Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes (20 page)

Ty followed his raised paw to the closet with the sliding doors from his childhood, out of which he had been terrified a bear would emerge. There stood the dark-oak bookcase containing
Treasure Island
and
Uncle Remus
and other books. In one corner of the floor, his Bozo doll dozed against a Howdy Doody dummy.

Ty bristled. “I put away childish things long ago.”

“Well,” said the bunny demon, “if I might venture an opinion, maybe you put away too many of them. Observe yourself when you were rich in childish things. Perhaps you’ll decide to pick and choose differently tonight.”

The room exploded with overhead fluorescents from a ceiling as high as a three-story extension ladder. Below fidgeted rows of boys and girls in squat wooden chairs. “Calm down,” said the severe woman standing in front of them. “I know it’s Easter and your mothers and fathers are communing with God, and all you can think about are Easter baskets. Right?” A mumble of yeah’s rose up. “I know, I know. But we’re going to make a nice present for Mommy.” She brought out a large tray of alphabet letters, made out of pasta dyed red and blue and green.

Ty said, “‘Whatever your hand finds to do—”

“—do it with all your might,’“ completed the Easter Bunny. “Time passes, and here you are, prim little Ty, sitting dutifully at a table pasting on the last letter.”

His memory, even fifty years on, remained sharp. The plate, floral designs around the edges, the Bible verse in the center. But his eyes went again and again to the small diligent boy he had been, tonguetip pressed against the corner of his mouth. No demon could fake the profound impact this vision had on him. “He’s so...open.” On his left sat a Negro boy. As an adult, Ty had a well-nigh automatic judgmental response to him; but his eight-year-old self was completely at ease. He saw past the boy’s skin color, or rather, his acceptance embraced that skin, unquestioned, as part of his glory. To his right, another boy was going on and on about an Easter basket. “I got two gigantic bunnies, and nine big huge eggs with real bright colors, and jellybeans spilling over the sides and out into the streets so that people slipped and fell, and green grass that reaches clear on up to the sky!” Ty felt the innocent envy of his boyhood heart. But even that was engaging, not sinful, a simple wish for more than the boy on the right had received. Later, adults would teach him to censor that feeling, to name it and bury it deep in his soul.

“That’s right,” said Easter Bunny. “That’s how it happens. If we may show you...”

Ty watched in awe and horror, as the boy he was then, a look of pride in his eyes, appeared in brief scenes, some of them mute, some with telling comments from adults. Some scenes involved the boy he had been, others the adolescent, the young man, the mature man, the man getting on in years. From the first, he heard the intelligence in his voice, the power to string words together, to catch the rhythm of each phrase, to coat with gold the dross of spoon-fed conviction. But even spoon-fed conviction latched onto his spirit and that benighted spirit shaped his developing mind. Seeing the process sped up did nothing to reaffirm the correctness of his views; rather, it showed him how a fresh, open-minded boy let himself be shaped and sliced and penned in by narrow grown-ups who seemed to know what they were talking about but did not. They hid behind God. They claimed that God believed this or that, and that the Bible, here, here, and here, proved it. He saw what utter nonsense that was and how his elders’ predispositions had shaped his view of scripture.

He was stunned. “I was ready to quote chapter and verse.”

“Boy, were you ever!” said the Easter Bunny. “But you see now, don’t you, good sir, how utterly beside the point such an exercise would have been? Santa and Wendy have told me how, on their prior visits, you saw into the hearts of many fine people and understood that their sexual nature is cause for rejoicing and embrace. It isn’t a sin at all, but part of God’s plan.”

“I see now that that’s so. But my God, the Tooth Fairy and her imps were so persuasive. Won’t they invade my dreams again? And how am I to behave tomorrow morning? What sermon can I possibly deliver? I feel utterly changed, as if centuries of grime had been wiped away.”

Santa seemed relieved. “Regarding your dream,” he said, “the archangel assures me that the pure in spirit cannot, without willing it, be touched by evil. You will not forget the light. The Tooth Fairy will be powerless against you, no matter how much she rages, nor how much you are made to suffer. As for your frets about tomorrow’s sermon—”

“You’ll be okay, Mister Taylor.”

“As Wendy says, you’ll be okay. Trust to instinct. Trust to your rhetorical skill. Tell the truth. Be
forceful
in telling the truth. Will it be easy? It will not. But there is no alternative. Once your eyes are open, it is impossible to close them again.” Santa pointed and there sat Ty once more in Bible school, holding up the plate, running his fingertip lightly over the letters, mouthing the words in wonder: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”

Then Ty’s childhood bedroom reappeared and there stood his three visitors, clustered around his bed like the wise men. He sobbed with joy. “What did an old sinner like me do to deserve this?”

Santa said, “Had we but world enough and time, we would visit all of humankind in this way. But our mission has been to save one little boy from suicide. If by saving you, we have saved him, why, that’s all to the good. Now, sleep. When you wake, you won’t recall our visit, but its effects will stay with you forever.”

“Goodnight, Mister Taylor.” Wendy blew him a kiss.

“Thank you for indulging us, kind sir.” The Easter Bunny’s eyes twinkled. “We have merely reintroduced you to your worthiest self. He has long been buried, but thanks to the grace you have allowed to bloom within, he has risen and breathes free once more.”

“God’s blessings on you all,” said Ty. Stifling a yawn, he slid beneath the covers, gave a weary wave to his departing guests, and surrendered to sleep.

* * *

As soon as Gronk witnessed the preacher’s fascination with his boyhood self, he knew the game was lost. He knew as well, pressed to the ceiling with his ribs strained to the cracking point, that he should have raced back to the island right after the immortals’ visit to the Strattons.

A tactical error.

But he hadn’t wanted to report failure if he could report even partial success. And the evangelical pontificator had seemed so firmly in their camp. Why, he might have been so incensed at the attempt to turn him, as to corral Walter and Kathy Stratton after his Thanksgiving sermon and sway them with even greater ferocity into obedience to his unChristlike Savior, even though it meant the death of their son.

Mommy will tear me to pieces, thought Gronk.

The miles flew by. Over and through cloudbanks he passed on his way home. At the last minute, he cursed himself for not bringing with him, in propitiation, the bones of a hapless child.

He spied his brothers sprawled idly on the shore, Chuff moping alone near the dunes. Further on, there was his mother, scanning the skies in a squat, palms upturned in supplication to an unholy god.

He touched down badly, tumbling in a heap before her.

“Well?”

“Pan and his brat had quite a time of it.”

“And they failed.”

“One might ever wish for such failure.”

Her lids tightened. “I don’t like the way you said that.”

“What I mean is, one who attempts to reverse the effect of nightmares might ever wish for such failure, for it looks and feels and tastes, in every respect, like success.”

“To the point.”

“They enlisted the Easter Bunny. He appealed to the mortals' childhood innocence. Our dreamscape invasion had no lasting effect. They've been turned. Please don’t shoot the messenger.”

But she leaped upon him, flaying his cheeks, gripping his great gray testicles and squeezing until he cried and beat the sand with his fists. “Their visits are over? You stupid little shit, you should have reported back at once. I might have tainted the still-to-be-visited mortals’ image of the Easter Bunny, whose seeming innocence masks a history of unspeakable acts in past service to me and to his own unworthiness.”

Thus did she rant and thus did Gronk suffer, broken and healed and broken anew, until the Tooth Fairy’s wrath was spent and she left him there in great pain, plotting afresh as she paced the sand.

* * *

“Oh, don’t bother, I’ll find my own way home,” he had told them, hopping close to the sleigh’s right runner and setting one paw on the black lacquer of its scrollwork.

“You’re sure?” said Santa.

Wendy looked disappointed, but said, “We did good, didn’t we?” stroking his paw and planting a kiss on his cheek. “Your whiskers are super-soft, my good friend bunny.”

At which he blushed, averted his eyes, and aw-shucks’d his way toward again begging off a ride home. “I’m too excited to sit still,” he insisted.

Which, though true, was not the whole story.

Santa offered a hesitant but hearty, “Thank you,” meaning it but still with that undercurrent of bad blood between them. Then Lucifer’s antlers lit up and the reindeer lofted the sleigh skyward, thundering soundlessly into the night. Wendy waved and Santa too, smears of green and red against black. The Easter Bunny raised a paw in farewell, but they were already too far distant to see it.

Being on his own gave him the chance to drop in on little Jamie. He gazed in fondness at the sleeping boy whose death they had postponed. Jamie lay fast asleep, his tousled hair careless on the pillow. The Easter Bunny blessed him and leaped through the window, flying swiftly away from Colorado Springs toward his far-flung burrow. Lights twinkled below, then abruptly yielded to expanses of darkness and seascape and wooded lands.

But his thoughts dwelt upon joy and vexation. Joy at having spoken with mortals, at having seen them touched by glimpses of their childhood and then transformed. Thrilled to the heart, he chittered with delight as he sped along, ears pressed back against his scalp. Yet he remained vexed at Santa’s demeanor and his own hesitancy and shame. Santa had softened as they triumphed, but only a little. At Wendy’s kiss, the Easter Bunny tensed for Santa’s roar of objection. But it hadn’t come.

Delayed perhaps?

Would Santa drop Wendy off and return to chastise him, or worse?

He hoped not. But perhaps having it out was necessary.

Sighing, he sped on, eager to regain his living quarters and bask in memories of mortal contact.

* * *

Finished her pacing, the Tooth Fairy grabbed her imps and rushed them into the dreamscape. The mortals were seated at a tea party. Delicate bone china graced a damask tablecloth on a balmy beachfront, a lazy sway of palm leaves overhead.

Their souls had been washed clean. Their garments were colorful now, comfortable, and reflective of spiritual renewal.

She and her brood dropped down about them. With a sweep of her hand, the crockery shattered and the table collapsed. Scalding liquid splashed everywhere. The sudden attack, the burns they suffered, the lurch from paradise—these infuriating dreamers took it all in stride.

“Idiots,” she said. “Have you forgotten our last meeting? The satanic nature of this Santa and Wendy? Their mission to turn you from God’s truth?”

The boy leaped to his feet. “You’re a liar!”

“Pay her no mind, Matt,” said Kathy Stratton.

Her husband said, “She has no power over us.”

“Go,” commanded the preacher, standing behind the seated couple, his hands on their shoulders. “Leave us in peace.”

“Foolish man,” said the Tooth Fairy, “you’ve been duped as well, I see.” She rose into the air and dissolved the broken table with a glance. A pool of steam-hung water took its place. “Gronk tells me they brought in the so-called Easter Bunny. Let me show you what this dark spirit did.” The steam swirled aside to reveal glimpses of the creature’s past. “He stared in at bedroom windows. With jets of invisible seed, he befouled siding. Here you see him tricking a coed, spaced out on drugs, into coupling with him before she realizes that her boyfriend is pounding on the door and now the saintly Easter Bunny loses hold of his invisibility. Look at the creature’s mad red eyes.” Mist swept in and swirled the scene away. “This is the innocent bunny whose guileful ways have lured you into the satanic camp of those who embrace sin.”

Kathy Stratton said, “You're lying to us. We’ve seen the Easter Bunny. To his soul we have seen him. He’s nothing like that.”

“What you’ve shown,” said Ty Taylor, “are the perversions of your own sick mind. We’ll have none of it.”

“Get lost,” said the bully. “You don’t belong in our dreams.”

The Tooth Fairy swirled up in fury. “Doltish mortals. I show you the truth, and you reject it. Boys, have at them!”

Then her imps, Chuff lagging more than usual, swept in to attack the dreamers. Limbs were lost, only to regrow. Wounds bled and healed, blood unspilling back inside them as torn skin restitched and smoothed. But the dreamers in their unruffled defiance transcended the pain, or felt it not at all.

Though she raised a volcano and made it spill rivers of lava, caused the sea to roar and waves to fall heavy upon them, fissured the ground, then fissured those fissures, blasted their bodies apart—yet those bodies unblasted, the ground regained firmness beneath their feet, the ocean receded and relaxed into placidity, molten rock upflowed back inside the volcano, which eased into gentle hills rich with greenery.

“Retreat,” she screamed, feeling foolish and defeated and tenfold defiant.

When they regained the island, she thrashed her boys, casting her impotence upon them. “Leave me,” she shouted, and they scattered, but, “Not you, Gronk.”

* * *

The others hustled Chuff along the beach until Gronk and their mother were two distant dots. There, to the slap of waves, they sailed into him.

Clunch gouged his eyes with the fat stubby knuckles of both hands. Bunner pistoned his fists into Chuff’s back, bruising the skin and battering the spine until it broke, healed, and broke again. Zylo and Faddle wrenched his arms, violating with torque and torment the integrity of muscle and bone. Quint, Zest, and Cagger razored their claws along every inch of skin, ribboning the flesh and drawing blood. “Too good to hurt a mortal, eh? Leave us all the work? Mommy oughta toss you off this island. You’re a freak. There ain’t enough hate in you. Whatsa matter, boy? You prefer receiving pain to giving it? No problem.”