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anything’s possible, I suppose.” The look in his dad’s eyes made him uncomfortable, so he got up and said, “I’ll be back tomorrow, but one thing we’re going to do is plan a great Christmas celebration right here. I’ll bring the turkey and dressing when the big day comes.”
    Willie Raines smiled. “That’ll be mighty fine, Son. I’ll look forward to it.”
    As Ben left the hospital he continued to mull over their conversation. The story of the angel he dismissed at once. Could have been a dozen ways some officer could come in there. A replacement. Somebody lost from his own unit. Or maybe Dad just dreamed it, imagined it. I’ll have to talk to the doctors about it.
    * * *
    Ben Raines spent most of the afternoon walking the streets of Chicago. It was something he often did when he could not get a handle on a story or a piece of writing. Usually something would come. It was not exactly like in the cartoons where a lightbulb goes off over a character’s head, but it was sort of like that. A thought would come, and when he meditated on it, thought about it awhile, it would begin to grow and swell like a tree puts out branches. That was the way the story was filled in.
    But this time nothing came—absolutely nothing . Finally he went home, fixed himself a TV dinner of chicken and rice, then sat down in his recliner and watched part of a football game. He didn’t care much about the game. Who won wasn’t important to him one way or another, so he dozed off.
    When Ben woke up, his mouth was dry and he felt confused. Opening his eyes, he started to get up out of the chair and suddenly realized that It’s a Wonderful Life was on. It was the scene where Clarence had saved Jimmy Stewart from committing suicide and was explaining to him how important his life had been.
    More than once during the next hour Ben nearly turned the movie off. He had seen it more than once, but somehow this time he felt compelled to watch. Finally it got down to the last of the movie, where all of the people that Jimmy Stewart had helped during his life came to his rescue, and Stewart realized that his life had not been in vain after all. Others had gone ahead of him and made more money and become famous, but his life had counted, too.
    And then it suddenly came to Ben: I’ll write a story about Dad and the people whose lives were changed because of what he did at Bastogne.
    The idea was as clear as crystal, and he got up out of the chair and began walking back and forth, excited by the idea. I’ll find those men that were in that foxhole with him, the members of his squad. Shouldn’t be too hard to trace them. He probably knows where some of them are. Then I’ll find out what they’ve done since the war. Some of them may not still be alive, but some probably are.
    As always when Ben Raines got an idea, he ran away with it. He could not stop his thoughts. They seemed to tumble over themselves. His thinking was all intertwined with It’s a Wonderful Life , but he thought , That’s just a movie. Real life’s not like that.
    He fixed himself a cup of coffee, sat down at his computer, and began typing preliminary notes. He discovered at once that there was a problem.
    â€œIt won’t be like the movie,” he said aloud. “Some of them may have wound up in the penitentiary, but I’ll tell the truth.” Another idea came, and he typed rapidly.
    â€œâ€˜The Angel of Bastogne.’ That’s what I’ll call it. Has a nice ring to it.” Suddenly, as sometimes happened, he got a sentence that would do to begin the piece with. The first sentence of any writing was always important, whether a newspaper story, a novella or a full-length novel, and this one came to him. And when he had typed it, he stared at it and read it aloud:
    â€œWe would all like for stories to have happy endings, but most of them don’t.”
    Pleased