Christmas morning, Ellen and I gave our seventy pound poodle, Hendrix, his present, a toy fire hydrant, and lingered over coffee and the newspaper while he ran from room to room, squeaking it and tossing it around. A warm house and a happy dog—we had plenty to be grateful for. I’d just tossed the paper into the bin when my phone chirped with a new text message—42.84915380709258, -88.73699427107046 Bring first aid supplies. Rudolph.

I guessed the numbers were latitude and longitude coordinates, and when I entered them into my map app, they pointed to a spot in the Whitewater Creek Nature Area in Wisconsin. It was about a two-hour drive. The short text felt desperate, so we didn’t bother to shower. Ellen has first aid squad experience, so she put together a kit while I got the dog into his car harness. We didn’t talk much on the drive north.

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think Santa’s sleigh crashed?”

“I don’t know.”

Ellen tried texting Rudolph a few times, but there was no response. We were both worried, so the drive seemed to take forever. We got there a little after noon.

The Nature Area is next to the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, just off Fremont Road. It’s a wooded preserve with a small river running through it. Whatever snow there’d been had melted away, and the sun kept trying to peek through the clouds. We pulled onto a gravel road that led to a small parking pad in the middle of a meadow. A dozen or so people milled about, some with rifles slung over their shoulders. I parked next to a forest green crew-cab pickup truck. There was a dead deer in the bed. It looked like an immature buck, small but with antlers.

“Stay here with Hendrix,” I said. “I’ll see what’s going on.”

I pulled on my coat and walked toward a group of seven near a stand of trees on the other side of the meadow. Four of them, two men and two women, were younger than the others, college students, maybe. They had backpacks over their shoulders and looked cold in hooded sweatshirts and fleece pants. The other three were men who appeared to be in their forties and were dressed for the weather in boots and camouflage parkas. They all had rifles. One of the men was holding his, nervously shifting it from one hand to the other. I don’t know much about rifles, but I’ve seen enough scoped Remington 700s to recognize that’s what it was. As I approached the group, he turned to look at me. I smiled and waved.

“Just turn right around, pops,” he said, “this isn’t your business.”

His cap was tipped back revealing a high forehead and a bushy brown beard. He wasn’t physically intimidating, but the way he kept fidgeting with his gun made me uncomfortable. I addressed the group of young people, but I kept my eye on him.

“Hey guys. What’s goin’ on?”

A tall young woman, dressed in purple sweats, had been watching me approach. She cocked her head to one side, like she was trying to figure out who I was. “Are you campus security?” she asked.

I ignored her question and repeated, “What’s goin’ on?”

“These hunters (she spat the word) think they can come into our park and start killing deer. I called campus security to arrest them for trespassing. Is that you?”

The fidgetor took a step toward me. “This is the Holiday Hunt,” he said. “The state says we can shoot any deer we want from Christmas Eve to January first.”

The girl held her phone out, pointing the screen at the men with the rifles.

“Nope. I checked, asshole. You can only hunt on farmland, and you can only shoot the ones without antlers.”

I held out my hand. “Let me see that.”

Her phone showed a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources web page. I couldn’t tell if she was right about the farmland, but it did say they were only allowed to hunt antlerless deer. I handed her phone back and asked the hunters, “Do you fellows have your hunting licenses?”

Two of the men pulled licenses in plastic holders from their jacket’s chest pocket. The fidgetor said, “Mine’s back in my truck.”

“Back in your truck,” I repeated. “You mean the pickup with the little buck in the back? The buck with antlers?”

One of the other men said, “Dammit, Bobby. We told you—“

I handed the purple girl her phone. “You need to call a game warden or the Whitewater police. Campus security won’t do you any good out here.” I turned toward the hunters and gestured with open palms. “Today’s Christmas, guys. How about a little goodwill? You know, peace on earth? Wouldn’t you rather be home with your families?”

They looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. Then my phone chirped. It was a text from Rudolph—Behind trees. Straight back. Almost to the river. The hunters were arguing with one another, and the students had gone back to yelling at them. I turned away from the group and went back to the car for Ellen. She lowered her window as I approached. I could barely hear her over Hendrix’s barking.

“What’s happening? she asked.

“Hunters and college kids facing off. I told the kids to call the police. I found Rudolph. Grab your first aid stuff.”

“What about Hendrix?”

“Leave him in the car. He’ll be okay for a little while.”

We walked around the edge of the meadow, staying well away from the other people and trying to look inconspicuous. Ellen had on her backpack filled with first aid equipment, and I carried two gallon jugs of distilled water. When we got to the tree line, we entered the woods on a little game trail, then angled toward the river. It took a few minutes to pick our way through the undergrowth, but we came out on a path that ran next to the river. Rudolph was waiting for us. There were leafy vines threaded though his antlers. Mud covered the light patches on his fur and shrouded his nose. I thought I detected a glow beneath the nose mud when he saw us.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “I wouldn’t have bothered you, but we have a couple of injured deer that need attention.”

I said, “That’s what we do, brother.”

I opened my arms and stepped forward to hug him, but another reindeer suddenly emerged from the bushes. He was bigger than Rudolph, taller and more muscular.

“This is Comet,” Rudolph said. “He’s with me on this mission.”

Ellen smiled and said, “We’re happy to meet you, Comet. Merry Christmas.”

The reindeer snorted and let loose with a series of grunts and barks.

Rudolph said, “Comet understands English, but he doesn’t speak it well, so he prefers communicating with humans through me. He, um, says, ‘Merry Christmas’ back.”

Comet lowered his head, his impressive rack of antlers pointing in Rudolph’s direction, and grunted some more.

“Okay, okay,” Rudolph said. “Fine.” He sighed. “What he actually said was that he doesn’t like humans, he doesn’t like Christmas, and you’re only here to administer first aid. Also, Comet is the slave name that Santa Claus gave him. He prefers his reindeer name.”

“What’s that?”

“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it if I told you. Just call him Balthazar. It’s a name he makes the elves call him. Some kind of joke he and his brothers cooked up. They call themselves Melchior and Gaspar.”

The two of them led us around a thicket, Ellen and I stumbling over the logs that the reindeer gracefully jumped. We came out in a little clearing, well-hidden from the river path. Standing in the center were a half dozen deer—a buck, two does, and three fawns. Not reindeer, but smaller, whitetail deer, the kind you see in forest preserves. They shied away from us at first, snorting, the buck pawing the ground. Rudolph said something to them in deer language, which quieted the adults, but the fawns were still frightened. They started bleating. Balthazar grunted at them, and the fawns lay down, still shaking but quiet.

“Balthazar and I are escorting them to a safe area,” Rudolph said. “We thought this was it, but as you saw, the hunters caught up to us.”

We started with the buck, figuring if he let us touch him, the others might tolerate it, too. They were all wearing the same mud and leaf camouflage as Rudolph. In addition, this buck had a patch of moss plastered to his left haunch. I stroked his muzzle and talked to him in low tones while Ellen examined him.

“He probably doesn’t understand what you’re saying,” Rudolph said.

“I’m just explaining what we’re doing, and hoping the sound of my voice is soothing or reassuring or something.”

Stepping closer he said, “I’ll translate.”

Ellen removed the moss from the buck’s haunch. “He’s got a gunshot wound back here. There’s an entrance and an exit wound, and they’re pretty close together. I don’t think it hit bone.”

“Can you stitch him up?” I asked.

“No. I don’t have anything to shave the surrounding fur. I’ll clean it out and apply some antibacterial ointment. If it doesn’t start bleeding, I can use super glue to close the wounds.”

Balthazar grunted, and Rudolph said, “Yes, yes, I’ll tell them what the humans are doing.” To me, he said, “Your instinct will be to hold him still by grabbing his antlers. Don’t. That’s the fastest way to freak a deer out. It’s like disarming him.”

“What should I do?”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing. And Ellen, don’t get behind him. You don’t want to get kicked.”

I continued stroking the buck’s muzzle and described what Ellen was doing to his wounds, pausing every so often so Rudolph could translate. Balthazar kept the other deer in line. Ellen washed the wound with water, then took an alcohol swab and cleaned it out. The buck’s nostrils flared, and he snorted a few times, but he didn’t pull away.

“You’re doing great,” I told him.

Ellen applied some antibacterial ointment.

I touched my forehead to the buck’s forehead and whispered, “We’re almost through.”

Ellen taped a thick gauze pad over the wounds. “There,” she said. “I couldn’t glue the edges together. They’re oozing a bit. It wouldn’t hold.”

“That’s it, buddy,” I said. “You’re done.”

The buck flicked his head up, catching me under the chin and clacking my jaws shut. Balthazar made a trilling noise that I assumed was a laugh.

The other injury was a doe with a swollen foreleg. After calming her, Ellen manipulated the leg. The doe was lying down, so it was easier for me to hold her steady. And she was obviously intimidated by Balthazar, so a quick bark from him kept her still.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” Ellen said. “But it’s a really bad sprain. I can’t give her any painkillers. I don’t know what dosage would be safe.”

Rudolph said, “Can you put on a splint so she can walk?” He looked around nervously. “We have to get going.”

“Why are you walking?” I asked. “Can’t you just sprinkle everyone with magic dust, shrink them down, and fly out of here?”

Balthazar laughed again.

“Learning to fly takes years of training. The whitetails couldn’t do it. Anyway, Balthazar and I didn’t bring enough magic dust. He and I still need to get back to the North Pole.”

“I can splint the leg,” Ellen said. “But not with branches. They’d rub too much and aggravate the sprain.”

“There are a couple of ice scrapers in the back of the car,” I said. “They’re flat plastic.”

I walked back to the car, sticking to the edge of the clearing again. The rest of the cars in the parking area were pulling out. It looked like the college kids had prevailed, and everyone was going home. The perfect Christmas ending. I waved to a few of them as they left, then dug the ice scrappers and some towels out of the back of the car. Hendrix was asleep in the back seat, and I wrapped our car blanket around him. The green pickup truck was still there, but the fidgetor wasn’t in it. I looked for him as I headed back but didn’t see him.

The sun was starting to go down, and shadows were growing longer, criss-crossing the trail, and painting everything in shades of purple and gold. I’d lost track of time. It looked like we only had a couple of hours until sunset. As I made my way around the thicket, the fawns started bleating again, and I heard an angry grunt from Balthazar. I broke into a run but turned an ankle on a stone and fell into a bramble bush. As I struggled to get free of the thorns and back on my feet, I heard Ellen shouting. When I finally limped into the clearing, there was the fidgetor, his gun shouldered and pointing at my wife. I tried to remember the guy’s name. Billy? No. Bobby.

“Bobby!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

He spun around, bringing the rifle to bear on me.

“Oh. It’s you,” he said. “You need to get your lady and get out of here.”

“All your friends have gone home, Bobby. Come on. It’s Christmas. Wouldn’t you rather be home with your family?”

“Those guys aren’t my friends, I’ve got no family, and Christmas is bullshit, so you can shove it. Now get out of here before you get hurt. I’ve got an hour and a half til sunset, and I’m harvesting these deer.”

“Harvesting?” Ellen said. “You mean murdering.”

“Call it what you want lady, but if you don’t want to see it, you better go. Now.”

I hobbled across the clearing to where Rudolph and Balthazar stood shielding the other deer. Ellen was kneeling next to the injured doe. I looked at the hunter. He’d turned to follow me again, but his rifle was pointing at the ground between us. I considered jumping him, but my twisted ankle hurt when I put weight on it. I wouldn’t be fast enough. Instead, I asked him, “What do you mean you’ve got no family?”

“Not your business, asshole, but if you must know, my wife took the kid and went to Minnesota last year. She’s living at her mom’s. I talked to them this morning, and she’s not coming back, so that’s it. I’ve got no family.”

I inched over to Rudolph and spoke softly into his ear. He nodded.

“What’s your kid’s name?”

Bobby shouldered his rifle again, aiming at Rudolph. “Hunters aren’t supposed to shoot elk, but I guess I don’t really care what the law says anymore.”

“How old is your kid,” I asked.

He said, “Matty’s six,” but he didn’t lower his rifle.

“Does Matty believe in Santa Claus? Does he believe in flying reindeer?”

“Of course. He’s six. He’s a kid.”

“But you’re an adult. It would be stupid for you to believe in all that stuff, right?”

I turned to Rudolph and used one of the towels I was carrying to clean the mud off his nose. When I stepped aside, Rudolph lit up, casting a red glow over the little clearing. His nose was the brightest I’d ever seen, bathing deer and humans in its warmth.

“That’s a good trick,” Bobby said. “Now get the hell out of here before I hurt you. I’ve got some deer to shoot.”

Balthazar lowered his head and started toward the hunter, but Rudolph stepped in front of him.

“It’s not a trick,” Rudolph said. “Watch.” He leaped into the air, circled the clearing twice, and landed right in front of Bobby. The man lowered his rifle again and reached out to touch Rudolph’s nose.

“It’s real,” he gasped. You’re real.”

Then he started crying, slowly at first. He tried to hold back the tears, but something in him broke. He was sobbing and gulping, and finally he sat down in the prairie grass in front of Rudolph and let go. I took the opportunity to pick up his gun. Whatever emotions were coursing through him were so strong he didn’t notice when I started working the bolt and ejecting the bullets. I put them in my pocket and tossed the rifle aside. I went to help Ellen with the doe, while Rudolph kept an eye on Bobby.

We used one towel to wrap the doe’s foreleg and tore the other into strips. I broke the ice scrapers into equal lengths, then used the towel strips to tie them onto either side of the leg. I used one strip to bind my sore ankle. Even with the padding, the doe groaned, and I doubted if she’d be able to walk very far until the swelling went down. While we worked, I listened to Rudolph talking to the hunter. He asked him questions about his son, and when Bobby responded, Rudolph encouraged him to tell him more.

“Tell me about Matty,” Rudolph said. “What does he like?”

“You mean what kind of toys?”

“Toys, games, books—anything.”

“He…he really likes T-ball. In the summer, I mean. He doesn’t understand it, yet.” Bobby almost laughed, remembering. “He gets a kick out of knocking the ball off the tee, but he usually runs the bases in the wrong direction. One time he hit the tee, and the ball fell off, rolled a few inches in the dirt, and stopped. Matty looked at it for a minute, then stood there giggling like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

When Bobby had exhausted himself and was sitting, sniffling, Rudolph told him about Claris and the life they’d made together at the North Pole. Then he said, “And this year Claris and I had our own little fawn, a male, like yours.” Bobby started crying again. He lie back in the grass, his hands covering his face. When he finally pulled himself together, I helped him stand up.

“You obviously love Matty,” Rudolph said, “and he’s going to need you as he grows. Work something out with your wife. You don’t need to be married to be a father.” He nudged the man with his nose.

I took Bobby back to his truck. He was shaken, but able to drive. I held the door open while he climbed into the driver’s seat, put his rifle in the back, and waited until he drove away. The sun was below the horizon now, with only a golden glow in the sky. I got the flashlight from the car, and checked on Hendrix. The temperature was dropping, so I started the car and cranked up the heater for a couple of minutes, before going back for Ellen. When I looked, though, Ellen and the deer were coming out of the woods, slowly walking toward the car. I left the engine running and went to meet them.

“You did good, brother,” I said, when Rudolph was in earshot.

“You too,” he said. “So as you probably guessed, Balthazar and I didn’t go on the Christmas Eve run this year. After seeing the devastation in the war zones last year, we just couldn’t take it. You humans killed even more children this year, and instead of trying to stop it, you normalize it. Just yesterday, a baby froze to death in Gaza, and in your own city, a two-year-old boy was shot, and none of you humans are outraged. Well, I’m through. Finished. The other reindeer can pull the sleigh. It’s tricked out with plenty of headlights, so they don’t need my nose anymore. Besides, I’ve got a fawn now. I need to be with him and Claris.”

“I don’t blame you for giving up on us,” I said. I couldn’t defend my fellow humans. Rudolph was right about us. There was an uncomfortable pause. I tried to fill the silence. “Congratulations on your fawn. That’s wonderful news. But, why aren’t you home with him and Claris now?”

“We got word that a friend of Balthazar’s was in danger.” He nodded toward the group of whitetail deer. “That’s what’s left of his family. I didn’t know the friend, but…” He trailed off. “Anyway, we’ve got to get going. I want to find someplace safe for them, then get out of here. Get home.”

“You said they can’t fly, but do you have enough magic dust to shrink them down?”

“Sure, but what good will that do?”

“We could take them in our car and unshrink them when we get someplace safe. They could ride in the back where the dog can’t get at them.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Just being in the same car with a dog ten times their size would scare them to death, maybe literally. You’ve given me an idea, though. Do you have some kind of container in your car?”

“I’ve got a bucket.”

“Perfect,” he said.

We lined the bucket with another towel, and Rudolph used some magic dust to shrink the whitetails. I gently placed them in the bucket, which we tied around Balthazar’s neck.

Rudolph said, “We’ll take them to a safe forest preserve, unshrink ‘em, and head home.”

I was afraid to ask him the question that had been gnawing at me, but he anticipated it.

“Yeah, next year.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if I’ll be back. I probably won’t take a solo vacation, you know, being a new dad.”

“Your family’s always welcome at our place. Any time.” I suddenly felt like crying. I blew my nose and muttered, “I’ll miss you.”

“I know, brother. We’ll see.”

Balthazar nodded to Ellen, took a short run, and leaped into the air. He circled above us, impatiently waiting for Rudolph.

“Hey,” I said. “What’s your fawn’s name?”

Rudolph laughed. “It’s a human name. Claris is actually the one who suggested it. She’s listened to all my stories over the years and thought it would be a way to acknowledge an important relationship, or some such psychobabble. Balthazar says it’s the stupidest fucking name for a reindeer he ever heard.”

“Well, what is it?”

I think he blushed. Or maybe it was the glow from his nose. The sky was dark by then, so I couldn’t really tell, but I know he smiled as he took off and said, “We named our fawn, Tim.”