The Mucker of Santa’s Workshop

“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.