The Fat Man (18 page)

I
guess the look on my face said it all: “I’ve got to get back to Kringle Town and save Santa!” and Not So Tiny Tim was having none of it. He gave a short whistle and the next thing I knew was that those two reindeer Tim showed me out in the street pointed their killer antlers in my direction and bounded toward me. I was about to be kebabbed by a caribou.

I like my guts to stay on the inside, thank you very much, and I wasn’t going to give up so easy. So I ran. I turned into the dark maze of Potter’s house and figured I’d find a way out, head to the bridge, cross back into Kringle Town and warn Santa. The reindeer had other ideas. I heard eight hoofs thunder into the house after me. I was in trouble and I didn’t have much of a head start. See, in Pottersville, there is no elf magic so I couldn’t fly. Good intentions don’t earn you any wings here.

Potter’s place didn’t give me many spots to hide, and the windows had bars over them. I managed to keep ahead of the reindeer ninjas because their hoofs slapped and skidded on the marble, but I knew I only had a few seconds before I was filleted. Getting back across the bridge was going to take a Miracle on 34th Street, as we elves like to say, and I needed a shortcut to that grand old avenue. So I took the stairs.

The route to the second story was a narrow staircase that twisted back on itself every few steps, chopping its way to the top. The staircase looked like it would slow the reindeer down a little bit, so I jumped up to the first landing in one leap and bounded up the rest of the flight as fast as an elf with eleven-inch legs can go.

When the reindeer took to the stairs, it sounded like the house was getting shelled. They crashed into each other pretty hard and got their legs and antlers tangled. As they scrambled to get loose of each other, I darted down the upstairs hallway and opened the first door I found. Big mistake, that.

The second I realized what I walked into, it was too late to turn back because a couple of sets of reindeer antlers pierced the door behind me like it was made of paper. The points coming out of the wood wiggled and bounced like they had a life of their own. Still, I think I would have preferred trying to outrun an antlerectomy instead of dealing with what stood staring at me. I had walked right in on the Pottersville version of Twelve Drummers Drumming. By the look in their eyes, I was in for a good beating.

The room was smoky and dark, but I could see that there were bongos and war drums. There were big bass drums, too, like you see in parades and drum sets reserved for rock stars. There were kettledrums and little toy drums no bigger than a cup. And there was one ragged old piece made from a hollow stump with a brown sheet of animal skin stretched across the top. It was strapped with a rope to a brown little man who pulled down his sunglasses to get a good look at me. “Say cats, dig what the dog drug in!”

“Our train done stopped at Square Town,” said a drummer in the back.

“Wrong riff, short gator,” said another.

“That ain’t cool,” said a third voice so deep it shook the room.

The brown little man held up his hand for silence. “Let’s take five and catch his vibe,” he said and walked over to me. “What’s the jump, chump?”

I extended my hand and said, “My name’s Gumdrop Coal. Is there any way out of this funhouse? As you can tell, I’m not very good at reindeer games. Just point me in the right direction and I’ll get out of your hair.”

“No can do, Scooby Doo,” said the man. Then there was a rim-shot from somewhere in the back. “If the gimp with the stick is done with your shtick, you are out of bounds and the boss don’t grease our mitts to let you give us the slip, dig?”

“That’s a fact, jack,” said the deep-voiced drummer.

“You’re the Little Drummer Boy, aren’t you?” I asked, trying to make friends in a hurry.

“Bur-rump-pah-bump-bahm!” he answered. “You got the name cool, but you’re a fool, and that’s the truth. You might as well turn around and face the music, amigo. Go back. March, that is.” The Little Drummer Boy started to bang his drum to a marching beat and it only took a few seconds before the other drummers joined in. I could feel the noise all the way down to the bottom of my feet. The reindeer were slowly drilling their way through the door behind me and now the drummers were moving toward me. They all looked strong and they all had sticks. I noticed a door halfway in the middle wall to my left. Even if it was a closet, getting in it would buy me a couple more seconds, but I needed to distract the drummers. The only thing I could think of was to clap.

I went opposite the beat.

The drummers went BOOM.

I went
slap.

BOOM.

BOOM.

Slap
.
Slap.

It worked. The drummers were taken out of their rhythm, and they stopped advancing my way. Twelve hardheaded drummers started to bang away, each trying to establish a new beat, but what they got was noise. It sounded like someone had pushed a chest of drawers down the stairs.

“Bur-rump-pah-bump-BAHM!” shouted the Little Drummer Boy, banging his drum with extra emphasis. “Follow me, dig?!”

“No, I got the bass, baby,” rumbled the deep-voiced drummer, pounding away. “Talk this way!”

The other ten drummers started blasting their own ideas. During the hubbub, I made a break for the door on the left-hand wall. If it was a closet, I was a goner. If it led back into the hall, I imagined I’d find Not So Tiny Tim and the killer caribou. As I jerked open the door, I tried to imagine which would be worse—and then I saw what would be worse.

It wasn’t a closet or the hall. It was another room just like the first, only this time—wait for it—

Eleven Pipers Piping.

So this is what Potter had tucked away upstairs like some half-wit aunt—the mob from the Twelve Days of Christmas. Even in Kringle Town, this crowd was tiresome company, so I imagine Potter recruited them with the lie that on his side of the bridge, they’d be respected. The pipers didn’t look any friendlier than the drummers, and some of them had dispensed with formality and exchanged flutes for lead pipes. They slapped the ends of their pipes into their palms with sick, hard thuds. Behind them was another door and I was pretty sure it would lead to the leaping lords and so on and so on, but the drummers were coming up fast and the killer reindeer behind them. I figured my best bet was to run as long as I could.

“Where do you think you’re going, mac?” one of the pipers said.

“I got a hot date with the milkmaids,” I said. “I’m in a hurry because I think a few of the lords have a jump on me.”

“You think that’s funny?” the piper snarled. “You one of those comedians that make fun of the Twelve Days, mister?”

“No, not at all,” I said, stealing a couple more inches toward the door. “In fact, I’ve always dreamed of becoming a piper.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, the drummers—that’s not music. Any monkey can slap a stick on a table. And I can’t be a leaping lord because I wasn’t born to the purple, and the rest of the song is chicks and dames. No, if you want to be a part of the Dozen, a piper is the way to go.” There wasn’t this much tap dancing in vaudeville, but it seemed to be working. The piper handed me his pipe, “Give it a try, wise guy.”

The flute was heavy and stout enough to bust a kneecap or ring somebody’s noggin.

“You know how to work it?” the piper asked. Some of his buddies came up behind him and the others were heading toward the drummers’ door to see what the commotion was about. The path to the next door was clear.

“Sure, I know how to work it,” I said, lifting the flute. “You whistle into this little hole, right? You just put your lips together and
blow
.”

With all my might, I swung the flute right into the kisser of the big piper and let the pipe do the rest of the work. And then I legged it out of there. As soon as he stopped seeing stars, I was going to have a passel of angry pipers and drummers on my tail and I needed to make some space.

Getting past the leaping lords was a cinch. The ten-spot of lords can’t control their jumping. They are like a bunch of pogo sticks gone amok, and the only way they can really hurt you is if they just happen to land on you by blind luck. I used that to my advantage when I darted into the leaping lords’ royal chamber.

“Someone has infiltrated the court, what!” said one lord as he bounced by and into a wall.
Boing! Smack!
He had apparently kissed the wall many times. His face looked like a bad potato.

“Visitor ahoy!” cried another lord, who apparently fancied himself an admiral of the sea. He was dressed like he was going trick-or-treating on the poop deck. “Show your colors, man,” he said to me as he flew by.
Boing.

The other eight lords tried to steer themselves my way, but ended up ricocheting off each other.
Boing. Smack. Boing. Boing. Smack! Boing.
You could tell it hurt.

Suddenly, a piper burst into the room and was right beside me with a mean-looking flute aimed for my head. An instant later a lord fell from the sky and flattened him like a pancake. “Sorry, old boy,” his lordship said to the piper. “Meant to get the other bloke.” Drummers and pipers were now pouring into the room and leaping lords landing on them was my only chance of getting away. It ain’t easy to run while looking up and behind you at the same time. The door to the next room couldn’t have been more than ten paces away, but I had to dance ten miles to get there. The dance worked. The lords were out of control and the drummers and the pipers made for easy targets. I’d look up and see where I thought a lord would land and get someone to chase me to that spot.

By George couldn’t have planned it any better.

By the time I got to the other side, the floor was littered with wounded drummers and pipers and the ohso-tough reindeer were too spooked to come any farther.

Not So Tiny Tim looked at the battlefield and smiled as he watched me go through the next door.

I guess he knew that, even in Pottersville, my luck with the ladies wasn’t going to change.

But if I didn’t try a little of the old Gumdrop charm with the dancing ladies next door, Santa was going to have a date with Zsa Zsa on Misfit Isle—and that was going to be a bad breakup.

CHAPTER 21

A
s I shut the door, the nine ladies stopped dancing. One of them glided over, locked the door and put the key in a place where only lucky keys go. She was beautiful, with skin soft and fine and white as the good dishes. Her hair was pulled straight back over her tiny, perfect head framing a face that belonged on top of a Christmas tree. She smiled and I felt my tinsel tingle.

Then she hoisted a leg as long as a country mile up in the air, and pointed her toe in a way that made you think of poetry. Eventually. As much as I hated tearing my peepers away from her face, studying that leg was nice work. And when she lifted herself across the air like a magic butterfly, the whole view got better, especially when she landed beside her eight other friends who were beautiful enough to raise the property values even in Pottersville.

Nine Ladies Dancing lined up in front of me like prize roses. Six inches behind me, on the other side of the wall, there was a mob of crazy trying to kick, scratch and bash their way through to tear me apart, but I didn’t really hear them. All I heard was the soft
whoosh-whoosh
of the ladies’ feet as they teased the ground with a kiss from their beautiful little toes.
Whoosh-whoosh. Whoosh-whoosh.
Like the ticking of a clock.
Whoosh-whoosh. Whoosh-whoosh.
The girls glided across the floor like a cloud, twirling and swirling in a song of arms and backs and toes and legs. Especially legs. They spun as quietly as a snowflake to the other side of the room and then stopped, and I thought my heart would break. Then they smiled at me, all of them. These girls were better fishermen than Saint Peter.