THE RETURN OF MAD SANTA
By Al Sarrantonio
The whole mess began on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. I was in the sleigh shed talking with Shmitzy, my chief mechanic, about some minor problems he’d been having with the front-runners of the sleigh. Shmitzy’s a little guy—about two-and-a-half feet tall, a good foot shorter than me—a solid, reliable elf with a grease-stained beard. The sleigh sat polished and clean in the center of the room, and Shmitzy was leaning against it with his arms folded, throwing unintelligible technical terms at me. I’d just gotten him to tell me in English what the heck was wrong with the sleigh when the doors to the shed burst open and Santa Claus bounded into the room.
“Gustav! Shmitzy!” Santa boomed. “How are my favorite helpers?” He was fat and pink, his beard fluffed, his eyes twinkling. He leaned over, patted our backs playfully, and brought his rosy cheeks down close to our faces.
I gave him the thumbs-up sign and rapped my knuckles on the side of the sleigh. “A-okay, Santa. Everything’s right on schedule, and Shmitzy tells me he’ll have this boat ready to roll by tonight.”
“Good, boys! Good!” Santa threw back his head and gave us a hearty “Ho ho ho!” I was sick of that laugh—it usually started to get to me around this time of year, though I have to admit I’d have walked off a cliff for Santa, annoying laugh or no—but I gave him a big smile anyway. He patted us gently again.
“See you later, boys! I just came by to see how things were coming along. I’m supposed to be helping Momma with her baking for dinner tonight.” His eyes sparkled. “Special cakes for everybody! Ho ho ho!”
I winced, then quickly gave him a grin and the thumbs-up sign as he turned to leave.
And then a strange thing happened. He was halfway out the door when he suddenly froze in mid-step. He stood locked like that for a few seconds. Then, just as suddenly, he unfroze. He turned back to us with a strange, confused look on his face.
“Boys,” he said. But then he shrugged. “Oh, never mind. It was nothing.” He turned and took another step.
Again he froze. Shmitzy and I started toward him to see if he was all right. All of a sudden, he gave an ear- piercing roar and spun around, plucking Shmitzy up off the floor beside me and tossing him through the air. Shmitzy gave a yell and sailed like a shot put about thirty feet, hitting the floor in the corner of the shed with a groan.
Santa turned to me, his hands reaching for my neck. There was a horrible look on his face—his eyes bulged whitely from their sockets, and he was beet red above his beard. “Gustav,” he said, his voice a cold growl.
He opened his mouth in a gaping cartoon grin, grasped my neck with his white-gloved hands, began to squeeze…and then suddenly returned to his old self. It was like someone had flicked a switch. He dropped his hands and looked at me, completely mystified.
“Gustav, what happened?”
I was shaking like a belly dancer, but I managed to open my mouth. “I don’t know, Santa. You…didn’t look so good for a minute.”
There was an expression of helplessness on his normally jolly face. “I don’t know what came over me,” he said. He turned to Shmitzy, who was sitting on the floor across the room, touching his head tenderly. “I’m sorry, Shmitzy. I…just don’t know what happened.”
I took Santa gently by the arm. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Why don’t you go back to the house and lie down. Have Momma fix you something hot to drink. The rush must be getting to you.”
He brightened a bit and let me lead him to the door. “Yes, I suppose I should. Now that I think of it, Momma has seemed a bit irritable today, also.” He paused, trying to think of something. “And I remember something…a long time ago…”
“Well, don’t you worry about it, Santa. Go in and take it easy. You’ve been working too hard.” I smiled and patted his arm, nudging him in the direction of the house. “Leave everything to me.”
“Yes, I will. Thank you, Gustav.” He smiled and patted his belly.
I watched him walk across the snow-covered courtyard to his cottage, open the door, and go in. I thought I saw him freeze again for a moment as he stepped through the doorway, but I couldn’t be sure. He really must be working hard, the poor guy; I’d never seen him get mad before, never mind toss an elf across a room. I considered going over to the cottage and having a talk with him and Momma to make sure everything was all right, but then Smitzy, now recovered, called me over to explain one more time what he was going to do with the front runners on the sleigh, and I soon forgot all about Santa.
That night everybody came marching into the dining room at the usual time for our special Christmas Eve dinner—a little celebration we have every year before all the craziness and last-minute work. They were all there: the wise guys from the Toy Shop, tripping each other and giggling and sticking each other with little tools; the gift-wrappers, lately unionized; the R&D boys with their noses in the air (big deal, so an elf can get a college education), the maintenance men; and assorted others. The dining room was decorated for the occasion: holly and tinsel, and red and green ornaments all over the walls, a “Merry Christmas” sign hung crookedly over the big fireplace behind the head of the table, fat squatty candles hanging from the low-beamed ceiling giving the place a warm, cheery glow. Though I know it sounds mushy, I have to say that getting that dinner organized always left a warm glow in me and was one of the high points of the year.
When everyone finally sat down I rose near the head of the table in my place as chief elf and raised my glass of wine to give the traditional toast to Mr. and Mrs. Claus, just as my father had done before me and his father before him. Every year it was the same thing: a simple toast, Mr. and Mrs. Claus come in, they bow, we bow, everybody drinks the wine, everybody sits down, we eat a great meal prepared by Momma Claus, we all eat too much, we all eat some more, and then we work like crazy getting ready for the big ride. All traditional. Smooth production. End of story.
This time I stood up and made the toast, and Mr. and Mrs. Claus entered, and everybody dropped his wine glass and gasped. Santa and Momma swaggered into the room like a couple of movie gangsters. Santa had a big cigar clamped in his teeth, and that evil grin I’d seen on his face that afternoon was now painted on both of them. I couldn’t believe that the always-sweet, round-faced, bun-haired Momma Claus could ever look like a prune-faced dockworker, but she did. In the glow from the candles, they both looked pretty nasty.
Momma Claus stepped to the head of the table and raised her fist. There was a toy bullwhip in it. “Santa’s going to talk to you now,” she snarled, “and you’d better listen. Anybody who doesn’t gets
Momma stepped aside, and Santa took her place. He pounded on the table with a fist, then looked up, glaring into each of our faces up and down the table. “I like you boys,” he growled, “so I’m going to keep you around.” He opened his mouth in a horrid, toothy smile. “But from now on we’re going to do things a little differently.”
The heavy table shook from all our trembling.
Santa grabbed a full bottle of wine from the table and drank half of it in a gulp. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Come on!” he roared, and, waving the bottle like a banner, he stomped out of the room into the courtyard.
We all sat rooted to our seats, eyes wide with terror; then Momma cracked her whip and we scampered out. As we marched out into the snow, old Doc Fritz, the physician here at the North Pole, a solemn fellow with the body and face of a miniature Sigmund Freud and a professorial manner to match, edged up to me. He leaned over unobtrusively and whispered into my ear.
“I believe I know what is happening,” he said. “This has occurred before.”
“What?” I said.
He nodded slowly and scratched at his beard. “It was a long—”
Just then, Santa came screaming down the line, waving his arms madly in the air. “Everybody to his station!” he shouted.
Fritz opened his mouth to continue, but Santa came charging toward us. We quickly separated. Fritz shambled off toward the infirmary, and I scooted to my office.
I sat drumming my fingers on my desk for a few minutes, and then decided I had to talk to Fritz again to find
