If Just For One Night

Superhero Stanley
If Just For One NightBy
Brian R. Kupfer

I was up to my usual lofty prowling on the rooftops of the city, just before dawn, when something in my peripheral vision caught my attention.
It seemed to be a trail of sparks in the night sky, losing altitude and heading to the north of the city. The sparks seemed to be just like what you would see coming from a malfunctioning bit of machinery, except for the fact that there WAS no machinery in sight and the sparks were moving across the sky all by themselves.
There was no juking, weaving, or other sharp maneuvering, but the little spark trail was definitely moving under some sort of control, occasionally climbing to avoid buildings as it continued to lose altitude gradually on its flight across my city.
I also seemed to be the only person that had noticed it, as I couldn’t see anyone else looking towards it.
Then again, there weren’t a hell of a lot of people dumb enough to be on top of these cold and windy rooftops in the tail end of December, either, so, it was hard to be sure.
I didn’t know what the hell it was, so, technically, I was seeing an Unidentified Flying Object, or UFO, in the epitome of the definition of the term.
Which means I was never going to hear the end of this from the crew.
In fact, since I was already close to the airport, and Joeda’s pad in a General Aviation hangar, maybe he would have an idea of what was going on.
Never hurt to check.

____________________________________________________________________________________

It took me fifteen minutes to get to the edge of the city’s downtown district, and therefore the end of my ability to hop from roof to roof with the help of my modified version of Kitten’s grapple, longer than usual because I had to carefully avoid the seemingly thousands of holiday lights strung along and between the buildings downtown.
If I had it bad, I could only imagine poor Spider-Man’s consternation at trying to swing through Manhattan during this time of the year.
Besides, my armor and clothing was probably a lot warmer than his red and blue one-piece!
Once at the edge of town, I rappelled down the building next to the parking garage where I had parked my green Bricklin before swinging over to the garage’s top floor.
The sun was already peeking over the eastern horizon and the sky lightening by the time I got into the gull-winged car and started the ignition.

From there, it was a short trip along a nicely twisty back access road over to the General Aviation side of the airport, where I headed to the sixth, and furthest, of the hangars on that side of the building.
You could see it from nearly half a mile away, what with all the festive lights and inflatable lawn decorations Joeda and Syn had put up over the last couple of weeks.
So much for Joeda’s original idea of a “hidden lair”. I thought.
Of course, looking around, the other five hangars were only marginally less enthusiastically lit up themselves.
Maybe the kid knew what he was about after all.
I pulled the SV-1 around towards the rear of Joeda’s hangar and parked it beside my “normal life” replacement for the Durango, a black GMC Terrain. Which was next to Joeda’s Honda Civic hatchback and Syn’s black Harley with the orange and pink flames on it.
Parked a little further off was a nondescript black Dodge Charger that was trying too hard to be unnoticeable, thereby standing out as Captain Dodge’s unmarked PD cruiser, and a newly-purchased BMW Z4 that belonged to Kitten.
Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.
And now I had that annoyingly cloying song from The Pirates of Penzance stuck in my head.
This early in the morning, all of them being here could only mean one thing.
The womenfolk were planning something, possibly to the detriment of Joeda and I, but more than likely a Christmas party.
Which, really, amounted to the same thing.
Walking past my Terrain, I shook my head upon noting it now had giant fuzzy antlers attached to the rear doors, and a big red nose on the grille. Obviously Kitten’s doing.
Still shaking my head, I entered the rear door of the hangar, noticing that the interior, if anything, had more lights and decorations strung around than the exterior.
The next thing I noticed was that there was Christmas music booming across the space from the front part of the converted building. Off to the right of the door, Joeda’s Buell is on a jack stand, half disassembled.
I wandered into Joeda’s office, only to find him at the front bay windows of it.
Walking up beside him, I can’t say I blamed him. The view was unreal.
Captain Dodge sat on one of the oversized sofas in the main living area, wrapping gifts on the coffee table in front of her, wearing her “nothing to see here, move along” gray business suit she wore when on duty, her black trench coat tossed over the back of the sofa.
Syn and Kitten are busy finishing up decorating the massive fifteen foot tall tree in the middle of the room.
In red “Santa’s Helper” outfits, complete with fur trim and those puffy-ball hats.
With Syn up on a folding ladder attaching the star atop the tree.
It was like a fetishist’s vision of a Norman Rockwell Christmas scene.
Except for “Die Hard” playing on the sixty-inch LCD HD TV on the wall, that is.
It had just gotten to the part where the elevator doors open and “Tony Vreski” is revealed in his grey sweatshirt wearing the words “Now I have a Machine Gun. Ho-Ho-Ho”.
I wondered how the hell he’d managed to convince them to do it.
And where my camera was.
With that thought, I looked around the office, knowing we had a stash of cameras for surveillance work, and grabbed out a Sony Alpha DSLR.
You would have snapped off a dozen photos, too.
After spending perhaps a little more time than was absolutely necessary watching the two festively clad women decorate the tree, I turned to Joeda and mentioned the flying spark trail.
After summing up what I had seen and fending off his suggestion to be on the History Channel’s “UFO Hunters”, I asked him if he had any ideas.
“You said whatever was shedding the sparks was descending towards the north of town?” Joeda asks.
“Yeah. Why, what are you thinking?”
“Could be old Klaus. He lives out that way.”
‘Klaus?” I asked.
“Yeah, Klaus Von Sankt, old hermit that’s got half a screw loose, spends most of the year locked up in his old farmhouse, no one ever sees him until December or so, when he starts tinkering around in the barn like a man possessed. Some kind of experiments with an old car or something, I’ve heard. No one’s ever seen it. Dunno why he would be tinkering with an old car, he’s sort of filthy rich. Brand new SLS AMG sitting out front, cherry red.”
“Nice wheels. About where does he live?” I asked.
In response, Joeda wanders over to one of the seven desktop computers he has running in the office. Pulling up Google Earth, Joeda zooms in on the city, then rolls his trackball north, centering on a farmhouse just past the city, and barely south of the Canadian border.
“Huh. That’s about where they were headed, all right. Coulda been a dark-painted aircraft and there is plenty of room to land anything shy of a 737 on that land.”
“You’re going to go take a look, aren’t you?” Joeda asks him.
“You know me too well.” I comment with another long-ish glance into the next room.
I must be nuts. I thought to myself as I headed back out into the sub-zero night, the Alpha still in my hand, visions of red-clad women dancing in my head.
______________________________________________________________________________________


Almost a full ten hours later, I pulled the Safety Green colored Bricklin to a halt in front of the metal cattle gate that stood open by the dirt road heading off towards the farmhouse.
Once I had left Joeda and the women, I had headed home, taken a shower and a nap after having spent all night on patrol.
I woke up, had my “breakfast” at almost a normal person’s dinner time, left a message with Kitten as to where I would be, since it was the night before Christmas Eve, after all, and headed out of town for Klaus Von Sankt’s place.
After deliberating for a moment, I turned down the dirt road and headed towards the barn I could see tucked amongst the trees at the edge of the property.
I could have called ahead, but Joeda had found no listing for Von Sankt, nor any evidence that the man had ever had a phone.
So it was time to do this the old fashioned way.
The house was nearly a half-mile from the barn, and the red Mercedes SLS AMG that Joeda had mentioned was nowhere to be seen.
I parked in what counted for the driveway, where I could see signs of a vehicle having recently been there, and angled the SV-1 with the nose pointed towards the entry road.
So I skulked around to the back door, peeking in the windows on the way, just to be sure no one was home.
Trust me, when dressed up in the Superhero uniform, it is impossible NOT to skulk.
Not seeing any movement in the white one-story dwelling, I headed in a jog across the open meadow between the house and the old barn.
Where it had once obviously looked like the stereotypical American barn, with red painted sides, white trim, hay door above the main doors, and black tiled gambrel roof, it had seen better days, and, indeed, was slouch backed in the middle of the roof. The sides were no better, the paint faded and peeling and the windows boarded over.
That having been said, the walls were still mostly straight and none of the boards in them were loose, plus the main doors seemed rather sturdy.
Maybe the place wasn’t kept up to “Better Homes and Gardens” standards, but neither was it exactly neglected.
In fact, I was willing to bet that the roof had been designed to look like it was falling in as camouflage.
I futilely checked the main doors, but knew in the back of my mind that they would be securely locked.
I was right.
So out came my miniaturized pneumatic grappling hook, which I fired through the hay door and seated before scaling the front of the barn.
Once in, I inched my way across the hayloft until I was able to reach the railing overlooking the barn floor below.
And I just stood there, looking.
Couldn’t believe my eyes.
Still can’t quite explain what I saw in that barn, without having you think I am completely nuts.
But here goes.
Sitting dead center in the middle of the barn’s floor was an ancient sled of northern European origin, from around the early 1800s, if I was any judge.
I was obviously well cared for, and stained a subtle dark cherry, with long steel runners extending at least twenty feet from six inches past the front of the livestock harness attachment on the front to almost a foot behind the rear of the well-preserved transport.
Set up much like a modern full size pickup truck, the sled had a leather-upholstered bench seat spanning the width of the sled in the front, with a wooden divider just behind the back of the bench seat.
The rest of the length of the winter vehicle was given over to payload, whatever may have been carried in it.
However well maintained this sled was, it was obviously not a museum piece, nor being restored to be such, as evidenced by the state-of-the-art components and attachment mounts scattered around beside it and in the process of being mounted to it.
I wanted to get down there and snoop around, I knew no one would believe me if I didn’t have SOME evidence, so I shot a few photos of the sled with the Sony Alpha.
A shelf had been added along the front of the driver’s area, molded in a plastic the same color of the sled’s original wood. Mounted to the shelf was a GPS unit and a set of modern aviation radios, with wiring contoured along the floor into the box the leather bench was mounted on.
Dropping to the barn’s floor, I noted a seventeen inch Viao laptop, IFF squawk box, transponder, and radio direction finder display as well.
Even more strangely, while looking into the front of the sled, I saw writing etched under the bench seat, which I had lifted up, that was grey-toned in age and seemed to have been burnt into the seat base when built.
It was in Old Dutch.
At about the time I noticed this, the main barn door opened silently, and a tall man, about my own height of six-four, rangy but strong looking, like an old oak, with a long grey-white beard and sparkling black eyes, stood there for a moment before running away from the barn and back towards the house.
In the flash of a moment I saw him, I barely registered he was wearing a red jacket and pants.
As I stood up and started to chase after him, my foot stepped on one of the livestock harnesses.
Which jingled, thanks to the small silver globe bells attached to it.
I sped up to catch the old man, who was surprisingly quick.
This had to be Klaus Von Sankt.
Thinking of the man’s name, and the sled I had just been inspecting, something clicked.
It wasn’t a sled at all.
It was a Sleigh.
Capital S and all.
Klaus Von Sankt.
Klaus of the Saint.
Saint Klaus.
Sinterklaas.
There was no way in hell.
Couldn’t be. Just a myth.
But I knew damned well there was only one way to find out.
Sprinting at full speed across the meadow, I could hear the growl of a dual overhead cam, 6.2 litre V8 as the SLS AMG came to life.
I could see the cherry-red gullwing reversing past my Bricklin and turning around to head back out of the farm’s property, and by the time I reached my ‘Look at me” green car, all I could see of the Mercedes Benz coupe was the taillights.
Great, I was about to be in a race with a person who possibly had mystic powers, and, on top of that, was in a thirty-five year newer car.
Both had V8s, 351ci for mine and 378 for his, but my car weighed about a hundred pounds LESS than the newer Mercedes.
Which meant, by rights, that he should leave me in the dust, since the posted 0-60 time for my car, when NEW in 1975, was 9.9 seconds.
The SLS was rated at 3.8 seconds for the same test.
I would just have to hope to keep him in sight.
Of course, I did have some experience at high-speed chases through this city.

It took only about twenty minutes to get into the outskirts of town, as there was enough traffic to let me keep sight of the red coupe, and it soon became apparent that Von Sankt was heading into the heart of the city, though that seemed to be the dumbest place to go, since his car would easily outstrip mine on the freeway, whereas the maze-like layout of streets and nighttime congestion in the city’s center would allow me to close the gap.
Then I started to notice the uniformity of dress of the people on the sidewalks.
A lot of red with white trim.
Of course.
SantaCon was this evening, as our city had the third latest one in the country, on the 23rd. Only Temecula, California and Boulder, Colorado had theirs later.
Everywhere else had had theirs at least a week ago.
I had to close the gap now or I would never find a man with a beard in a crowd of red-suited, fake bearded men and women.
Which is exactly what happened.
I passed the SLS parallel parked about two blocks from the heart of downtown, but Klaus was nowhere in sight.
Didn’t help that some of the female Santas were, er, slightly distracting. Especially this one brunette……but my plate was already full.
So, since I had lost the man himself, and I thought I knew what the problem was, I did what I do best in my Stanley guise.
I stuck my nose in.

___________________________________________________________________________________

“Joeda, without our help, he’s never going to get this thing working again. I know what’s wrong, and you’re about the only guy that can fix it in time. Meet me over at Klaus’ place as soon as you can get there.” I stated over the Bluetooth headset as I pulled the SV-1 around through the maze of one-way streets to end up heading back out to Von Sankt’s barn.
Joeda met me there, and was standing in the driveway of the house beside his little blue Civic.
It took us most of the night, but we had all the tech gear wired into that Sleigh by the time the sun rose, and were both happily ensconced in our own beds with no one the wiser before eight in the morning.
It was already Christmas Eve.
That night, around eight, we met up back at the hangar again, for our traditional Christmas dinner, since tomorrow we’d be with our genetic families.
Tonight was for the family we’d chosen.
Karen and the Kitten had spent the majority of the afternoon cooking, utilizing utensils in the hangar’s kitchen that Joeda hadn’t even known he had owned.
When I showed up just before eight, Dodge was pulling in right behind me, having just gotten off work at the Precinct.
Of course I teased her about the handcuffs. It HAS to be done.
And she threatened to use them, which didn’t help the situation any.
When Sarah and I entered the hangar, Karen and the Kitten were sitting on one of the sofas drinking wine and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life”, which was about five minutes from the end.
The cop headed for the kitchen area.
Joeda and Syn were nowhere in sight, but I could imagine what they were up two. Those two were like damned rabbits.
Yeah, so I’m a little jealous, but I have my own relationship issues to deal with, as evidenced by the two brunettes in front of me.
Things were still tetchy on that front, since, technically, Kitten and I had never quit dating, if that was the current euphemism, when Karen and I fell for each other.
In my defense, everyone had thought the Kitten was dead.
I tell you, I walked into that room with all the excitement of a man going to the oral surgeon.
Luckily, Dodge saved my bacon by tossing a cold brewski at me, which gave me something to put in my mouth besides my foot.
By the time the movie ended, I was finished with the first beer of the night, and the two boff monkeys had decided to make an appearance.
We may be dysfunctional, but we’re all we’ve got.
As we were all settling around the table (I took one end of the rectangle to avoid being trapped between the women in my life), I hate to say, but, outside there arose a clatter.
Sure enough, we rushed to the rear hangar door to find old Klaus Von Sankt standing there, his Sleigh nowhere in sight.
“I just wanted to stop by and say thanks to all, and leave you a gift.” The jolly old man stated.
He looks nothing like what people thinks he looks. He’s not at all fat, for one thing, and his face is more of a light walnut color, like a Dutchman that has spent many years in the sun, than rosy.
After having said his piece, he embraced each of us in turn, calling us all his special helpers, with a sideways glance at Joeda and I.
You should have seen those two the other night I thought, remembering Syn and Kitten decorating the tree.
‘Who says I didn’t?’ I heard without sound.
After embracing each of us in turn, ending with Dodge, he turned, walked ten paces, and simply disappeared.
I could swear I heard little bells and saw a movement overhead.
But the night was overcast, and I’m still not sure.
Either way, our night was filled with warmth and cheer, and Dodge’s on call phone did not go off that night.
All was peaceful in the city, for one night at least.
And I knew that this night, the Superhero Stanley would be not be needed on patrol.
And that itself was a minor miracle on Earth.


So, from the characters in my head, to the Characters I am blessed to have in my life, Happy Holidays.

One Week

Tron: Legacy comes out next week.

Damned right I'm geeking out.

Who's coming with me?

I'm drivin, LOL