The Fat Man (2 page)

Ho ho ho.

But things wouldn’t stay jolly for long.

I didn’t know it yet, but someone back at the North Pole was about to start playing reindeer games for keeps, gunning for the Fat Man and all the good things he stood for. It wouldn’t be long before I was given the powder, fired, Old Yeller time. Santa gave me my walking papers and told me that there was a new elf in Kringle Town. He said that my kind of elfing wasn’t needed anymore, that it was old hat. I didn’t even get a fruitcake. It looked like my only friends at the moment were a bar stool at the Blue Christmas and a half-empty bottle of brown nog. Those two chums kept me from clearly seeing the doom-screaming headline:

For a little while, things seemed too foggy even for Rudy’s schnoz and the whole tale was about to get more twisted than a cheap string of lights, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I thought my bad luck started when I was put out to pasture, but now I know I was knee-deep in trouble long before that night.

So was Santa.

So was Christmas.

I didn’t help matters any acting like a damn fool. I slapped some jaws, hurt some friends and broke some hearts, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

The worst was the murder.

CHAPTER 2

I
should back up a minute because there are some things you need to know. For instance, even though we work for Santa, an elf’s DNA is not automatically dialed for sugarplums and fa-la-la-la. Not all elves are North Pole Moonies, saluting the flag and drinking the nog-aid. Some of us have been with Santa from the beginning, when St. Nick was strictly mom and pop, a grassroots happy-fest started by a fat kid and some sawed-off toy makers. We shared Santa’s belief that there should be at least one night when children smiled. “A child gave the world so much that night in Bethlehem,” Santa said. “I just want to find a way to spread the spirit of that wonderful gift!” I still choke up at the simple beauty of the Fat Man’s notion. Elves are naturally nostalgic, but Christmas really was better back then. The giving came from the heart, but so did the receiving. The gratitude was genuine and the kids were really, truly thankful. But then the snake eventually brought his bag of apples to the Garden of Christmas, and after a couple of bites into the old McIntosh, the kids demanded more.

And old St. Nick couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say “no.”

That’s when the whole bag went south for some of us at the North Pole. Some elves couldn’t stand to see the Fat Man kill himself trying to fill a black hole of greed. Some of us got dark. Some of us got bitter.

I got revenge.

Gumdrop Coal is my name and I’m a 1,300-year-old elf and the chip on my shoulder will give you tetanus. I’m two-foot-three, but if you think you can crack wise about my height or take me in a fight, you’ll be making the worst mistake of your sorry life. I will jingle your bells up through your giblets hard enough to make your eyes scream.

I’m serious.

Remember that, and you and I will get along swell.

 

 

H
ere’s what else you need to know. I wasn’t always this jaded. I got a heart, but it’s a hard one. My pop was the crabby dwarf from the old Snow White yarn. The old man had a real cob up his hinder and was meaner than the devil with a rash. When the Grimm boys first came around digging up dirt on the dwarfs and Snowy, Pop wasn’t bashful about showing the brothers a fit that would shame a Viking. Pop held a torch for Snow, so when she gave him the old heigh-ho for that tall glass of Prince Charming, Pop added brooding to a bad temper. That Walt guy’s picture of Pop was a pipe dream, and whatever was in the pipe was pretty rooty-tooty.

Mom was one of those stepsisters you heard stories about. For years, she thought she was the cat’s meow until the woodland vermin decided to give her little half sister a makeover. The kid cleaned up pretty well and when she arrived at the ball looking like a million bucks, my mom and aunts looked like they had swallowed moat water. The prince asked the little half sister if she was the kind of girl who wanted to see his tower and, well, the shoe fit. Mom was not a bit happy about getting the short end of the slipper for a husband. To make matters worse, Mom’s happily-ever-after story was having her eyes pecked out by ravens. She married Pop out of necessity, so she wouldn’t run into the furniture. At the altar, Mom said, “I gotta marry somebody, so it might as well be a half-pint jerk weed.” Mom resented Pop’s crush on Snow and drummed on the old man’s brow on the subject like an Apache on the warpath. She was none too pleased to be the runner-up to another “perfect” princess. Mom never let Pop forget how lucky he was to have her. Mom reminded the old man that she was only about three corns away from donning a glass slipper. If she would have had a little lanolin or a crowbar, she would be sitting on the throne.

“You’d be wiping my behind,” Mom would screech from her stool in the corner. “You’d be no more than a lackey, a serf, a little fool with bells on your hat. You’d have to make me laugh or die.”

“I wipe your behind now,” Dad would thunder back. “I wait on you hand and foot, treat you like a queen, and you couldn’t hold a candle to Snow White.”

“I’m blind, you ignorant, pathetic little peckerwood!” Mom fumed through fake tears, trying to muscle up a little sympathy. “You owe me. Girls like your precious princess are heartless harpies who send their little animal friends out to prey on innocent people like me. They’re vindictive little tarts is what they are. And don’t kid yourself, stretch. Snow would have laughed you out of the bedchamber. You can’t cross the moat with a sapling! Ha ha
ha
!”

Now you can see why I had to leave home.

Truth is, there aren’t that many places in the world for elves to go. Despite what you may have read, Middle Earth is really for outlaws. Middle Earth elves and dwarfs are desperadoes who are looking for a hole to hide in and maybe score a quick treasure. They sit around and brew hooch from roots, scheming and plotting on how to survive another day. You really don’t want to be in Middle Earth after dark, not if you want to keep your magic dust—or your throat.

Now if you are a sick little jasper, you can be an Old Country Elf. These are your basic leprechauns, dwarfs, gnomes, gremlins, pixies and hobs—mischievous, twisted little pucks with a knack for jerking around weak-minded humans too dumb to come out of the rain. Old Country Elves can make a living, but you’re always on the job and working around werewolves, ogres and a long line of moor-inspired nightmares, so life is no picnic. Plus the food doesn’t get much better than haggis, and there just isn’t enough mead to wash that taste out of your mouth.

Munchkins are elves, but they’ll try and tell you different. Munchkins are elf elitists, and if their Lollipop Guild puts the kibosh on your application, they’ll pretend they never knew you. Personally, I never understood the attraction of being a Munchkin. They make their life sound all yippy skippy and ding-dong the witch is dead, but they don’t tell you the Flying Monkeys are still around. I hear those ape-vultures drop out of the sky like the Angel of Death and sweep up a Munchkin in a blink. It’s Flying Monkey takeout and I hear the leftovers look like the butcher’s floor. If that’s the good life, they can have it.

Some elves go rogue and strike out for your world, the human world. They try to pass themselves off as “little people,” but some elfin birthmarks (the pointy ears and chins, the curled toes), usually give them away. The elves that happen to make do in your neighborhood are usually starring in freak shows and small-time circuses, and you don’t need me to tell you how tough a carny’s life is. It’s hard work, dangerous. And there’s no dental insurance.

The only other path for an elf to pursue is the North Pole, the show. It is the best, too, and it was the only path I had in mind.

I arrived at the North Pole in 725 A.D. on a winter morning colder than a snake’s shoulder. I was a kid then, a little soft in the head and running from a hard home. I heard about a place of light and cheer and joy and I wanted to see if it was real. I heard about a guy—Nick to some, Kris to others—who was living to make children feel special. I wanted to be a part of something like that. I wanted to be moved before it was too late. I wanted what every kid wants—his wish to come true.

It only took a little over a thousand years. I just wished I could have gone a different way, that’s all.

CHAPTER 3

B
efore we get to how I got fired and all the mess that follows it, let me tell you how I got the job. Realize that there are some who wouldn’t want me to spill about some of what goes on in Kringle Town. They don’t want you to know that sometimes there’s a rat in the figgy pudding. They want to keep secret some of the stuff that goes on behind gingerbread doors, but for the love of Christmas, I’m going to sing. Sue me.

The first fact you should know is that some elves have superpowers. From Santa to the lowliest stocking stuffer, there are special elves that have more moxie, more mojo, more brains and brawn and je ne sais quoi than any of those rubes in a cape ever hoped to have. Some of us can fly. We can shoulder a two-ton sack of toys without a grunt. Elves can turn invisible, throw our voices, breathe underwater, dance with fire and whistle through peanut butter. Elves cobble the toys, pepper the mint and deck the halls. We cast spells, raise hell and take names. You don’t see us unless we want you to and then you don’t recognize us. We can take your best shot and give it right back, but the point is moot. You’d never catch us or come close to landing a punch. Elves are smarter than you, quicker. Special. There is no kryptonite.

If you make it to the Pole and are discovered to have a super elf power or two, you’re invited to a special training corps to learn how to use them, courtesy of Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete as he is sometimes called. Black Pete is one of Santa’s right hands, a surly little flunky who was with him at the beginning and is tasked with creating an elite squad of Santa Helpers. Black Pete’s academy is an elf gulag, a soul-sapping regimen of pain and ruin, with three meals a day of nothing but fruitcake and water. Black Pete’s methods are meant to break you, and many are happy to get broken. But when you’re broken is when you learn. You learn how to harness your magical elf powers, how to do push-ups with your gray matter. Delivering presents to the world in a single night would be quantum cyanide for most physicists, but Black Pete shows you the tune and teaches you how to play it so you really can help Santa. Graduating a Zwarte Pieten means you know your onions. You get plum assignments like the toy line or chimney reconnaissance. You race reindeer and go undercover to check The List. Twice. A Zwarte Pieten is an elf rock star. But if Black Pete spits a line of gingerbread juice in your general direction, it’s curtains. Peter out and your job is trying to match all the abandoned and lost socks of the world or raking out reindeer stalls. It ain’t pretty. Santa’s reindeer get a lot of fiber. A lot.

The other poop you need to be wise to is that our world, Kringle Town, is in a different dimension than your human world, hovering at the edge of what you can see and hear. Kringle Town is always there, just out of sight. It’s how we see you when you’re sleeping, know when you’re awake. It’s how we know if you’ve been bad or good—well, you know the rest. Kringle Town is full of smaller cities and burgs, rivers, oceans, the works. We even have an “other side of the tracks” and I shouldn’t have to tell you it’s called Pottersville, and you don’t want to go there unless you want some bad business. Kringle Town’s population is all your favorite holiday characters. We don’t just come to life after Halloween. We all have lives to live and jobs to do here throughout the year, so our day-to-day resembles yours in a way. Your world doesn’t have as much snow, and the Muzak isn’t cranking out carols 24/7, 365 days a year, but we have a lot more in common than you think. The point I want to make is the holiday characters that you know and love can have bad days too, from low blood sugar (a real problem despite all the candy), to the stress of trying to stay chirpy for the cause. I mean, Frosty is real. I see him all the time in that old silk hat he found. But the Snowman likes to travel, and when he goes south, Frosty puddles in a skinny minute. Now, say you’re minding your own business and happen to step into that puddle. Well, friend, you’re going to get an earful from a voice at the bottom of your shoe that will tell you just how intimately you can get to know a carrot if you don’t get your curly-toed boot out of his face.