Steve Hockensmith: Naughty-Nine Tales of Christmas

And I wasn't the only one who noticed it. There were narrow slots in the side of the trailer, and through them I could see Big Buck and Kev stalking past.

"You hear that?" Kev asked.

"You smell that?" Big Buck said. He walked up and stuck his fat face against one of the slots. I was tempted to run over and poke his beady eyes, but almost immediately he stepped back waving a hand in front of his nose. "Whooooeeee. And I thought you smelled bad."

"Oh, ho ho," Kev growled.

He and Big Buck walked around to the back of the trailer.

"Well, lookee here," I heard Big Buck say.

He was noticing, I could only assume, that the doors were unbolted.

I wasn't happy about it, but what choice did I have? I started creeping away from the doors… and toward my stinky trailer-mates. Whatever they were-cows, sheep, llamas, unicorns-I figured they couldn't be too dangerous. Someone's going to leave a truckload of bears at the mall?

I shuffled through the blackness blindly, my arms stretched out in front of me like a zombie. The snorting and stamping around me got louder, which actually helped.

Clop clop, wheeze .

Excuse me. I'll move over this way.

Stomp stomp, grunt .

Alright, alright. I'll move a little more that way.

I'd been doing my Helen Keller imitation maybe half a minute when Big Buck opened the door. Just enough light streamed in for me to see him and for him to see me-and both of us to see what was in the trailer.

Reindeer. Nine of them. Big ones.

Big Buck and I were both dumbstruck. Reindeer? Really ?

And then I remembered Missy Widgitz's big surprise. This was how she was going to get a leg up on River Valley Mall. Screw the "real elves." We'd have the real Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen and… uhhhh… Rudolph and… uhhhh, Snowball and… you know. All of them.

I don't know if Big Buck figured it out or not. Once he'd accepted the reindeer's presence, he didn't seem to care. The look of surprise faded from his face, and he smiled at me.

"You better come out of there, Shannon."

That made it even worse, somehow. Here I was about to be killed, and the jerk couldn't even get my name right.

"I don't think so," I said.

"You better come out, or we're comin' in."

Kev pushed in behind him.

"Buck… I don't think we oughta go in there," he said in a hoarse whisper.

Big Buck shot him a glare. "You're afraid of Bambi?"

Kev peered into the trailer. The reindeer were spread out all around me, their breath coming out in long puffs of steam.

"Bambi never got as big as that," he said. "And it's so dark in there."

"Yeah, sure, I get it," Big Buck sighed in a strangely resigned, Here we go again kind of way. "Guess I'll just have to take care of the bitch myself, then."

And he started to haul himself up into the trailer.

Now, this is where my story's going to diverge a bit from the official account. I told the police that when I saw Big Buck coming at me, I screamed. Which is kind of true. I did scream.

I screamed, "Yah! Yah!"

And I stamped my feet.

And I slapped the nearest reindeer on the ass.

Donder and Blitzen jumped, bumping into Comet and Cupid, who got spooked and bolted. And when a couple of reindeer bolt, the others tend to follow.

Big Buck didn't scream. He didn't have time. He just fell back out of the truck and let out one loud "Ow!" All I could hear after that was the sound of big hooves hitting something soft and wet.

When I finally worked up the nerve to peek outside, there were nine reindeer spread out all over the Olde Towne Mall parking lot-and one Santa Claus spread out all over the pavement behind the truck. Kev was long gone.

It took about five minutes for the cops to show up. The TV news vans were there in ten. I think I was still in shock at that point. I caught a glimpse of myself on TV the next day, and it wasn't pretty. I was being put in a police car (my mom practically fainted when she saw that on the news) with this stunned, stupid expression on my face. I looked like I'd been partying with Arlo.

It took a while for me to pull my words together, but I finally got out the whole story about Big Buck and Kev and the tape. The police were pretty nice, but they just sort of nodded their heads and looked concerned and asked me if I wanted to speak with a counselor. After a couple hours, my mom came and took me home.

Despite my babblings about a pervmo conspiracy, I think the cops assumed it was really an attempted rape, nothing more. The newspaper and TV stations didn't come right out and say it, but they hinted the same thing. At first. But then a day later, there it was on the front page of the Herald-Times : "Police Uncover Santa Burglary Ring."

The first part of the story went something like, "River City law enforcement officials have revealed that the man smooshed by reindeer earlier this week at Olde Towne Mall was William 'Big Buck' Thomerson, a.k.a. William Thompson, a.k.a. Thomas Williams, a.k.a. William Williamson, a.k.a. Vincente Benito de la Rosa III, a career criminal with multiple convictions for home invasion, burglary and theft stretching back to the early eighties. Police suspect that Thomerson was attempting to use his position as Olde Towne's resident Santa Claus to identify families that would be on vacation over the holidays, making their homes targets for break-ins. Sources also reveal that Thomerson might have secured his position through foul play: Yesterday afternoon, police found his fingerprints in a car that was involved in an accident that cost the mall's previous Santa his life. Thomerson's suspected accomplice, Kevin 'The Elf' Kane, was apprehended in Indianapolis yesterday attempting to hotwire a golf cart after his car ran out of gas near the city's Broadmoor Country Club. Authorities expect Kane to be back in River City for questioning tomorrow."

I've got to say-at first, I was pretty impressed by River City's finest. It took some real brains to connect all the dots.

But then I thought, "Did it really?" Maybe it didn't take brains at all. Maybe all it took was a tape-a tape that could have been found in Big Buck's pocket, untrampled, by cops checking out my story.

Of course, the article didn't have a sentence like, "Detectives gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Hannah Fox, whose paranoia and insane life choices made these breakthroughs possible." But that was O.K. There was an even better bit towards the end of the story.

"Thomerson's position at Olde Towne has raised disturbing questions about the mall's hiring practices. 'I assure you, we're going to be investigating this thoroughly and taking steps to ensure that it never happens again,' said Patti Cheney, Olde Towne's new promotions director. According to Cheney, the mall will discontinue its 'Santa's Workshop' operation for the rest of the holiday season."

Which meant I was unemployed, and there was nothing my mom could say about it. I'd been attacked, traumatized by vile criminals. It would take me weeks to recover-weeks I would spend sucking candy canes and watching TV.

It was going to be a merry Christmas after all.

Monday, December 15, 2003

In his own way, Erik Bigelow was a stickler for punctuality. According to the employee manual, everyone who worked for Now! Publishing was supposed to arrive no later than 8:30 a.m. So when Bigelow came in at his usual time-9:20-he had his eyes peeled for anyone as lax and late as he was. Those he caught he lectured on the importance of team spirit and playing by the rules and giving one's all. He gave the same speech to any Now! employees he saw trying to sneak out earlier than his usual departure time, which was 4:50.