4
Under the jolly hues of twinkling Christmas lights, two hundred thousand people swarmed through the downtown mall on a last-minute buying binge.
Alright, so that was a bit of an exaggeration. The Eastland Mall probably couldn’t hold two hundred thousand people even if you stacked them like plywood all the way up to the third story ceiling. It just felt that way as Jeff fought through the mob, careful to hold onto Brian and Davey’s hands.
Actually, he was holding onto Brian’s head, since Brian had a pencil and drawing pad in hand. Even though he bumped into every other person that passed by, the kid insisted on drawing his one-eyed sock monkeys even now.
Jeff usually demanded that Brian leave the pad in the car. But that led to sulking, and, well, it was Christmas Eve. So he held onto Brian’s head, and Davey’s right hand.
Unfortunately, that left Davey’s other hand free. And at the moment, he was talking to his pinky. Loudly. “Yesh, yew a pwetty wittle baby!”
Davey had his hand balled in a fist, with just the little finger sticking out. He wiggled it, made it dance through the air, bobbed his head in time as he sang songs to it.
Quite a few people were staring as they walked past.
“Do you think you could stop that, maybe, just for awhile?” Jeff asked.
“You want me to talk to my other fingers?”
Jeff suddenly had a clear mental picture of Davey serenading his extended middle digit.
“Never mind. Just…use your inside voice.”
“But Dad,” Davey hollered over the rumble of the crowd, “Pinky couldn’t hear me if I did that!”
“Then pretend he’s psychic, and he’s reading your mind, okay?”
But despite Davey’s shenanigans, despite the ugliness of the board meeting, despite the feeling of being a salmon pushing endlessly against the human tide (not to spawn, he mused, but to charge – on his Visa Gold Card), despite the canned holiday muzak that packed his ears like wet cotton, Jeff was upbeat. This was his favorite time of year. The forest green and crimson banners unfurling from the mall’s high-ceilinged dome…the glitter of sno-in-a-can frosting the store window edges…the model toy train track that Tidman’s Toys put up every year, running the length of the store…the wrapped empty boxes in every shop window, each one a promise of a real box to be opened Christmas Morning…
And way up ahead of them, the crowning glory: a department-store Santa on a candy cane throne, holding court as a couple of green-suited women plopped kids on his lap and snapped pictures for greeting cards.
The guy that Eastland Mall got to play Santa every year was a winner. An honest-to-gosh real beard, white as snow. Plump cheeks, a size-50 waistline, even his own set of silver-rimmed spectacles. And a laugh and a smile straight out of a storybook. Dressed in his glossy red velvet suit, with its black fur trim, he was Father Christmas if ever a Macy’s could hire one.
There were probably a hundred kids in line, but heck…it was Christmas Eve.
“Hey guys, want to see Santa?” Jeff could barely contain the excitement in his voice. “Brian?”
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Copyright © 2008 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.
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