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The tale that Mr. Atnas told was too fantastic to be credible, and the psychiatrist, of course, didn’t believe a word of it. But the longer the man spoke, playing out one train of thought after another, the more Dr. Young suspected that Mr. Atnas believed he was telling the truth.
For half an hour, the psychiatrist listened closely for disclosures that might suggest violent feelings or thoughts. He detected none.
Finally, and with a feeling of sadness that surprised him, Dr. Young said, “Over the years, I’ve interviewed more than a few men, especially chubby ones with long white hair and beards, who, especially in late December, truly believed they were Santa Claus. You’re obviously delusional, my good chap. But with a twist. You think you’re the Anti-Claus. For goodness sake, Mr. Atnas. It’s Christmas Eve, and I don’t relish the idea of committing anyone — excepting violent types — at Christmas.”
Dr. Young paused, inhaled deeply, sighed and then said, “Look, I’m going to let you go, provided you promise not to take any toys that don’t belong to you.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“But can you promise?”
“Oh, I can promise, sir. But keeping it’s another thing entirely.”
“But you will try?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Then be off with you. Quickly! Before I change my mind.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Mr. Atnas stood up abruptly and walked toward the door. As he reached for the doorknob, he heard the psychiatrist exclaim, “Have a Happy Christmas, Mr. Atnas. And don’t do any of that skulking after toys. After all, you have promised.”
Mr. Atnas had already started down the hall, but he stopped for a moment, just long enough to mutter, “And a Merry Christmas to you, too, sir.” Despite his words, the tall man’s thin lips and bushy black eyebrows conspired to form an intense scowl.
“A depressive,” Dr. Young muttered to himself.
As Salk Atnas exited, the psychiatrist realized that the interview had stirred up a long-repressed memory of the Christmas he was six. Santa Claus had brought him a cowboy outfit — a ten-gallon cowboy hat, tan-colored chaps and two six-guns with real leather holsters and gun belt. At bedtime two nights after Christmas, he had stubbornly refused to put these marvelous toys in his toy box. “Cowboys don’t have to put their stuff away,” he told his mother defiantly. The cowboy toys were gone when the boy awoke in the morning. With hot tears and a loud voice, he accused his parents of taking them. They denied it, and his father eventually administered a spanking to silence the child. Hat, holsters, belt, chaps and pistols never returned. Fifty-five years later, Dr. Young had forgotten them. But now, as he watched Salk Atnas close the door behind him, the memory of the episode burst into his consciousness, and the psychiatrist felt a surge of unhappiness.
“Hmmm,” the psychiatrist said to himself.
As Mr. Atnas walked out of the mental health agency, he saw that the sun had already set and that the digital display on the clock outside Jericho Bank & Trust said 4:47. Few people were about.
Two mornings later in East Konestoga Township, some children living in a blue house with black shutters on Ford Street awoke. They were barely out of bed when each made an unpleasant discovery.
“Hey, my new doll’s missing,” said Mandy.
“Has anybody seen my yellow dump truck,” Denny asked.
Just then Arnie ran into the room. “I can’t find my new guitar,” he said tearfully.
The tots looked everywhere, then ran to their mother, a pretty brunette named Jean.
She was sympathetic.
“Where did you leave them?” she asked. “Did you put them in the new toy boxes that Santa brought?”
“No,” Denny said. “We just left them on the floor.”
“Like we always do,” Mandy interjected.
The children never found their toys, and late that night — it was the 27th of December — no one noticed a very tall man stride down Jericho’s Market Street. It was Mr. Atnas. He wore a sea-green woolen cap and a raggedy green coat that reached to his calves. He carried a dark green seaman’s bag slung over one shoulder. There were patches hand-sewn on the tattered sack.
Mr. Atnas crossed the park betweenRiver Streetand theKonestogaRiver, then climbed down the riverbank to a dock where a small submarine was tied up. It was purple with faded orange stripes. A stiff wind began to blow as he boarded the vessel, but Mr. Atnas ignored the wintry blast, which pelted him with small snowflakes. He opened the hatch, lowered the duffel bag, and entered the boat.
He was the little sub’s captain as well as its crew, and he headed into the engine room where he activated the ship’s three coal-fired motors. It took 15 minutes to steam up, and soon the submersible quietly sailed away from the shore. In mid-river it submerged and started descending the stream.
Shortly before daybreak, it somehow — magically, really — managed to maneuver all three hydroelectric dams that blocked the Konestoga’s lower reaches. The sub surfaced as it passed a harbor town and moved far out into Chesapeake Bay.
In a matter of hours, the vessel, still running atop the water, passed under a bridge and moved into theAtlantic Ocean. Mr. Atnas — whose proper first name was spelled Sualc — spun the wheel, and the sub turned south, headed on its customary three-day run to the South Pole.
The sub’s cargo bay contained a vast assortment of new toys, all in a heap. Mandy’s doll lay on the top, alongside Denny’s yellow dump truck and directly on top of Arnie’s plastic guitar with the windup crank.
The solitary sailor studied a chart of the geologic formations that rose under the Antarctic icecap as he decided where to leave this load of toys. With the index finger of his left hand, he tapped a spot on the map marked “ToyMountain.” As he did so, with the fingers of his right hand, he absently twirled the right end of his pencil-thin black moustache.
The author has been telling his children about Salk Atnas ever since December 1972.
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About John L. Moore
