Santa Claus
by
Ed Benjamin
©1995, ©2013 & ©2019
When Sam Graham got off the bus in Central City; he felt the cold wind whip around his body, fluttering his clothes. Sam turned the collar of his overcoat up so his ears and the back of his head were protected from the fierce, frigid wind. Kneeling against the pull, he picked up his bag and walked to a nondescript brownstone hotel on First Avenue.
Sam quickly went inside and registered, paid one week’s rent in advance, then hurriedly went up to his room on the seventh floor. Inside his drab hotel room, he sat on the single bed and fingered a loose ringlet in the corded bed cover. After some time, he reached into his pocket and laid a ten-dollar bill, two ones, and some change neatly on the bed. He stared at the money for what felt like a long time.
As he unpacked his bag, Sam took a bottle of pills and placed them in the top drawer of the bedside dresser. Once completely unpacked, he left his room and got a hamburger from a little place he had passed down the street. When he returned, he pulled out the bottle of pills and placed them on top of the dresser so he could study them as he lay on the bed. In the neon flicker of the hotel sign, he stared at the bottle until his eyes drifted shut. Soon after, Sam fell asleep.
The only job he could find was playing Santa Claus in a local department store. Every morning Sam would rise at ten, wash up, and go to the store to start his long shift. He ate at the lunch counter. Fortunately, lunch came with the job. Afterwards, he would change into his big red suit, sit in the chair next to the toy department, and listen to the excited voices of the children at his arrival.
Although he wasn’t a particularly zealous Santa Claus, the children seemed to like him, so the store manager kept him on. The holiday season would be over in two weeks anyway, and help at a minimum wage was hard to find this time of year.
At nine every night, Sam would change back into his street clothes and stop somewhere to eat on his walk back to his room. Once his belly was full of cheap diner food, he would return to his room and lie on the bed. His eyes never left that bottle of pills until sleep forced them to close.
On the third day of his seasonal job, Sam met Joey. Joey was one of many kids in line waiting to see Santa. When it came to be his turn, Joey climbed into Sam’s lap and didn’t say anything. Sam guessed Joey was about seven years old, and he had short black hair and gloomy brown eyes. His clothes were typical for the neighborhood: faded jeans, wool plaid shirt, and a zip-up windbreaker with a patch on the left sleeve. Sam didn’t think much about the boy who just sat there silently in his lap for ten minutes. Sam went through his usual lines of dialogue, but nothing provoked a response from Joey. Getting tired of the boy, Sam gently guided the boy from his lap and sent him on his way. Wordlessly, Joey walked off, and the next child in line came forward. That night, Sam could feel the warmth from the boy’s body on his knees as he lay there looking at the bottle. For a moment, something stirred in his memory as he looked out the window. His gaze shifted back to the pills before he went to sleep.
The next day, Joey was back in line.
“Ho-ho-ho, what’s your name, little boy?” Sam asked the still outwardly meek child as he climbed up into Santa’s lap.
As he did the day before, Joey said nothing. He just sat there. Again, after a few minutes, Sam brushed Joey off his lap to keep the line moving.
And, like a bad rerun no one asked for, Joey was back in line the very next day. Trying to stay in character and not let his frustrations show, Sam asked for the little boy’s name.
“Joey,” the boy finally answered.
Surprised, Sam followed up with, “How old are you, son?”
“Seven.”
“What do you want for Christmas?”
Instead of answering, Joey just climbed out of Sam’s lap and walked away. Beyond confused, Sam watched him leave through the side door. Sam also noticed something else that raised many questions in his own head – Joey was always alone.
The next day, Sam asked the store manager if he knew anything about a shy boy named Joey. The manager said he didn’t. On this day, Joey didn’t show up until almost closing time. Again, he didn’t speak. He just sat there on Sam’s lap, resting his weary head on Sam’s silken arm. Since there was no one else in line, Sam let him stay.
When the store started to close, Joey got down and started to walk away. As Sam left his chair to go change, he noticed the young boy had stopped in the toy department to look at some footballs. Sam changed quickly and rushed to the side door where Joey had exited and rushed out into the street. Straining his eyes in the streetlight, he thought he saw Joey at the end of the block. Sam hurried to the corner. But when he got there, Joey was nowhere in sight.
That night, Sam didn’t take the bottle of pills out of the dresser. He lay there gazing out the window. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the echoed harmony of Christmas carolers. It sounded like a recording being played over the loudspeakers of some store. Funny, he hadn’t noticed it before.
On Monday, he went in to work early. In the toy department, he bought a football and a board game. With the last bit of change in his pocket, he bought a pair of woolen gloves. The lady at Customer Service didn’t charge him extra for wrapping the items. After all, he was Santa Claus. When they were wrapped, he put them in a brown paper bag and headed to his station to start his shift.
As expected, Joey came in around six o’clock that evening. There were several children ahead of him in line, so he turned and left. Sam was going to call out, but Joey was already gone. At eight o’clock, Joey came back and did his silent routine. When he got off Sam’s lap to leave, Sam handed him the paper bag. Without a word, Joey took the bag and left.
The next day was Christmas Eve. Sam had changed his clothes early because the store was closing at six o’clock. Dusk settled in deep among the cold city streets and alleyways.
Done with his shift, Sam was walking out of the store when a small, thin woman pulled at his coat sleeve.
“Mister,” she said, “are you Santa Claus?”
She was about forty years old. Her black hair was disheveled and tinged with grey strands, her eyes rimmed in dark, saggy skin.
“Yes… I mean, I was,” Sam answered.
The streetlight seemed to make the scar on her upper lip glisten when she talked. “I just wanted to say thank you. I’m Joey’s mother.”
“It’s all right,” he said, warmed slightly from her earnest words. “I did it for me., mostly.”
When Sam got back to his room, he took the bottle of pills out of the bedside drawer and flushed its contents down the drain.
Bathed in neon light, Sam smiled and thought, “Maybe next year, somebody will need a Santa Claus.”
The End
I hope you enjoyed this story.
It has been around for some time. I like to share it every year.
If you are interested, I do have other publications, which I sell through various retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, and others
You can access these stories by searching for my name “Ed Benjamin” at the various venues.
Ed