The Santa Who Came by Sleigh

They came in party clothes and half-zipped snowsuits and one boot on, down the steps and out onto the sidewalk and right to the edge of the street, a whole crowd of them, forty or fifty kids, yelling and pointing.

Some of the parents came behind them carrying coats.

Vern said “Whoa” low and steady, and the team stopped right in front of the hall, snorting steam, bells ringing.

The kids lined Main Street on both sides. And Dad stood up in the sleigh.

He did it slowly, one hand on the seat back and one hand on my shoulder, and when he got all the way up he spread his arms out in that old red suit.

“Well, look at all of you,” he said. “Have you been good this year?”

“Yes!” all of them yelled, the way kids do, every single one.

And then Owen came pushing through the crowd. He was in his church pants and a sweater and no coat at all, and he did not stop at the curb.

He walked right out to the sleigh and grabbed the side rail next to my hand.

“Great-Grandpa,” he said. “That’s you.”

“Shh,” Dad said. “Don’t tell anybody.”

“Can I come up?”

Dad looked at me.

I lifted Owen under the arms and set him on the iron step, and he scrambled up into the back seat and sat right down next to his great-grandfather and put his arm through Dad’s, the shaking one, and held it in his lap like it was his.

I had to look away at the brick wall for a minute.

Then the hired Santa came out. Gus.

He was a big man, maybe sixty, in a nice suit with a lot of fake white fur, and a beard on elastic, and he stood on the top step of the hall with the wireless microphone still in his hand, looking out at the empty doorway behind him and the street full of kids in front of him.

For a second I was afraid he was going to be angry.

He came down the steps and walked out to the sleigh. He looked at the horses, at Vern, at the bells, and then up at Dad.

“Sir,” he said. “I’ve done this nineteen years. Malls, banks, hospitals, three in one day sometimes. I have never once had a sleigh.” He pulled the elastic beard down off his chin. “Any chance a guy could get a ride?”

Dad laughed so hard he had to sit down. “Get in,” he said. “There’s room for two Santas in the back. Owen can sit on your knee.”

So Gus climbed up.

And Vern spoke to the team, and they went around the block, the whole block, slow, with Dad and Owen and Gus from Rochester in the back seat throwing candy, and every kid from that party running along the sidewalk beside them in the sun.

I did not ride. I stayed on the sidewalk by the hall steps and watched them go. And that is where I was standing when Brittany came out.

She came out last. After the kids, after the parents, after the committee ladies in their Christmas sweaters, after my son with the baby on his hip. She stood in the doorway of the empty hall by herself.

Behind her I could see the photo booth with its ring light still on, and the big chair by the tree with nobody in it, and the long tables of ham and lefse with nobody at them.