bearanoia – January photo show excerpt

They mostly knock over garbage cans in the burn pit.

And growl and hiss at each other.

There were nine at once last summer, mostly brown.

But mostly they run around at night, once it’s quiet.

Pity the poor person who must switch off the generator after the
guests have gone to sleep.

And walk back, whistling, squeezing a headlamp.

Mustn’t run.

from an elf to a witch

I wandered back and forth between the grey plastic “ice” slide and the slot cars, ducking around the red carpet that led to Santa’s home.

I stopped at a collection of picnic tables and began picking up sheets of paper.

A blonde elf picked up crayons. She didn’t need help but I offered anyway.

We set out coloring pages, outlines of the kid from “A Christmas Story,” and a girl sitting on Santa’s lap.

I scowled at sermon notes a man had left on the table.

He’s just a guy, I told myself.

Be nice.

The elf told me she was familiar with the feeling.

“My dad’s really religious, but we hardly ever went to church,” she
told me.

(So you’re going to hell, I thought.)

Now she follows Wiccan teachings.

(Yeah.)

The elf told me about casting spells for good, since energy returns in threes.

She was drawn to the feminist teachings in her faith.

(I’d rather listen to a goddess than a God, myself.)

“I’d love to be a stay-at-home mom and a full-time witch,” she said.

(Yeah. I laughed.)

“I know it doesn’t go with the feminist thing, but it’s what I’ve
always wanted,” she added.

I nodded.

“Well, if that’s what you want,” I said.

(That sort of goes with the feminist thing, too.)

From a bar fight to Nerf toys: a humble elf tries to help.

I took a green apron from Santa’s workshop and walked toward the shooting range.

My home for the next 8 hours.

Children shot darts at paper ducks, occasionally flipping the ducks backwards.

Mostly not.

I helped preschoolers pull back strings on bows: “hold the arrow like this.”

Every few minutes, I held up my hands to stop the assault, then knelt down to pick up foam arrows and darts.

A couple of 15-year-old boys stopped by to play. They wore cowboy boots and called me ma’am.

A man in jeans, a t’shirt and a Carhartt jacket joined them. He brought his daughter.

I think she was 6.

“I about died the other night,” he told the boys.

He turned his head to reveal baseball stitches along his neck.

(A very large baseball, like a 6-year-old might use.)

The boys stared.

I looked for a chair.

The girl watched the carousel behind us.

“I got into a fight at a bar. This guy started talkin and so I started fightin, then his girlfriend – no, his sister – came up behind me with a knife,” he explained.

Good sister.

“Half a centimeter deeper and he woulda hit my carotid artery and I’d a bled to death in seven seconds.”

“Whoa!” the boys said in unison.

“She got $100,000 bond, assault with a deadly weapon,” he added.

“Assault! It should’ve been attempted manslaughter,” one boy said.

“I’m glad you’re okay!” the second boy added.

I picked up arrows. Silently.

The man mentioned the bar.

“I don’t like that place – my dad got into a fight there ’cause three people tried to jump him,” the second boy said.

(The chances.)

“No! It’s good! I know the guy that owns it,” the man said proudly.

“Why’d you try to start a fight?” I asked.

He finally noticed me.

“He was talkin bout my Tap Out shirt,” he said.

Hey, it’s ten percent

The training supervisor handed me some papers stapled together.

Call in if you’re sick, and, Don’t call Santa by his real name, even if you know what it is.

(And so forth.)

She led me to a cash register.

A cashier mumbled instructions and glanced around the room.

He asked me to stand by a second cashier and figure it out.

(Oh. That’s not what he said?)

“I can try it now,” I told the cashier, after 15 minutes.

Some women handed me camouflage sweatshirts.

My supervisor tossed the hangers in a box as I asked them for their numbers.

Something about “We get in trouble” otherwise.

Is that how it works?

(I always make something up, a cashier told me later.)

Me, too.

A man in a black polo and khakis approached.

“I wanna get the military discount,” he said.

“You got your ID on you?” my supervisor asked.

He explained that he didn’t, that it was probably in a box in Virginia.

I scanned his items.

“I don’t have my ID, but I can show you where I got shot,” he continued.

I tried to remember which buttons to push.

Number?

He told me.

“They sent me to Germany. I sat around there for a while but my leg tightened up, so there you go. Now I’m working at KFC.”

Um. Do you have a rewards card?

“I’d go back in a heartbeat if I could,” he told us.

He pulled up his pant leg to reveal pink welts behind his knee.

Credit. Right?

“Thank you for your service,” my supervisor said.

He signed, shrugged and walked away.

(You’ve saved ten percent.)

On what? The mind bends.

In which I’m hired as an elf

I recently got a job at a hunting store filled with dead animals.

Naturally.

The Store That Cannot Be Named, if you will.

A certain writer – we’ll call him David Sedaris – inspired me to apply to be an elf.

Except that he hated it.

(Foreshadowing!)

This isn’t New York, however.

This is the Ozarks.

The people are kind and like to kill things.

(Although, to be fair, it can be necessary.)

Oh, listen to me!

Elfing couldn’t be any worse than folding clothes for two months, so I applied in October.

As I thought about a baseball game I’d just attended, I received a call.

“Can you open your schedule?” she asked.

(Beyond 8-6.)

Can I lease my soul to the company store?

“Sure,” I said, afraid that saying no would mean hearing no.

The next week someone interviewed me.

“Now, some people take one look at the outfit and say ‘No, thank
you, it’s not for me,’” she told me, as she cut through tape on a cardboard box.

“And, you know, that’s just fine,” she added, holding a green and
red hat with bells.

“No tights?” I asked.

She smiled.

No tights.

Nor green shoes.

Just a red polo, green apron and the hat.

Oh, and khakis.

(Horrors.)

“So, how many hours can I expect,” I asked her.

“Well, we have a lot of college kids, and they’ll just call in,” she told me, annoyed.

“Well, in December …” I said helpfully.

“They just think, ‘It’s all about me,’” she said.

“And they have finals,” I added.

She shook her head.

But she seemed to like me, perhaps because I had graduated nearly five years ago.

(I wanted to bring real world experience to the role.)

She said I’d get 30 hours, and she shook my hand.