Free Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes by Robert Devereaux Page A

himself, is a natural extension of that concern. Never forgetting to honor those we seek to persuade, we shall nonetheless not dilute our efforts to render more Christlike their view of their fellow man.”
    Santa sawed the air as he spoke, so firm were his convictions. But truth to tell, this venture into grown-up territory frightened him, and now he brought his rhetoric down a notch. “Dear friends, let me confide in you. I much prefer making good little boys and girls happy. Adults, particularly the most egregiously fallen ones, so sophisticated and subtle in the mental prisons they construct for themselves, have ever been beyond the pale. I don’t like observing them. I don’t like thinking about them. I would much prefer a world without them.
    “But for Jamie Stratton, I will venture outside my comfort zone. With gusto shall I confront his tormentors. And, God willing, Wendy and I will change a few minds, remove blinders from their eyes, and restore our visitants’ childlike grace this Thanksgiving Eve.”
    Seeing the smile on his daughter’s face, Santa fell in love with her all over again.
    “We must never forget that these grown-ups and the bully boy were once innocent babes not yet tangled in the prejudices of their elders. As I meet them, the image of their prelapsarian selves I shall strive to keep before me always.
    “For we are not about simply saving Jamie Stratton. We are about saving these four as well. Be with me in this, my brothers. Set aside all petty bickering, embracing the warm glow of magic time and crafting the perfect environments for persuasion. This I ask of you, as you love me, as you love Wendy, as you honor your own generous natures.”
    Santa ending on a resounding note, the elves rushed him and heaved him heavenward, passing him along, wrestling him to the snow, and tickling him without mercy, as they did each Christmas morning. And he threw off gales of laughter and pleaded for them to stop, while flocks of green caps jingled skyward in the crisp morning air.
    But speeches punch up one’s resolve in the ringingest tones of which one is capable, setting aside for the moment whatever doubts might weaken that resolve.
    Could he do it? Could he truly encounter grown-ups, those abundantly judgmental souls whose words were empty, whose hearts had shriveled into black fists, whose minds were blighted with canker and cant? These were creatures that lived in a hell of their own making. Could he really harrow the hell of even one such being, bringing him or her out of those blasted circles into the divine light of heaven on earth?
    He had no idea.
    But he would try.
    If he failed, he would fail grandly.
    This he vowed as his jelly-bowl belly bounced, and his cherry cheeks shook from his helpers' good-humored roughhouse, and the day shone grand and glorious all about them.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 9. A Bully Shaken to the Core
     
     
    MATT BELUZZO FELL exhausted into bed.
    Turkeys on classroom walls. Cartoon pilgrims with toothless grins and blunderbusses. And a steaming pile of crap, couched in cautiously non-denominational terms, about being thankful for one’s lot in life. Fat chance of that. His old man in the slammer, Mom boozing it up, stoking her lungs with cancer, stern-faced teachers cramping his style, holding him back for a second try at sixth grade with eleven-year-old pipsqueaks. Yeah, he had plenty to be thankful for.
    Dirty clothes were strewn everywhere. Tomorrow he would yell at Mom to get her act together, haul her bones out of bed, and wash them. Damned if he’d do it. Women’s work. Shirts had three good days in ’em tops, bring his sweat smell into homeroom, stink up Whittier Elementary something fierce. But his underwear was starting to itch.
    He’d deal with that tomorrow.
    Day off. Small favors.
    He slept fitfully, in and out of dreams, dead to the world, then waking to the moonlit bedroom with its slump-ugly