The Fat Man_ A Tale of North Pole Noir - Ken Harmon [69]
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
Hang Your Stockings and Say Your Prayers
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