Then they went hand in hand to her bedroom. Secure about her he tucked the covers, the oil lamp by her bedside casting great bird-wing shadows everywhere.
“I love you, Daddy,” she said.
“I love you too, Wendy. More than words can say.”
She patted his hand where it rested on the coverlets and looked concerned. “Do you think, in the grand scheme of things, we’ll really make much of a difference?” She tried to keep disappointment out of her voice, but she was determined to be realistic about their new task and three was such a small number of households to visit.
“It’s good you’re not letting hope run away with you. It helps keep me in check too. On the other hand, to hit a far target—”
“One must aim one’s arrow high.”
“Forty-five degrees, to be exact. You and I, young lady, should aim high. Take me, for instance. Let’s see if I can walk the talk. I feel such depths of generosity toward my beloved boys and girls. Year after year, I have dedicated my life to abundant giving. Well, I vow right here and now, on my honor, to extend that generosity to grown-ups too. Go back far enough and all of them have a worthy child buried in their souls. It’s our task to revive and strengthen and put that child in charge of their lives. Many manage to keep it alive themselves, to nurture it, to be generous toward themselves and others. They’re the ones who honor the spirit of Christ, of Buddha, of all divine avatars. Good grown-ups abound. But alas, there are far fewer among the rich and powerful, who climb ladders, adopt warped credos, lie, cheat, and steal, scratch, claw, and scrabble for advantage, rattle sabers, appeal to baser instincts, monger war, the list goes on and on. It would be easy to grow cynical and lose ourselves in despair. But you and I are going to focus on their worthiest ideals and how those ideals might be strengthened and encouraged in the mortals we visit. Those few, we will pick with care.”
“Indeed we will,” said Wendy, beaming.
“Consider Nelson Mandela. Now there’s an extraordinary fellow. Were it not for him, South Africa would have devolved into factionalism and mass murder. Instead, despite the years stolen from him in prison, he preached peace. Preach it? He practiced it.
“But let me not babble on endlessly into the night. We both need our rest. Next Thanksgiving, with luck, we’ll set a few mortals on the path to goodness. We must be patient. Change the right man or woman and it makes all the difference. But whether they stick to that path and change the world will be up to them.”
“I can’t wait,” she said.
“Sleep tight, darling Wendy. I’ll let my two yum-bunnies know you’re ready for your goodnight hug.”
“G’night, Daddy,” she said, her eyelids heavy. Snowball and Nightwind padded in then (from the catch on the carpet, they clearly needed their claws trimmed) and leaped upon the bed, circling nests into her comforter and flopping down to either side of her.
It had been a full day. But she vowed to stay awake long enough to feel the warmth of Mommy’s kiss and Anya’s granny-lips on her cheek.
It was a struggle, yet she managed it. Just barely. But by the time they rose from her bed and reached the door, Wendy had utterly and blissfully entered the land of dreams.
Chapter 45. A Small Significant Shift
FROM THAT DAY FORWARD, Santa looked in on the human race to gauge its progress. In that one small area of interaction, they had of course enjoyed instant improvement. Day by day, its effects rippled throughout the world, although spillover into other attitudes and behaviors was hard to discern.
One day in June on their walk to the Chapel, Wendy said, “It’s frustrating, I agree, to watch them one day at a time. That’s why I prefer to project their futures.”
“Of course,” said Santa, feeling foolish. “Project them for me, would you, please? I’m particularly interested in the ones we dropped in on to save Jamie Stratton.”
Wendy laughed. “Sure thing!”
Perched on a large boulder, Santa watched Wendy paint the arctic air with vignettes. Before granting his request, she showed him in quick succession some of the worst homophobes who had been chocolate-egged into reason and goodwill. Not only did they behave better, but they looked more youthful, wrinkle lines relaxed away, acceptance far more frequent in their demeanor, judgmentalism in general diminished. At his urging, Wendy brought up Meg Weddle, whose turned nature made her nearly unrecognizable, so completely had she let go of her unnecessary defenses.
After Meg came Matt Beluzzo. Santa watched him try at first to remain with his gang of unsavory friends. But they, alas, clueless in a new key, had refocused and intensified their hatred onto women. So Matt left the gang, and six years later, was going steady with Terry Samuelson. As he matured, he eased out of his manic need to appear manly and macho. His features softened. Indeed, Santa had witnessed, worldwide, a subtle softening of men’s features.
“Here’s Ty Taylor,” said Wendy. And there was Ty indeed, in a private huddle with high mucky-mucks, speaking the word of God from the pulpit of a progressive church and pounding podiums on the lecture circuit. A fully recovered and repentant fundamentalist, he called himself, roundly condemning the wrongheaded views of literalist sects on abortion and capital punishment and goose-stepping jingoism, even as he bore not the least animosity toward those who held such views. “The follies done in the Father’s name,” tut-tutted Santa. “Some Thanksgiving, we ought to tackle head-on the evils of wayward religion.”
Wendy brought up more of Ty’s triumphs, as his hair grayed and he became more righteous in his pursuit of truth. Somewhere along the way, he picked up a wife, the pert Mimsie Bannerman, an exquisite complement and a compassionate communicator in her own right. “Oh, I remember Mimsie,” said Santa with boyish delight. “When she was five, she asked one of my surrogates for, received, and took much delight in a Betsy-Wetsy doll. A darling girl. A fascinating woman!”
“Now for the Strattons.”
At once, good old Walter and Kathy lived and loved before them. They were far happier these days, with less to prove, less to agonize over. There they sat, their sons between them, in a more compassionate church. They encouraged, Walter even more than Kathy, Jamie’s violin playing. “They’re also far more encouraging of each other. Walter was never much of a hiker, but Kathy loved it. Now they hike frequently. In fact, that’s what they’re doing at this very moment.”
“Show me,” said Santa. And there before them, along the trail to Bierstadt Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, hiked Jamie’s mom and dad. Then they ventured off-trail to enjoy a snack of almonds, dried apricots, egg-salad sandwiches, and one another.
“Wow, look who’s with them.”
Santa looked and saw the Easter Bunny standing beside a tree not twenty feet from the Strattons, who, concealed from other hikers, were growing decidedly amorous. Rachel had told Santa of their meeting in the tent and her forgiveness of him. “Hmm, I wonder—”
“I know exactly why he’s there. He and I discussed it.” Wendy wiped the scene away. “But modesty forbids.”
Santa boomed out a laugh. “All’s right with the world, then.”
“For the moment. This little corner of it, anyway.”
“Perhaps,” said Santa with a sigh, “that’s as much as one can expect.”
Then they headed home. As he followed Wendy through the winter wonderland, Santa gave silent thanks for the life he had been granted and the beautiful beings he shared it with. Anya. Rachel. Wendy. The elves. The reindeer. Chuff. Every last one of them beautiful beyond beautiful.
“What are you chuckling about back there?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Santa. And he chuckled again, sending up gales of laughter to dance among the treetops.
* * *
Whenever the Easter Bunny watched mortals make love, he found them utterly enthralling. Every coupling came about differently and progressed at its own pace—clothing tossed or ripped away or gently removed, the touch tentative or abrupt or soft and sure, words halting or beguiling or
shocking or sweet—and every coupling sounded, in a transposed key, the truth of the relationship entire. He had observed acts that gave every sign of hearts and flowers; but at the core, they were without joy or love, and both parties knew it. Conversely, just the night before, he had watched and enfertilized a taciturn pair, not a word spoken between them, not a smile exchanged; yet their love had been profound and all encompassing. What were their names? Ah yes, Reiner and Matilde von Huene, living in the heart of Rottenburg ob der Tauber.
Now, on a bright sunny Colorado afternoon, there had come into his ken Walter and Kathy Stratton. He had last seen them, in person no less, on Thanksgiving Eve. A crisis point. They had been traumatized in dream by the Tooth Fairy and her bastard imps. He and Wendy and Santa had reconnected them to their childhood impulses, and they made the correct choice vis-à-vis their son Jamie. Which in turn had led to the disaster of the egg-seeds and the triumph—joy, oh radiant joy—of the Divine Mother’s chocolate eggs, each of which had passed between these very paws. He held them up, admiring their blessed leather.
Marvelous.
Now here lay the Strattons on a large crinkly blue poncho Kathy had stowed in her backpack. Walter, having enticed her out of her hiking clothes, shrugged off his own. “Shall we have a girl?” he asked.
“Okay, let’s,” she said. “Oh, but what if it’s a boy?”
“Jamie will adjust. And we’ll try again later.”
“Nope, this one’s the last. Then comes your vasectomy.”
“Ouch. Well then, we’d better do this right.”
Kathy laughed. “It feels pretty right to me.” She gave a sigh. “You know how we’re always fretting about infertility? Well, suddenly I’m not worried about that at all. How strange.”
“We’re blessed by the gods. Mmm, do that again.”
“This?”
“Yep.”
“I think we must be blessed.”
And the Easter Bunny watched as Walter moved upon his wife and ventured inside her. Sheer beauty, this joining of the flesh. He, of course, had none to join. God had seen to that. All he could do was give the kiddies a moment of pure spring bliss each year, baskets and egg hunts. And a teensy bit of that bliss rubbed off on their parents.
But this was no time, he mused, to let himself be distracted by his past misdeeds, whatever they were, and his correction at the hands of the Great Deity in the Sky. No. His attention must be fixed fully upon the entwined couple, upon the movement of their organs, the sacs, the ducts, the fluids, the projectile surge of ejaculate, the motility and stamina of scads of spermatozoa, the womb’s moist receptivity, and the egg’s tremulous surface.
Then came the twitch of his nose, giving just the right zygote-English to the triumphant swimmer who would, ovum-conjoined, lead nine months hence to little Jamie’s longed-for sister. What would they call her? He hadn’t a clue.
Oh my, to what throes mortals abandoned themselves at the point of orgasm; or in Kathy’s case, faked orgasm. But her joy was genuine enough, and her love for Walter. What a privilege it was to view this thigh-to-thigh, skin-to-skin activity. If there was incontrovertible proof of God’s existence, the sight of mortal copulation was surely it. Perhaps if humankind ever gave up its joyless lust for power and its fascination with violence and death, it would turn to marveling at the spectacle of lovemaking.
An idle thought.
Men especially were too much enamored of playing king-of-the-hill ever to give up their fists and bombs. Not, at least, as the world was presently constituted.
But he had seen a subtle shift in the Father’s creation. Indeed he had been its agent, and knew how beguiling such changes felt.
One good shift deserved another.
And another.
Who knew what lay in store for this odd race of beings?
Maybe the Father would make other tweaks to the space-time continuum. And maybe the Divine Mother would remember a certain bunny’s role in this first one, and he would get to reprise it. Wouldn’t that be grand?
Pointless musings. Pointless, yes, but grand. Still, he was more than content with what was. Santa’s younger wife had forgiven him, if tentatively, in the warm glow of a great tent. What precisely she had forgiven, he could not for the life of him remember. But it felt grand nonetheless, and once-faded colors had retained their new intensity. Best of all, he had permission to leave Easter baskets for everyone at the North Pole again, and Wendy would receive the most opulent one of all.
He sighed happily. Then he blinked, blew a good-luck kiss to the impregnated woman and her hubby, and leaped skyward, heading home.
* * *
That night, as Santa Claus tucked her in and Snowball and Nightwind nestled against her, Wendy felt a shift in her outlook. Though her voice and body remained those of a child, she suddenly felt very grown-up and grave. “Daddy?”
“Yes, dear.”
“You mentioned shooting our arrow high.”
“I did.”
“Well, just look at these people.” Not wanting to upset her two mommies, she draped her bedroom in magic time and filled it with the sights and sounds of human beings doing the most horrendous things to one another. Rapes and murders offended their sight. Harsh words barked from dark corners, the moans of the suffering assaulted their ears, and the thunderous destruction of bombs and missiles shook them to the bone.
Then she swept the horrors away, her room regaining its wondrous calm, and rushed into Santa’s arms. “I’m sorry,” she said, sobbing with him. “But I had to remind you. Because we need to do far more than visit three households next fall. I mean, we can and we should choose those three wisely. But whatever our theme, we’ve got to aim for the kind of massive transformation we were allowed to bring about a few months ago. We’ve got to push Michael on this. We’ve got to fall on our knees before God and the Divine Mother and implore them to extend our charter. We really must aim our arrow high. Because you know why?”
Santa’s face was white with shock. “Why?”
“If we don’t, I’m afraid in a few years there won’t be a human race.”
Santa tried to speak but could not. She could tell he was struggling, but this time compassion for fallen mortals shone in his eyes and he did not flinch. “Wendy,” he said at last, “you continue to astound me. The little girl is gone, or rather she sits enthroned in the heart of an adult. And I joy in, and am in awe of, the young woman I see before me. So tell me, my wise fair one.” Wendy laughed at that, and Santa smiled. “What is the greatest failing of humankind? What does having seen what we’ve seen tell you about that?”
Wendy grew still. She took her stepfather’s hand and furrowed her brow. “I think,” she said, “no, I know what their worst failing is. They forget what their kindergarten teachers taught them. They give lip service to great spiritual leaders, but fail to heed the import of their words. They band together in groups and champion crude systems of belief and act, systems that pretend to be kind and loving, but are not. This or that set of constraints, they insist, are for their own good. They come unmediated from God. Sacrifice an eye to see as we see. And though you suffer on earth, you’ll have your reward in heaven. Perhaps the original impetus of these groups is fresh and creative and free. But over the years, they fall into corruption, luring the next generation in. So they lead little boys and girls astray, in the name of keeping them from falling into savagery. Where is Christ in this? Where is the Buddha? Where Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, and that Nelson Mandela person you mentioned?”
“Where indeed?” said Santa. Then he peered at her with untold depths of love and a look of utter despair. “But Wendy dear, how can we hope to address all of that?”
“I don’t know,” said she. “Not yet. But we’re going to do it. And we’re going to make a real difference. This is no misguided hope on my part. This is resolve. Because we mustn’t fail. Our generosity must stretch even farther than it did last Easter. I know we can do it. I’ll settle for nothing less. We wi
se fair ones have guts, and if I’ve learned one thing growing up under your tutelage, it’s that we can do anything we apply our hearts and minds to. Anything. I’m not about to take my immortality lightly. Yes, we ought to follow the promptings of our wise child, but it’s time we both grew up, took the bull by the horns, wrestled him to the ground, and kept him pinned until he cries uncle and turns into a lamb.”
Santa was stunned. “I never knew you had...no, that’s not true. I always knew you had this in you. Good for you.” He gave her hands a squeeze. “Goodnight, sweetheart. Tomorrow, the world begins anew. When one is immortal, there’s no such thing as taking on too much responsibility. The ball’s in your court, dear. Let’s do the right thing!”
Wendy embraced him. “I love you, Daddy.”
“And I you, dear one.”
“Send Mommy and Anya in, okay?”
“You won’t saddle them with this?”
She laughed. “Not yet. But soon.”
“Soon it is.”
Then Santa winked, blew her a kiss, and left the room. Wendy lay back, glowing with resolve. “We’re going to do it,” she told Snowball, raising a dynamo of a purr with her stroking. “See if we don’t.”
* * *
In the fullness of time, Wendy told her moms and started planning for the fall. What she and Santa (and yes in the end the Easter Bunny joined them too) did the following Thanksgiving was astounding indeed. But what their great deeds were, how they achieved them, and their long-term ramifications shall be left for another tale and another time.
Let us focus briefly, instead, on the Christmas Eve that came after.
Santa Claus made his usual rounds, visiting slumbering households, leaving gifts and good cheer, taking bites of cookie and sips of milk, feeding all but the last bit of carrot to his reindeer, and tingeing the air with hints of evergreen and magic that tickled good little boys and girls in the belly and provoked in them great giggles of wonder.
Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes Page 34
