ON VIXEN

The police found him on December 26 sitting on a bench in Atlantic City, NJ. Dressed as Santa he seemingly was staring at the cold green ocean. He was doing no harm, couldn’t. He was dead. Rosy red cheeks and nose were frost bitten. His chest length white beard was saturated with ice crystals and was real. Removing Santa from the bench was not easy as he was as frozen as if he had been in Benny’s Meat Market deep freeze for a week. It was the 29th before the M.E. had thawed the poor soul enough to lay him down flat, examine, test, cut him and put what was left in the morgue freezer at Benny’s Meat Market. The story was carefully kept from the newspapers until somebody, hoping to I.D. Santa, accidentally, on purpose leaked it to John Walters, NBC correspondent.

Within minutes of the story being aired on t.v., hours before it appeared in the N.J. Chronicle, the crud hit the fan. Phones at the police station rang non-stop. New line were tapped in, Staff had to be gathered. Everyone was sure Santa was his long lost father, brother, friend. Children called because they remembered sitting on his lap in Macy’s. That was only the beginning.

The NY and LA Times front paged it. Constant bulletins on t.v. asked people to calm down. The police phone numbers were blacked out, but there was no calming down. A line formed that ran for blocks around the morgue. The M.E. stationed several assistants at the main door to interview lookie loos, and let noone in. The crowd was angry, pushing, shoving, threatening with fists in the air. That brought squads of police officers ready to hose down the unruly curious if need be. It took two full days before the hullabaloo eased. NBC had a child tell the public that Santa had been identified as her great-grandfather. Her parents were going to have a private funeral for him in a private place. Tears ran down her cute freckled face. Donations for the funeral came to NBC via email. Instantly NBC stopped the influx. The lines outside the morgue became less sporadic. Only a few callers seemed sincere, had photos of the bearded Santa in sports, business outfits. One picture was of him in a tux at his grandson’s wedding. Santa playing tennis, swimming, reading to his children was proof, wasn’t it? The M.E. carefully scanned each offering, trying to find familial resemblances. He asked about birthmarks, scars. One frail lady described her husband’s birth mark exactly like the cold, old man had on, but her husband had no scars on his chest and he had caps on his front teeth. ‘We do not have your husband here.’

And so it went, slowly fading from the media. Santa was ready for a pauper’s grave. A plain wooden casket was brought up from the basement. The re-frozen Santa was gently put in the box and taken to his last resting place, where he surely thawed and was forgotten.