SANTA’S HELPER                     

                                                       by

                                              Patrick Breheny                                                         

     Jimmy was six years old and it was Christmas. He thought about how in the rest of America, outside New York City, outside the Bronx, people lived in houses like the ones in Christmas cards, and probably made sure the hearth wouldn’t be burning when Santa came down the chimney. But in a Bronx tenement building, the tenants complained loudly any time in winter the radiator hadn’t been banging and hissing, so Jimmy knew the super would have the heat up late, and if Santa went down the chimney he’d get cooked in the coal furnace in the basement. Jimmy lived in a fifth floor apartment in a walk-up. How else could Santa get in? Jimmy figured it had to be by the dumbwaiter, the platform inside a shaft that the super raised with ropes to collect garbage every night. The super, Mrs. Shandler, pressed a buzzer to each apartment to announce collection, and the bags were placed in the dumbwaiter through a half door in the wall of the interior entrance of the apartment, from about the height of his mothers shoulders and reaching almost to the ceiling.

      One of his parents’ rules was that the dumbwaiter door was to always be latched except at Mrs. Shandler’s pick up times. But surely once, on Christmas Eve, it would be alright if it was open. He waited until everybody---his mother, father, two older sisters, older brother---was asleep. He gauged by the snoring he heard from the other rooms, and from his brother beside him, that it was clear, and he went out to “use the bathroom”, then slipped to the corridor, raised the latch, and left it unlocked, but barely noticeable that it was.

     He went back to bed and waited .He’d see Santa this time .He was so excited, staying awake wouldn’t be a problem. He waited. He waited. His brother’s snoring was low and monotonous and inviting. It was making him sleepy. He fell asleep too, and dreamed for a while, but then woke himself up again. Darn, he’d been asleep. He went back into the living room. All the presents were under the tree. He’d missed Santa. The door to the dumbwaiter was still unlocked. Santa couldn’t have locked it from inside the dumbwaiter as he was leaving. Jimmy started down the corridor to latch it, but he was so sleepy, so disappointed. He yawned. He couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. He just wanted to go back to bed. He did just that.

     He fell asleep again quickly, but the next time he woke up it was because he heard a crinkly sound, like someone touching wrapping paper, coming from the living room. Did Santa come back?

     He crept back in. There was a man in the living room. Santa’s helper?  He didn’t look like you’d expect, like an elf or a dwarf, dressed in ho-ho-ho red. He was wearing jeans and a windbreaker and sneakers, and he was taking the presents back, stacking them by the dumbwaiter, the door of which was now wide open. Did Santa leave the wrong presents here? Maybe mixed these up with the ones for the Currans on the other side of the dumbwaiter shaft? Making a list, but too busy for checking it twice? Well, he didn’t get to see Santa, but a helper wasn’t bad.

      Jimmy asked, “Can I help you?”

     Santa’s helper almost jumped out of his jeans, looked at Jimmy and said, “Oh, shit!”

     Jimmy sometimes said “Oh shit” when his parents weren’t around, but he didn’t expect Santa’s helper to say that. .Maybe it went with the jeans and jacket and sneakers. Santa’s helper was just a regular guy. Jimmy noticed he had his face covered too with a handkerchief. Well, dumbwaiters probably smelled bad.

     Santa’s helper left all the presents on the floor and quickly climbed back into the dumbwaiter. One of the ropes was tethered to the handle, and groaned. He put his hands back inside the apartment, trying to loosen the loop, the pull of his weight keeping the rope taut. Jimmy thought any friend of Santa’s was a friend of his, and decided to help. The handle was in the open position, and if Jimmy pushed it to the closed position, without actually locking it, that would give some slack. He did that, moved the handle. Santa’s helper shouted “NO!”

       Too late. The rope slid suddenly along the handle, reached the end, lashed itself free, then whipped back into the dumbwaiter in one violent snap. Santa’s helper flailed his arms and hands to grab the ropes inside, then dropped from sight.

     Jimmy stood on tiptoe and looked down the shaft, but it was black dark in there. He just heard a long “Ayeeeee!”, and finally the sound of the platform landing hard at the bottom. Santa’s helper stopped screaming then. Jimmy closed the door and latched it. He didn’t think this had happened. He was still dreaming.

     He realized his mother had come into the living room. She was sleepy eyed, unsteady with drowsiness, and said, a bit annoyed with him, “Can’t you wait until morning. Put them back.”

     “Sure. Okay, Mom. Sorry.”

     She left, and he put all the presents under the tree, then went back to bed again. He wanted to go to sleep as fast as he could, but he began thinking about this, Santa’s helper dressed casually, wearing a mask. He’d have to be a young agile guy to climb down chimneys and up dumbwaiters. Santa would have to be too. If Santa was a big fat guy, he’d get stuck in the chimneys. If he wore his red suit, it would get all smudged. His white beard would be black from soot. The mask would be to keep out chimney dust and the smell of garbage from dumbwaiters. Santa would have to be like the man who had just been in the living room. Nobody ever saw him, so nobody knew what he actually looked like.  Could that have been Santa himself who’d just rode the dumbwaiter free fall down five stories?

     He wanted to be dreaming fast. He WAS dreaming. He’d kept himself awake to open the latch, but then he fell asleep, and only dreamed he got up and saw the presents, then dreamed some more that he got up and saw the man. Trying to get himself back to sleep now was part of the dream. He willed himself to sleep and dreamt only good things, about Christmas morning and presents.

     He woke last the next morning. Everybody was up opening presents. He checked the dumbwaiter latch. He’d left it open, then dreamt about the presents being out, dreamt he woke up and met Santa or his helper and dreamt he closed the latch. So, if he was dreaming all night, the latch would be open from the only time he got up, pretending to use the bathroom.

     Closed.

     Well, his mother could have done that. Surprising she didn’t say anything, though. They always made such a big deal about it. Well, he’d ask her. But not now. She was too busy today. Dinner to cook, his cousins coming. He’d wait a while to ask her. Maybe until she’d forgotten. She’d be mad about leaving the latch open. Why complicate things? Enjoy his presents with his siblings. He couldn’t wait until his cousins came, and he’d try out his new sled. It had snowed last night.

    It was a great Christmas dinner, made like at Thanksgiving, with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie. In the evening, about six o’clock, Mrs. Shandler buzzed for the garbage. She was a great talker, that one, as his mother put it, and at a time when there were no cell phones, internet, or even a building intercom in most buildings, including his, she communicated with tenants the old fashioned way, by shouting up the dumbwaiter shaft. She had a story this evening, about the bum that had somehow gotten into the basement on Christmas Eve, no doubt drunk, fell asleep in the dumbwaiter, and was found there frozen on Christmas morning, cheap traffic off the street, May The Lord Have Mercy On Him, and not before he’d broken a couple of dumbwaiter boards, but her husband Joe had hammered them back together.

     It was then that Jimmy knew for sure he had been dreaming. Sure, maybe some of the department store  Santas were bums, you could smell the alcohol on them, but real Santa or his helper wouldn’t be a bum. Just a nightmare he’d had.

     He said “Merry Christmas” so many times, so enthusiastically, after that that everyone, kids included, began asking him to stop. He called the other kids Scrooges. You’ll see, he told himself. Santa Claus will bring presents again next year like he always has. He didn’t need dumbwaiters. He had his own ways of getting in. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!

                                                   EPILOGUE

     There was a medical report done on the intruder Mrs. Shandler found at the bottom of the dumbwaiter shaft one Christmas morning long ago. Police postulated that the man had pulled himself up using the dumbwaiter ropes to seek entry to apartments, found none open, and at some point lost control of the ropes and fell.

     Of course they had no reason to pass that information on to Jimmy on the fifth floor, who’d begun to think of the frozen bum as “Bumsicle”, cheap traffic off the street, May The Lord Have Mercy On Him.

     Long before the following Christmas, he’d begun to figure out what everybody does eventually, that there was no Santa Claus. It was his parents. So---if there was never a Santa Claus, nobody could kill him. Cancelled out. It was as clear as the solution to a question on one of his first grade math quizzes. 5-5=___? Equals nothing. Precise and logical. Zero equals zero. Nothing is nothing.

     What a dream he’d had at Christmas.