In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [11]
“Quit dragging your feet. Get moving,” she barked at the toiling little figure climbing the stairs.
The music from above was deafening:
JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE ALL THE WAY…. sung by 10,000 echo-chambered, reverberating chipmunks.…
High above me in the sparkling gloom I could see my brother’s yellow-and-brown stocking cap as he squatted briefly on Santa’s gigantic knee. I heard a booming “Ho-ho-ho,” then a high, thin, familiar, trailing wail, one that I had heard billions of times before, as my brother broke into his Primal cry. A claw dug into my elbow and I was launched upward toward the mountaintop.
I had long before decided to level with Santa, to really lay it on the line. No Sandy Andy, no kid stuff. If I was going to ride the range with Red Ryder, Santa Claus was going to have to get the straight poop.
“AND WHAT’S YOUR NAME, LITTLE BOY?”
His booming baritone crashed out over the chipmunks. He reached down and neatly hooked my sheepskin collar, swooping me upward, and there I sat on the biggest knee in creation, looking down and out over the endless expanse of Toyland and down to the tiny figures that wound off into the distance.
“Uhh … uhhh … uhhh.…”
“THAT’S A FINE NAME, LITTLE BOY! HO-HO-HO!”
Santa’s warm, moist breath poured down over me as though from some cosmic steam radiator. Santa smoked Camels, like my Uncle Charles.
My mind had gone blank! Frantically I tried to remember what it was I wanted. I was blowing it! There was no one else in the world except me and Santa now. And the chipmunks.
“Uhhh … ahhhh.…”
“WOULDN’T YOU LIKE A NICE FOOTBALL?”
My mind groped. Football, football. Without conscious will, my voice squeaked out:
“Yeah.”
My God, a football! My mind slammed into gear. Already Santa was sliding me off his knee and toward the red chute, and I could see behind me another white-faced kid bobbing upward.
“I want a Red Ryder BB gun with a special Red Ryder sight and a compass in the stock with a sundial!” I shouted.
“HO-HO-HO! YOU’LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, KID. HO-HO-HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!”
Down the chute I went.
I have never been struck by a bolt of lightning, but I know how it must feel. The back of my head was numb. My feet clanked leadenly beneath me as I returned to earth at the bottom of the chute. Another Snow White shoved the famous free gift into my mitten—a barely recognizable plastic Kris Kringle stamped with bold red letters: MERRY XMAS. SHOP AT GOLDBLATT’S FREE PARKING—and spun me back out into Toyland. My brother stood sniveling under a counter piled high with Raggedy Ann dolls, from nowhere my mother and father appeared.
“Did you tell Santa what you wanted?” the Old Man asked.
“Yeah.…”
“Did he ask you if you had been a good boy?”
“No.”
“Ha! Don’t worry. He knows anyway. I’ll bet he knows about the basement window. Don’t worry. He knows.”
Maybe that was it! My mind reeled with the realization that maybe Santa did know how rotten I had been and that the football was not only a threat but a punishment. There had been for generations on Cleveland Street a theory that if you were not “a good boy” you would reap your just desserts under the Christmas tree. This idea had been largely discounted by the more confirmed evildoers in the neighborhood, but now I could not escape the distinct possibility that there was something to it. Usually for a full month or so before the big day most kids walked the straight and narrow, but I had made a drastic slip from the paths of righteousness by knocking out a basement window with a sled runner and then compounding the idiocy by denying it when all the evidence was incontrovertible. This caused an uproar which had finally resulted in my getting my mouth washed out with Lux and a drastic curtailment of allowance to pay for the glass. I could see that either my father or Santa, or perhaps both, were not content to let bygones be bygones. Were they in league with each other? Or was Santa actually