The Santa Who Came by Sleigh

I walked beside it in my green wool coat, my old one, with my right hand on the side rail. I did not plan to. I just did not want to be anywhere else.

We came onto Main Street at twenty after two.

I have lived in this town most of my life and I do not think I have ever seen it look the way it did that afternoon.

The sun was bright and low and it lit up the snow so hard you had to squint.

Every one of the old brick storefronts had a wreath on the door, the ones the high school kids put up the Saturday after Thanksgiving. There was no wind at all. You could hear the bells for blocks.

People heard them before they saw us. A man came out of the hardware store holding a box of furnace filters. Two women came out of the café with their coffee.

And there were kids. The town was full of them that afternoon because of the party, families parked up and down the street and walking toward the hall. A little boy in a blue snowsuit stopped dead on the sidewalk with his mouth open.

Dad reached into the bag and threw him a handful of candy. Most of it landed in the snow, and the boy dove for it like it was gold.

“Merry Christmas!” Dad called out, and his voice carried all the way down the block.

That started it.

A little girl in a pink snowsuit screamed, “It’s the real one!” and took off running down the sidewalk to keep up with us, and then her brother ran, and then three more kids I did not know, and then their parents were walking fast behind them, laughing, with their phones out.

Dad waved with his right hand until it shook so hard he could not keep it up. Then he switched to his left and kept waving.

Then he threw candy with the left and waved with the right. He never stopped. Not once in four blocks.

I walked along beside him and handed him fresh handfuls out of the bag, and I watched the kids’ faces. Not one of them looked scared. Not one.

A girl of maybe four reached up and grabbed his shaking hand as we went by, and held on for three steps, walking, and then let go and stood there in the snow looking at her own mitten like he had left something in it.

The community hall sits at the south end of the block, a long low brick building with a flag out front. As we came up on it, I could hear music through the wall, and a man’s big amplified voice.

The bells got there before we did.

I heard it happen. The voice inside was in the middle of a long, booming “Ho, ho,” and it stopped, right in the middle, like somebody had pulled the plug. The music kept going for a second by itself.

Then a little voice from inside, high and clear, said, “Mom, what’s that?”

I knew that voice. It was Owen.

The double doors at the front of the hall banged open, and the kids came out of that building like water out of a busted pipe. I have never seen anything like it.