Elf

The next morning, we see them. On their usual tour of the barn before the winter season happens. The Disney Rejects -- these extraterrestrial blond things from California, girls who didn’t make the Disney Channel, the Disney Cruise, Mouseketeer Girls who fuck up lines and dance steps so they’re stuck in New Hampshire at Santa Land dancing for the tourists. Their one last shot of stardom before they pack it in and kill themselves. Everyone in town is scared of them. They’re different. And they hate us.

“Now, girls,” Walter says. “This is where Santa comes for his reindeer.” No one laughs. “And here are Santa’s working elves.” Walter expects us to wave at them with our shovels.

I just keep shoveling shit.

“Can we get going?” one Reject asks. “It’s really, really cold in here.”

“Get a load of that one,” Burger whispers, but I’m not looking. I already know. Blonde chick, usually in red, white and blue, occasionally with a cowboy hat, and always with spangles and sparkles and fake eyelashes. “She ride me high I bet.” I forget to laugh so he smacks the shovel into my rib. “She’ll ride me high,” he says again, using his eyebrows as exclamation marks.

“Ha,” I say just to keep his shovel away. And I continue flinging piles.

Yeah, I know what we look like in our Elf Boy outfits -- losers, fucking losers. Velvet hats and red satin jackets, candy cane striped boots covered in reindeer shit. There’s no use pondering the merits of getting it on with them. No use to all these jokes, all this nodding and chuckling and rubbing our hands up and down the shafts of shovels. It’s hopeless. A waste.

“Check her out, man…”

But then I hear it. A squeal, a smack, then a squish. First, I think it’s Bessie, the mental reindeer, the one who bit Burger in the ass last year when he was messing with her with some jingle bells. But it’s not Bessie, with her high-pitched squealing, banging against boards, it’s one of them. She’s fallen straight into one of my piles.

“Oh, dear Lord,” Walter says.

But this Reject doesn’t cry. Burger out there first, and Bud Jr. rolling up his sleeves. She’s laughing. Even through all the ‘Oh my gawds’ and arched eye glances of her fellow dancing queens, she’s fucking laughing.

So I pull her out.

That night, after Burger leaves, I leap end to end over the pitchforks, AC/DC just blasting the hell out of the place. Bessie knocks her antlers into feed bins and headbangs the walls. I’m done sweeping, the stalls are layered and fresh, and the old man will be good and drunk, passed out in his chair, so I can get past his sorry hump and upstairs without him coming at me. I balance upside down between the slats that separate the reindeer stalls. Feel the blood rushing into my forehead. And finally see the stars behind my eyelids.

“Hey.” The dancer chick stands at the barn’s entrance, her arms across her chest. I topple over quick, grabbing for my gloves. “You could be a dancer,” she says. “Good balance. Strong arms.” She chews the air as if she can’t breath. Then I realize her teeth are chattering.

“Yeah, right.” And I hand her my bottle. She holds it tentatively as if I’ve given her some lit match, a grenade or something. “It ain’t gonna bite you,” I tell her roughly. So she takes the bottle and guzzles it hard, those black eyes hitting my face with attitude. She’s long and lean like the rest of them, but there’s nothing Sound of Music about her face. She’s got a Mick Jagger mouth.

“You got height and distance. Long stance between leaps.” She’s enjoying this, her breath coming out in long puffs as she stares at my Elf Boy tights, my boots covered and stinking.

“Don’t you got curfew?” I crack my neck.

She tries to look dangerous, and she almost pulls it off except that her teeth are too white and she has diamond earrings. I don’t say nothing because she’s blinding actually, and I’ve never before had a conversation with any one of them, especially late at night, and without Burger for backup. “Yeah,” she finally says.

She’s watching Bessie. Turning her antlers left and right as if looking for ropes to come at her, pulling her back inside, but when she sees there’s nothing, she takes larger steps.

She finishes the bottle, hands it back to me. “You have more?”

Bessie doesn’t look back, even once. And then she’s gone, a flash of brown to all that cold white.

I swing that empty bottle and know that I can smash it hard against the wall, get her back to where she belongs, let her see the pieces flying. But all I do is tell her, “I got to lock up.”

And that dancer girl, she doesn’t move. She just doesn’t move, and it begins to snow.

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