Bob The Elf (and the missing button)

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From a thousand feet above it looked like a shimmering jewel glistening in the noontime sun. It caught Ralph’s eye so he dived in for a closer look. Ralph was an outcast in the crow community. He never preened, wouldn’t eat carrion, and had a few curiously stray feathers on the very top of his head. Today, alone as usual, he’d been following I-95 looking for something to eat or pique his interest. He was busy picking up shiny objects and passing time until someone threw the last bite of a burger or some fries out of a car window. Ralph tried to not let his estrangement from the flock bother him. He knew he was as good as any other crow, and suspected he was a lot smarter. “What’s with that eating nasty road kill?” he thought.

Ralph zeroed in on the shiny object, and as he floated nearer he realized it was under the mesh of a storm grate. He landed on the grate and immediately found that the shiny article was a few inches out of his beak’s reach. Ralph cocked his head to one side and gave the gold button a closer look. “That looks like an engraving of Earth with a Christmas tree on it,” he mused. “I wonder where that came from?”

*

In a chilly workshop six thousand miles north, a diminutive, fresh faced, and very worried little fellow in a green suit and pointy red hat, rubbed his neck and kept repeating, “oh me, oh me, oh me.” Bob, a very minor cog in Santa’s multi gear network of elves, had made a new discovery. Bob couldn’t decide if he should run and tell his supervisor, the red haired and volatile Petunia Elfson, what he’d just learned. The big sleigh was scheduled to roll out and fly away in fifty-nine minutes, and suddenly everything had gone wrong.

Yesterday, December 23^rd, a frantic e-mail arrived from a gynormous toy factory in Taiwan, bringing the worst possible news to the North Pole. Every single Wobbleezer Action Figure had to be pulled in. The recall was urgent and all-inclusive. Toy testers in a rural Irish village had easily disassembled a Wobbleezer and eaten 13 pieces. Both four year olds were being closely observed, and the tiny parts were expected to pass within a day or so. Nonetheless, danger lurked in every Wobbleezer, and they all had to go back to Taiwan for modification. Bob knew that this meant they’d all be scrapped at the toy stores where they were sold and replacements would be rushed out from the factory. This time of year, a rush shipment took about five weeks. That would be about five weeks too late for Christmas.

Although Bob was worried he took this news fairly well. After all toy procurement was Horner’s job. Horner was an elderly elf that’d seen over 200 years of evolution in Santa’s Workshop procedures. Horner could remember when he and 10,000 other little people labored all year long to make enough wood and metal toys for all the children of the world. Due mainly to computerization over the past couple of decades, various cutbacks and downsizing had reduced Santa’s workforce to sixteen harried, nervous, and overworked elves. Each of the sixteen had very specific jobs, and none overlapped. Days were long and stressful, but Horner was at the top of his game.

Elves don’t get sick and the last injury was when Mrs. Claus accidentally sat on Moe way back in 1934. She was distracted by news of the escalating war in Europe and very worried about the children there. While parking her oversized posterior in a loveseat near the radio, she failed to notice Moe who was napping before his shift. Poor Moe suffered a cracked ulna and sat out four weeks of work in late October.

Horner had happily stepped up and was feverishly making arrangements to get new toys to replace the defective Wobbleezers. Old Santa was in his usual laid back state with wisps of smoke encircling his head and a smile on his cheery round face. Nothing seemed to bother the man in the red suit, as long as that pipe was lit and smoke kept filling the air.

Bob was currently worried about the sleigh recall. A small company in India had bought out the failing Japanese carriage maker who had produced Santa’s Sleigh since the early sixties. That’s when Toyota and the rest of the Japanese manufacturers took over the auto industry. The sleigh makers just got sucked into the vortex. Now, at 11:01 PM on Christmas Eve, an urgent phone call from India had thrown a major monkey wrench into the works. Santa’s one and only sleigh absolutely could not fly tonight. The flaw which Iranian testers found in its construction was terminal. The Quality Control Manager at Happy Sleigh Works in Scalpur, stated point blank that even one attempt at landing on a rooftop would certainly kill Santa and probably many innocent Christmas celebrants. Santa was grounded.

“Oh me, oh me, oh me,” Bob repeated. “What ever will we do? Santa surely must make his appointed rounds.” It seems that elves frequently talk like that.

As Bob was thinking there was no solution in sight, Petunia saw him standing in the workshop with his forlorn face hanging low. “Bob, you must go fetch Santa’s red outfit. We need to get him suited up, no matter what,” she shouted. “Christmas has been happening for 2008 consecutive years, and it won’t be stopped by a couple of silly little glitches,” Bob took off like a rocket for the climate-controlled closet where the internationally famous red suit was kept. With great care, he pulled it off the rack. The hand hewn wooden hanger always seemed to keep the suit perfectly straight and ready for action. “That’s strange,” Bob thought to himself. “Why would it have been hung up with one button left undone?”

“Oh me, oh me, oh me!” Bob wailed. “This is the worst possible thing that could have happened!” His fingers trembled as he held Santa’s splendid red suit up to the light for closer inspection. There was no doubt about it. There were only seven buttons. The eighth gold button was missing!

Hearing Bob’s exclamation, Petunia dashed into the huge closet with a worried look on her chubby pink face. “Whatever is the trouble, Bob?” Quickly seeing the problem, she cried out “Oh my stars! The gold button is missing!”

The two elves were stunned. They just stood there in the humidor staring at Santa’s one and only red outfit in total disbelief. How could this have happened? Every precaution is always taken. Nobody ever touches The Suit until it’s time for Santa to go out on Christmas Eve. A thorough search of the obviously empty closet was complete in less than ten seconds. The red Santa Claus Suit is the only thing ever kept in the climate-controlled room, and the floors and walls are kept immaculately clean to avoid contamination of the two thousand and nine year old garment. The button truly was missing.

Bob didn’t know that Petunia was the only living being who knew the importance of the missing gold button. Without that button, there would be no Christmas presents for millions of children and adults around the globe. It did the usual things that buttons do like fastening Santa’s big red pants to the coat so they could not slip down when he’s exiting chimneys. However, the same button that kept Santa’s coat closed to protect him from the cold temperatures of a winter night did something else that only Petunia knew.

The missing button was most important. It was the Magic Button! It was the talisman that made Santa’s big night possible. That single button had the magical power to carry Mr. Claus around the world in only one night, bringing Christmas presents to over 2.1 billion Christians and countless others who believe in Santa Claus.

*

In a Christmas Palm in south Florida, Ralph the finicky crow was roosting atop his latest prized possession. It had taken Ralph much time and great patience to finally get his beak on the shiny object he’d spotted in the storm drain. Shiny things were his weakness and near downfall. Many times Ralph had barely escaped being electrocuted while landing on wires to inspect something he’d seen reflecting the bright Florida sun. He’d spent a split second too long sitting in the center of the fast lane trying to pry some glistening bit of this or that out of the melted tar on I-95, on several occasions. It’s hard to judge the speed and closing rate of an 18-wheeler when you're fixated on a bauble.

Hundreds of short trips from the saw grass to the drain grate had done the trick. Slowly, Ralph had put enough grass in the grate so that a maintenance crew making a routine drain inspection had to pull the grate to clean it out. Ralph watched patiently perched high in a nearby palm, waiting for the right moment. The second the workers paused for a quick water break, Ralph swooped down from his branch. In a flash he grabbed the button and minutes later Ralph was admiring his latest prize in his Christmas Palm’s cozy nest.

*

The clock in Santa’s ‘ready room’ was moving at breakneck speed. The last 49 minutes had passed in what seemed like 49 seconds. At 11:50 PM the alarm bell on the tall overhead doors leading into the workshop storage area sounded. The doors slowly opened. Outside there was a line of tractor-trailers loaded with over a billion Wobbleezer replacements. These were labeled “Wabbleezers” but the subtle difference in spelling would not be noticed by the fevered recipients. The children of the world would be very pleased to have the safer and longer lasting knock off manufactured in Akron, Ohio. North Pole magic prevailed, and in a flash, all were wrapped and stowed in the faulty sleigh. Nobody told him of the recall and it looked like the clueless Santa would soon be airborne in his dangerous toy filled sled.

Bob’s fingers were bleeding. He’d chewed his nails beyond the quick and was still gnawing like a beaver building a dam. His nervousness did not escape the alert eyes of Petunia and Horner. They couldn’t do anything to make Bob feel better about the things he was sure were happening all around him. He knew the sleigh was dangerous and may harm Santa and many innocent people. He knew that the missing button was important, but not the degree to which it was necessary. Horner didn’t know the button was missing, but he’d seen the sleigh recall. He knew, though, that Petunia would never put Santa or children at risk, so he was just calmly waiting to see what would happen.

Bob once again glanced quickly at the clock. 11:59 PM. Santa laughed a jolly “Ho, ho, ho,” as he bounded out of the green room and jumped into his waiting sleigh. Eight tiny reindeer snorted and pawed at the concrete floor of the warehouse, waiting for the doors to open and let them fly. Santa grabbed a handful of reins and started calling each reindeer by name.

In South Florida, a black crow with a red splash of color on the top of his head was suddenly thrown high into the air above his Christmas Palm nest. Disoriented, he flipped over and over barely got his wings spread in time to avoid a crushing beak first head plant in the sand. As the stunned Ralph glided to the ground under his palm tree, he wondered what had blasted him out of his tree so violently. Finally gathering his senses Ralph flew back to check the damage to his nest. The nest was fine but his prized gold button was gone.

*

From a secret village near the North Pole, a jolly old man, eight tiny reindeer, and a very sturdy sleigh rose into the starlit Alaskan night. The jolly old elf was toasty warm in his heavy red suit. His pants were secure, and all eight buttons of his coat were intact. The missing button had miraculously reappeared at the stroke of midnight, its magic automatically making everything perfect for Santa’s big trip.

*

The elf named Bob breathed a huge sigh of relief. Bob and Petunia smiled as the sleigh disappeared from sight. All the children of the world would get their presents again this Christmas just as they had for the last two hundred years.

Copyrighted 2009, D. J. Winfield