Don't Call Me Christina Kringle (11 page)

“Mmmm. I was working across the street when I smelled something sweet.” With another double-finger snap-clap, the new guy, Smoothie, strolled into the kitchen. “Oh, and there's cookies too.”

“Help yourself,” said Trixie.

“Just don't drip any of your hair goop on 'em,” added Flixie.

“No problemo,” said Smoothie as he ambled over to the rack of chocolate chips.

“So,” Trixie said to Christina, “speaking of gifts, you never found the one your father wanted to give you last Christmas?”

“Nope. And Grandpa and I searched everywhere. You wanna see what I was going to give to him?”

“Sure!”

“Hang on.” Christina left the kitchen and ran to her bedroom.

While she was gone, Trixie turned to Smoothie, filled him in.

“Her father was a fireman. Took toys to sick kids stuck in hospitals on Christmas Eve.”

“And poor kids in housing projects,” added Flixie. “Just like the three wise guys who followed a movie star to Bethlehem.”

“Last Christmas Eve,” said Trixie, “he died. Before he could give Christina her big Christmas gift.”

Smoothie nodded. “Gotcha. Thanks for the update, ladies.”

Christina hurried back into the room with a white box. She pulled out a red velvet Santa hat trimmed with fluffy white fur.

Flixie and Trixie gasped.

“Don't worry,” said Christina. “It's fake fur.”

“It's beautiful.”

“Yeah. He, you know, needed a new one.” Her voice caught when she said it. “The thing he'd worn for like fifteen years was starting to look ratty.”

“Sure, honey, sure.”

Now Christina pulled a folded piece of paper from the box. “This was the story in the newspaper. About how he died on Christmas Eve.”

She spread the clipping out on the kitchen table so her new friends could read it.

HERO FIREFIGHTER NICHOLAS “SAINT NICK” LUCCI DIES IN CHRISTMAS EVE BLAZE, blared the banner headline. Gray type surrounded a portrait of Christina's smiling dad decked out in his Engine 23 helmet and turnout gear.

“There's those eyes again,” sighed Trixie.

Smoothie moseyed over to the table, licking melted brown goo off his fingertips.

“That your dad?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Christina.

“Huh. I knew this guy.”

“What?”

“Sure. Saint Nick Lucci. Used to work at my firehouse.”

“Engine 23?”

“Yeah. I was their kitchen brownie. Engine 23. Cleaned up the pots and pans they left soaking in the sink. Let me tell you, those guys could make a mess. …”

Christina smiled, remembering. “Making spaghetti.”

“Yeah. Spaghetti. The bell would ring, they'd run off in their truck, I'd clean up the kitchen.”

“Were you there last Christmas Eve?”

“Oh, yeah. Big fire. Just like it says in the newspaper there.”

“And you saw my father?”

“Sure. And he had this one big gift on the back of the truck. It was all wrapped up. Big tag on the side said: ‘To Christina, from Santa.' ”

That same morning, at King Tony's Toy Castle, four parents were fighting over the last Dumping Dino remaining on the shelf.

The costumed bears from out front, decked out in their fuzzy plumed hats, had to storm into the store and break up the fight in aisle six with their balsa-wood spears.

Every boy and girl in the city wanted a Dumping Dino—the remote-controlled dump truck that could wondrously transform itself into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. However, three days before Christmas, there was only one left and no other store in town had them! They were a King Tony exclusive.

Tony Scungilli, the king of the Toy Castle, headed downstairs to Santa's workshop. Actually, it was just a dingy corner of the basement where two brownie brothers, Gustav and Gizmo, cranked out all the best-selling toys in the store. They were surrounded by rolling bins and boxes full of parts and pieces, widgets and thingamabobs, whatchamacallits and doohickeys—all imported from China: gobs and gobs of unfinished human business.

“Fellas?” the toy mogul shouted to be heard over the clatter of plastic snapping into plastic. “You got a minute?”

The two brothers looked up from their cluttered workbenches. Both Gustav and Gizmo were dressed in carpenter aprons and knickers. They wore eye-googling goggles made out of magnifying-glass lenses so they could see all the pee-wee parts and properly insert all the tab As into all the slot Bs. The goggles made them look like bug-eyed beavers, busily building King Tony's toys. Their tiny hands were whirling blurs of swirling, non-stop action as they quickly assembled new intricate knickknacks.

“Can't chat,” said Gustav.

“Busy,” said Gizmo.

The two brothers were brownies of few words. They let their hands do all their talking. In fact, in the time it took them to say those three words, they had constructed one Wetty Betty and a Bopping Beano Bear who sang lullabies when you bopped him on the nose.

“Right,” said Tony. “I was wondering—could youse guys maybe work a little faster?”

Gustav cocked an eyebrow.

Gizmo tilted his head.

Their hands, however, kept spinning.

“Faster?” asked Gizmo.

“Yeah. There's only two shopping days left 'til Christmas.” King Tony pumped his fist like a cheerleader. “So I need youse two to pull out all the stops, give me everything youse got.”

To save time, Gustav and Gizmo took turns answering:

“We …”

“… always …”

“do.”

“Yeah,” said Tony, “well I need one hundred and ten percent. Come on. It's just for two days. Tell you what, youse two pick up the pace, increase production, double your Dumping Dino output, and I'll give you a big bonus. And I'm not just talking cream and cake, boys. I'm talking cold, hard cash!”

He pulled two gleaming copper pennies out of his pocket.

“Yep. These shiny Lincolns could be yours!”

The two brownies glared at the pennies.

And then Gizmo snarled.

“You knew Christina's father?” Professor Pencilneck said to Smoothie, the newly arrived brownie.

They were standing in the cellar of the shoe shop and had to raise their voices to be heard over the hammering and clattering and buffing as hundreds of shoes were being marvelously restored to new life.

“Yeah. I knew her old man.” Smoothie fidgeted with his diamond earring. “From the firehouse.”

“Fascinating.”

“And you eyeballed this Christmas present she's been searching for all year?” asked Nails.

“I sure did. It was, you know, on the fire truck. In a bag.”

“Fantastic!” said the professor. “Fate must have sent you here, my friend.”

“Yeah. Somethin' like that. Plus, I got to meet those two hotties, Trixie and Flixie. Va-va-voom. Grrrrr.”

“Easy, pal,” said Nails. “Them two ladies are pals of mine.”

“Sorry. I meant no disrespect.”

“Yeah, well, just watch your mouth. Me and Trixie are going steady. Have been for fifteen years.”

“My apologies. Nobody told me.”

“Yeah? Well I just did.”

“Ahem.” Professor Pencilneck cleared his throat to try to clear some of the tension between the two. “Perhaps this afternoon,” he said to Smoothie, “when Christina returns home from school, you will be able to provide her with even more information, clues that might aid her in her quest to find her father's final Christmas gift?”

“Sure. Whatever. No problem.”

“Good,” said Nails. “Until then, stay away from my lady friend and help us with these shoes here.”

“You got it, chief. Let me look around. See what job I'm best suited for.”

“Please do,” said Professor Pencilneck, gesturing with his walking stick to the chugging assembly line set up in the tight basement of the shoe shop. At least fifty brownies were merrily working on shoes being fed down on a conveyor belt made out of old exercise machines, spare parts and fan belts from a rusty washing machine, and rubber floor mats rolling across hubcap cogwheels. Robotic arms crafted out of discarded gooseneck lamps, bent umbrella spines, and used wrapping-paper tubes fed shoes to the different departments: soles, uppers, laces, grommets, leather-punching, polishing. The whole thing was powered by an upright vacuum cleaner connected to a clothesline pulley and controlled by a discarded smart phone with a ton of downloaded apps.

The brownies had found the fixtures for their makeshift shoe factory in the back alley's rubbish bins. (Their new friend, the alley cat, had helped them find the really good stuff.) The professor had sketched out the blueprints. Nails and his buddy Winky put it all together in a flash with bubblegum and bailing wire.

They were churning out a dozen or more marvelous pairs of shoes every twelve minutes.

“I got soles to nail,” said Nails, moving over to his workstation where he rigged up an improvised pneumatic nail gun with a garden hose and a very powerful bubble-top hair dryer the beauty shop down the street had tossed into their dumpster.

“I need to consult with our new engineers,” said Professor Pencilneck, pulling out a clipboard.

“Great,” said Smoothie. “I'll check out the lacers, the hole punchers, the spit-shiners. See who needs me most.”

“And, don't worry,” said the professor. “We promise not to pay you a penny. However, there will be cream at the end of the workday. Plus whipped cream and ice cream!”

“Swell,” said Smoothie. “I'm all about the cream.” He strolled down the assembly line, checking out each workstation, flirting with any females he met along the way.

Professor Pencilneck bent down to consult with the two new workers who had just crawled under the rolling treadmill section of the assembly line to see if they could somehow increase its speed.

“Any luck?”

“Yes,” said one.

“Easy peasy,” said the other.

“So we can double production?”

“Yep,” they said together.

“Thank you, Gustav and Gizmo!” said the professor. “We're so glad you two could join us!”

The brothers just nodded. Then, hands spinning, they started piecing together insoles, heels, tongues, and toe caps, sending them down the line to Nails and a woman named Stitches, who told jokes and sewed real fast.

The professor stood back and admired the hurly-burly hubbub of the bustling brownies.

Grandpa Lucci's Christmas dream was about to come true.

And, with a little luck and Smoothie's assistance, they might be able to help Christina find what she was looking for, too!

Christina practically raced home from school, where she had actually said, “Merry Christmas” to two, maybe three, of her friends.

The new brownie, the slick little flirt named Smoothie, was kind of a jerk but he had worked at her father's firehouse! He could help her find the missing gift. She knew he could!

But first, Christina would help Captain Dave at the firehouse party. She'd take over a ton of the most awesome Christmas cookies ever created, which they'd sell to raise money to buy toys for kids who wouldn't find anything under their tree if the firefighters didn't keep her dad's Christmas Eve tradition going.

She pushed open the door to the shoe shop and saw the most amazing thing she'd seen all week, which was really saying something, seeing how she'd seen so many amazingly magical little people in the past few days.

But this was, indeed, the most amazing sight of all: Grandpa handing the snooty banker a check.

“Are we all even steven, Mr. Bailey?” Grandpa asked, the impish twinkle back in his eyes.

“Yes.”

Grandpa ripped another check out of his checkbook. “Here. I pay you for January and February, too, okay?”

“Fine.”

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Bailey!”

The banker grunted.

Grandpa saw Christina standing at the door.

“Merry Christmas, Christina!”

“Merry Christmas, Grandpa!”

“And a Happy New Year, too. Right, Mr. Bailey?”

The banker just grunted again.

The firehouse had never looked so Christmassy.

The truck was parked out on the street so the main floor could be transformed into a winter wonderland festooned with evergreen garlands and looping strings of multicolored lights. A twinkling Christmas tree stood sentinel in one corner. Tables groaned under the weight of baked ziti and stuffed shells in long aluminum pans. There was even a big pot of firehouse chili.

A group of carolers, some of whom were local TV and theatre stars, led a rousing rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” complete with choreography for the leaping lords, the milking maids, even the partridge in the pear tree. Six rowdy firefighters joined in on the fun, shouting “five golden rings” and spinning around every time the six geese were done a-laying.

Christina had set up her cookie table right beside the foil-wrapped box where partygoers could deposit their unwrapped toys for needy children. Any money she made selling Trixie and Flixie's magically delicious cookies would be used to buy even more presents.

Captain Dave, wearing his dress blues, strolled over and placed a fatherly hand on Christina's shoulder.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure? Cause I could ask one of the guys to take over here.”

“No, I'm okay. Really. When I do this kind of stuff, I feel like Dad's right here with me, y'know?”

“Yeah. I do.”

He squeezed her shoulder. Neither one said anything for a while. They just marveled at the happy scene.

Then Captain Dave took a peek inside the toy box.

“Whoa! How'd we score two Dumping Dinos?”

“I brought 'em.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

“But they're the hottest toy in town!”