Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Nutball Season.pdf - Kristine Kathryn Rusch - margozap

Nutball Season

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

In my business, nutball season starts on Halloween, and goes to about Christmas. Oh, you get your

occasional Friday-the-Thirteenth run on the precinct, and you gotta pray you get every full moon off, but

the real serious wackos don't seem to surface until about the last week in October, and they don't

disappear until New Year's Day. What they do the rest of the year, I haven't the slightest. But up until

then, they're harassing me and mine, or folks just like us all over the country.

Every year, I got my favorite nut story. But last year's I don't talk about much. Because I ain't sure

exactly who the nut is, me or the geezer what started it all.

You see, he walked into the stationhouse a shade before midnight on December twenty-third, wearing a

red Santa suit and looking pasty and tired, that kinda tired we all get when we pull too many shifts in a

row. The house was empty that night. The desk sarge was handling some crisis, the dispatch was doing

his nails, for godssake, and most everyone else was either at their own homes or doing their beats.

Me, I was at my desk. I'd stopped in the precinct after a collar to finish up some paperwork before going

home to macaroni, cheese, and tuna, my specialty. Not that I minded. It was better than Cindy Lou's

meatloaf surprise, which I missed even less than I missed her. So I wasn't really in a hurry to leave—even

though soaking up the camaraderie of the stationhouse at that time of night was kinda like trying to sleep

in a rooms-by-the-hour motel.

The old guy came in as I was typing the last part of my report. He sat down in the metal chair before my

desk, leaned over the files like he owned the place, and said, "Excuse me."

I held up my hand, signaling he should wait until I was finished, hoping someone else would come into the

house and the old guy would trot off to them. No luck.

"Excuse me," he said again. "Where do I go to file a complaint?"

I knew I wasn't gonna get rid of him as easy as I wanted, so I said, "A complaint about what?"

"Mrs. Billings. She plans to shoot me if I land on her roof tomorrow night."

Now to understand that sentence, you had to know that the next night was Christmas Eve. And since it

was Christmas Eve, and he was an elderly guy with a long white beard dressed all in red, it was pretty

clear who he was gonna impersonate.

At least, that was how I thought of it at that moment. But I wasn't being quick on the uptake. I didn't

think about the implications of asking this guy a question. Which I did.

"Does this Mrs. Billings have a child?"

"Well, of course," the old guy said in his precise way, and I realized then and there that I should have

kept my mouth shut because I was buying into his fantasy.

Of course, my mouth hadn't stayed shut, and now I was in deep, and I tried to fix it, I really did. I told

him, you know, that maybe he could wait a day or stay off the roof or just plain get outta town.

He looked at me like it was sixth grade again and he was Sister Mary Catherine trying to explain

Algebra.

"You simply do not understand," he said. "I cannot stay out of town. I must come, and I must arrive on

that night. I cannot change that. Too many children will be disappointed."

"Listen, bub," I said. "I know it's Christmas and all, but you know, kids really can't tell time. They won't

notice if Santa arrives on Christmas Eve or the day after."

"They'll notice," he said in that precise way of his. It was his manner of speaking that really got me to look

at him. He didn't sound like he was from around here.

I know, I know, I don't exactly sound Upstate either, but you can tell I do belong in New York. This guy

sounded kinda English, but kinda like Katharine Hepburn, too. You know. Cultured.

And the voice didn't quite suit him, neither. I mean how do you expect a guy dressed like Santa to

sound? Me, I'd think all deep-voiced and jolly. But no one'd think jolly about this guy. They wouldn't

even think fat. This guy was big, but he was all muscle. His eyes weren't twinkling. They were that hard

steel gray that some beat cops get after too many long days. And his beard wasn't snowy white. It was a

yellowish silver, the yellow probably being tobacco stains from the pipe clenched tightly in his thin mouth.

"Take it from me," I said to him, "when I was a kid, there was this guy next door who worked for

PhilcoFord. This was in the days when companies really cared about their workers, you know? And this

guy's kid, he was my age. The company Santa drops by every year, not just to this guy's house, but to

ours, too, and he always come on a Sunday, but I don't really notice, you know—"

"Not until thirteen-year-old Michael Trent pointed it out to you. I know," the geezer said. "He got coal in

his stocking that year."

The hair on the back of my neck stood out. The moment was a bit too Miracle on 34 th Street for me.

Now, there coulda been a thousand explanations for him knowing that—I mean, I told that story a

hundred times—but how he knew he'd get me that night, I couldn't figure.

I decided to ignore the geezer's last comment.

"Anyway," I said. "The point is—"

"That the children don't notice, but they do. They have an internal sense of what's right and what's not,

particularly when it comes to Christmas. And that's at the heart of my dilemma."

"How's that?" I ask.

"She has a child. A boy of three. He's a good boy, too, and doesn't ask for much. Her neighbors'

children have all grown, and they visit their grandchildren on the holidays, so her son is the only child on

the block. Logic dictates that I skip the house, but I simply cannot. In the centuries that I have been doing

this work—"

Those hairs rose again. I was gonna have to get them trimmed.

"—I haven't skipped a single child. At least, not a single child who met the criteria."

I didn't want to ask about criteria. I didn't want to know the details. I was sure the old guy would give

them to me.

"Mr.—"

"Kringle."

"Yeah, right. Listen, we can visit the lady, ask her to stop threatening you, but without proof or an

incident there ain't much we could do. Now you can get yourself a lawyer, and have some judge order

her to stay away from you, but even that won't do no good when you go visit her house, don't you see?

Maybe there's some other way you can get the presents to the kid."

He stared at me for a moment, and I got the sense, even though he was too polite to say it, that I just

didn't get it.

"I have proof," he said softly.

"You do?" For all his complaints against this woman, he never once said nothing about proof. "Well,

lessee it."

He gave me photocopies—dozens of them—all letters, all from different children, all return addresses

right here in our little burg. As he passed the copies to me, he stuck his finger on the top letter and hit it

with such force that the sound echoed through the empty precinct.

"Right"—tap—"there."

I glanced at the top letter. It was from a nine-year-old girl. It said that she heard Mrs. Prudence Billings

say she'd shoot Santa if he landed on her roof. The little girl, she was writing to warn Santa, and to tell

him it was okay if he skipped her this year because she'd rather he'd be safe.

The kid was probably trying to guarantee free presents for life.

Then I thumbed through the letters. They were all versions of the same thing: the kids had heard this

Prudence Billings say she'd shoot Santa.

What a great woman. Jeez. What was she doing telling children them things?

"You need a lawyer, mister," I said, handing the letters back to him.

"But that doesn't solve my dilemma," he said. "I need to go to her house."

"Like I said, get someone else to deliver." And I leaned back in my chair thinking about her poor kid.

Imagine having a mom who didn't let you believe in Santa, who didn't let you have that one night when

you thought anything was possible, when you actually believed some fat bastard who had flying reindeer

could squeeze himself into a space barely wide enough for a broom and give you your heart's desire.

"I can't get someone else to deliver," the geezer said, sounding kinda forlorn. "This isn't a task that can be

handed from person to person."

I was feeling a bit bad now. I mean, everyone's entitled to their own delusions if they didn't hurt nobody.

But the guy wanted to waste police time on something that wasn't ever gonna happen, and I had to let

him know that we didn't send squads chasing after every elf in the bushes, metaphorically speaking.

But then, on the other hand, they teach you at the academy to listen to these nuts on the offsides that even

nuts sometimes know something what might be true.

So I got to thinking I had this guy figured out, so I leaned forward and I said, "Pop, I know it's tough

when families don't get along, and it ain't fair your daughter keeping you away from your grandson, but

you know, the kid ain't gonna hold it against you if you get a friend to bring him his toys this year. The kid

is gonna be a might upset if his mom takes out the deer rifle and pops you one. I mean, if those're your

options, you gotta know which one I recommend."

He got up and his voice went all deep, just like I was thinking it shoulda been, except it still wasn't jolly,

and he said, "I hate going to the established authorities. They never believe me. Why can't you people

have an open mind for once?"

The dispatch, he looked up from his nails, and the desk sarge, who had come back in from wherever the

hell he'd been, looked at the old guy throw a fit right in front of me, a very cultured fit, but a fit all the

same, and I knew what the sarge was thinking: he was thinking, there goes Mantino again, pissing off

some citizen.

I'd already heard the lecture about my melancholy state, about the way I should maybe get some help

now that Cindy Lou was gone, only the lecture probably wouldn't go that way. It probably would be a

bit harsher since Cindy Lou'd been gone nearly six months, and my mood hadn't improved much. It was

that empty house, you know, the starter, with two bedrooms the size of a closet, and the one empty as a

grave, what was supposed to be for the first little Mantino way back when me and Cindy Lou actually

liked each other. I'd been spending those last six months thinking, not about Cindy Lou, because me and

her we weren't right, but about family and how some people want one and never get it and how some

people get one and never want it.

All this went through my brain in like a split second, while the geezer's using his elegant voice to

broadcast to the whole house how I failed him. So I got up, and I said, not so loud that the sarge could

hear, but loud enough to shut up the geezer, "If you got the magic that can make reindeer fly, how come

you can't land on a roof without some wacko with a shotgun seeing you?"

The geezer sighed and got back in his chair. The desk sarge looked down, the dispatch went back to his

nails, and all was right with the world.

Momentarily.

"The magic works like this," the geezer said. "Anyone who believes in me can see me."

I said, "Look, from what I can see in them letters, she don't believe in you."

"You haven't read closely enough," the old man said. "She believes strongly enough to see me as a threat

to the entire civilized world. Unfortunately, she is probably the person who believes in me the most of all

the adults in all the world."

He had a point. He had a delusion, she had a delusion, and it was shared and there was a gun mentioned,

and I probably shoulda been taking this whole thing a lot more seriously than I had been.

"Okay," I said. "Whatta you want me to do?"

"I want you to go see her," he said, "and make her promise not to shoot me tomorrow night."

"You think that much hate is going to keep a promise?" I ask.

"She's a fanatic, isn't she?" he said. "She should keep a holy vow."

Right. Like I could extract a holy vow from a woman who hated Santa Claus. But it wasn't the hardest

thing I'd ever had to do on this job.

So like an idiot, I agreed.

· · · · ·

Christmas Eve, my shift started at noon, and since I didn't have a family, I was thinking maybe I'd work

late and then pick up some hours Christmas Day. I wasn't lying to myself that one day was like another; I

knew Christmas was special. I just figured if I worked through it, I wouldn't notice.

When I was a kid, the festivities started with the whole Advent season. The second the decorations went

up in church, they'd go up at home. My mom did the Advent calendars and the whole nine yards, and it

made December something else. I'd felt the lack ever since I moved from home—it wasn't the same after

I'd left, and it got worse after she died—but it was never so bad as on Christmas and Christmas Eve.

I probably shoulda gone to midnight Mass. I had it in my head I'd do it when I got off work, but I wasn't

sure I wanted to see all them folks and their families in the red velvet and the fake fur coats, and me

coming in in my uniform. I didn't figure it'd look right, you know?

And that's what I was trying not to think about as I drove up to this Prudence Billings' house. She lived in

one of them ritzy areas of town—you know, those colonial houses with the columns and the eight miles of

lawn before you even get to the front door. Santa had not just his choice of roofs, but he had his choice

of chimneys here.

I didn't like her even worse than I didn't like her before, and that was before I got outta the squad.

I walked up that long sidewalk alone, noting that whoever shoveled didn't do a fine job as there was still

a thin layer of ice that cracked beneath my boots. Someone had salted the steps, and the salt had melted

through the ice, but no one'd bothered to kick the ice away, which I did, just as a courtesy.

Then I rang the bell.

The door opened and there was this kid wearing a pair of red shorts and a Santa hat, and grinning like

there was no tomorrow. In that face, I saw every devil that ever walked, and I knew that the geezer lied.

This kid wasn't good, he was hell on wheels, and I was just about to give him flight.

I caught him with one arm as he was about to sail into the snowy depths of the yard.

"Hey, kiddo," I said. "You ain't dressed for winter."

"Don't care," he said, struggling against me.

I wrapped my arm around him, lifted him off the ground, and stepped inside with him. The hallway was

one of them all-wood jobbies with a staircase going up the side. The banister was covered in pine

boughs, and there were ornaments hanging every which way.

"Miles?" a woman's voice shouted from above.

"He's down here," I said, hoping I didn't give her too much of a start. "I caught him going out the door."

Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Nutball Season.pdf

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