“Father, where are your...?” She gritted back her anger and her upset. “Shake, Mister Rabbit.” Wendy seized his paw and shook it, thrilled to be meeting this warm and generous creature at last. Many were the Easter baskets he had left at her home in Sacramento. Though monstrous in size, he was the soul of gentleness. “With your help, we will save little Jamie’s life. It’s a privilege to be working with you, kind sir.”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” said the Easter Bunny.
He nearly tipped the sleigh over getting in. He squeezed himself into the back seat where Santa’s bulging pack rode on Christmas Eve. “It’s a tight fit,” he said.
Santa cracked his whip and shouted, “Up with you, my four-footed beasties!” The team shot skyward with such abruptness that Wendy’s head angled up and her back pressed against the lacquered seat.
“Whee!” said the Easter Bunny.
“It’s fun, isn’t it?” said Wendy, looking over her shoulder.
“Goodness, yes.” Silence. “May I say again how grateful I am to be on this mission. I’ve seen plenty of mortals of course, sleeping in their beds and...and so forth. But I’ve never spoken to them, and I must say little ants of anticipatory joy are crawling up and down my spine at the prospect.” Silence. “If I may be so bold, I sense a wee bit of discomfort emanating from the driver of this magnificent vehicle. If I have done aught to offend, and I have the vaguest feeling I have, I humbly and profusely apologize. We are none of us perfect—”
“What you did is beyond apology.”
The hairs rose on the back of Wendy’s neck.
“So don’t even try.”
“I...I surely wish I knew what I’ve—”
“Your memories have been erased,” said Santa. “Mine have not. And no, I will not go into it. You will drop this now. I’m doing my best to focus on Jamie Stratton. Were it the Devil himself, though that’s a creature that doesn’t exist, I would work with him to reverse this boy’s fate. Let’s just say, you’d better deliver, Mister Rabbit. This had better be worth the grief caused by being in your presence. No, wait, I mustn’t be so harsh. You’re here. You’ll serve whatever purpose you’re meant to serve. I don’t have to like it, but I will do my best to be charitable while we’re together. Two rules.” He turned and glared at the Easter Bunny in a way that Wendy had never seen him glare at anyone. “You will get no closer to me or Wendy than you are now. And you will not bring up my discomfort again. This I demand, and these demands are subject neither to negotiation nor to further discussion. In a moment, I’m going to ask you if I have made myself clear. Your answer had better be yes sir, or I will throw you out of this magnificent sleigh.
“Now.
“Have I made myself clear?”
The Easter Bunny stared in wide-eyed amazement. Then his brow wrinkled, and he slumped into a mumbled “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He faced forward again. “Sorry, Wendy, but he....” Then he lapsed into silence, shoulders tense, avoiding her.
Wendy looked back and gave a tiny shrug of encouragement. She was all at sea with Santa’s strange behavior, shocked and upset even as she was thrilled with their mission and their new recruit.
The Easter Bunny raised a paw as if to say, no matter. Still, the gesture could not hide his discomfort, and Wendy was determined to be as kind to him as possible and to confront her stepfather—on a walk in the woods, perhaps—when this was over.
Wendy stole a glance at Santa’s grim-set face, then did what she could to dismiss it, gazing with anticipation into the night sky.
* * *
The nightmare had shattered Matt Beluzzo.
Its torment went deep indeed, increasing where increase seemed impossible. Moreover, that torment had been meted out by the same immortals who appeared before him now. Their cheery demeanor struck him as obscene. Their presence so frightened him, he hardly noticed how changed the room was. Though he lay in his own bed, the walls, floor, and ceiling were those of his tiny room in the trailer, where they had lived until he turned eight. Dozens of candles bathed the bedroom in warm light.
He shivered uncontrollably. “Stay away from me, man. Just keep your distance, okay?”
“You’ve been dreaming,” said the Santa thing. “Whatever you’ve been told or shown or made to suffer, it’s all a lie.” But the creature’s drawn face did not inspire trust.
Then the Easter Bunny leaped into the room, a great surge of fur and soft brown eyes shiny in the flicker of candle flame. Though Matt ought to have been terrified, he felt instantly at ease.
The new visitor hopped past the other two and placed a paw on the blankets closest to him. “Greetings, Matt,” he said in a voice that melted his remaining defenses. “May I say what an honor it is to meet you. I want to apologize for the meager baskets I’ve left in the past. But you were, and are still, a naughty little fellow, you know, to be scrupulously honest about it. Still, I’m quite sure this visit will turn you into one of the nice ones, and then I’ll feel far more generous toward you on Easter Eve. Now, that isn’t why you should change. A craving for chocolate and jellybeans would be insufficient to justify or sustain such an abrupt readjustment in your life. No, simple love of all humans everywhere, conspicuously lacking in you thus far, ought to be your guide, Matt.” He glanced at Santa and Wendy, who had lost all taint of the demonic. “But I blather. Pray, forgive me, you’re the first mortal I’ve ever addressed.”
“That’s all right,” said Matt. It was strange to see and hear a giant bunny rabbit form intelligible words and phrases.
“You spoke to me,” said a delighted Easter Bunny. “He did. He spoke to me.”
“Let’s get to the business at hand, shall we?” said Santa, with a gesture beyond the bed that dissolved the walls.
“Yes, of course,” said the Easter Bunny.
“Here you are at four months,” said Wendy, “almost able to roll over and crawl.” There he lay upon a thin blanket on a threadbare carpet in the trailer’s living room, Mom and Pop shouting at each other across a table littered with grease-stained bags of fried chicken. Matt tried to hate them, but found it impossible with the Easter Bunny beside him. His father fumed cigarette smoke from his nostrils. “Yeah well, I’m steamed cuz some punk faggot cut me off coming home. I came this close to flooring it and ramming the sucker’s bumper sideways up his candy ass.”
The Easter Bunny raised a paw to his cheek. “Oh dear me, your father’s definitely not a nice man, is he? But the point of this, of course, Matt, is that while your wide-eyed infant self understood not a word of what he just said, your whole being was shaped by everything around you, and this instance of bigotry, so casually spewed by your paterfamilias, has right now nestled snug and secure at the base of your brain’s linguistic center. Okay, Santa, bring up the next scene, please.”
His parents were replaced by a schoolyard in the brilliance of the noonday sun. “Hey, look, there I am.” And so he was, his hair tousled, running in the playground, not looking where he was going.
“Oops-a-daisy, down goes Matt!” said the Easter Bunny with a sympathetic chuckle. Then he grew somber. “Now this is the really sad part, because you see those older boys? You’re crying. You’re bawling your eyes out, the unreliable ground has ripped itself out from under you and dealt you a skinned knee, a real ouch-a-roonie, and it smarts. But instead of helping you, these naughty boys taunt you.” And there they were, a memory rushing vividly back, three ugly brat-faces pie-holing open around the word sissy and a singsong “Matty is a gur-ull, Matty is a gur-ull.” Even now, at twelve and tough as nails, Matt felt his throat catch and his gut seize up with hurt. “There, there, Matt,” said the Easter Bunny, “it feels really bad, doesn’t it?”
“Uh huh.”
“Now see what happens next.” The schoolyard shifted. Matt was a few years older, shoving a little kid down, holding his shoulders, and getting in his face with, “Sissy, sissy, Joey’s a sissy.”
“You didn’t cry very much after those
kids called you bad names, except sometimes in your room at home, into your pillow so your mommy and daddy wouldn’t hear.”
It was odd.
As scene after scene sprang to life, it wasn’t so much their content that turned him as the presence of the Easter Bunny. He was so warm and loving, so funny and quirky, and so gentle with the truth, yet not afraid to offend, not really, around his apologies. He showed him Terry at eight, the boy Matt had once been—but seemed no longer—fated to kill. How sweet he was, running into a candy store, methodically setting down two quarters and a dime and pointing excitedly into a glass case to claim his prize. Matt was shown other boys too, and himself at many ages. And always in this, though the Easter Bunny never called attention to it, Matt saw that he himself was in fact attracted far more to males than females, and that his entire life had become an elaborate denial of it.
The Easter Bunny nodded. “You see how things are. That’s nice. It’s the first step in straightening out your crooked walk. You can be kind, though nasty folks call you names. Some people will tromp and trounce you. If they do, answer them with kindness, not as if you’re better than they, though indeed you are; but because it’s the right thing to do, and you, Matt, from this moment on, are a right-thing-doer.”
“I am?” asked Matt. Then upon reflection: “I am. I can do that. And I will. I have Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny on my side. That’s got to count for something. Oh, and you too, Wendy. I didn’t mean to leave you out.”
“That’s okay.” Wendy beamed.
“Santa, bring back that first scene, would you?” asked the Easter Bunny. Considerably more at ease now, Santa gestured. Matt’s parents once more sat before them, gnawing chicken bones. “He’s the true test of your resolve, isn’t he?”
“My dad.” Matt’s hatred was visceral.
“Go further. Stare right straight into him.” Matt gazed deep down into the world of sorrows his father carried. As he watched, the old man’s life unraveled in time through all the nastiness done to him and by him to others, until the adolescent appeared and rolled backward into a childhood state of innocence. Then forward again they flew, to the kitchen table and the smoke fuming from his nostrils. But when Matt arrived there, he found he could no longer hate his father.
“Now, your mom.” And so with her, yet another timestream backward unrolled, a lifetime unlived and relived. My God, thought Matt, the misery. The paths closed off. The restraints placed on her so early, so often, and in so many ways, that she gave into them and defined herself by them, embraced a loser, sought solace in drink, and let herself go to seed.
“What a sad sight,” said Matt with compassion.
Then his bedroom returned.
“Sad indeed. And how magical are your tears. I joy in what now springs to life in you. Goodbye, dear boy,” said the Easter Bunny, the warm leather of his paw touching Matt’s face for the first time. Matt hugged the gentle creature, then exchanged hugs with Wendy and Santa.
“Don’t go,” he said.
His visitors told him they wished they could stay longer. But they all, Matt included, understood. They had served their purpose. The grime had been wiped from Matt’s vision, which now sparkled vivid and clear.
Will I backslide? came the idle worry.
Then sleep took him, and assurance burned in his soul, an assurance that could not be gainsaid.
Chapter 19. Parenthood Unshackled
“YES, OF COURSE,” SAID SANTA, TIGHTENING HIS HOLD on the reins. “Our furry friend did a fine job. We all did, Wendy. Not just him. The three of us did. But it’s too early to pat ourselves on the back. Children, even nasty ones, can be pretty malleable. Grown-ups are the challenge. Their prejudices have had years to calcify. Even the best ones tend to turn into smug little know-it-alls. And let’s not forget, these particular grown-ups have been misled by a certain fairy and her brood.”
From behind: “If I may say so, sir—”
My God, thought Santa. Yet another assault of brutal honesty was in the offing. The creature may have been, according to the archangel, utterly transformed, but his frankness could use some toning down.
“—I sense envy toward me. You are less than secure perhaps in your stance toward Wendy here. You worry, as I do not, that she will admire me for having succeeded with little Matt where you (though, if I may assure you, Santa, I do not share your self-condemnation) have faltered, or failed, or fallen down utterly in your parental responsibilities.”
“Nonsense.” But Santa knew that the insufferable rabbit was spot on. He has lost himself, condemning these mortals when he ought to have been the soul of patience, intolerant in the face of intolerance. And toward the Easter Bunny? Dear Lord, how could he forgive or forget the outrages this creature had perpetrated upon his wives during the days in which the furry bearer of baskets had bartered his soul for the Tooth Fairy’s favors? Yet here he was, doing good and making Santa look bad in Wendy’s eyes.
Be generous, thought Santa, generous. The way Matt was fixed shows me a possible way past my Pan self.
“We’re a team, Daddy, us three,” said Wendy. “With Jamie’s parents and the preacher, we’ll just need to pitch in and try harder. The Easter Bunny has shown us how. By appealing to their childhood innocence and making a heartfelt assault against their wobbly and wrong grown-up stances, we have a chance, in this one area, to restore their inborn divinity.”
“Maybe you’re right, dear.”
“I’m sure she is.”
“I didn’t ask you,” snapped Santa. “Did I ask you?”
In the sleigh, dead silence.
“All right,” said Santa, “I apologize.”
“Oh there’s no need for—”
“But there is, and I do. Wendy’s right, we’re a team. We need to bend all our efforts toward Jamie’s parents and the Reverend Taylor. The Tooth Fairy has thrown a terrifying veil over their eyes. We’ve got to rip it to shreds and bring them home to godliness. Truth is the way. Truth is our best weapon. I am content to have you spearhead the attack, bunny. We have our differences, that you know—”
“But whatever might they—?”
“They exist. That’s all I’ll say. But if we don’t set them aside and join in common cause, the Tooth Fairy will have been right to call us demons and the boy will be lost.”
“All for one,” said Wendy, “and one for all!”
From behind Santa: “One for all!”
“Yes of course,” agreed Santa. “I’ll go along with that. We have the resolve. My helpers’ handiwork has reverted to topnotch—”
“You know, sir,” the Easter Bunny ventured, “I have an idea what might be bothering them.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” said Santa. “Concentrate your efforts on Kathy and Walter Stratton. Scour their childhoods. We must come to them armed to the teeth.” And so they did, furrowing their brows in an intense effort to comb the past, as the reindeer drew them across the skies over Colorado Springs.
Half a hand-span from the Easter Bunny’s back, Gronk held on, drinking in every word. In the boy’s bedroom, he had been pressed against wall and ceiling, unable to draw nearer and feeling queasy to be as near as he was. He debated fiercely with himself. Should he break away and report now, or hang on for the next visit? He and Mommy and his brothers had driven the grown-ups into a desperate embrace of prejudice. If Santa and his cohorts failed to pry their fingers loose from that prejudice, they would lose the game. Far better, Gronk thought, to report that triumph than the melting of some turncoat brat’s will when faced with a big fuzzy bunny.
He decided he would wait, enduring the nausea of one more bedroom before making his report. When the sleigh banked, he clung fiercely to its back.
The Stratton house, for the third time, loomed from below.
* * *
Kathy awoke with the shakes, her skin still burning from eternal hellfire. Inviting warmth filled the bedroom and the odd glow that had seemed inviting but was...no, it again embraced her
, and the sizzle and burst of pine knots upon an invisible hearth greeted her once more. How real the nightmare had felt. And how real the fantastical scene before her, the jolly old elf and his green-clad girl, and, oh my God, a brown-eyed bunny rabbit whose ear-tips nearly touched the ceiling and whose size and demeanor instantly identified him.
“You’re demons.” Walter’s voice trembled. “We’re on to you. I command you to leave this house.”
Kathy noticed folds and shadows on their visitors’ faces. Seemingly pure innocence glinted, in the candle glow, with hints of menace. How could she be sure? Then she set her jaw. Why struggle for certainty when she could simply surrender her will to God? The Bible could not be gainsaid. Right was right, and only the Devil would try to argue against it. It frightened her how pleasing a shape he could assume. “Get thee behind me,” she commanded, blinking back tears.
“Oh good heavens,” said Santa, “trust your eyes, will you? Trust your heart. We’re who we say we are, and Almighty God has sent us to save your son.”
“Salvation comes only through Christ.”
“It’s okay, Missus Stratton,” said Santa’s stepdaughter in that heartbreaking voice of hers. “We’re in the same camp as Christ. Somehow the Tooth Fairy got into your dreams and tried to trick you. She isn’t very nice at all. Daddy says she once did mean things to me and my parents, but God took away my memory of exactly what.”
“I always believed,” said Kathy, “that Satan’s minions would be ugly with dark brows and hard eyes. But now I see that they can appear however they like, and still be wicked inside.” The hurt on the girl’s face gave Kathy pause, but she steeled herself. “I refuse to be swayed by your pretend sweetness, young lady. You’re nothing but a little devil.”
“That’s quite enough,” said the Santa demon.
The Easter Bunny raised a paw. “If I may, please.” His loving assurance instantly melted Kathy’s resolve. “You don’t know which camp to trust. I understand that. How can we prove to you that we are not demons? We cannot. Even the gentlest of mortals can harbor terrible monsters inside. But we are not like them. Our hearts are pure. All we can do is proclaim the truth and ask you to open yourselves to our words, to test them in the purest place in your hearts, in the place where God waits beyond fear and doubt.”
Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes Page 14
