Buon Natale by Leonard Varasano

Not a day can pass without my thoughts going out to a dear friend, a kind man of modest means who had appeared before us one autumn afternoon long ago, and soon was to evolve into the father figure desperately missing from our lives. He became our mentor, the one who kept us on the straight and narrow. His was the voice of reason in times when our world seemed turned upside down, ready to shake my brother and me along with all the other orphans out of our precarious existence at the children?s shelter, where we lived for many years. From my earliest memories, the children?s shelter is all I remembered as my home.

Berto wandered into our lives one day and never left, developing into the pillar of strength we relied upon, whose presence allowed us to grow in a kind-hearted environment, which many children never get to experience at all, parents or not.

I?ll never forget the first time we saw Berto, at a Halloween party of all places, which he somehow convinced our caretaker Miss Burnett would be fun for ?the keeds?. Mind you, we were country kids, hicks, so the party that he threw for us was like something from another planet.

He showed up dressed as a devil. Not a mean or scary one, but a devil with floppy horns, a stubby, pointed tail, and funny demeanor, and had us doubled up laughing in no time. He made his entrance dancing to crazy music we?d never heard before, blasting away on the victrola. ?Che la Luna,? belted out by a husky-throated singer. I can still hear the pulsing clarinets, and visualize everyone dancing around him, clapping, stomping, Miss Burnett too.

Then, we played a game. To this day I?m not quite sure what premise we were supposed to follow, but instead of breaking a pi