Gregor gave two pronounced goose honks, followed by three short, quick ones, then wiped vigorously back and forth. The now-crumpled handkerchief he held before him like an offense.
“Thus is it done. The soiled cloth now goes carefully back into the pocket and, once I reach home, into the hamper, to be replaced by a clean, freshly-folded one.”
Master weaver Ludwig raised a hand. Gregor glared, refusing to acknowledge the questioner. Ludwig chimed in anyway: “But Gregor, where’s the harm? What matter whether handkerchief or finger removes the stuff so long as it’s removed? Did you really call us together for this?”
Gregor reddened. “You see?” he said, cutting off Ludwig’s last word. “That’s the attitude. Lax, lazy, insufficiently vigilant. Our master weaver picks his nose and eats what he has picked. Those same fingers, unwashed, take up the needle and handle bolts of cloth. Do you suffer under the illusion that Ludwig’s filthy nose products do not slime their way into his weave? What befouled toys does Santa place beneath children’s trees? Do you see? Do you see how pernicious and invasive an evil is spread by such acts? I tell you, my brother elves, we have devolved. This vile habit, which I have vowed to vanquish and to help all of you consign to the oblivion it deserves, cloaks some terrible truth about our past. Whatever its cause, this obscenity shall not stand. When I see it, I will call the offender on his folly. My brothers have vowed to do likewise.” Truth be told, fat Josef and Engelbert looked dubious. “Moreover, these meetings, to shame us and steel our resolve, shall continue until this scourge has been routed.”
Herbert’s guilt hung like lead in his eyes. If only Gregor knew the half of it, thought Fritz, he would go apoplectic.
“You have been put on notice. I expect this ungodly practice to cease. Spy on one another. Spy on your unworthiest selves. Report offenders at once to Engelbert, Josef, or me. We shall shame them into surrender, I swear upon my sacred honor.”
And Gregor strode off, gesturing them back toward the dormitory. Amidst much murmuring, the elves took up the march, self-conscious now about their bodies. Gone the casual arm swing, the lax sway of hands alongside easy-breathing chests.
Shame hung heavy about Fritz, and worse, he saw, about his friend Herbert. I should feel anger, he thought, anger at the grumpmeister’s bullying and at Herbert’s dismay.
But all was shock and confusion within him.
* * *
Chuff, the Tooth Fairy’s lackluster youngest, sat forlorn in his least unfavorite spot, peering at the moon through a thicket of blighted trees halfway up the mountain’s west slope. The moon was cold and full and uncaring, its sheen the harsh, metallic glint in his brothers’ eyes when they sailed into him with tooth and claw.
“If I could only have a sign,” he said to the moon, so softly that only the odd syllable came out. Nonetheless, he lofted his eyes upward and said, “Please, the smallest sign. Something to assure me there’s more to life than this.” Chuff winced at memories of beatings and railings, of bad children running from him in terror as he obeyed his worst instincts. Lately, his self-loathing had increased. “I’m not like my brothers,” he said. “They sense it. So does Mom.”
At the thought of her, Chuff’s throat narrowed. She preferred her sons vicious. But Chuff found viciousness harder to conjure up with each passing day. She rewarded mayhem in the telling. Even when one of his brothers lied, and everyone knew he was embellishing his nasty deeds, Mom praised the liar.
When the blood of vengeance rode high in her, a certain nostril flare and lip curl distorted her looks. Chuff’s tales, contrive them though he might, never managed to please her. Hard and cold as her heart, she listened. If he escaped the telling without a scornful word or a command to the others to beat him senseless, he counted himself lucky. “She means well. No, that’s wrong. She never means well. I don’t want her approval or praise. But I do. It’s the coin of the realm, and dear pale moon—who at least, in your indifference, spares me your sneers—I sit here impoverished. Enrich me, or at least grant me minimal sustenance. There must be a way out, some way to...to find my true family, not these awful changelings.”
His brothers’ scowls rose before him. He dismissed them, but they came again. Then he calmed and let them vanish into the chill air of the island.
“A sign. One small sign pointing the way out.”
But the moon’s glare held steady. No wink. No warmth. No wavering. Clouds came in to cover it, until it was but a gray smudge hidden inside a darker gray.
For the longest time, Chuff tried to coax the moon back into view. It refused to return.
Chapter 6. The Power of Prayer
THE ELVES WEREN’T THE ONLY creatures at the North Pole who had slipped into magic time that night.
Santa, having scrutinized the ceiling above his bed for hours, finally crawled from beneath his blankets and over the bottom lip of the bed, doing his best not to disturb his wives. He pulled on flannel underwear, shrugged into a suit and boots, and trudged across the commons to the workshop. There he sat for many an hour, summoning scenes past and present from the four mortals whose futures Wendy had shown him.
First he examined Ty Taylor, a proper lad who had adopted without question his parents’ strictness. From his earliest days, he seemed destined for the ministry. Santa observed the young man at seminary, swallowing as gospel his denomination’s lies. Evangelicals were a cockeyed fringe back then, as the seventies began and Ty turned twenty-two. Outside, authority was being questioned, defied, rebelled against. But inside, Ty and his classmates were admonished to obey absolutely and to buttress with rhetorical flourishes the beliefs of the buttoned-down.
Santa brought up scene after scene of Ty’s indoctrination into institutional homophobia, into selective Bible parsing that slathered a false sheen of God-acceptance over the prejudices of the day. Though Santa longed to wrench these teachings from Ty’s mind, he could only observe the
ir inculcation.
In his teens, Ty passed two vagrants on a park bench in Chicago and burned at the suggestion they shouted after him. Santa felt his discomfort, as if he thought that heterosexuality ought to blare with trumpeted certainty from him, but did not.
Then came assignments to this or that church, sermons on sin, the gradual development of a beguiling preaching style that honed the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness that worked upon the sinful.
Despairing at what he saw, Santa let Ty Taylor go.
He next probed Jamie’s parents, likewise tracing them from their childhoods, how they met, the dominance of Kathy MacLaren in their marriage. Here as well he noted the gender uncertainty in both of them, dropped references to manliness as their sons developed and diverged. Though Jamie was only eight, Santa observed his father’s worried looks and felt the fears of both parents as they discussed the boys in the privacy of their bedroom.
But what most upset Santa was the life of Matt Beluzzo at his current sullen age of twelve.
His father, languishing in jail, despised his wife and son and had let them know it with curses, slaps, and belt-whippings. Matt’s mother smoked and overate, covering her misery in excess makeup. She rarely looked Matt in the eye but stared past him, speaking, when she spoke at all, in insults.
For Santa, who had focused all his life on good little boys and girls, Matt’s family repulsed him. And that repulsion distressed him no end. Worse, he knew that what he had seen played itself out repeatedly in homes throughout the world. Seeing one such family was unbearable. Imagining their misery multiplied drove Santa to his knees, his hands clasped in prayer, his eyes red and wet.
“Dear God,” he began, “I thank you for my many blessings and above all for my loving friends and family here at the North Pole and for the children who hold my truth in their hearts. My life, save for that unfortunate interlude with the Tooth Fairy, is one of contentment. Even my struggles with my...my less savory side led eventually to Rachel and Wendy’s welcome into our community and the enrichment and expansion of my marriage, for which I could praise you for all eternity and not begin to praise you enough. But tonight I must speak a prayer of pleading, a request to be granted the power to right a wrong, to extend my charter, and not to shrink from extended contact with grown-ups.
Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes Page 4
