Mall Santa

     The satire of Christmas is revealed when he watches his mother ransack the secret stash of her already wrapped gifts in the back of his father's closet, vulgar language and shreds of paper flying everywhere, searching for something she can divert to her friend Marcy, who just stopped by with a gift for her. It is imperative that she project the appearance being just as thoughtful and giving. And the clock is ticking -- her remark as she excused herself implied a quick hop upstairs. Clutching a roll of gift wrap, she hisses at Ben to fetch the tape and scissors from the home office. He tiptoes off to obey, rattled by what he just witnessed -- his mother breaking so many codes of Christmas, bastardizing the surprises his father had in store, demystifying his concept of Santa Claus. At age 9, he had begun to waver on the mythology of Christmas but stuck to the ledge. Now, because of his mother's relentless competitive spirit, he lets himself fall into the abyss of disbelief.  

     Back in the kitchen she gushes over the necklace as she helps Marcy with the clasp. It's so you, she proclaims then dives into a dramatic rant about the shopping errands she must get to before the stores close. And just like that, their previously set plans to play Christmas records, bake cookies and bask next to a warm fire are replaced with a desperate mission to the very last place anyone wants to be on Christmas Eve -- the local mall.

     While Ben bundles up and mutters his reservations about this plan, his mother rewraps with vampire speed the desecrated gifts -- perfume, cashmere sweaters, expensive shoes, a luxurious robe -- and crams them back into hiding. She meets him at the front door overdressed in a cocktail party gown and knee high boots. Her bright red lipstick is crooked. Ben chooses not to tell her. 

     Somehow his mother lucks out and vultures a prime parking spot. The mall, with throngs of sour faced people crashing into each other like angry atoms, still has the Santa station in the atrium. The absurdity of this smacks Ben in the face like a hard packed snowball. Shouldn't Santa be the North Pole finalizing his flight path and loading the sleigh? How can he be here and still have time to do his thing tonight? Ben wants answers and takes advantage of his mother's frantic preoccupation with replacing that necklace to convince her to let him get in line for a quick chat with the old man. She plants him in line, greases his palm with a 20 then shuffles off to Saks Fifth Avenue without looking back.

     The elves are efficient tonight. Each kid in front of Ben is prepped to employ brevity with their last minute requests for Santa since he has to get to work soon. When he reaches Santa's lap he wastes no time telling the story about his mother and the gifts and how he came to be here today. Santa looks over Ben's shoulder to an elf who shrugs and taps on his wrist watch. 

     I know you're not real. Ben can't hold eye contact when he speaks.

     Ho, ho -- I sure feel real. Santa pinches his arm and grins.      

     I mean, I know you're not really Santa. Ben whispers, careful not to alarm the younger kids waiting impatiently. And that's okay -- it's our secret. But I need to know. Is Santa real? 

     Santa offers a poker face that comes across like constipation then draws Ben closer. Santa is anyone who delivers joy and hope to people they love, and to some people they don't even know. He strokes his beard for effect and continues. Santa is very real, Ben. 

     Ben's eyes ignite and his mouth gapes. Behind Santa the elf smiles and flutters his hands to move him along. He smiles and nods at Santa and floats away in the direction of Saks. A hand on his shoulder snaps him from the warm and fuzzy trance -- one of Santa's elves. Immediately Ben realizes that he failed to pay for the session and reaches into his pocket for the crumpled bill.

     The elf waves him off and asks, Do you want to see Santa's sleigh on the roof?

     Ben looks at the entrance to Saks, decides there is time and takes the elf's hand. Together they blend into the crowd and head toward the parking structure.

     Is it a real sleigh or just a prop? Ben asks but does not get an answer. The elf seems to be in a hurry, and Ben assumes this is a clandestine mission, that kids are not allowed to see the sleigh, so he hustles along.

     In the parking garage, Ben thinks it odd they do not head to the elevator and notices the elf's grip on his hand has tightened. He tries to pull his hand away but the elf, now with a hateful look on his face, yanks him along. 

     Stop, Ben cries. I want my mom. 

     I want my mom, I want my mom. The elf mocks him and jerks his arm hard. 

     They reach the far corner of the lot where a grey van is parked. The side door slides open as they approach. Out steps a short man dressed in black smoking a cigarette. Ben goes numb, dragging his feet on the ground to slow the progress. The elf bends to gather Ben from the pavement and catches a shiny black boot in his teeth. He immediately goes limp and crashes to the ground where his head bounces and rests. Ben pulls himself up and sees a blur of red advancing toward the van. Santa makes quick work of the smoking man, dropping him to the ground with one punch then delivering a knockout boot to the head. Ben watches in awe as Santa retrieves a pack of cigarettes from the unconscious man's jacket and lights one.

     In the security office, Santa gives Ben's mother a terse lecture about leaving her kid unattended and tells her that he would arrest her if it were not Christmas Eve. She wails and grips Ben too tightly. Santa is an undercover cop. He pulls Ben aside and tells him that he may be the key to busting a regional kidnapping ring. It's all too much for Ben to process, especially since he's still wearing the Santa Claus costume, so Ben just nods.

     When Santa asks if he has any questions Ben pulls away from his mother, leans in and whispers: Do you still believe what you said to me about Santa? 

     Santa removes the red hat and fake beard and hands them to Ben. Tonight these belong to you, kid. 

The Gravel Road

     Birds and crickets drop their morning soundtrack on the Hollow while lingering wisps of last night's dew settle into these foothills that have swallowed him whole. In a decrepit chair on the front porch Ben sips hot coffee and gives a cold shoulder to the dawn of a new day. He eyeballs the barn adjacent to the house and considers the rotting apple hidden on the top shelf of his work bench. Surely the makeshift bowl holds enough charred bud to shroud his anxious thoughts and postpone the arrival of the day's demons. Not now, he decides, not yet. If the game warden comes back around, he needs his frayed wits about him. Yesterday the air reeked of suspicion when he shared the account of how he came to kill the neighbor's pit bull. That stench of doubt kept him up all night. Then there's the matter of those neighbors and whether Ben started a war. 

     'They're blackbillies.'  Danny blows dust off the chainsaw and wipes sweat from his brow.    

     The eyes and ears of Rocky Hollow, its Carl the Janitor, Danny is a neighbor and grizzled lifetime resident who witnessed Ben's pathetic lumberjack charade a few days back and showed up this morning on a mission of mercy to finish the job. Ben admires Danny's handiwork -- the branches of a fallen tree carved and spread cleanly like a Thanksgiving turkey breast -- and swallows hard the lump of envy over his handle of the chainsaw as if it's a natural extension of his arm. His shame from last week's failed attempt at manhood still stings and he makes a mental note to get rid of the broken chainsaw corpse that laughs at him from its resting place in a far corner of the barn -- a monument to his inadequacy.  

     'How's that?'  Ben braces for the racist rant.  

     'Black hillbillies. Get it?'

     Ben offers a neutral grunt. 

     'Worse than you're used to back in the city. They got less to lose.'  Danny revs the saw to punctuate this and cuts into a giant slab of trunk.

     Ben chews on this rough cut of insight for a minute and looks into the swath of woods that separates their land from his. Out here he always feels like someone's watching, as if the hills do indeed have eyes, and now more than ever regrets his lifetime's guilty pleasure of horror movies. He packs a 3 inch hunting knife at all hours, brandishing it openly when checking all door locks at bedtime. The idea of remote living seemed so romantic when they bought this place. Suddenly, less than a month in, thanks to his savage act creating new enemies, it's a slasher revenge flick waiting to happen.   

     'But you did what you had to do, Ben.' Danny kills the engine. 'And it was a favor to the rest of this Hollow.' 

     The crunch of car wheels on gravel cuts the awkward silence. Ben looks down the hill and watches the black Ford Explorer's cloud of dust follow it up to his barn where it parks and idles. He makes a mental note to have an apple later.  

      Watching Officer Cox's eyes dart about the room, it sucker punches Ben that he spends too much time alone in this barn. Each day finds his hands idle and his mind skittish for 8 hours while his boys are at school. His intentions to become a hermit have been realized already to an extreme, and he worries if this is where the Ted Kaczynskis of the world get their start. To his friends he romanticized the idea of spending days writing in the barn, churning out essays and stories and eventually a respectable body of work, and he bought into the idea at first. Soon it became apparent that the lonely hours would be dangerously loaded with revelations and personal confrontations. His writing flowed thick and strong, but the subject matter was grim -- mostly post-apocalyptic plots of survival and murder. He suddenly sees this setting through Cox's eyes -- disheveled, littered almost maniacally like a squatter's den, not remotely indicative of mental fitness -- and a pulse of paranoia beats within. Somewhere in the mound of chicken scratched notebooks is written a memo of hypothetical scenarios for how that dog might meet its end. Ben stares out the window at Danny in the distance, considers for the first time that he unwittingly volunteered to be the Hollow's patsy and wonders just how fucked he is now.