Bagombo Snuff Box (22 page)

“Nope,” said Richard.

“Okay,” said Santa. “Maybe I got a electric train for ya, an’
maybe I don’t.” He rummaged through a pile of parcels under the tree. “Now,
where’d I put that stinkin’ train?” He found the parcel with Richard’s name on
it. “Want it?”

“Yup,” said Richard.

“Well, act like you want it,” said Santa Claus.

Young Richard could only swallow.

“Ya know what it cost?” said Santa Claus. “Hunnerd and
twenny-four fifty.” He paused dramatically. “Wholesale.” He leaned over
Richard. “Lemme hear you say t’anks.”

Mr. Pullman squeezed Richard.

“T’anks,” said Richard.

“T’anks. I guess,” said Santa Claus with heavy irony. “You
never got no hunnerd-and-twenny-four-fifty train from your old man, I’ll tell
you that. .Lemme tell you, kid, he’d still be chasin’ ambulances an’ missin’
payments on his briefcase if it wasn’t for me. An’ don’t nobody forget it.”

Mr. Pullman whispered something to his son.

“What was that?” said Santa. “Come on, kid, wha’d your old
man say?”

“He said sticks and stones could break his bones, but words
would never hurt him.” Richard seemed embarrassed for his father. So did Mrs.
Pullman, who was hyperventilating.

“Ha!” said Santa Claus. “That’s a hot one. I bet he says
that one a hun-nerd times a day. What’s he say about Big Nick at home, eh? Come
on, Richard, this is Santa Claus you’re talkin’ to, and I keep a book about kids
that don’t tell the trut’ up at the Nort’ Pole. What’s he really t’ink of Big
Nick?”

Pullman looked away as though Richard’s reply couldn’t concern
him less.

“Mommy and Daddy say Big Nick is a real gentleman,” recited
Richard. “Mommy and Daddy love Big Nick.”

“Okay, kid,” said Santa, “here’s your train. You’re a good
boy.”

“T’anks,” said Richard.

“Now I got a big doll for little Gwen Zerbe,” said Santa,
taking another parcel from under the tree. “But first come over here, Gwen, so
you and me can talk where nobody can hear us, eh?”

Gwen, propelled by her father, Big Nick’s chief accountant,
minced over to Santa Claus. Her father, a short, pudgy man, smiled thinly,
strained his ears to hear, and turned green. At the end of the questioning,
Zerbe exhaled with relief and got some of his color back. Santa Claus was
smiling. Gwen had her doll.

“Willy O’Hare!” thundered Santa Claus. “Tell Santy the trut’,
and ya get a swell boat. What’s your old man and old lady say about Big Nick?”

“They say they owe him a lot,” said Willy dutifully.

Santa Claus guffawed. “I guess they do, boy! Willy, you know
where your old man’d be if it wasn’t for Big Nick? He’d be dancin7 aroun’ in
little circles, talking to hisself, wit’out nuttin’ to his name but a flock of
canaries in his head. Here, kid, here’s your boat, an’Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you,” said Willy politely. “Please,
could I have a rag?”

“A rag?” said Santa.

“Please,” said Willy. “I wanna wipe off the boat.”

“Willy!” said Bernie and Wanda together.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Santa. “Let the kid
talk. Why you wanna wipe it off, Willy?”

“I want to wipe off the blood and dirt,” said Willy.

“Blood!” said Santa. “Dirt!”

“Willy!” cried Bernie.

“Mama says everything we get from Santa’s got blood on it,”
said Willy. He pointed at Mrs. Pullman. ‘And that lady says he’s dirty.”

“No I didn’t, no I didn’t,” said Mrs. Pullman.

“Yes you did,” said Richard. “I heard you.”

“My father,” said Gwen Zerbe, breaking the dreadful silence,
“says kissing Santa Claus isn’t any worse than kissing a dog.”

“Gwen!” cried her father.

“I kiss the dog all the time,” said Gwen, determined to complete
her thought, “and I never get sick.”

“I guess we can wash off the blood and dirt when we get
home,” said Willy

“Why, you fresh little punk!” roared Santa Claus, bringing
his hand back to hit Willy.

Bernie stood quickly and clasped Santa’s wrists. “Please,”
he said, “the kid don’t mean nothing.”

“Take your filt’y hands off me!” roared Santa. “You wanna
commit suicide?”

Bernie let go of Santa.

“Ain’t you gonna say nuttin’?” said Santa. “I t’ink I got a
little apology comin’.”

“I’m very sorry, Santa Claus,” said Bernie. His big fist
smashed Santa’s cigar all over his face. Santa went reeling into the Christmas
tree, clawing down ornaments as he fell.

Childish cheers filled the room. Bernie grinned broadly and
clasped his hands over his head, a champ!

“Shut them kids up!” Santa Claus sputtered. “Shut them up,
or you’re all dead!”

Parents scuffled with their children, trying to muzzle them,
and the children twisted free, hooting and jeering and booing Santa Claus.

“Make him eat his whiskers, Bernie!”

“Feed him to the reindeers!”

“You’re all t’rough! You’re all dead!” shouted Santa Claus,
still on his back. “I get bums like you knocked off for twenty-five bucks, five
for a hun-nerd. Get out!”

The children were so happy! They danced out of the house
without their coats, saying things like, “Jingle bells, you old poop,” and “Eat
tinsel, Santy,” and so on. They were too innocent to realize that nothing had
changed in the economic structure in which their parents were still embedded.
In so many movies they’d seen, one punch to the face of a bad guy by a good guy
turned hell into an earthly paradise.

Santa Claus, flailing his arms, drove their parents after
them. “I got ways of findin’ you no matter where you go! I been good to you,
and this is the thanks I get. Well, you’re gonna get thanks from me, in spades.
You bums are all gonna get rubbed out.”

“My dad knocked Santa on his butt!” crowed Willy.

“I’m a dead man,” said O’Hare to his wife.

“I’m a dead woman,” she said, “but it was almost worth it.
Look how happy the children are.”

They could expect to be killed by a hit man, unless they
fled to some godforsaken country where the Mafia didn’t have a chapter. So
could the Pullmans.

Saint Nicholas disappeared inside the house, then reappeared
with another armload of packages in Christmas wrappings. His white cotton
beard was stained red from a nosebleed. He stripped the wrappings from one
package, held up a cigarette lighter in the form of a knight in armor. He read
the enclosed card aloud: ‘“To Big Nick, the one and only. Love you madly.’” The
signature was that of a famous movie star out in Hollywood.

Now Saint Nicholas showed off another pretty package. “Here’s
one comes all the way from a friend in Italy.” He gave its red ribbon a mighty
yank. The explosion not only blew off his bloody beard and fur-trimmed red hat,
but removed his chin and nose as well. What a mess! What a terrible thing for
the young to see, one would think, but they wouldn’t have missed it for the
world.

After the police left, and the corpse was carted off to the
morgue, dressed like Kris Kringle from the neck down, O’Hare’s wife said this: “I
don’t think this is a Christmas the children are going to forget very soon. I
know I won’t.”

Their son Willy had a souvenir that would help him remember.
He had found the greeting card that came with the bomb. It was in the
shrubbery. It said, “Merry Christmas to the greatest guy in the world.” It was
signed “The Family.”

There would be a rude awakening, of course. The fathers were
going to have to find new jobs, ho ho.

Most married women won’t meet an old beau for cocktails,
send him a Christmas card, or even look him straight in the eye. But if they
happen to need something an old beau sells—anything from an appendectomy to
Venetian blinds—they’ll come bouncing back into his life, all pink and smiling,
to get it for wholesale or less.

If a Don Juan were to go into the household appliance
business, his former conquests would ruin him inside of a year.

What I sell is good advice on stocks and bonds. I’m a
contact man for an investment counseling firm, and the girls I’ve lost, even by
default, never hesitate to bring their investment problems to me.

I am a bachelor, and in return for my services, which after
all cost me nothing, they sometimes offer me that jewel beyond price—the
home-cooked meal.

The largest portfolio I ever examined, in return for
nostalgia and chicken, country style, was the portfolio of Celeste Divine. I
lost Celeste in high school, and we didn’t exchange a word for seventeen years,
until she called me at my office one day to say, “Long time no see.”

Celeste Divine is a singer. Her hair is black and curly, her
eyes large and brown, her lips full and glistening. Painted and spangled and
sheathed in gold lame, Celeste is before the television cameras for one hour
each week, making love to all the world. For this public service she gets five
thousand dollars a week.

“I’ve been meaning to have you out for a long time,” said
Celeste to me. “What would you say to home-cooked chicken, Idaho potatoes, and
strawberry shortcake?”

“Mmmmmmmmm,” I said.

“And after supper,” said Celeste, “you and Harry and I can
sit before a roaring fire and talk about old times and old friends back home.”

“Swell,” I said. I could see the firelight playing over the
columns of figures, The Wall Street Journal, the prospectuses and graphs. I
could hear Celeste and her husband Harry murmuring about the smell of new-mown
hay, American Brake Shoe preferred, moonlight on the Wabash, Consolidated
Edison three-percent bonds, cornbread, and Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and
Pacific common.

“We’ve only been away from here for two years,” said
Celeste, “but it seems like a lifetime, so much has happened. It’ll be good to
see somebody from back home.”

“You really came up fast, didn’t you, Celeste,” I said.

“I feel like Cinderella,” said Celeste. “One day, Harry and
I were struggling along on his pay from Joe’s Greasing Palace, and the next
day, everything I touched seemed to turn to gold.”

It wasn’t until I’d hung up that I began wondering how Harry
felt.

Harry was the man I’d lost Celeste to. I remembered him as a
small, good-looking, sleepy boy, who asked nothing more of life than the
prettiest wife in town and a decent job as an automobile mechanic. He got both
one week after graduation.

When I went to the Divine home for supper, Celeste herself,
with the body of a love goddess and the face of a Betsy Wetsy, let me in.

The nest she’d bought for herself and her mate was an old
mansion on the river, as big and ugly as the Schenectady railroad station.

She gave me her hand to kiss, and befuddled by her beauty
and perfume, I kissed it.

“Harry? Harry!” she called. “Guess who’s here.”

I expected to see either a cadaver or a slob, the remains of
Harry, come shuffling in. But there was no response from Harry.

“He’s in his study,” said Celeste. “How that man can concentrate!
When he gets something on his mind, it’s just like he was in another world.”
She opened the study door cautiously. “You see?”

Lying on his back on a tiger-skin rug was Harry. He was staring
at the ceiling. Beside him was a frosty pitcher of martinis, and in his fingers
he held a drained glass. He rolled the olive in it around and around and
around.

“Darling,” said Celeste to Harry, “I hate to interrupt,
dear.”

“What? What’s that?” said Harry, startled. He sat up. “Oh! I
beg your pardon. I didn’t hear you come in.” He stood and shook my hand forth-rightly,
and I saw that the years had left him untouched.

Harry seemed very excited about something, but underneath
his excitement was the sleepy contentment I remembered from high school. “I
haven’t any right to relax,” he said. “Everybody in the whole damn industry is
relaxing. If I relax, down comes the roof. Ten thousand men out of jobs.” He
seized my arm. “Count their families, and you’ve got a city the size of Terre
Haute hanging by a thread.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why are they hanging by a
thread?”

“The industry!” said Harry.

“What industry?” I said.

“The catchup industry,” said Celeste.

Harry looked at me. “What do you call it? Catchup? Ketchup?
Catsup?”

“I guess I call it different things at different times,” I
said.

Harry slammed his hand down on the coffee table. “There’s
the story of the catchup-ketchup-catsup industry in a nutshell! They can’t even
get together on how to spell the name of the product. If we can’t even hang
together that much,” he said, “we’ll all hang separately. Does one automobile
manufacturer call automobiles ‘applemobiles,’ and another one ‘axlemobiles,’
and another one ‘urblemowheels’?”

“Nope,” I said.

“You bet they don’t,” said Harry. He filled his glass,
motioned us to chairs, and lay down again on the tiger skin.

“Harry’s found himself,” said Celeste. “Isn’t it marvelous?
He was at loose ends so long. We had some terrible scenes after we moved here,
didn’t we, Harry?”

“I was immature,” said Harry. “I admit it.”

‘And then,” said Celeste, “just when things looked blackest,
Harry blossomed! I got a brand-new husband!”

Harry plucked tufts of hair from the rug, rolled them into
little balls, and flipped them into the fireplace. “I had an inferiority
complex,” he said. “I thought all I could ever be was a mechanic.” He waved
away Celeste’s and my objections. “Then I found out plain horse sense is the
rarest commodity in the business world. Next to most of the guys in the
catchup industry, I look like an Einstein.”

“Speaking of people blossoming,” I said, “your wife gets
more gorgeous by the minute.”

“Hmmmmm?” said Harry.

“I said, Celeste is really something—one of the most
beautiful and famous women in the country. You’re a lucky man,” I said.