There is but one…
 an intractable tract for Christmas 2012

by Juliet Eyeions & Paul Brazier

‘Dad, can’t we go any faster? We’ll be late for school!’
  ‘You should have thought of that when you missed the school bus. The Tractor is in front of us and, as we all know, There Is But One Tractor —’ Rudy smiled inwardly as he composed a suitably sententious, portentous and entertaining phrase — ‘and the sole purpose of The Tractor is to ensure, in the case of any dilatory foot-dragging or other deliberate late-making behaviour, that the culprits are made properly late by the prevention of speeding, rushing or other dangerous on-road over-compensation at the expense of the chronologically sound.’
  ‘Daa-ad!’ they whined in unison. They loved his opportunistic verbosity but he suspected his children had deliberately missed the school bus so they could get a ride in his new car and showboat it in front of their schoolmates. That wasn’t going to happen, now they had been Tractored, but he wasn’t going to let them off lightly. Still, there was no reason discipline couldn’t be fun.
  ‘Just imagine if Santa left everything to the last minute. How would you like to get your presents on Boxing Day — or New Year’s Eve, or even Easter?’

The irony of this did not strike him immediately as he drove frantically homewards through the dark, snow-deep countryside. A spectacular light show for a famous pop band’s Christmas Eve gig had had last-minute technical hitches — things he really ought to have sorted out in the earlier stages rather than going out buying Christmas presents — so he had had to be on-site during the display and was now breaking all his own rules in a desperate attempt to be back for midnight and their home-made Santa Ceremony.

Fog has added itself to the roster of antagonistic elements he thought as he slalomed around a particularly wide and dark bend, and the road-holding of the new car at speed is really quite impress……! It also stops remarkably well! He would have sworn the country lane ahead was clear but, as he had come out of the bend, a red and green apparition had suddenly appeared in front of him — a tractor in a ditch with one wheel high in the air. There was no room to pass it and it was only when his car’s nose slid under the raised wheel and the tyre struck his windscreen a firm but gentle blow that his car finally came to a halt. And the windscreen shattered.
  As his mind conducted an instant-replay with freeze-frame, he couldn’t help but notice that there were no tyre-tracks leading to the tractor — which meant it had been there blocking the road for a while — and that there was precious little snow on the tractor, which meant it had hardly been there any time at all…
  He shook his head. He had more serious problems to think about, such as how to get home now. He had no mobile phone; he didn’t believe such modern devices were anything more than toys and, indeed, new ones for both his children lay wrapped up beneath the tree at home. His mind was wandering again. He cracked the door and a cold, snow-laden blast of air invaded his car’s cosy interior. He rammed his baseball cap onto his head, grabbed his coat from the back seat and stepped gingerly out into the snow.
  As he began to struggle into his coat, he thought he heard a muffled voice. Putting it down to the wind, he resumed his overcoat dance in the dark — one arm appeared to be inside-out and tucked into a pocket — when he heard it distinctly again.
  ‘Mmmphelpmmmph!’
  It seemed to be coming from the tractor! He dropped his coat and tried to run around to the other side. He fell immediately waist-deep in snow and ankle-deep in ice-cold water. His shoes filled. But he persevered and, clambering out of the other side of the ditch, found that as the tractor had heeled over a tree branch had penetrated the driver’s window, picked up the driver’s coat collar and pinned him firmly to the roof. And this branch was the only thing stopping the tractor rolling right over.
  Rudy’s experience as a lighting jockey now came into play. He levered himself out of the mud under the snow, leaving one shoe behind, and climbed nimbly up the bonnet and across the offside door. Once clear, he opened the door and lowered himself in.
  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Rudy.’
  The driver, a little, rubicund man dressed in, of all things, a santa claus suit, gasped and sighed,
  ‘Thank Goodness you’re here! If I had been stuck here much longer I would have been terribly late. I’m Nick, by the way.’
  His suit was plainly well made of good cloth because it showed no signs of ripping. And all the buttons were done up fast, as was his big, black belt, so his arms were trapped, dragged upwards by the branch, so he couldn’t undo his jacket and free himself.
  Rudy lowered himself gingerly until he was supported by the steering wheel — ‘Mind the Santa Nav!’ Nick cried as Rudy’s arm brushed an electronic gadget, with a big red stud on top, fixed to the dashboard — and proceeded to release this strange little man. First the belt, then the buttons from the top so he wouldn’t be throttled by the final one. Unfortunately, this meant the little man gradually tipped forward and balanced on Rudy’s shoulder, sliding out of his coat until his arms were pulled backwards most painfully. And, as Rudy popped the final button, his arms flew free and flopped flailing forward over the steering wheel and dashboard where they hit the Santa Nav square on the big red stud.
  There was a peculiar popping noise and suddenly it was very bright. The tractor tipped back towards the upright position and the little man’s whole weight was suddenly on Rudy’s back again. An ominous crunching from underneath accompanied Rudy suddenly being pushed face-down into the driver’s seat.
  Now it was perfectly obvious to Rudy, with the tractor still tilted to one side and them leaning on the driver’s door, that it was not a good idea to open it. But the little man reached over and released the door latch.
  ‘No!’, shouted Rudy but too late. The door flew back and they both tumbled out head-first towards almost certain death from broken necks on the tarmac eight feet below.
  It was, however, their falls that were broken, not their necks, as they landed in the soft safety-cushions that had been spread by the elves (elves!? thought Rudy) for that very purpose. He bounced quite pleasurably for a few moments, then got his feet under himself and propelled himself towards the edge, where he sat for a moment to catch his breath. He had a brief impression of arc-lights and people (elves!?) rushing everywhere, then he focused on the tractor. It still sat crooked because one of its great rear tyres was firmly planted in the middle of the wreckage of the bonnet and windscreen of his new car.
  The little man in the santa suit scotched down next to him, looking quite pleased with himself.
  ‘Welcome to Santa Centre Six!’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘Sorry about your car!’
  Elves!?

‘ — and so you see,’ said Santa, for it turned out he was indeed Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus himself, ‘I was in too much of a hurry and didn’t peep-jump before I skipped to your time and ended up in that ditch right in front of you.’
  ‘But my car…!’ Rudy mumbled around a mouthful of the most delicious mince pie he had ever tasted. Feeling was returning to his numbed fingers, helped partly by their being wrapped around a big, steaming mug and partly by the contents of the mug, a strong, sweet, black coffee laced, he suspected, with overproof rum.
  ‘Don’t worry about that, my friend. The elves will have it good as new in no time.’
  ‘But it was new!’ Elves!? ‘And what do you mean, Elves?’
  ‘Never mind, now. We have more important things to discuss. One of the reasons I fell into your path was my Santa Nav was acting up and, when I got caught up in that branch, I couldn’t reach the emergency stud…’
  ‘I don’t care about that. Tell me about the elves! Elves don’t exist!’
  ‘You’ll be saying next Santa doesn’t exist which, given I am sat sitting here in front of you, is patently absurd.’ The little man stood and turned away, huffing petulantly.
  ‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to deny you exist…’
  ‘That’s all right then. Now, about…’
  ‘…but Santa and elves and the like belong in fairyland, not in the real world.’
  ‘Well, of course, you’re quite right there. Which is why the dwarves built me these Santa Centres. They hover in cyberspace between the different realities and allow me speedy access to any part of the globe.’
  ‘Cyberspace? Santa Centres? – Dwarves!?’
  ‘Oh, dear. I tried to avoid an infodump. Ah, well — As human population has grown and grown, so it has become more difficult for us faëry folk to fulfil our obligations solely by magic. Rather than let things slide, which could only have led to our annihilation sooner or later, we decided to take advantage of human technological innovation, adding just a twinkle of stardust where humans were having problems.
  ‘The elves dream up new and wonderful gadgets and seed them into the minds of suitable humans. The humans then actually design and build the prototypes and so turn them into reality, then the dwarves pinch the specifications and set up magical production lines to be sure there are always enough for Christmas. With the lower echelons, it isn’t a problem, but we do have trouble keeping up with Apple.’
  ‘Apple? The fruit or the computer-maker?’ Perhaps it was the coffee, or delayed shock, or some other factor, but Rudy was having trouble keeping up.
  ‘iPhones! iPods! iPads! Did you never wonder why most Apple products come from Ireland? The leprechauns are the only ones who can keep up with Cupertino, and they’re struggling — which brings me to my present problem.
  ‘All the dwarves’ products are naturally based on the latest Earth-born tech and my delivery vehicles all have the latest Apple iPhone SantaNav…’
  ‘Delivery vehicles?’
  ‘Oh, do try to keep up. I told you we couldn’t continue using magic, so the reindeer have been retired. We keep them for nostalgia and occasional guest appearances. Rudolph is particularly popular…’
  ‘Rudolph? ‘s my name!’
  ‘…with his nose and his ability to find the most remote places in the dark late at night. But a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer is rather conspicuous and, as I said, magic-heavy, so now we use vehicles that blend in better — tractors in more rural areas, buses showing ‘Sorry – Not in Service’ blinds in more urban places and milk-floats in city centres.
  ‘I transmat down from the Santa Centres with them during rush hours throughout the year, then I make my plodding way to present-distribution destinations and, on arrival, I press the midnight button, which time-skips me to the appropriate hour on Christmas Eve. I deliver the presents, return to the vehicle, press the emergency stud and skip back to the nearest Santa Centre — although I do have to start the engine and we have had some trouble suppressing the sound…’
  ‘’s strong stuff, this coffee,’ Rudy slurred.
  ‘Come on,’ said Santa, taking Rudy by the hand. ‘We need your specialist help fixing the Apple Maps Santa Nav. The elves can’t imagine what’s wrong and the dwarves can’t fix it unless they know what needs fixing. Only a human can lead the way­­. If it doesn’t get fixed, there will be an awful lot of disappointed children in the morning.
  ‘Oh, and when we’re done, we’ll make sure you get home safely.’
  
Fog has added itself to the roster of antagonistic elements he thought as he slalomed around a particularly wide and dark bend, and the road-holding of the new car at speed is really quite impress… something red and green — blinked — and was gone. He hit the brakes and — it also stops remarkably well! — slid to a halt. He could have sworn there was something in the road, in the ditch, but there was nothing visible behind him. Even so, it was the kind of accident that was just waiting to happen if he carried on driving so intemperately so, when he engaged gear again, he drove off much more carefully.

‘…and as he came round the bend, he was so frightened when he thought he saw The Tractor in front of him that he slowed down and thought and realised Santa must be telling him to drive more carefully or he would never see his children for their Santa Ceremony.’
  ‘Daa-ad!’ they objected, but sleepily. Having made it home safely, he was sitting in their bedroom just after midnight telling them the story of how he had come home.
  ‘Come on, kids, one more time — ‘There Is But One Santa and…’ but they were asleep. He had invented the Santa Ceremony to get them to go to bed on this most difficult night of the year and it had worked. He and his wife kissed their children’s foreheads and tiptoed from the room. He stumbled and realised he was only wearing one shoe. He must have kicked it off in their bedroom. As they crept down the stairs, he wondered if the presents he had got were okay…
  ‘Did you hear that?’ he said to his wife.’It sounded like The Tractor?’
  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows ‘There Is But One Tractor…’’
   While sure he had heard a tractor cough into life distantly then quickly go quiet, he joined in meekly,
  ‘There Is But One…’
the end

There is but one… is
copyright © 2012 Paul Brazier & Juliet Eyeions

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