We had no way of rectifying the matter, since only Santa could keep track of millions of Christmas wishes and it goes without saying that he had no idea where the animal belonged.
And so Jericho joined our family. Born of the bag, he insisted on sleeping in it every night, as if returning to his mother's womb. This introduced us to an amazing property of the magic bag that we would never have discovered otherwise: each morning Jericho emerged from his sleep as if for the first time, reborn daily.
While Jericho brought a brightness and cheer to our lives that we'd never had before, there was still the overwhelming anxiety produced by Santa's mood. We elves walked on tiptoe throughout the village, always expecting the worst.
And then, after months of whining and moping, Santa had emerged one morning from the gloom of his TV room, pasty and bloated, but with a spark in his eye that we had almost forgotten. “Grady Elf!” he called when he saw me. “I need a trainer. You've got an athletic background, right?”
I tried to explain that my two-month stint as a reindeer jockey hardly counted, but once Santa gets an idea in his head, it's nearly impossible to dislodge it. Hence the many disastrous chimney incidents before that nearfatal one convinced him to change his MO.
I blamed myself. When Santa had argued against cable television, it was I who kept after him to have it installed. My reasons were purely selfish; I'd heard cable offered the sort of programming that could keep a lonely elf warm during long winter nights.
How could I have known that Santa would discover Pay-Per-View wrestling? Or that he would get it into his shaggy old head to earn the World Heavyweight Belt and surround himself with scantily-clad dancers in order to show his estranged wife that she had tossed away the best man she'd ever encounter?
And now Santa Claus, the professional wrestler wannabe, was throwing himself full-force into the ropes, threatening to destroy all comers. Since he had made good on the same promise several times before (not because he's a talented wrestler, but simply by virtue of his size), most of the elves exited our makeshift arena en masse.
Hemmit Elf lagged behind, his arms folded across his banty chest. He leaned casually against the doorframe and stopped me as I tried to escape the embarrassing spectacle in the ring.
“Well, Grady Elf,” he said. “Do you still think he's capable of running this organization?”
I tried to shrug it off. “This is just part of the performance,” I assured him, aiming for nonchalance. “It's entertainment.”
Hemmit Elf snorted. “He's a lunatic! The revolution's almost over, and the dictator's about to topple.”
At exactly that moment, Santa bounced off the ropes and pitched facedown onto the mat, sputtering, “Ho-ho-ho for life!”
The senior elves—Chabo, Kash, Malenky, and Bill— joined me in the executive dining room for a bachelor's lunch of sandwiches and grog. “I remember,” Kash said, as he did every day, “when the Mrs. cooked up a hot lunch that—”
“Yes, Kash,” I said sharply. “We all remember. But we've lingered too long in the past. After this morning's fiasco, Santa's job is hanging by a thread. We've got to make him see how his behavior jeopardizes the system. If he continues to neglect his duties—”
Jericho jumped into my lap and yapped for attention, unconcerned with our crumbling empire. I pulled a small rubber ball from my vest pocket and lobbed it at the wall. Jericho made a flying leap to catch and mangle the bouncing prey.
“Hemmit Elf has an unnatural ability to be in the right place at the worst possible time,” I said.
“Worst time for us,” Malenky Elf reminded me. “Perfect time for them.”
By them he meant the rebels, the young elves led by Hemmit, who chafed at Santa's insistence on maintaining the status quo. Hemmit Elf wanted mechanization, computerized inventory, Humvees to replace the reindeer, and a cappuccino bar in the sleigh room. Santa wouldn't hear of it, of course. Neither would he trouble himself to offer other suggestions for updating the operation. Sometimes I wondered if he really wanted his job at all.
The rebels had begun to spread dissension among the crew, initiating sick-outs during the busiest season. They grabbed every opportunity to highlight Santa's apathy and bizarre behavior. And while I hesitated to point a finger, there had been several unfortunate illnesses that ran rampant among the reindeer.
Piled one atop the other, these minor annoyances had inflated the level of frustration among the workers. Where once we'd been a merry band of toy professionals, we were now a frustrated assemblage of blue elves.
“Maybe,” Chabo Elf said, thoughtfully stroking his thinning beard, “it's time we surrendered to the inevitable.”
Jericho's head snapped up. He stared at Chabo Elf as if he'd understood the words and was appalled by them.
“Et tu, Chabo?” Kash asked sadly.
Bill Elf grimaced and moaned, “Who's next?”
“Chabo Elf, you aren't serious!” I protested. “They're a small group of troublemakers. If we keep our heads, this nonsense will blow over.”
“Will it?” Chabo Elf asked. “Christmas is only a week away. Our production is down eighteen percent. Rudolph isn't half-recovered from the stomach upset. The only thing that can save us is good old-fashioned Christmas magic, and the only person who can make that happen is a middle-aged, steroid-laden has-been who just issued a cage match challenge to Hulk Hogan.”
“Look, Santa will snap out of it!” I was getting a bit testy myself. Truth was, I didn't know if Santa would ever be himself again, but elves of my generation are genetically inclined toward optimism. “It's a midlife crisis. These things happen.”
“To Santa Claus?” Malenky Elf asked skeptically.
“Sure. Why not?” I nodded firmly. “We confront him—tactfully, of course—and lay it on the table. Once he understands—”
The dining room door blew open and in stalked Quiggle Elf, Hemmit's right-hand fiend. He was redfaced and shaking his fist in a perfect imitation of Santa's earlier performance in the ring. “You're all going down for this one!” he shouted. “Santa just attacked Hemmit and tried to kill him!”
We followed Quiggle at a run back to the workshop, with Jericho bringing up the rear. By the time we arrived, Hemmit's henchmen had him surrounded. Their sturdy little elf bodies formed a barricade around the leader, who sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor, an ice pack held to the back of his head.
Hemmit looked directly at me, smug even in his battered condition. His eyes didn't quite work in sync, but that hardly mattered. He could see the future clearly enough and it looked bright for him, indeed.
I sat on the floor beside Hemmit, feeling a smidgen of sympathy for the cockeyed villain. “Tell me exactly what happened,” I said.
A lump stuck out on the back of Hemmit's head, already turning more colors than a string of Christmas lights. The skin had been broken, but the bleeding was light and had already stopped, leaving a reddish black crust in the center of the lump.
“Surely you can figure it out,” Hemmit snapped. “Santa the psycho got caught up in his performance. He attacked me from behind. With that.” Hemmit pointed to the Louisville Slugger lying on the floor behind him.
I scooted over for a closer look at the alleged weapon. A couple of hairs, Hemmit's length and color, remained on the bat and there was a small nick in the wood.
There was no denying that Hemmit had been hit with something, and the bat seemed the most likely blunt object. “But how do you know it was Santa?” I asked. “I mean, if you were attacked from behind …”
“Who else would've done it?” Hemmit's glazed eyes blazed with anger. “You heard the old freak threaten me just this morning!”
“The Boss doesn't usually walk the halls with a baseball bat at the ready,” I said snidely.
“He got it from the bag!” Hemmit snapped back. He winced as he turned to point, indicating the low shelf where Santa's bag was stored throughout the year.
The bag was nowhere to be seen.
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“Why would Santa conk you on the head just to get his bag?” I asked.
Hemmit's sly smile disgusted me. “Because,” he said and flipped his hand airily, “he doesn't want me to have it. Childish of him, isn't it?”
“He's gone too far!” someone shouted, and the group concurred.
“Boot him out!”
“Hang him like a stocking!”
The other elves nodded agreement, and not just Hem-mit's rebel crew; even among the loyal there were reluctant mutterings, or worse—silence.
Jericho paced the shelf, searching in vain for his bag. I thought I knew how he felt. The heart of our known world had disappeared; neither of us knew how to proceed so we told ourselves that persistence and diligence would make everything right again.
The shelf is empty, I admitted to myself, and the Pole belongs to Hemmit now.
A jingle of bells in the hallway told me the final battle in the war for Pole Control was about to erupt.
Santa bounded into the room, his cheeks red as cherries and his manner bright as tinsel. “Ho ho!” he boomed. “What's this? A party?”
“Keep him away from me!” Hemmit whined.
Instantly the front row of elves moved to surround their gutless leader. The Boss was temporarily confused; then he burst into jolly laughter. “Not to worry, Hemmit,” he said. “I'm a ragin' madman in the ring, but just plain Claus out here.”
I got to my feet and crossed the room to stand by Santa's side. Not a single elf joined me. Reaching up to tug at his beard, I whispered, “Santa, we have a problem.”
The Big Guy listened quietly to my brief explanation, looked intently at the unforgiving faces of the elves around him, then turned and trudged back toward his living quarters. I watched him until he turned the corner at the end of the hall, but nothing in his demeanor answered the question on all our minds: Is Santa a homicidal maniac?
Chabo Elf quietly joined me in the doorway.
“There's no fight left in him,” I said. This truth settled like a glacier on my chest.
“Hasn't been for a long time now,” Chabo agreed.
“In that sense, this is his fault. It began to slip away when Santa lost his spirit.”
I nodded. “Exactly right. Am I the last one to see it? Am I that naive?”
Chabo put a wrinkled old hand on my shoulder. “Not naive,” he said mildly. “You have more faith than the rest of us. You believe.”
“Yeah, well.” I turned to look at the others. Elves formerly loyal to the Old Way were shuffling their feet, shamefacedly listening to Hemmit spout his detailed plans for revamping the system. “I have no belief in what's coming. I have no faith in Hemmit.”
“Neither has anyone else,” Chabo said, with a meaningful look.
I pondered this for several seconds before understanding dawned. “Without belief …”
Chabo Elf finished for me. “There is no Santa Claus.”
It was a sleepless night in the village. The noise of celebration in Hemmit's quarters was almost as nerveracking as the martial arts movie sound effects blaring from Santa's television. Even in a silent room, I'd have been wide-awake.
Jericho, too, roamed and whined, unable to sleep without his security bag. I cradled the puppy in my arms and laid my head on his. “There's a new world order,” I told him. “It'll take a lot of getting used to, Jericho.”
He cocked one ear as if he wanted to hear more, so I talked on. As the long night passed, I told Jericho the story of Santa Claus: that he stood for the magic of faith, that his miracles kept hope alive in a universe that sometimes tried to crush the souls of its children, and that, whatever happened, we should always remember Santa the way he had been in the beginning.
When the cuckoo called five A.M., I dragged myself out to meet the new day and the new regime. Jericho followed on my heels, probably afraid that I would disappear the way his security bag had done.
Passing Santa's door, I heard a ferocious burp from within and surmised that he'd been hitting the eggnog pretty heavily. What does it matter? I asked myself, and continued down the hall toward Chabo's room.
My knock was met by a grunt followed shortly by the slow, heavy steps of a downcast elf. Chabo opened the door a crack, peered at me through red and swollen eyes, then stepped back to allow me inside.
“Get any sleep?” I asked.
Chabo's room was a disaster, a hundred diverse items tossed into a pile on the floor. A small suitcase sat at the end of the bed.
“Change is inevitable, but I'd as soon go through it somewhere else.” Chabo shook his head and sighed.
Jericho wiggled out of my arms and hit the floor running. I watched him scamper about, fighting through the pile of clutter as if the fate of the world depended on his victory. Satisfied that the pile posed no threat, Jericho stuck his fuzzy head under the bed, wiggled his tail, and disappeared. Presumably to battle evil dust bunnies.
“Want to share a sleigh to the bus station?” Chabo Elf offered. “Traveling is easier with a friend.”
Leaving hadn't occurred to me until that moment. I'd never been away from the Pole, I realized. Never! The Outer World was as strange and new to me as each new day was to Jericho.
As I pondered the possibilities and pitfalls of starting a new life outside the Pole, Chabo waited patiently. The older generation is like that; we have learned patience through the centuries because without that virtue, we'd surely go mad. What is there to do at the Pole, after all, but wait for the year to pass and for Christmas to arrive?
“Yes, thanks,” I said. “I'll start packing right aw—” My impulsive choice was interrupted by a noise coming from underneath Chabo Elf's bed. “What on earth is that?”
I leaned over for a look beneath the low cot. “It sounds like snoring,” I muttered. “Poor Jericho must be worn-out.”
Sure enough, the puppy was sleeping soundly—inside Santa's bag!
“Chabo?” I straightened and looked him in the eye. “How did Santa's bag get under your bed?”
Chabo stared right back at me, but he spoke not a word.
“You don't mean … you took the bag? It was you who clobbered Hemmit with the bat?”
This brought a mischievous grin to his face. “That's the most fun I've had in years.”
I allowed myself a moment of vicarious satisfaction before expressing the appropriate moral outrage. “Don't you see what you've done? You've destroyed any hope of saving Santa's job. Chabo, you have to confess right away.”
Chabo shrugged. “Oh, I'll confess, if you like. But that won't save Santa. Nothing will. I've tried”—he spread his hands to indicate the objects strewn about the floor—“to find an answer. All night I tried. This is the result.”
I was confused and told him so. Frankly I suspected that Santa wasn't the only madman among us.
“That's why I took the bag,” Chabo explained. “I knew nothing less than magic could set things right. It's gone too far, you know. Santa let it go too far. Sometimes changes take on a life of their own.”
His desperation was understandable, but his methods were indefensible. “What did you expect to get from the bag?” I asked. “A time machine to take us back to the Good Old Days?”
“I didn't expect anything,” Chabo said irritably. “That bag belongs to Claus. I was surprised it worked for me at all. As you can see, it produced junk. Just worthless junk.”
I took a closer look at the objects on the floor: a set of Tinker Toys, a baseball glove, two Chatty Cathys … a collection of outdated toys from the bag of an outdated Claus.
Reaching underneath the bed, I slid the bag out gently so as not to disturb Jericho's long overdue nap. “Let's tell Santa,” I said firmly. “We'll figure out the rest of it later.”
Santa sat while Chabo related his sins. Santa had to sit; standing caused excruciating pain behind his eyes.
“For what it's worth,” Chabo finished, “I thought I could help you. I'm sorry.”
Santa rubbed his blotchy
face with his hand then sighed heavily. “It was kindness, Chabo. I understand and I'm sorry I don't deserve it.”
“Look, Santa.” I still had Jericho and the bag in my arms. “Chabo will explain to all the elves that he assaulted Hemmit and then—”
The Boss held up a hand to stop me. “Let it go, Grady.”
“But you can't—”
“Grady,” Santa said sternly, “there comes a time when one must surrender to the demands of the majority. However imbecilic they may be.”
Chabo hung his head, fully resigned to the demise of Santa's reign. I wanted to protest, to scream and shriek and by the very force of my heart bring back the wonderland of our youth. Instead I carefully pulled sleeping Jericho from his dark womb and held the bag out to the pathetic figure of a Claus before me.
Santa took it, running his stubby fingers over the soft, faded velvet. I could see memories etched on his wan face as he recalled the centuries of magic that he and the bag had shared. “Like a part of me,” he said apologetically. “I wish I could set it all right again.”
He closed his eyes and smiled a sad little smile, then reached inside. For a few seconds his hand lingered, reluctant to bring an end to the fantasy. Finally he withdrew a tightly clenched fist … but not an empty one.
“What's this?” Santa asked with surprise.
Chabo and I leaned in for a closer look. “Another bag?” Chabo suggested.
It was nearly identical to the bag in Santa's other hand, only newer and brighter, smelling of fresh snow and pine needles.
Jericho woke suddenly, no doubt disturbed by my gasp. The puppy wiggled free of my hold and confidently grabbed the old bag between his teeth. Santa watched as Jericho tugged the bag. “Here, pup. This one's all yours now. Hemmit can use the new one.”
This arrangement suited Jericho just fine. He dragged his private sleeping quarters across the floor to a corner of Santa's room, pushed and pawed at it until the lumps were finely tuned, then curled up in the middle of the bag and fell asleep.
“Well,” Santa said, “at least someone's happy.”
I looked from Chabo to the Claus and back again. “Don't you get it? It's a new bag!”
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