The Fat Man Read Free Page B

or my best friend—Dingleberry Fizz. Dingleberry Fizz and I met that first week of boot camp. Black Pete was trying to teach us how to fly by putting us at the bottom of an avalanche. The old man stood at the top of a mountain and kicked boulders down the hill until they started to take some of their friends with them. About six of us stood quaking in our curled boots at the bottom of the mountain as rocks the size of battleships rolled down on us. Elf flying is all about willpower and focus, seeing yourself in the air. Black Pete trained you by giving you the choice of seeing yourself getting squashed like a bug by a rock or soaring above it. As the first boulder approached, our unknown instinct kicked in and all six elf cadets went to the air. It was more like a big jump rather than a launch, but Black Pete knew that as he pitched rocks at us, we’d either get the hang of flying or we wouldn’t, so he pitched rocks at us with deadly accuracy.
    So there I am dancing just above the avalanche, trying my best to overcome the notion of gravity. After half a minute, I was exhausted, my brain already sapped from trying to focus on flying. I was flapping in the air, but could feel myself drifting down. I looked up and a stone as big as the moon was coming straight toward me. I thought I was a goner, but suddenly something snatched my hand and yanked me up over the big stone and high above the rumble of the avalanche. My rescuer was a fair-haired elf with a long, straight nose and the reddest cheeks I’d ever seen. He had bright blue eyes and a kind of crooked half smile. “Squeeze your hinder,” he said to me.
    “What?”
    “When I squeeze my hinder together, it helps me concentrate on flying better,” he said. “I don’t know why, but it does.” Just to prove it, he darted straight up in the air, looped upside down and cruised back beside me pretty as you please. I could feel myself drifting back down, so the elf gave me a small kick in the behind and said, “Try it.”
    The kick helped. I squinted and kind of folded my backside into itself. It was a different sensation, though not a completely uncomfortable one. My mind wandered into trying to figure out the reason you’d want to do such a thing with your body, when suddenly I started to fly. I mean, I really flew. The guy was right; twisting up your cheeks kind of cleared your mind and then your inner pilot was allowed to take the controls. Suddenly, flying was as natural as falling off a log, and I skipped across the sky like a dove, my new friend right beside me.
    “Thanks,” I said, extending a hand. “I’m Gumdrop Coal.”
    “Dingleberry Fizz,” he said. “Don’t mention it. It’s why I’m here.”
    That simple statement is what best describes Dingleberry. He is the sweetest soul I know. You can’t get him down, can’t make him mad. The light is always on. The first thing Dingleberry thinks about when he wakes up in the morning is helping somebody out. He can’t wait to get started, either. He usually is up and at ’em at the crack and ready to go without a drop of coffee. You’ll be kidnapped from a dream by Dingleberry standing at your bunk, shaking you and smiling. “Hey, wake up! Slingshot Ruthie needs a new coat of sprinkles on her house! Want to go with?” he’d ask, all excited. If you rolled back over, Dingleberry didn’t judge. He’d be back in an hour or so as you pried your eyes open. “Now that you’re up, let’s go learn how to make doll heads, so we can help when the girls get behind.” Even when I got into one of my foul moods and growled that I had my job to do and didn’t have time or even the inclination to help someone else, Dingleberry just smiled patiently. “You don’t mean that, deep down,” he’d say, believing it. “You’re just tired. Just try and think Holly Jolly thoughts and you’ll be OK.”
    It was hard to stay mad at the world with a friend like Dingleberry Fizz. He is the elf I’ve always wanted