The Scourge

by R. Tilden Smith

  “Girl, it’s kind of dark over there,” Crystal cautioned, “you sure you don’t want to just let your dog do his business on this side of the street?”

  “I can’t do that Crystal. I don’t have anything to pick up the mess and the Tower has strict rules about animals going to the bathroom on the property. You know I’m already fighting a battle with that old hag just to keep Tyson. I don’t want to give her any more ammunition to use against me.”

  “Alright then, but I didn’t pack my piece when I came over here tonight. So if something goes down I’m just letting you know that you and the pony dog are on your own because I’ll be in the wind.”

  “Duly noted scaredy-cat.”

  “Scaredy-cat? Need I remind you that it was you that asked me to walk with you. Smart ass.”

  “Ok ok, just come on.”

  They crossed the street and entered the park on its west end, following a wide gravel path dimly lit by decorative electric street lamps made to look like the old fashioned gaslights. The faux flame within the lamps flickered convincingly, animating every shadow formed by the strange light. Tyson walked slowly, sniffing the ground every few feet.

  “This place is spooky as hell,” Crystal said, “make your dog hurry up so we can get up out of here.”

  “Let’s just walk a little further,” Moji said. “I’m sure he’ll find a good spot to do his business.”

  Their path merged with another smaller asphalt-covered path that swung them clear of the big oaks that lined the boulevard and led them to the edge of a large clearing. The asphalt path had no direct lighting, it was illuminated only by the dull electric glow of downtown Houston.

  “Moji, I can’t see a damn thing. Let’s go back.”

  Moji could hear people talking and see figures moving around in the distance. “What are those people doing on the golf course?”

  “Damn sure ain’t playing golf,” Crystal replied. “Moji, I’m serious, let’s go. I’m getting the heebie-jeebies.”

  As Crystal turned to retrace their steps, several blue streaks flashed across the steel gray of the night sky. They could hear “ooh’s and ah’s” from the people on the golf course.

  “Did you see that!” Moji said. “That was a shooting star! I haven’t seen one of those since I was a little girl.”

  Tyson had found a spot on the closely cropped grass that met his approval and, walking in an ever-tightening circle, finally struck the defecation pose.

  “I saw it,” Crystal said. “I also see that your dog has unloaded a big stinking pile on the pretty golf course grass. Can we go now?”

  “Aw, come on Crystal! Don’t you want to stay and see if we see any more shooting stars?”

  “Girl, it’s too dark and creepy out here. It’s time for me to go home.”

  “Please! Hang with me for just a few more minutes. I promise I won’t keep you out here too long.”

  “Ok, but if you make me miss my nooky I ain’t never going to forgive you.”

  Moji giggled. “I’m sure Sam is looking forward to the nooky just as much as you are. He’ll wait up.”

  They followed the path until they came upon an unoccupied bench that faced the golf course. Moji sat down at one end of the bench. Tyson, finding nothing of interest within the six foot radius of the leash, sat down at her feet.

  Crystal took a seat next to Moji. “I don’t know what you heard Moji, but men get old fast. My baby Sam, I love him to death but do you know what he told me? He said, ‘baby, I’m getting too old to be knocking the boots every single day. I’m tired. Most days I have to choose between doing my husbandly duties and going to the gym. I damn sure can’t do both.’ So girl, I gotta pick my spots. I can’t have my Sam up and die on me because he was working too hard to please me.”

  Again Moji was stuck trying to figure out whether Crystal was trying to be funny or serious. But the last thing Crystal said plucked a string in Moji’s heart; one that she had hoped would remain still forever.

  Your father worked hard to please you and it killed him. The small voice never ceased tormenting her. It would not rest until she was to account for her father’s death. She took a deep breath. Just then another meteor streaked across the sky.

  “There goes another one,” Crystal said.

  “Yeah,” Moji said, “they’re so beautiful.”

  “Yeah, they kind of remind me of the cheap ass fireworks my Uncle Lionel used to set off every fourth of July. Every year he would get us kids all hype about the badass Roman candles he brought back with him from Louisiana. He would tell us, y’all kids don't need to go see no Boston Pops fireworks! I got some serious shit from my boy down on the bayou. Y’all better stand back now cause this going to be some serious shit. Then he would set a big bucket of sand in the middle of the street, stick one end of his big ass Roman candle in the sand, and light the fuse. And every year the whole family would watch as his cheap ass Louisiana bayou Roman candle would pop, whistle, and make a faint streak in the sky, just like that meteor just did, and then fizzle out, just like that meteor just did. I felt the same then as I do now, bored and unimpressed.”

  Moji wrinkled her nose at her friend. “You are such a Debbie Downer! Don't you ever let the wonder of God’s creation fill you with awe?”

  “Yeah, all the time. Like when I first saw Jamarco. I said to myself, mmmmm, God has outdone himself right there! Then I was filled with something, but I don't think it was awe.”

  Moji giggled. “Girl you cray-cray for real!”

  Their laughter filled the night air, mixing with the excited exultations of the other groups of onlookers sprinkled along the fairway as another barrage of meteoroids scribbled a path over their heads.

  “You know,” Moji said, her demeanor suddenly somber, “when I was a little girl, my father took me to visit my grandmother in Nigeria. She lived out in the countryside and at night it would be so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The sky would be so full of stars. I had never seen so many stars in all my life! I asked my father, where did all those stars come from? He said, “I will tell you a story that my mother used to tell me when I was a child. Long, long ago,” he said, “before there was artificial light, the sky was dark at night; no stars shown at all. People learned in time to make fires to light up the darkness. One night a girl, sat warming herself by the cooking fire, playing with the ashes. She took the ashes in her hands and threw them up to see how pretty they were when they floated in the air. And as they floated away she put green bushes on the fire and stirred it with a stick. Bright sparks flew out and went high into the sky, and mixing with the silver ashes, it all hung in the air and made a bright road across the sky. And the little girl called it the Star’s Road. When the little girl saw what she had made, she was so pleased that she began to clap her hands and dance. The little girl took some of the roots she had been eating and threw them into the sky, and there they hung and turned into large stars. The old roots turned into stars that gave a red light, and the young roots turned into stars that gave a golden light. There they all hung, winking and twinkling and singing.”

  “Moji honey,” Crystal said, “that was a really beautiful story. I miss your father. He was a wonderful man.”

  “Yes he was,” Moji said, her voice cracking, “I miss him too.”

  They watched as three more meteors silently blazed overhead, brightening and then winking out one after the other. They heard cheering and clapping in the distance.

  “Ok, that was more impressive than anything my Uncle Lionel ever did,” Crystal said.

  Moji smiled but her thoughts turned melancholy. “You know, my grandmother used to say that when a star falls from the sky it meant someone you love had died. She said a star knows when a person’s heart fails and when the person dies, it falls from the sky to tell their family that their loved one has gone to heaven.”

  Crystal swallowed the large lump in her throat and wrapped a comforting arm around Moji’s shoulders. She didn’t say anyt
hing. She knew she didn’t have to. They sat in silence as several more meteoroids streaked across the sky, each brighter than the last. Suddenly, a streak appeared that didn't fade. Instead, it grew so bright that lit up the park, chasing stark shadows across the freshly cut grass. Moji had to hold her hand up to her face to shade her eyes. A thick black cloud roiled behind the light, etching a wound in the sky that looked like an old scab on dark skin. After a few seconds the light faded, plunging the park back into near darkness.

  “Wow,” Moji said, “that was something!”

  Crystal jumped up from the bench. “Ok Moji, it’s definitely time to go.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. That was a little too much falling star if you ask me. Come on Tyson, let’s g–”

  Without warning, a blast tore through the manicured landscape of the park, its shock wave ripping trees and structures from their foundations with the force of a powerful, fast moving tornado. Tyson panicked and ran toward the fairway, instantly snapping taut the short leash connecting him to Moji, jerking her backward off her feet. She struck the pavement head first. Just before she lost consciousness, her brain recorded a glimpse of something it hadn’t seen since her childhood; the star’s road, the uncountable embers of God’s fire smiling down on her, stretched like a sequined blanket over a jet black sky.

  9

  The radio barked for his attention, an insidious, two-tone warble that grated on Jack’s nerves.

  “Skip, come back,” Rose said, “Come on Jack, answer the radio. I know you’re listening.”

  It was a little after ten pm and Jack “Skippy” Flanagan sat quietly on the driver’s side of Tex-Can Energy’s bucket truck number twenty-seven eating his “lunch”—a jalapeno cheese burger with triple meat—from his favorite restaurant in the whole world, Whataburger. Still chewing his third bite of the sandwich, he wiped the grease off his chin with the sleeve of his shirt and tapped the talk button on the radio.

  “Rose, I’m on my union-mandated lunch break. You know I don’t have to report for at least another thirty minutes.”

  “I know you don’t sweetie but we got trouble at Hermann Park and Cambridge and I wanted to catch you before you got out of the area.”

  “I’m not in that area,” Jack said, hoping the lie would buy him more time with his sandwich, “I’m halfway across town.”

  “Not according to my computer. You’re at Holcombe and Greenbriar. As a matter of fact, you’ve been there for some time, probably hiding out in the parking lot of the Whataburger.”

  Jack was a little miffed at being called out over the public channel where other people, especially management types, might be listening in. He hunched over the radio and barked into the microphone. “Like I said Rose, I’m eating my lunch, and I have the right to sit wherever I damn well please while I eat it.” He let go of the talk button. There was no response. “Rose, did you hear me?’ he said, “Dispatch, come back.” Again, no response. The soft hiss of radio silence barely filled the cherry picker’s cabin, but it made more than enough noise to piss Jack off. Jack stabbed the talk button again, ready to unleash a full shift’s worth of pent up frustration over the company airwaves—management be damned—when he felt the buzz of his cell phone on his backside. He shoved his hand into his back pocket and ripped the phone free. “Who the hell—Hello?”, he growled into the phone’s flat screen.

  “Calm down Jack,” the voice said, “it’s me Rose.”

  “Rose?” Jack said, confused, “How the hell did you get this number?”

  “Karen gave it to me after she bought you that phone for Christmas. Said to call you every once and awhile so you’d learn how to use it.”

  “My daughter’s a damn sneaky little brat.”

  “She really cares about you Jack, and she worries.”

  “Well, I don’t need anyone looking over my shoulder Rose. Karen’s my daughter not my mother so she should mind her damn business, and I damn sure don’t need dispatch preaching to me over the radio.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence on the other end of the call. Jack thought he heard Rose crying, but the sound faded too quickly for him to be sure.

  “I…I mean, I’m sorry Jack,” Rose said, straining to contain her emotions. ”I could tell you were getting upset. I just didn’t want you to get in anymore trouble, you know. I figured you forgot that the company had put in those GPS trackers in all the bucket trucks.”

  Damn, Jack thought. He had forgotten all about those stupid GPS trackers. And for the umpteenth time this year since his wife died and left him all alone, Jack had made a complete fool of himself. “I’m sorry Rose. I’m a damn fool.”

  “No you’re not. You’ve just been through a lot. I understand. When my Albert died, I didn’t think I could go on all by myself. I felt so alone, so empty. If it wasn’t for the support of my close friends and family, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

  “Thank you Rose. Thank you for trying to be a friend to a stupid old fool like me.”

  “Stop it, Jack. You’re a wonderful man who’s just going through a rough patch. Everybody understands that. Well, everybody that counts anyway. It’s not fair that they make a man with thirty years of seniority pull third shift troubles. You deserve better than that.”

  “Well, it’s not like I didn’t bring it on myself. I’m lucky to still have a job. Anyhow, third shift ain’t so bad. I get to spend a lot of time by myself, eat at my favorite establishments, and best of all, I get to listen to the sweetest sounding dispatcher in all of Harris county.”

  “Oh stop it!” Rose said.

  Jack could almost hear her smile through the phone. It made him feel good that his weak attempt at making amends was somewhat successful. He didn’t need to alienate one of the few friends he had left at Tex-Can. “Well, my lunch break is officially over. You’d better start talking to me over the radio or someone gonna think I’ve died out here.”

  “You got it Jack. I enjoyed our conversation. Let’s try to have more of them, ok?”

  “You’ve got a deal. Bye Rose.”

  “Bye Jack.”

  Jack disconnected the call. He felt a pang of guilt for succumbing to Rose’s attempt at a more intimate relationship. Though his wife Denise had been dead for over a year, Jack still hadn’t mustered up the courage to let her go. The radio crackled.

  “Truck two-seven come back. Over,” Rose said, her voice settling back into its official capacity as third shift dispatcher.

  “This is two-seven,” Jack said, trying to match Rose’s detached corporate tone.

  “Please confirm rollout to Hermann Park and Cambridge to investigate outage.”

  “Confirmed and rolling. ETA is 10 minutes.”

  “10-4 two-seven. Talk to you soon Skip.”

  “You got it, Rose.” Jack holstered the radio’s mic and cranked up bucket truck twenty-seven. The old engine coughed a couple of times in complaint then revved up to idling speed. Jack had enough seniority to warrant one of the new, fancier cherry pickers but he preferred the old models. Well, I may have to rethink that now that they’re sticking those damn GPS units in ‘em, he thought.

  He put the truck in gear and swung it carefully into stop-and-go traffic. Everybody’s rubbernecking, he thought, looking up at those stupid shooting stars instead of keeping their eyes on the road. Stupid rubberneckers.

  The weatherman said that the shooting stars—meteoroids he called them—were special, we won't see them this bright again for a hundred years, he said. There was a time he might have appreciated the specialness of the shooting stars. He reckoned that if Denise were alive he would have ventured out with her into the dark to gawk at the streaks of light in the sky. Yeah, because she would have wanted to see ‘em and she would have begged me to go with her because she wouldn’t want to go by herself, and I would have grumbled some stupid objection but reluctantly agreed to go with her because, I would tell her, I didn’t want her to be outside in the dark by herself. But in reality, even after twenty-f
ive years of marriage, I still enjoyed her company. I loved the smell of her hair, the way her hips swayed when she walked. I loved listening to her talk, even when she was nagging me about something stupid. I loved her...

  The road blurred and Jack had to slow down. “Damn it Denise, I miss you so much,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes.

  He pulled a napkin from his Whataburger bag and wiped his nose. “Shit. Come on Jack, get yourself together. Denise wouldn’t want to see you like this.” Nope, he thought, Denise was used to tough guy Jack. The well weathered exterior, foul-mouthed, take no prisoners Jack Flanagan. The Jack Flanagan that fought with every healthcare administrator in the medical center until his wife was under the care of the best oncologist in the country. The Jack Flanagan that hocked everything he owned to pay for his wife’s treatment when he found out that his company-provided health insurance—insurance that he faithfully paid the premium for over twenty years—wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. The same Jack Flanagan that, in the middle of his wife’s very solemn funeral reception, knocked the snot out of that good-for-nothing union president who negotiated away his healthcare benefits so he and his minions could drive fancy cars and wear expensive wing tipped shoes.

  “Yeah,” Jack said, “Denise loved her some old Jack Flanagan.” Denise took the old Jack with her to her grave, he thought. The new Jack is just a tired old lineman, exiled to the graveyard shift, waiting on retirement and a lousy pension. That is, if the union wing tips don’t spend it on a yacht or some other bullshit before I can collect.

  He eased the truck onto Cambridge Street, turning on the truck’s overhead strobes to compel other drivers to move out of his way. He could see the Hermann Park Drive intersection in the distance, all the traffic signals were blinking in unison and the street lights were dark for a quarter mile in all directions. Jack picked up the radio and fingered the talk button. “Dispatch, this is two-seven, come back.”