The Fat Man (25 page)

“Come on, Dingleberry,” I said. “We’ve got some toys that need to be loaded onto Santa’s sleigh.”

A
s we cruised into Kringle Town Square, everyone from Santa and the elves to the reindeer and all the toys looked up, and no one seemed too thrilled to see us. Kringle Town was a mess with parts of buildings knocked to smithereens, and there were plenty of elves bruised and limping. Dingleberry and I brought the Misfit balloon to a soft landing beside Santa’s sleigh. “Come out and stand behind me,” I said to the ugly toys inside.

They did as they were told, pouring out of the mouth of the Crocodile Cobra like a bad meal. The Misfits were ugly and crooked. Some were missing eyes and some had mean-looking horns. But all of them, every single one, just needed a kid to play with them. To love them, and—like the kid with the blanket said—show them a little mercy.

“What’s going on, Gumdrop?” Santa asked.

Here went nothing. “Santa, as much as I’ve been wrong about naughty kids, you’ve been wrong about the Misfits. We all have.”

“What do you mean?” Santa asked.

“Santa, it would practically kill you when a kid went to the Naughty List,” I said. “You knew there was some good in that kid somewhere, and good deserved a present. You were acting out of love, Santa, just like you should have been. I messed everything up with my idea of justice, of a kid having to earn your love by being good. We should love them anyway, no matter what.”

“Yes, that’s true, Gumdrop,” Santa said. “And I think I can see where you are heading. That we owe the Misfit toys the same affection. But shouldn’t good children get the most wonderful toys we can give them?”

“You’re not giving a kid’s goodness enough credit, boss,” I said. “Kids, even the rotten ones, love toys. I mean, they are over the moon about them. Sure, the bratty tykes may rip the heads off dolls and turn even the simplest toy into a monster, but they
love
that monster. It’s theirs. An ugly Misfit toy teaches a kid that being a friend takes a little more effort. You have to try harder to love it. Santa, you’ve always tried hard to find something to love in a child. Teaching kids to do the same with toys and each other is the best gift you can ever give.”

The Fat Man blinked away a few tears. “That’s quite a good gift, yes. In all my years, I’ve failed to look at it that way, Gumdrop. Thank you.”

“Kids are wired to do good, think good, Nick,” I said. “Or else there’d be no such thing as Santa Claus. Kids will play with anything, with anyone. It’s the world that makes them stop playing. Maybe if we give them plenty to play with, they’ll keep playing longer. I say, let’s deliver all the toys to all the kids.” When I said that, it seemed to change the meaning of “child’s play” for me.

Santa was beaming. The Ho ho ho was ready to go. “And I am sure that if I ask the normal toys to play nice with the Misfits, everyone will have a truly wonderful Christmas!”

Right on cue, a Captain Chet Apollo action figure, bright and shiny, climbed out of the top of Santa’s sack and slid down to the line of Misfits. The trooper put down his laser blaster and offered the hand with the orbit turbo ignition to a Misfit called Nutbreath the Flying Squirrel. “I’d like you to come with me, friend,” he said to one of the stupidest toys ever made. “I’m going to a little boy that has an imagination so big, I’m sure we can have a lot of fun flying around the galaxy he creates. We’ll do what we can to make sure you’re not always the alien.”

Underneath his gray fur, Nutty blushed and let out a hearty laugh. His breath could have knocked a buzzard off a gut wagon, but the trooper didn’t flinch. “Yes!” Nutty said. “That sounds fun. Thank you! Thank you!”

“Ho ho ho!” Santa bellowed, and the whole square cheered. “Toys, find yourself a partner and let’s finish loading the sleigh! We haven’t got much time and I don’t want to miss a child or a cookie!”

There was a mad scramble as toys found a Misfit to lead them to their place in Santa’s sack. Everyone was smiling and cheering. The music started again.

Santa picked me up and carried me to a quiet place while the sleigh loading was finishing. He put me on his lap and gave me a pat on the back. “Thank you again for discovering this lesson, Gumdrop,” Santa said. “But I’m interested in what brought about your change of heart.”

I told him the story of the kid with the blanket up on the roof. About what the kid said about doing things out of love, instead of making sure everything was fair. How love, simple love, was what we should aim for and let everything else just fall away.

“That’s very wise advice from such a little boy,” Santa said with a twinkle in his eye. “Tell me more about him.”

“He was just a kid, Nick,” I said. “Maybe seven or eight, nothing special, had a blanket with him.”

“A blanket, huh,” Santa said.

“You know, Gumdrop,” Santa said. “Sometimes blankets are called swaddling clothes. I’m just saying. You may have just had the best Christmas gift of all of us.”

CHAPTER 29

A
ll of that was a long, long time ago. I kept elfing for a couple hundred years more, and then decided to retire. It was time. I’d made a lot of toys, enjoyed many, many Christmases, and had been blessed more than I deserved. I decided to quit while I was ahead and let some younger elves know the joy I discovered. Santa said that I had earned the privilege of throwing another Yule log on the fire and to stay at home and do my best to drive Rosebud crazy.

Yeah, I surrendered. Rosebud and I got hitched pretty much after Misfits joined the regular toys in going to boys and girls all over the world. Santa officiated and Dingleberry Fizz was both best man and maid of honor. He cried like a baby, the little sap.

A lot of credit was heaped on me for the success of buddying Misfits and regular toys, but Dingleberry did all the heavy lifting. He worked up an entire formula for matching the right toys together and then putting those toy teams with the right kid so that now Kringle Town doesn’t even see a toy as a regular or a Misfit. They’re just a toy, a gift. They’re something special. Only an elf with a heart as big as a house can do that, so when a kid squeals with glee at their present and learns to love it, flaws and all, thank Dingleberry Fizz.

Ding will never retire. He’s busier than ever with the Toy Buddy Program and, of course, organizing the Kringle Town Comic Con and blogging about
By George Adventures
in his spare time. Rosebud and I don’t see him as often as we like. Every once in a while, Rosebud will whip up some big feast (I insist on swan, naturally), and Ding will come over and we’ll talk and laugh all night long. We’re happy, but seeing Dingleberry Fizz raises our spirits even more.

Though times have changed and the toys are more complex than ever, Santa is still the same, jolly and bright. The Fat Man is back up to “shakes like a bowl full of jelly” and still gets a charge out of the kids’ joy. The other thing I noticed is that, because Santa’s gifts are made and given completely in love, the kids have changed a little too. Oh sure, there are still some little thugs out there who would gripe about anything, but in some magical way, the kids seem to really receive their gifts as something special, and that’s not bad. Not bad at all.

My bride does a little bit of everything. She quit the paper after winning every piece of newspaper hardware she could get and turned to writing a series of mystery novels set in Kringle Town. The North Pole Noir series stars a tart-mouthed, peppermint-chewing investigative reporter named Lucy Lemonade. The dame is always stumbling onto trouble, but you can always count on Lemonade to solve the caper and lock up the bad guy by the last page. The books are as hot as sunburn, and Rosebud has been cranking out about a book a year with titles like
Rudolph and the Foggy Bog
,
The Mysterious Myrrh Maid
and
Love and Death—Who Capped Cupid?
Of course, when she is not beating a page of paper into pulp, Rosebud is full of secrets.

For my last birthday, she hatched a surprise party. Knowing I wouldn’t go for such a thing, she kept it top secret, never even hinted that there were big doings going on. Turning older leaves me kind of grumpy because I tend to dwell on how many birthdays I wasted having that half-empty look on life. I was worse than half-empty because I was also sure that what liquid was in the glass was poison, so I kick myself for being stupid for so long. When I came home a few weeks ago for my birthday, I was happy to hear Rosebud upstairs pecking away at another mystery so I could sit down, relax and shake off my bad mood.

But before I could get good and settled, the front door opened and in walked Chauncey, the Farsighted Otter, a Misfit from the old days. I hadn’t seen him in years, but there he was with a big bucktooth smile on his mug and his paws—all three of them—wide open. “Happy Birthday, Gumdrop!” he said and squeezed me like he was making Gumdrop juice. Before I could even ask him what was going on, a Chatterbox Wall Flower Doll came in and slapped me on the back. “Fifteen hundred years, huh?” she said. “You don’t look a day over a thousand! Gosh, that’s my little joke. You really don’t! If I had to guess, I’d say you were about 700. Or 750. No more than 762 and three months, eight days. Do you like my hair? Maybe we can dance later? What do you think? Huh? Wanna dance later?”

Behind Chatterbox came another old Misfit, and then another. Pretty soon, the house was full of them, all laughing and talking, pumping my hand and giving me kisses. “I can never thank you enough for helping me find a kid that would play with me,” they’d say. “Every day there’s some new adventure!” “I’ve been passed down to three generations of youngsters,” another would shout. “Once I was a Misfit, now I’m a family heirloom! Family! Can you believe it? Thanks for that, Gumdrop!”

I didn’t think I deserved the goodwill surrounding me, but I actually caught myself smiling. That’s when I saw Rosebud and Dingleberry up on the stairs looking down at the scene with big smug grins on their pusses. The big sneaks. Dingleberry pointed a finger at my bride and shouted, “Her idea, buddy! Don’t look at me! Happy Birthday, friend!”

I blew Rosebud a kiss to let her know that it was safe to come over. When she got close, I could see she was trying not to cry, so I pulled her close and whispered in her ear, “I ought to wring your neck, doll face. But I think I’ll kiss it instead.” I did and the crowd cheered.

“I just thought you should be happy on your birthday for a change,” Rosebud said. “You haven’t wasted your time, Gumdrop Coal. You’ve made the most of it! Just look at these friends!”

I did and they were beautiful, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling I could have done more if I had gotten smarter sooner. “Really?” I asked.

Before Rosebud could answer, all the Misfits started cheering again at whoever was coming through the door. The crowd parted and there stood none other than Sherlock Stetson.

The old cowpoke detective had been stitched back together. His stuffing was a little uneven and he was still as ugly as homemade sin, but that cockeyed grin of his beaming at me was almost more beautiful than I could stand. “Gumdrop, Gumdrop, Gumdrop, my good man!” he roared.

“Howdy, Sherlock,” Rosebud said. “I’m glad you came, because I’ve got a bit of a mystery on my hands and I need your help.” She jerked a thumb at me. “Hard head here wants to know why he deserves all this.”

The clueless look on Sherlock Stetson’s mug was the same, but since he had been the plaything of a very logical little girl, the little cowboy had picked up some elementary thinking. “Well, sir,” he said. “Let me give you one clue.”

Tiny Tim—who did not die—was standing in my door. He was a little boy again, with a shriveled leg and leaning on a crooked stick, but the light from his eyes made the stars jealous. Tiny Tim came back to us. The little boy in the big monster across the bridge realized what he had lost when he gave up on Kringle Town and Christmas. He didn’t chase me in Pottersville to keep me there, he was escaping right along with me. Tim fought his way under Bailey’s moon and, when George pulled him to the other side, Tiny Tim lived again.

“I’d like to solve the mystery, if you please, sir,” Tiny Tim said.

“By all means, partner,” Sherlock said with a bow.

“It seems quite simple to all of us, Gumdrop,” Tiny Tim said. “You made us part of something. You made us something special. You helped teach friendship and love to a world of children, even the children who are damaged and twisted. They are, perhaps, the hardest to love, but you reminded us that they are who need love the most. Everyone will feel like a Misfit and be hard to love at some point in their lives. When one does, you don’t want justice. You want a friend, someone who understands—a Misfit just like you. You helped children learn that friendship and mercy are stronger than laws and rules, that love, not power, is what lights the dark.”