The Fat Man (23 page)

I’ve seen Dingleberry Fizz on a Christmas morning when his toys get into the hands of a little kid. I’ve seen him when kids squeal and giggle and start making noises when they play with the thing that Dingleberry made with his hands and his heart. Ding’s happy then, but at this moment, Ding was as happy as I’d ever seen him. But he was crying.

“I knew he was real,” Dingleberry said. “I always believed. They weren’t just made-up stories, parts of them were real. The good parts. I hope you’ll read them now, Gumdrop, and see what I mean. I’ll share them, I will. I’ve got fourteen boxes of books.”

“I’d be honored, friend,” I said. “Maybe that’s how we’ll celebrate the New Year.” I raised my glass and Dingleberry clinked his. We were quiet for a few minutes, but Ding was restless. “Thank you for telling me, Gumdrop,” he said. “But if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to take a walk by myself before the Loading of the Sleigh Parade starts.”

“I don’t mind. I’ll see you up there.” I watched him go, bursting with goodness and happiness and hope, because believing in something had paid off for Dingleberry Fizz. Even though I saw George in the flesh and he saved my hide, doubt still gnawed at me. But Fizz was different. His faith was real. At that moment, I envied him more than any soul on earth.

I sat there for a while, stewing and chewing over everything. It wasn’t long before Rosebud Jubilee couldn’t stand being away from me. She climbed the stool beside me and pounded the bar. “Elvis, you old hound dog, you,” she said. “My whistle is in need of a wetting. Oh bring me a Figgy-tini and shake it right here, if you please.” The girl liked to make a production of ordering a drink, so I didn’t interrupt the show. Rosebud also liked to make a lot of noise about pretending to ignore me. She slapped a copy of
The Marshmallow World Gazette
up on the bar so I would be sure to see the blaring headline.

“Oh, did you want to see the paper, chum?” she asked me in a nonchalant sort of way. She was awfully cute when she was being annoying.

“I see the Nutcrackers are two games up,” I said. “They’re swinging the lumber pretty good right now, but their bullpen needs to be put out to pasture.”

Rosebud took the jab and jabbed right back. “Well, then they won’t be the only ones not getting to first base on a regular basis, I guess.”

“Uncle,” I said. “I can tell that you’re too full of yourself today, so I wouldn’t stand a chance. Elvis, put the lady’s girly drink on my tab.”

“Surrendering so soon, Coal?” Rosebud asked. “Not going soft on me, are you?”

“I was already soft,” I said. “You’re the one that made me such a hardened criminal in that little tale you wrote. I’ll be the first to admit that I am prickly and persnickety, but you made me sound like Herod.”

“But you come off a hero in the end,” she said. “That’s the stuff the readers want. So you
did
read the article!”

“Glanced at it.”

“
Glanced?
”

“Skimmed it.”

“Then you missed all the good parts,” Rosebud said. “Looking back at the whole story, it had more red herrings than a Norwegian glutton. How did you figure it all out? Really?”

“Something tells me I haven’t yet, and that’s the truth.” I turned to Rosebud to show her I wasn’t kidding now. “I’m all mixed up inside, so maybe that’s it, but something is bothering me that I can’t shake.”

“You take the cake, Coal,” Rosebud said. “This caper is easier to wrap than a square box with good tape. Zsa Zsa and the Misfits are miffed at Santa and Kringle Town for giving them the stink eye. They find a sympathetic ear in Potter, he recruits gimpy Tim and they all plot to make it a Misfit world. But Potter is slow freight, so they push him off the choo-choo and chug along with their grand plan. They used you, Raymond Hall, Cane and a few others to try and rid the world of the Fat Man and Christmas spirit. They just didn’t count on you having brains, brawn and—forgive me for sounding cornier than Kansas—a heart. That’s it. Put a ribbon on it, it’s done.”

“Then why give up when they were so close?” I asked. “They could have nabbed Santa before I got there. Zsa Zsa had a pretty good head start. Why vamoose?”

“They’re Misfits!” Rosebud said. “They can’t think past Plan A. They ran and hid when they heard you got away. They went back across the bridge where they think everything and everyone looks good in the dark. Maybe it’s where they belong. Let them picnic off each other, I say. We won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But I still don’t get it. I want to know why all this happened. Why?”

“Forget it, Coal,” Rosebud said. “It’s Kringle Town. Understanding is overrated. Chew on something too long and it loses its flavor, like cheap gum, and then it’s nothing but a sticky problem—and usually someone else’s. Quit trying to know everything, sweetie. It will make you crazy.”

“Er,” I said and Rosebud gave me a look. “Crazi
er
is what you meant to say, but you were being nice.”

Rosebud clinked her glass to mine. “Well, it is the holidays.”

We sat there quiet for a while, watching the crowd at the Blue Christmas. Everyone was getting a little cheer before the Loading of the Sleigh Parade started and it was fun to watch the festive mood. Me and Rosebud would watch and then catch each other’s eye and smile. Then we’d both look away quick, like a couple of kids. My head was empty, I couldn’t think of a thing to say, so I made with the chitchat. “You going to the parade?”

Rosebud kept her eyes on the crowd, but her face turned the color of a Radio Flyer wagon. “I hear there’s big doings going on up there tonight,” she said.

Butternut Snitch. I just stepped in more quicksand. I don’t know where the gossip girl got her story, but it wasn’t from me. Was Rosebud playing me like I was the big fish at the end of her line? Deep down, I knew Rosebud was for me. I didn’t need to shake the present anymore. I wasn’t so sure I was ready just yet. I was thinking of all this and knew I had been quiet too long. I needed to say something. I could feel the heat on the back of my neck. “Oh, I’m sure something will happen,” I said. “It always does.”

No one can ever accuse me of being rude. I always invite trouble.

CHAPTER 27

I
’ve seen thousands of the Loading of the Sleigh Parades, but never get tired of them. Kringle Town puts on the dog and throws itself a big party. Everyone is there, happy that the hard work is done for a bit and that Christmas is finally here. There are bands on every corner, bells in every hand. Santa’s sleigh sits in the town square, bright and shiny, and the reindeer look as smart as show horses. One after another, happy elves pile millions of presents into the sleigh. When you see the haul, you can’t imagine how it all fits, but Santa’s sleigh is a magical old rig; it never gets full. Even on a Christmas when naughty kids were getting gifts, Santa seemed to have plenty of room.

One of the big traditions of the Loading of the Sleigh Parade is the balloons. Elves make huge balloons of the season’s most popular gifts and pull them along Saint Nick’s Avenue with big ropes into the square. There are always giant teddy bears and baby dolls, so big that they seem to black out half the sky, but there are also new balloons each year, like race cars or spaceships or whatever the kids are asking Santa for that particular season. The little elves love to see the new balloons; their hands point up in pure excitement the whole parade long. Watch their faces a few minutes and you start to get excited yourself. Even a crusty, old, coal-delivering heart like mine softens watching a giant, bejeweled Princess Pony Cindy float across the clouds. Though I would hate to have to admit that.

Every balloon brings a new wave of cheers and music and squeals of happiness. Somehow they are able to time it so that the last balloon arrives just as the last package is loaded onto the sleigh. By then, it is dusk and the blaze of Christmas lights and candles under the purple North Pole twilight is one of the grandest sights in the world. You can get drunk just watching the stars rise and letting the happy sounds give your soul a good scrubbing. And just when you think it can’t get any better, Santa steps out of the great hall.

As soon as you see the Fat Man, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Most elves do a little of both, but this Christmas, the lump in my throat could have blocked a chimney. Santa almost didn’t happen this year and some of that was my fault. Knowing how close we were to not seeing Santa step out in his red suit with that big smile on his mug made my eyes sting. Santa had been swell about the whole thing. “Don’t worry about it, Gumdrop,” he told me. “Everyone makes mistakes. You were doing the best you could. It turned out all right in the end. That’s what counts! Here, have an orange.” Something, though, still gnawed at me.

Despite all he’d been through, Santa skipped down the stairs like a kid on the last day of school, waving and Ho ho ho-ing like there was no tomorrow. The crowd was eating it up, cheering until the one and only Dingleberry Fizz started leading them into a roaring version of Gene Autry and Oakley Haldeman’s rousing anthem, “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

Rosebud Jubilee slipped her arm in mine and snuggled into my side like a missing rib. She looked up at me from underneath that darned hat of hers just as the words
All is merry and bright
danced over our heads. I took a deep breath and allowed myself to smile. Rosebud did more than smile back. She was a take-charge type of dame and wasn’t going to let the moment pass without giving me a kiss so I would know what time it was.

Funny, during that kiss, time stopped. Happiness was a long stretch of road in the car with the radio on, the top down and plenty of sandwiches in the back. It was a perfect kiss on top of the world, full of the kind of mush that would make little boys squirm and old maids cry. It was good, better than I deserved, and I could almost let go. I vaguely heard, “
Hang your stockings and say your prayers,”
but I snapped to when I heard the screams.

There are a lot of ugly things in the world, but the balloon creeping over Kringle Town Square made you wonder if there was enough ugly left to go around. It was like a haunted blimp, cobbled and stitched together parts from parade balloons that had been discarded long ago. It had the tail from an old Hermy the Hedgehog balloon, a popular want from a couple of Christmases past. The body looked like it came mostly from the Polka-Dot Pig balloon, with a few patches of the Fur Troll Patrol balloon. Two legs were from some kind of cat balloon, another leg was from Ghost Duck. The final balloon leg was a long, tan, curvy gam that had been sawed off that Malibu doll. The head was the snarling, unfriendly puss of the long-forgotten action toy the Crocodile Cobra. The balloon that these parts formed was bad news and looked worse than any storm cloud. It was a Frankenstein dirigible. Even on fire, the
Hindenburg
looked better. But the worst part was what was in that wicked, hissing mouth of the Crocodile Cobra. It was full of Misfits.

The Misfits hadn’t disappeared. They hadn’t given up. They had tucked themselves in a balloon as ugly as they were, snuck right into Kringle Town and were now looming above Santa’s sleigh like a nightmare. But it was worse. You can wake up from a nightmare. The Misfits were real and they were jumping up and down like banshees, ready for war.

Zsa Zsa stood at the tip of the Croc Cobra’s lip, roaring like an earthquake. She had war paint on her face and was wearing a mean suit of battle armor with a sledgehammer in one hand and a rusty spear in the other. The Misfit army behind her was outfitted more or less the same way, all of them with wild eyes throbbing with hate.

Below, elves scattered like they were being thrown out of a bucket. The ones who could fly took off in a hurry, and the landlubbers darted through the square looking for cover. The ghastly sight had even spooked the hotshot reindeer and they just stood in their places with their mouths open, shaking their jingle bells in pure horror. And in the middle of the gloom stood Santa, helpless, doomed. He stared up at the Misfit warship as still as he could be. The only way you could tell he wasn’t a statue was that statues don’t have tears running down their faces.