A Trip to the Stars

by Nicholas Christopher

  I was shaking all over, but before I could come back at him, my father stormed out and left me there, wanting to turn that room upside down and smash every single thing in it. Instead, I broke open his desk drawer and took something I knew was irreplaceable to him, something that would drive him crazy to lose; worth little in itself, without it he wouldn’t have access to his most prized possession. For years, long before he had Bel and me to attack, my father had tried to obliterate what little good of my mother still lived in my heart. Now I was going to repay him for his efforts.

  You see, despite her long absence, until then my mother had continued to play a dubious role in our little family: arguing about her had usually kept my father and me from clashing about our more immediate differences. She served as the kind of buffer between us that she would never have been if she were still around. When she was around, she shopped for clothes, lost money at the casinos, and had her affairs in hotels downtown. My picture of her had altered as I got older and better understood what her life in Reno had really been like. When I was a boy, I often just sat gazing at her, and she was so beautiful I couldn’t imagine her doing any wrong.

  In fact, even then I knew what she was capable of. I knew, for example, that she had disappeared on us far sooner than my father thought: not when she last walked out of the house, but the moment she let go of my hand at the planetarium while talking to the man in the white suit. How many times in my head had I taken revenge on that man. Usually with my hands around his throat. Sometimes with a knife under his ribs. Or a gun jammed into his stomach, wiping away the smile I imagined he had flashed at my mother that day. A man whose face I would not know if I passed him on the street.

  Dupont’s face, on the other hand, I will never forget. Especially as I last saw it, contorted, with glaring eyes, behind the wheel of a red sedan bearing down on Bel as she tried to run clear of him along the edge of a ravine; I had gotten down on one knee just ahead, steadying a .44 pistol with both hands, knowing I would only get the chance at one more shot as his car flew past.

  How, in a few short hours, did I get from arguing with my father to shooting a man dead?

  After running out of my father’s office, I threw some clothes in a suitcase and telephoned Bel. I told her to take, not her car, but a taxi, to a place where we used to rendezvous, a Mexican joint called El Neón, midway between Las Vegas and Reno on Route 95. I said she should bring what she needed, that we were heading for California—to start our new life, once and for all. Brave words for someone just turned eighteen, with three hundred dollars in his pocket and no prospects. Though we had discussed running away together many times, I would never know if she agreed that this was the best time to make our move. In her brief hesitation over the phone, I could sense her uneasiness, but she said only that she would be there in an hour, at five o’clock.

  We never had the chance to discuss how she felt. No sooner had I picked her up at El Neón and doubled back toward the California state line than a red car appeared out of nowhere in the late-afternoon light and began riding our tail. Suddenly the car slammed into us, crushing the rear fender and forcing me to pull onto the shoulder. As I slammed on the brakes, I saw it was Dupont behind the wheel, wearing a Stetson and a black duster. He leapt out and was at my window in a flash.

  Leaning in, he gripped my shoulder like a vise. He told me I had something of my father’s that he wanted back, and I realized how careless I had been: leaving the desk drawer open, running from the house. Obviously my father had discovered my theft within minutes. I could have denied it, argued with Dupont, called his bluff—instead, I bit his hand, spun the streering wheel to the right, and floored the accelerator.

  For a couple of miles he ate my dust, but then suddenly the red sedan was back on my tail, closing fast. Skilled as I was at jumping car engines, I had little experience of car chases, and Dupont, the ex-cop, was very comfortable driving at breakneck speeds. Again he slammed into our rear, and I had to grip the steering wheel with all my strength.

  Bel couldn’t believe what was going on. Bracing herself against the dashboard, she kept asking me who Dupont was and what he wanted. But it was too late to explain. And I was panicking. We were on a stretch of road under construction, between Luning and Pilot Peak, a mountain northwest of Las Vegas. The desert there was truly a no-man’s-land—bare rocky flats for miles in every direction. When I saw Dupont was going to cut us off again, I got desperate and pulled off the highway altogether, hoping that somehow Dupont would spin out of control and I’d lose him.

  But as I sped across the flat, his red sedan was still bobbing in my rearview mirror. Forty, thirty, twenty yards back and gaining fast again. There were scattered boulders to our right and a steep ravine dead ahead. About a hundred yards from the ravine, Dupont cut me off a second time, jumped out, and put a pistol to my head.

  He yanked me from my car and motioned with his pistol for Bel to get out too. Ordering us to put our hands on the car roof, he kicked my legs apart. He took my wallet from my back pocket and flipped through it. Then he yanked all my pockets inside out. He tore my jacket pockets away, and put the pistol back to my head, but still I wouldn’t give him what he was looking for. He told me to have it my own way, and walked around the car to Bel, adding that searching her would be a real pleasure. I told him he’d better not touch her. He laughed, stepping up behind her, keeping the pistol pointed at me while he ran his fingers along her cheek, then down her shoulder slowly toward her breasts. I said, all right, enough, let her go and I’ll give you what you want. This is what I want now, he said, running his hand under her breasts. Bel was biting her lip, frozen. Oh yeah, he said, she kind of reminds me of your mother. I told him I was going to kill him. He laughed again, then lowered the pistol and pushed Bel aside and invited me to try.

  I realized that he was off on his own with no turning back: the reason my father had sent him after me was beside the point now. My father might not have minded my being knocked around, and he wouldn’t shed tears if I didn’t come home again—but I didn’t think he wanted me killed.

  Before Dupont changed his mind and raised that pistol again, I jumped him. He decked me with a forearm to the head. With Bel screaming, I leapt up and charged him again. And I got lucky. Looking to sidestep and club me with the pistol butt, Dupont’s feet went out from under him. With a cry, he fell and the pistol flew from his grasp. He scrambled for it, but I got it first. He was quick, though, and by the time I turned it on him, he was in his car again, grinding the key in the ignition and backing up hard, trying to run me over. I rolled out of the way, but he barely missed Bel, and in her terror she started running. I cried out to her, but she wouldn’t stop. Dupont fishtailed his car around and went after her. I was still screaming as he nearly overtook her, but she dove off to the side. Then he wheeled the car around again, kicking up stones, and came after her even faster as she ran back toward me. Her face was white and her red dress was flapping against the yellow sand.

  Dupont swerved right, slowing down in order to be sure he hit her. He saw me with the gun, but he must have calculated that I couldn’t make such a difficult shot. Or maybe he was so enraged he had stopped calculating altogether. In fact, growing up in that part of the country, growing up with guns, I was a very good shot.

  Still, the first shot I got off was wild, shattering one of the car’s headlights. The pistol recoiled hard, and bracing myself, I aimed again, at Dupont’s open window, sliding the gun barrel to follow the car’s path. At the same time, I saw Bel trip and fall, and I knew this was going to be my last chance. Stopping the breath in my throat, when he was twenty yards away I squeezed the trigger again. There was a streak of smoke. The report echoed sharply across the ravine. And the red sedan skidded to the left, spun around, and lurched to a stop. The horn was blaring. Dupont was slumped over the wheel.

  I ran over to Bel, who was sprawled out on her back. Unknown to both of us, the damage to her was already done, just as surely as if Dupont had struck
her with the car. She had fallen badly the second time, cracking a rib. It was this rib that would cause complications in her pregnancy, and it was those complications that would kill her.

  But at that moment our minds were fixed only on the fact that I had just shot a man. As I helped her up, she kept asking me if Dupont was dead. The scream of the car horn reverberating across the ravine was the answer to that question. I made my way to the red sedan and saw what was left of Dupont’s head resting on the steering wheel.

  I gagged. I had never seen a man’s brains before. And there was so much blood on the seats and windows that I couldn’t believe it had come from one man. I reached in for Dupont’s shoulder and pulled him off the wheel. Bel was shouting to me, but I couldn’t take in her words. On the rear seat there was his Stetson, also blood-spattered, and the gasoline can he carried with him on long drives.

  I switched off the car’s ignition and threw the transmission into neutral. Then I took the gasoline can and emptied it inside the car and all over the hood. Slowly I pushed the car toward the edge of the ravine. I had to push it about forty yards, but down a slight incline, so it didn’t take me long. And even though Dupont had just tried to kill me and the only person in the world I really loved, I felt sick when I tossed a lit match into that car and watched it burst into flames as it rolled over the edge of the ravine. I knew that it could have been Bel and me in the car, our brains blown out, our bodies engulfed in fire, as it fell, slamming off the wall of the ravine and flipping over. I remember seeing a hawk circling overhead. And the clouds catching fire too as the sun set. And then a fireball on the floor of the ravine as the car exploded.

  Bel and I sped away from there as fast as we could. Several miles out, we passed another car, driven by a solitary man in a baseball cap. This man checked out our faces, and my license plate, as he passed. I thought I recognized him. He could easily have been another of my father’s employees. Or a complete stranger about to stumble on the fact I had just committed a murder. Or he could have been nobody at all.

  It hit me then that I wasn’t just in over my head, I was drowning. My hope that Dupont’s body might not be found for a while was fading fast. And when it was found, someone—it didn’t matter who he was—could now place me at the scene. My eyes glued to the rearview mirror, I wondered what that man in the baseball cap would do if and when he reached the ravine and saw the burning car, but I would never find out.

  As soon as Bel and I drove a couple of miles down 95, she had to get out and throw up. She became hysterical, and it took me some time to calm her down, though I was half out of my mind myself. We both knew I had to get out of the state, pronto. She said she wanted to come with me, but we also knew that, with me on the run, that was out of the question. She especially knew this was impossible, because of the pain she must’ve been in, which she kept to herself for fear I would insist on taking her to a hospital. At that moment, I couldn’t have imagined I would never see her again, but I think she knew. The way she looked at me, the things she said and didn’t say. She always had a strong sixth sense. I did know that, after what I had just done, my life was never going to be the same again. That evening, the last thing she said to me—the last thing she ever said to my face—was, “Don’t come back here until I tell you it’s safe.” Well, it’s never felt safe and I’ve never gone back. Even now, sitting in the next state, I’m not tempted to do so.

  I dropped her near the hotel where she lived with her uncle, the place Canopus had once owned. I drove all night, not to California, which was the direction the man in the baseball cap had seen me heading, but across Utah into Colorado, where I painted my car, and stole plates for it, and rented a cabin behind a broken-down motel, and hid out for the next few months. It was Canopus, in Manila, who told me the rest. That, in the meantime, Bel was in and out of the hospital, then stayed in a place outside Vegas, bedridden, keeping her condition to herself, keeping her uncle in the dark, until in December she went into labor suddenly and gave birth to a child. A child, Canopus said, whom she put up for adoption weeks later when her health deteriorated to the point where she knew she wasn’t going to make it.

  He didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl.

  Over those months, Bel and I had just a few phone conversations. At first, we were so terrified by what had happened that I remained incommunicado. I’d been in trouble before, but not like this. I sold my car and affixed the stolen plates to another car I bought for cash. Outside of buying food and gas, I talked to no one. I was barely across the state line in southeastern Colorado, near Four Corners, just outside the Indian reservation. About 150 miles from where I’m sitting right now. I figured at Four Corners I had four states to choose from: if they tried to extradict me in Colorado, I could jump to New Mexico, and if they came after me there, I would slip into Utah. Round and round and round—my head was spinning.

  Twice in the dead of night I drove all the way across Utah to the Nevada state line, but I didn’t cross it. I was afraid that if I was picked up, I’d never see Bel again. They’d just lock me up and throw away the key. And my father would be happy not to use his connections. My phone conversations with Bel became impossibly frustrating. Convinced the police were on to us, we feared my calls would be traced and so we never stayed on more than a minute. We were certain we had little very time to maneuver. Day and night I plotted desperately for a way out, and what did I come up with? Mexico. I told her that when I raised some money we’d rendezvous there. And lay low. She wasn’t going to have her baby in some dusty village. We’d find the most modern hospital in Mexico City, whatever that was. But for that you needed money. Money I couldn’t borrow and couldn’t afford to steal. If I got picked up in a hot car, I’d be finished. My head was still spinning.…

  And so I made another big mistake. To get the money, I confided in someone besides Bel. The last person on earth I should have turned to.

  My half-sister, Ivy.

  It’s a curious—maybe more than curious—fact that Bel and I shared the same sibling, our one and only sibling. Ivy was my mother Stella’s daughter by a man named Nilus Samax, who was Bel’s father by another woman. Soon after giving birth to Ivy, Stella left Nilus and ran off with my father. I was born a year later. In the meantime, three months before Ivy’s birth, Nilus had fathered Bel on a woman named Astrid.

  Follow all that? What a strange and cursed trio we were, spun off two wild women and two betraying men.

  Ivy hated Bel—a naturally affectionate girl everyone was drawn to—and when she got wind of our relationship, she hated me, too. Before that, Ivy and I had been okay. That is, for the two years I even knew she existed, after she first came into my life when I was fourteen. Showing up unnanounced one day at my father’s house in Reno. Each of us embraced the notion that the other might shed some light on the enigma of our mother Stella, and we shared and compared what crumbs of information we had. The runaway, we called her. That was my link with Ivy, and it was tenuous. What else could it be when our links with my mother were nonexistent.

  Two significant facts, however: from those crumbs Ivy and I deduced that it was her uncle who had accosted my mother at the Fleischmann Planetarium. He was the man in the white suit whom I had repeatedly murdered in my dreams. When I discovered that my mother had promptly gone on to abandon him—just as she had abandoned all of us—I didn’t feel quite so murderous anymore. For my mother, he had been an intermediary, not a great passion. The other fact, even more important perhaps: it was from me that Ivy learned our mother was still alive.

  For a while Ivy came to Reno pretty regularly and we would talk, and soon she became friendly with my father. Their link? Their mutual hatred of that same uncle of hers and Bel’s; he was also their guardian—Nilus’s brother, Junius Samax.

  It was through Ivy that, quite accidentally, I met Bel. I went to Las Vegas once to meet Ivy and, to her consternation, while waiting for her in my car on the road to the Hotel Canopus, ran into her sister. Bel and I knew of each
other, but only through the filter of Ivy, so when we actually met, the shock of our mutual attraction was that much more powerful. I fell in love with her at first sight—just as I did with you, at a time when I thought I could never again love anybody like that.

  Ivy knew at once what happened. Like a lot of people, she knew all about love from the outside in. What I didn’t want to see then is so clear to me now: Ivy was the most jealous person I’ve ever known. And the most effective, when she wanted to be, at concealing the venom that fueled that jealousy. From that day onward, after seeing Bel and me laughing together beside my car, she evidently began working overtime at how she could get at us. She felt me pull away from her as I grew closer to Bel, and she obviously knew I was hearing about the side of her she had kept under wraps, her cruelties to her sister, her cold rage. For better or worse, I had seven years with my mother before she disappeared; Ivy had had a few months. How much crueler that had made her, and how much colder, I could only guess.

  Soon enough I found out, when she got her opening and struck out at Bel and me in one quick stroke. An opening I gave her.

  Feeling particularly strung out one night when I was holed up in Colorado, unable to get hold of Bel, I opened up to Ivy, who had answered the phone in Bel’s room at the Hotel Canopus. I told her everything that had happened at the ravine. That I was at my wits’ end. I begged her to get hold of some cash for us.

  Instead she made sure that Bel and I never saw each other again.

  And months later—with how much pleasure I can only guess now—it was she who told me that Bel had died.

  If Ivy knew Bel had given birth to a child, she never let on. Maybe she kept it to herself as yet another form of revenge. Early on, I knew that Bel had not told Ivy she was pregnant. In fact, she had done all she could to conceal her pregnancy. But somewhere along the way Ivy had found out. To me, she backed up Bel’s story of a miscarriage. Not, of course, out of loyalty to Bel, but because it served her own purposes, to manipulate and keep us apart. One thing was for sure: in the end, Ivy knew that there was no way Bel and I were going to Mexico or anywhere else. Bel was too sick to travel, even to Colorado. So long as she was weak and bedridden, it was too dangerous, especially since I had to be prepared to light out on very short notice.