It's finally morning. I'm exhausted. I am really worried about one thing.

What if it learns to eat? My brother Ben lives in a modest little house on a quiet country road just outside the small town of Powder

Post, Maryland. I used to complain that it was so dark out there at night that when I

drove down from Connecticut to visit him every year, I couldn't spot his house.

So having a weird sense of humor, one Christmas I bought him as a gag gift.

One of those novelty light up restaurant signs that says pizza in red and green bulbs with a

glowing yellow slice beside the words. He laughed and put it up in his front window

facing out to the driveway and left it there all through my visit.

Then of course he packed it away somewhere, but each Christmas he would hang it back up in the window,

so I could spot the house more easily as I came down the road on my visit.

It became a running joke.

We were goofy like that.

What can I tell you?

Four years ago he did it again and I smiled when I saw the pizza sign guiding me through the pitch dark into the driveway

The night after Christmas he and I got a bit drunk watching movies in his living room and watching the snow pile up outside the window.

Seven inches since sunset with more to come, and the wind was blowing hard and powder post found itself in the middle of an actual blizzard.

Around 12, just before I went into the guest room to crash, Ben noticed something out the kitchen window that he thought was a little strange.

His neighbors across the road and down a fairways, the Birchisons, had never turned their inside lights on that night, though their

exterior lights were on. Archer, Birchison, was his know that their cars were still in their driveway.

He thought about calling over there, but it was just too late in the evening to bother them.

I woke up around four from a dream about a tiny female wooden soldier tapping the tip of her bayonet again and again and again

against the glass of the guest bedroom window. I got up and shuffled out to the hallway bathroom.

...