| “Dessert, anyone?” Charlene posed this question to her husband and three children, though she already suspected the answer. They sat in their usual spot, a red- cushioned booth in the Waterside Café on a warm Saturday evening in May. Will and Elaine looked up with smiles, while Scott, the youngest at seven, busily finished off the chicken fingers and honey sauce on his plate. “Need you even ask, Mother?” Elaine replied, slurping up the last of her orange soda with a straw. “Then hot fudge sundaes all around?” Jack suggested, seeing a thumbs-up from Will. © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik “With extra extra chocolate,” Elaine insisted. “That’s the only way to make them.” “You’ve got extra chocolate on the brain,” Will snickered. “Maybe, but you’ve got ketchup on your baseball jersey!” Elaine gleefully fired back. “Mom, is the earth going to stop spinning in the year 2000?” Scott blurted out, his face speckled with bread coating and honey sauce. “Will said we’ll all fall off unless the astronauts rewind it.” “Your brother’s just teasing you, Scott,” his mother said, caressing her son’s mop of dark brown hair. She glanced at Will. “Now why would you tell him that?” “Because he’s so gullible.” “One of your big sixth grade words?” Elaine muttered. “How impressive!” Jack lightly bit his tongue to keep from smirking. “Don’t worry about falling off the earth, Scott. Two thousand is still a year and a half away. Besides, your mother would catch you if you did.” Will and Elaine laughed as a waitress in a green and white uniform approached and began clearing off the empty dishes from their table. “You’re enjoying yourselves tonight,” she said amid the clatter of white china plates and dinner forks. © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik Charlene nodded. “We always do when we dine here, Leslie.” “That’s because you’re our favorite waitress,” Elaine added with a polite nod. “And we’re having ice cream sundaes for dessert.” “That must be the reason. Shall I bring out five then?” Leslie asked. “That’ll suit me fine,” Jack replied, “but you might want to bring extra ones for the others. They’re hungry too.” “Now that’s funny!” Scott said, laughing with a mouth full of chicken. “I must agree,” Elaine said with a grin, fingering an orange and yellow beaded necklace. “As if your father could even eat five hot fudge sundaes,” Charlene whispered to her daughter with a wink. “Bet I could?” Jack said, affectionately rubbing his wife’s shoulder. “No way!” Will replied, shaking his head as Leslie removed the plate in front of him. Elaine’s mouth went agape. “Five sundaes? You’re boasting, Dad. That story’s as believable as your shooting star landing in a snow bank.” Jack grinned at his daughter. “You’re not going to bring that up again, are you?” © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik “Yep!” Elaine smiled satisfactorily as she folded her arms and leaned back. “But I did see that star when I was little,” Jack playfully insisted. “Honest. I walked up and nearly touched it.” Leslie turned her head, glancing curiously at Jack before removing the last of the dishes from the table. She made a few mental calculations amid the background music and muffled conversations at the other tables and booths. “You would’ve gotten all burned up if you touched a star,” Scott stated matter-of-factly. Will shook his head and smirked. “Excuse me, but a shooting star isn’t really a star, for your information. Stars are just like our sun and they’re way bigger than the whole earth,” he explained with a professorial air. “What you saw flying through the sky was a meteor, Dad, most likely no bigger than a tiny pebble or a rice grain. I have no idea what you think you spotted in the snow bank.” Elaine grunted. “Thanks for that lecture, Frank-Einstein.” “It was a good lecture,” Jack said with a nod of approval. “And though I’ve known for years that it couldn’t have been real, I did nonetheless see a glowing star stuck in a snow bank on Christmas night when I was eight. It really happened.” “Dad, you must’ve been dreaming,” Elaine said. © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik “That’s what I told him,” Charlene said with a smile. “Come on, Dad! Who’d ever believe a story like that?” Will said, challenging his father with a buoyant laugh. “I would,” Leslie flatly stated, gathering up the last of the silverware as the five puzzled faces of the Mason family looked up in unison. “And if you give me a few minutes, I think I can prove it.” “You can?” Elaine asked, gazing wide-eyed at Leslie. “Sure,” she replied, quickly grilling Jack on the specifics of the glowing star. “I was eight years old. It was Christmas night, 1966,” Jack said, recalling the fiery meteor he saw sweep across the sky while standing near his blue-tinted snow castle in the backyard. “I followed in the direction it had disappeared, making my way through a grove of trees. That’s when I saw a light in the distance. It was a five-pointed star, sitting in a snow bank at the bottom of a sloping field. That small stretch of land bordered a short dead-end road just below our street in East Oaks.” Leslie grinned. “You mean Spruce Lane?” “Yeah, that’s the street. There are only two houses on it,” Jack said. “But how did you know?” © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik “Because my Aunt June used to live in the last house on Spruce Lane. I was born in 1966, so I was an infant that Christmas, but I know all about the star.” Leslie lifted the tray of dirty dishes and took a step back, suddenly realizing something as she looked at Jack with a sense of wonderment in her eyes. “So those must have been your footprints.” Jack shrugged. “What are you talking about?” “Let me get your dessert and then I’ll show you,” Leslie promised. “I have to run upstairs to the apartment first. Now don’t go anywhere!” ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Twenty minutes later, after the Masons had finished their ice cream sundaes and the dinner crowd thinned out, Leslie joined them at their booth. She sat next to Jack, placing an old family photo album in front of him. The satiny fabric cover had images of orange, yellow and red autumn leaves imprinted upon it. “Where’d you get the album?” Charlene asked curiously. “My parents live in the apartment upstairs. They own this café,” Leslie said. “My mom and Aunt June are sisters. Plus they have a brother, my Uncle Ralph.” “I appreciate the family history,” Jack said, slightly amused, “but what’s that got to do with my shooting star?” “Well, that star-in-the-snow-bank anecdote has been floating among my relatives for years,” Leslie replied, flipping through a few of the pages in the album. “Every couple of years someone is sure to bring it up at Thanksgiving or Christmas, and we all get a good laugh at Uncle Ralph’s expense. But don’t feel too bad for him because he usually laughs the loudest. Ah, here it is.” Leslie found the page she was searching for. © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik “What is it?” Elaine eagerly asked, plopping her elbows on the table and craning her head forward for a closer look. “Proof of your father’s story,” the waitress said, opening the slightly yellowed pages wide for all to see. “The star your father saw was as real as this diner.” “What are you talking about?” Jack said, glancing down at the collage of pictures on the two open pages. Suddenly his eyes focused upon a pair of black and white Polaroid snapshots affixed at the top of the left-hand page and he went speechless. Jack sat as still as stone, his mouth open, gazing at a vision from his past. He felt as if somebody had taken a picture of a distant dream image that had been tucked away in the deep recesses of his mind. Now here it was, exposed for the entire world to see, though part of him still couldn’t believe it. Staring back were two similar photographs, one a nighttime close-up of a glowing plastic five-pointed star, three feet across and wedged into a steep snow bank. The other photograph was of the same scene from a short distance away, the moonlit snow in the foreground shimmering in lustrous shades of gray, black and white. Also visible in the second snapshot was a single set of a young child’s boot prints approaching the snow bank from the bottom right corner of the picture. The boot prints then veered sharply to the left and disappeared out of the frame. “This is really it,” Jack whispered, staring at the photographs for several moments before looking up at Leslie. “How can this be?” © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik “It was quite a funny incident,” she said, “or so my relatives have told me over the years. And all thanks to my Uncle Ralph.” “Tell us what happened,” Charlene asked, sliding closer to her husband and affectionately holding onto his arm. She was eager to hear a few unknown details relating to his childhood. “I’ll give you a quick version so as not to bore you with the embellishments we usually add after a few drinks around the Christmas dinner table,” Leslie said with a chuckle. “Every Christmas my aunt and uncle on Spruce Lane used to put a large plastic star on the roof of the garage barn next to their house. The star was hooked up to a long extension cord running down the side of the barn and plugged into an outlet. They left it lit up around the clock. Anyway, the night before, on Christmas Eve, there was some freezing rain and strong winds that came through town and the star got bent over.” © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik “And did it fall down?” Scott asked, still attacking the last bit of ice cream at the bottom of his dessert glass. “Not quite,” Leslie said. “As the story goes, my relatives showed up at Aunt June’s house that afternoon to celebrate Christmas. Uncle Ralph, my mother’s younger brother who was nineteen then, climbed up on the barn roof when it got dark to straighten out the star. He never told anybody what he planned to do. Just said he was going for a walk.” “This funny story doesn’t involve any broken bones, does it?” Jack curiously speculated. © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik “Luckily, no,” Leslie said. “But Uncle Ralph climbed up on the roof nonetheless with a hammer and wrench. He loosened the bolts and removed the star from its metal holder, preparing to straighten it out with a few whacks of the hammer. Well, as he held the bulky star in his arms, he lost his balance. His foot slipped on the icy roof and…” Leslie made a steep downward motion with one hand. “Whoosh! Down the roof he sailed while clutching the star, which was still plugged in and glowing brightly.” Will erupted with laughter. “Did he catch himself, or fly into a neighbor’s backyard?” “Neither.” Leslie noted the same smiles and rapt attention from her listeners as among her relatives who had heard the story time and time again. “As Ralph flew off the edge of the roof, he heaved the star through the air and tried to cushion his fall on a nearby snow bank in the field.” Leslie eyed each member of the Mason family with mock seriousness before bursting into a grin. “Which he did successfully, landing waist deep in the white stuff. The star ended up stuck in another snow bank, still plugged in and glowing like it was on fire. Uncle Ralph bent over with laughter after he saw the star fly through the air and crash land. He went in and told everybody what had happened and got a huge scolding–and then lots of laughs. Everyone threw on their coats and grabbed cameras, eager to see Uncle Ralph’s shooting star.” “I remember hearing all that commotion,” Jack said. “Somebody opened a door to the house just as I stepped close to the star.” © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik “A bunch of my relatives went outside and laughed hysterically,” Leslie continued. “But as they approached the edge of the road, Uncle Ralph noticed a fresh set of footprints trailing down the field toward the star before suddenly turning direction toward the road. Everyone wondered who had just walked down the field, but nobody was there. They never figured it out.” “That was me,” Jack said. “I was so close to the star, looking upon it in amazement. When I heard the noise, I got scared, thinking I’d get into trouble. I knew I didn’t have time to run back up the field without being spotted, so I turned and fled to the road like a jackrabbit and found a place to hide.” Elaine giggled as she looked at her father. “A jackrabbit! Pretty clever, Dad.” “My grandmother insisted that they were an angel’s footprints,” Leslie replied, “watching out for Uncle Ralph to make sure he landed safely.” “Hmmm, an angel with footprints?” Jack said. Leslie raised an eyebrow. “Well, it was as good an explanation as any. But now we know the truth. I’ll have quite a story to tell my relatives.” “Just don’t tell them that my dad got scared,” Scott insisted. “Hey, Scott, I was only eight,” his father said. “How was I supposed to know that some mean ogre didn’t live in that house?” © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik Leslie smiled. “His secret is safe, Scott. I’m just glad I solved the mystery of the footprints.” Elaine tapped a finger upon the tabletop as she gazed at her father. “Still, there is one thing I want to know. You said you ran away from the star and hid when you heard the noises.” “That’s right, sweetheart.” Elaine shrugged. “If that’s so, then–where did you go, Dad?” © Copyright 2008 Thomas J. Prestopnik |
| ~ CHAPTER 12 ~ |
| A CHRISTMAS CASTLE |
| by Thomas J. Prestopnik © Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved. |
