“He flew too close to the sun.” A tiny teardrop trickled
from Raphael’s left eye.
”He stole one of my flying reindeer and decided to bareback
it 150 feet above the North Pole,” retorted Santa Claus. “Now I need a new lead
mucker.” He turned his head quickly to scan the stalls, but saw no hint of
activity. “Frankie!”
Two stalls away, an elf responded with a pained grunt. He
came into the hallway, walking as if he had been unpleasantly interrupted in the
middle of a nap. He had been napping, of course, sleeping off a night of shots
and chasers at the gentlemen’s club at the edge of the North Pole. He sauntered
slowly to Santa, dragging his pitchfork behind him and trying unsuccessfully to
straighten his hair with his free hand. “Hey, Santa, didn’t see you there,” Frankie
managed, desperately trying to focus on the big red suit a few paces in front
of him.
“Not surprising, considering how bloodshot your eyes are
this morning.” Santa’s tone was neither holly nor jolly.
“Oh, that?” Frankie muttered. “That’s just allergies. All
the reindeer shit, you know.”
“How silly of me, I guess I forgot about the high pollen count
in reindeer feces.”
“Don’t sweat it, Santa.” The hungover elf had missed the
sarcasm. In his mind, the conversation was going surprisingly well. “So, what
brings you down to the stalls?”
“Blitzen is dead.”
“Oh man.” Frankie paused to consider the news. “Suicide?”
Raphael, as kempt as Frankie was unkempt, inserted himself
into the conversation. “No, not suicide,” he said, flipping through a few pages
on his clipboard. “According to the official report, your manager, Krystal,
decided it would be fun to take Blitzen out for a midnight cruise. His
girlfriend, Crystal, no relation thank God, is all broken up about things. She
had to identify the … splatter.”
Frankie’s head almost cleared a little. “No, no, wait.
Krystal doesn’t know how to fly the reindeer. I mean, he can walk them around
the snow…”
“Yes, well, last night he took things to the next level, and
he and Blitzen paid the price,” Raphael said, tears welling up again.
“So it was murder?”
No more tears. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, he killed the reindeer, right? Isn’t that murder?”
“Are you saying this was intentional, that Krystal held a
grudge against Blitzen?” Raphael positioned himself for some serious
note-taking.
“No, no, he loved that horse.”
“Reindeer.”
“Whatever. But if it’s not murder, what is it? Vehicular
manslaughter? I mean, the reindeers are, kind of like flying cars, right?”
Raphael was no longer in writing position.
“Enough.” After the morning’s gruesome discovery, Santa’s
patience was already worn thin. A freshly inebriated elf wielding a pitchfork
and suddenly assuming his true calling was crime scene investigation was just
too much. Santa took a deep breath to collect his thoughts, and was almost able
to sound holly, though jolly would take more time. “Frankie, let us handle the
particulars. For now, I need you to be the lead mucker until such time as we
can post the position and do a proper round of interviews.”
“Really?” asked Rafael.
“Really?” repeated Frankie.
“Really,” Santa finished. He solemnly put his hands on Frankie’s
shoulders, and looked him directly in the eyes. “Frankie, with your pitchfork
filled with hay, won’t you muck my stalls today?”
Granted, it was not flawless iambic pentameter, and
Frankie’s pitchfork didn’t actually have any hay on it, but Frankie didn’t
hesitate. After all, what elf could resist a direct rhyming request from Santa
Claus himself? “Absolutely, Santa!” he exclaimed. He regretted the volume
immediately, and realized he was probably going to need to throw up soon. Santa
gave him a warm smile, a short nod, and a small shoulder squeeze, then turned
and left the stalls with Rafael.
Santa was still well within earshot when Frankie retched on
the exact spot where Santa had been standing just moments ago. “I’ll, uhh,
start with that,” Frankie called weakly. Santa and Rafael kept walking.
“Sir, are you sure that was a … wise decision?” Raphael
asked as delicately as he possibly could.
“Of course it’s not a wise decision,” Santa admitted. “But
there’s no one else here to do the job right now.”
“Very well,” Raphael answered, making a few quick updates on
his clipboard.
“We also need to schedule a funeral,” Santa added.
“Yes, sir, I’ll talk with Crystal to see if Krystal had made
any final arrangements…”
“Not for that bastard. You can feed him to the polar bears
for all I care. For Blitzen! Everybody loved that reindeer, and now we have to find
a new one and train it for the Black Friday dry run.”
Santa Claus and his wife, of course, were magically endowed
with long life (it’s the only way ordinary humans could have survived so long
on a diet built around hot cocoa and Christmas candy), but the reindeer had to
be replaced at regular intervals. It hadn’t caused much of a problem until the
1820s, when that “Night Before Christmas” poem listed Santa’s reindeer by name.
Since then, a new reindeer assumed the role of the retired (or, in this case,
deceased) member of the team.
“How’s the rest of summer looking?”
Raphael looked at his clipboard and clicked his tongue. “Not
good. There’s beta testing on that JoJo Jumpbot gaming system, and we still have
to finalize the new sector of the workshop for that new Halloween work.”
“The Halloween subcontract gig,” Santa sighed. “I can’t
believe I let you talk me into that. That reminds me, we need to check on our
orange dye reserves.”
As Santa and Rafael shuffled away, Frankie looked down at
the result of his binge drinking and had what could only be described as a
moment of clarity. He had lost his job as a toymaker in Santa’s workshop
several months earlier, following a mini-riot (they were elves, so “mini” is
probably redundant) sparked by revelations of improper elf activities. A rather
unfortunate incident with an inconveniently placed jack-in-the-box during the
melee had left him unable to sit for long periods of time. He was also a pretty
lousy toymaker. And a drunk.
During the public forum following the incident, Frankie said
he had been wrongly accused. He was set up, he argued. He was the fall guy, he
insisted. He was a patsy, he proclaimed. Of course, once you proclaim yourself
a patsy, there’s just no end to the giggles and snarky remarks. His career in
toymaking was finished.
But all that was in the past, he thought as he led Comet to
an empty stall so he could muck out the reindeer’s usual quarters. There were
only a few short months until Black Friday, and Frankie was determined to show Santa
he was worthy of his poetic praise. He stopped drinking and dived headfirst
into work, figuratively of course. Within two weeks, he had conquered “the
shakes” and developed a maintenance routine for the reindeer barn. He wrote it
down and posted it near the equipment closet.
Alas, Frankie had a list but failed to check it twice. No
doubt a second perusal would have helped him avoid the overturned rake he had
carelessly left in the middle of the barn. Instead, he stepped on the rake,
smacking himself upside the head with its industrial grade handle. As he fell
unconscious, his right shoulder managed to hit the lock on the new Blitzen’s
stall. When the gate sprang open, the untrained reindeer sprang out and took
the opportunity to wreak reindeer havoc throughout the complex. By a stroke of
luck, Blitzen had failed to crush Frankie beneath its hooves when it made its
escape. When he woke up in the hospital the next day with a nasty bruise and a
concussion, Frankie was informed that both he and Blitzen had been replaced.
After several minutes of destructive jumping and trampling,
the beast was put down by Crystal, an excellent markswoman, with a single shot.
While she argued the shooting was justified, some witnesses thought her actions
seemed less about public safety and more about a misguided personal vendetta. No
formal charges were ever filed. Crystal was ostracized by a select group of
elves because of her “cold blooded” solution to the rampaging reindeer; on the
positive side, she never again had to buy a drink when she frequented the
Huntsman’s Bar next door to the gentlemen’s club.
