Each time the sled drove head long into the rear of the car, we rolled ourselves up and out of the snow to stand erect, bodies raw and chapped watching the empty collision take place.  It was as if we were still waiting for Palmer's father to come blasting out of the house in undershirt and boxer shorts as he’d so often done to laugh at us.  But RC Conroy had been dead for almost three years, and so the sled sat immobile in the quiet emptiness, lodged beneath the Catalina until one of us gave in and walked the short distance across the street to retrieve it.

The night my daddy slipped out of the storm, the winter sky broke open momentarily to produce a shower of moonlight catching our attention and drawing our gaze upward.  We had studied space in school, knew our planets and could pick out the redness of Mars in the evening sky and Venus in the morning.  We knew what NASA stood for, and could imagine the power of a Saturn V rocket blasting an Apollo capsule into the vast emptiness of space.  Through that brief patch of clear night, we strained to see astronauts streak across the sky, but our imaginations could not stay aloft for very long.  The brilliant flames of the fire in front of us kept pulling them back down to earth.  When the sky disappeared behind the storm, snow resumed and a figure appeared out beyond the fire trudging his way along the street curb.  It was Daddy coming home.

    We watched as he slowly plodded toward us, hands pushing hard against thighs with every step in an effort to wade through nearly a foot of snow.  He made his way slipping and sliding across Robbins Street and then pushed the final distance to arrive upright, beads of sweat freezing quickly to his unshaven face.  A blanket of snow laid evenly over his hat and well-worn hunting jacket, and though he did not say, I knew he had been outside for a long time, that the walk had brought him a great distance