Don't Call Me Christina Kringle Page 11

  “My brownies! That man stole my brownies!”

  Christina hurried up the sidewalk, hoping no one else heard what her grandpa was shouting (and, if they did, she prayed they’d think he’d been the victim of a baked-goods robbery).

  “Grandpa?”

  “Christina! The FBBI came and took away our little helpers!”

  Christina took her grandfather’s elbow and guided him back into the shop. When they were safely inside, Christina noticed that the floor was littered with empty cream cartons.

  “Uh-oh,” she said, feeling Nails and Professor Pencilneck climbing up inside her backpack.

  “Heavens!” said the professor.

  “Where’s Trixie?” shouted Nails.

  “Gone,” said Grandpa.

  The two brownies hopped down to the floor. Professor Pencilneck turned over a crushed cream container with his walking stick. “Empty,” he said somberly.

  Nails bent down and dipped a finger into a milky-white puddle. Tasted it. “Cream. Pasteurized and homogenized. He used the heavy stuff.”

  “Who did this?” demanded the professor.

  Grandpa sank against a wall, sobbing. “The man from the FBBI.”

  “The what?” said Christina.

  “The Federal Bureau of Brownie Investigation!”

  “Grandpa, there’s no such thing!”

  “Yes, there is. And Ms. Dingler from next door, she says she wants her brownies back or Christmas will be ruined.”

  “Dingler?” said Nails. “She the frilly dame what runs the Christmas knickknackery next door?”

  “Yes,” said Christina.

  “The seamstresses—Bobbin, Spindle, and Spool. They used to work over there banging out baubles. Said the lady shopkeeper charged a hundred, maybe a thousand times more than what cheap little gewgaws were worth.”

  “No wonder Ms. Dingler sent me to the stupid candy-cane factory in the first place!”

  “Indeed,” said the professor. “She wanted you chasing wild geese so she could recapture the geese who had been laying her golden eggs!”

  Fifty-three

  Three dozen wire cages stacked three tall were lined up against a cold wall of the dank candy-cane factory creating a cell block for the recently imprisoned brownies.

  One assembly line was still set up to process fresh candy canes (stripes included), but much of the factory floor had been reorganized into new work areas. One for shoe-making, another for cookie-baking, one for toy construction, still another for fancy angel embroidery.

  “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, wee ones,” Donald McCracken said as he strode up the line of cages. “The last shopping day ’til Christmas. And look at all the work these humans here have left undone. Cookie dough. Toy parts. Scattered angel wings and bits of fabric. Ye need to work through the night to set things right. For as your learned ancestors decreed centuries ago, ‘For a brownie there is nothing more fun than finishing work that’s been left undone!’ ”

  Ms. Dingler walked behind McCracken, consulting a clipboard. They came to the cage where Trixie and Flixie were locked up.

  “Good evening, ladies,” said Ms. Dingler. “There’s a whole batch of cookie dough over there by the ovens. Looks like unfinished business to me.”

  McCracken pried open the cage door.

  The two brownies weren’t happy about it, but they had no choice. It was their brownie duty. Their reason for being. They had to go complete the cookies.

  “Come on, Trix,” said Flixie with a sigh.

  “I hope they brought the right spices. …”

  “Aye,” said McCracken. “We did. And your sparkling pixie powder, too!”

  As the two little bakers shuffled across the floor, McCracken and Dingler moved down the line to Gustav and Gizmo’s prison cell.

  “My, my. Will ye look over yonder. Half-built toys for all the good little girls and boys. Step lively, lads.”

  Reluctantly, the brownie brothers crawled out of their cage and dutifully set to work. However, their hands did not blaze or blur quite as fast as they had back at the shoe shop where Gustav and Gizmo truly enjoyed what they were doing.

  In no time at all, McCracken had brownies assigned to each and every task. The factory floor was swarming with hard-working brownies who slavishly took care of the tasks left incomplete by the human merchants. None of them, however, were whistling while they worked. There was none of the pleasure or joy that typically came with their accomplishments, just the mechanical completion of their chores. They were having as much fun as someone washing their socks in a cold sudsy tub.

  The humans hovering on the catwalks above the factory floor, however, were having a grand time. Chef Pierre was popping champagne. King Tony munched on pizza. The store owners who put the screws to the brownie labor force were giddy with glee. This Christmas, the brownies were going to make them rich!

  “Looks like Christmas will be saved,” Delores Dingler said to Tony Scungilli as they watched brownies Bobbin, Spindle, and Spool stitch together lacy memory angels and frilly cinnamon-spice potpourri sachets. “It’s a miracle! A true Christmas miracle.”

  “Yeah,” said Scungilli, firing up a thick cigar, keeping an eye on Gustav and Gizmo as they cranked out Dumping Dinos and Wetty Betties. “But that brat from the shoe shop almost ruined Christmas. Stealin’ our workers. Spoiling our sales. Someone should teach that kid a Christmas lesson.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Ms. Dingler. “Young Christina will soon pay for her dirty deeds.”

  “You and McCracken got somethin’ set up?” Scungilli asked, smacking on his wet cigar stub.

  “Indeed we do! And, it involves confiscating several illegally constructed toys that rightfully belong to you!”

  “Well, joy to the world!” said Scungilli.

  “Yes,” laughed Ms. Dingler. “For everybody except little Christina Kringle!”

  Fifty-four

  A police car, roof lights swirling, screamed up to the driveway of the Engine 23 firehouse.

  Captain Dave strolled outside to see what all the fuss was about.

  “Hey, guys,” he said to the two officers unenthusiastically climbing out of their cruiser. “What’s up?”

  “We need to look at your toy bin,” said one, staring down at his scuffed black shoes.

  “My what?”

  “The toys you’ve been collecting to give to needy kids tomorrow night,” said the second cop, who also couldn’t look Captain Dave in the eye.

  “We have a warrant,” said the first cop, sounding ashamed.

  “A warrant?”

  “Yeah. Apparently, you are currently in possession of stolen merchandise.” The cop looked at the warrant, read what was written there. “‘Purloined Intellectual Property.’”

  “I don’t believe this,” said Captain Dave.

  “Me neither,” said the first cop. “But, like I said, we got our orders. Sorry, Dave.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  And then the two cops went inside the firehouse to confiscate the “stolen” toys.

  Fifty-five

  Mister Fred, the fancy footwear impresario, marched across the factory floor.

  Past the toy makers, the angel sewers, the candy-cane painters, the cookie bakers and candlestick makers. He was furious.

  “Where are they?” he screamed at Mr. McCracken.

  McCracken cocked up an eyebrow. “Where are who?”

  “My shoemakers! Nails and Professor Pencilneck.”

  McCracken stroked his rubbery jowls. “Aye. Been meaning to discuss that with you, Mister Fred. Seems we ran into a wee bit of a problem when we rounded up the runaway brownies.”

  “Problem?”

  “Aye. Yer laddy boys were nowhere to be found.”

  Mister Fred stamped his feet. “This is unacceptable! I paid you in advance! I want my brownies.”

  “Well, I’m a’feared you can’t have them. However, I did locate two fine replacements.” He pointed to the only two brownies still impris
oned. Gaunt and grizzled, they gripped the bars of their cage and glared at the chubby shoemaker. Both brownies wore rubber hip boots, flannel work shirts, and tractor hats. They growled at Mister Fred, then spit at the straw lining the bottom of their cage.

  “The skinny one is Clodhopper,” said McCracken. “And the even skinnier one is Cheesecurds, but you can call him Cheddar Head.”

  “Are they cobblers?”

  “Not exactly. They’re new imports. Just arrived on the boat this morning.”

  “What did they do in the old country?” asked Mister Fred.

  McCracken hoisted his lanky frame to its full height and boldly placed his hands on his hips. “They worked on a farm.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Milking cows.”

  “Cows? Cows? What do these two rubes know about making designer shoes?”

  “Cows are the same as shoes!” insisted McCracken. “They’re both made out of cowhide, are they not?”

  “I need my two little shoemakers! screamed Mister Fred. “I need them now or Christmas will be ruined! Where are Nails and Professor Pencilneck?”

  Fifty-six

  At that very moment, Nails and Professor Pencilneck were sitting dejectedly, heads in hands, on the countertop of Giuseppe’s shoe shop, listening to Christina as she once again sawed her way through her slow and weepy version of “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas” on her quivering violin.

  Funeral dirges were hollier and jollier.

  The floor of the shop was still littered with empty cream cartons. Shoes bundled in brown paper were scattered everywhere. Giuseppe had dimmed all the holiday lights. Even the store cat was depressed and hiding in the basement. Christina’s caterwauling fiddle solo was too mournful, even for a creature that had spent most of its nights in darkened alleyways moaning at the moon.

  “Well,” said Giuseppe, with the violin’s lament providing an appropriately sad backdrop for his remarks, “I guess I will have to close up my shop. Move to Florida. With no brownies, I can no pay the rent no more. My life here is over. Done. Finito.”

  Professor Pencilneck strode to the edge of the counter, tapped Christina on the shoulder with his walking stick.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But have you had a chance to memorize that merry dance tune I taught you?”

  “Yeah,” said Christina, dragging her bow once more across the violin’s yowling strings.

  “Perhaps now would be a good time to play it.”

  “Why? Who has anything to be merry about?”

  “Me!” said Nails, covering his ears. “I’ll be very merry as soon as you quit playing that miserable death march!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Christina. “But I’m sad. When I’m sad, I play sad music.”

  “Yeah?” snapped Nails. “Well, what about me? I’m sadder. They took Trixie! Dragged her out of here in chains!”

  “Actually,” said the professor, “I believe they used cages. Cream traps.”

  “Whatever! If anybody’s got the right to be depressed, it’s me! But do you hear me tooting sad songs on my flute?”

  Christina finally stopped playing. She put her violin back into its case.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “Forget about it, kid,” Nails mumbled back.

  “There,” said the professor, “that’s better. No need to be discouraged. I’m quite certain we’ll come up with a solution to our dilemma, not that we have peace and quiet to think clearly. But, no matter what, we mustn’t be down in the dumps or discouraged. We must be of good cheer! After all, tomorrow is Christmas Eve!”

  When Professor Pencilneck said that, Christina picked up her fiddle and started playing Jingle Bells—the grimmest, glummest, most downhearted Jingle Bells anyone had ever heard!

  And Nails joined in on his pennywhistle.

  Fifty-seven

  “I need Nails and Professor Pencilneck,” shouted Mister Fred, “not Curds and Whey!”

  “Their names are Clodhopper and Cheddar Head,” said McCracken defensively.

  “They’re milkmen! I need shoemakers! Artistes!”

  They were arguing near the ovens where Trixie and Flixie were painting snowman cookies with glistening vanilla frosting and plopping jelly-colored gumdrops in place for eyes and buttons.

  “I’m sorry, laddy, but they were no longer there when we raided the shoe repair shop!”

  “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know!” McCracken shouted back. “That Nails is a crafty and clever one.”

  When he said that, the two baker brownies giggled.

  A brownie with oily, slicked-back hair strutted over to address the two men.

  “You ask me,” said the nervy brownie, doing an annoying double-finger snap-clap, “they went with the girl on the wild goose chase.”

  “Who is he?” demanded Mister Fred, flapping his hand disdainfully at the greasy little creature. “Why isn’t he working or in a cage?”

  “Because, pal,” said the brownie, tugging at his thick black hair and peeling it back like a waxy hat. “I ain’t no stinkin’ brownie.” When the latex wig popped off, his pointy ears, which had been covered by the wavy hair, sprang free.

  “Meet Smoothie,” said McCracken. “I hired him to go undercover for me.”

  The two baker brownies gasped.

  “You’re an elf!” cried the one called Trixie.

  “That’s right, sister! Had to breathe through my mouth the whole time I was down in brownie-town! You people stink!”

  The baker named Flixie waggled her batter beater at Smoothie. “You never knew Christina’s father, did you?”

  “Of course not! You think I’d scrub dirty spaghetti pots? Gross. That’s brownie work.”

  “You worked with Nails and Professor Pencilneck?” asked Mister Fred.

  “Not really,” said Smoothie, sniffing arrogantly. “I just pretended like I was working with them.”

  “You seem quite bright,” said Mister Fred, a demented glint in his eye.

  “That’s because I am, pal. I am.”

  “Very well, smarty pants, where are Nails and Professor Pencilneck, now?”

  Smoothie shrugged. “Easy. Wherever that kid Christina is. The one guy, Nails? He likes to act brave and heroic.”

  “Fine,” said Mister Fred, turning to face McCracken. “You need to contact the girl. You need to go back and find my two workers.”

  McCracken sneered at the shoe salesman. “Oh, I do, do I?”

  “Yes. I will not let Cheesebrain and Curdbreath anywhere near my shoes.”

  “Look, Mister Fred, I’ve told you over and over, they’ll do a fine job for ye. …”

  That’s when Mister Fred pulled out his sequin-encrusted pistol and pointed it at Mr. McCracken’s heart.

  “I want Nails and Professor Pencilneck. I want them now!”

  Fifty-eight

  Christina paced around the shoe shop.

  “So, you’re telling me that the finest, most expensive Christmas gifts in the city are all made by brownies?”

  “Well,” said Professor Pencilneck, “they were until our colleagues freely chose to come here and work for you and Giuseppe, instead.”

  “I see. Now the other shopkeepers want their brownies back?”

  “That’s right,” said Nails. “On account of it being so close to Christmas.”

  “Only one shopping day left,” said her grandpa, who sat slumped on a stool in a corner under what should have been a blinking holly wreath but he had left it unplugged.

  “Brownies made those stupid Memory Angels for Ms. Dingler next door?”

  “Technically,” said the professor, “they finished angels after Ms. Dingler started them.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Nails. “Bobbin told me that blonde bubble-head didn’t do nothin’ except lay out the fabric. Didn’t even cut out the patterns. Lot of humans get lazy once they get on the brownie assistance plan.”

  “But not you or your grandfather,” said the pr
ofessor. “I must say we have all been quite impressed, not only with your hospitality but your enthusiastic work ethic.”

  “Work is all I have ever known,” said grandpa wearily. “This shop has been my home for sixty Christmases.”

  “And now we finally know the true meaning of Christmas,” Christina said sarcastically. “Making money. Making as much money as quickly and crookedly as you can!”

  “Well,” said the professor, “I believe your father would have disagreed with you, Christina.”

  “Yeah. That’s right. My father loved Christmas.”

  “Yes,” said grandpa, a faint smile dancing on his lips, “he certainly did!”

  “Yep,” said Christina, “he loved it so much, he’d climb on a fire truck every Christmas Eve, wearing a Santa hat.”

  “And deliver them toys to the needy kids,” said Nails. “Your pops was my kind of guy.”

  “Indubitably,” said the professor. “ ‘For it is far better to give than it is to receive.’ Such is the brownie motto!”

  But Christina wasn’t paying any attention to what either brownie said. She was too mad.

  “My dad knew I loved it when he put on that stupid red hat.”

  “Because, Christina,” said Grandpa, “you loved Christmas, too.”

  “Yeah. That was my big mistake.”

  “Mistake? No …”

  “Yeah. Maybe if I had started hating Christmas sooner, my father would still be alive!”

  Fifty-nine

  While Christina sulked at the shoe shop, her friend Captain Dave stood watching the two police officers load every toy the firehouse had collected for children in need into the backseat and trunk of their patrol car.

  “C’mon,” he said to the cops. “You guys can’t be serious. Those toys were donated. They’re going to kids who won’t have any kind of Christmas if we don’t show up tomorrow night with something!”

  “Look, Dave,” said the older of the two men, who sounded about as bleak as Captain Dave felt. “The bosses gave us our orders. Confiscate all the contraband. Lock it up in the evidence room.”