Stars Go Blue

by Laura Pritchett

  She is so sorry. Sorry for her coldness, sorry for the way it has settled in her cells. Sorry to lose Ben. Sorry to lose herself.

  BEN

  He watches the snow change colors as the sky begins to lighten. Watches a branch of the cottonwood tree outside the window break from the weight, crack, and come down. Across the street there is a beautiful brick building, the old depot, and a huge metal grain silo. Oh, all the history and stories they contain.

  He goes back into the bathroom, and he stares at himself in the mirror. He wants to see himself one last time. Blue eyes and curve of the nose and line of the jawbone that has been his for seven decades. There is Ben Cross. In all his versions. Boy and young man and man and middle-aged man and older man. There is his soul and his body and his mind and all that is him. Staring back at him.

  From the bathroom, he hears the ding of a door. Inside his own brain, he hears the roar of water, a dam breaking. It’s true he’s sweating. It’s true he’s scared. He’s been this way before, breaking a horse or facing down a bull. He knows he can weather it.

  Rachel, dark hair, pajamas, clinging to his back, hugging him tight around the neck. Despair, then. Daughter in her coffin, the impossibility of that little girl now laid out, dark long hair still at her side.

  Renny, holding the baby and another baby and Renny’s eyes were sparkling, then, sparkling with water. And the life ran with water, greened the fields and his heart. The water trickled into the cells of his daughters and they grew and he would walk the fields with them, irrigating or checking cows, and it was spring, always spring, always the best time for water, always water.

  He looks around, confused. This bathroom. This is not his bathroom. It is not a bathroom he remembers.

  Then he hears the voices outside again. He hears a particular voice outside the bathroom. It is a friendly, easygoing voice that says, Hey, man, and it is the voice that has been speaking to him in letters and then in his own head. It is a voice that has been arguing with him, pleading his case, making excuses, whining.

  He remembers. Now that he has heard the voice. The remembering room in his brain has sparked alive.

  Two syringes are filled, in the pocket of his Carhartt jacket. He had his gun, but now he does not. He must get the syringe right. He must be careful and fast, all at one time. It will be the greatest act of his life.

  His hands are sweaty—he’s so hot! He wants to take off this jacket—the bathroom heater is going full blast—but he must keep it on—he must accomplish this. Still, he keeps his hands in his pockets, fingers of each hand curled around a syringe that is now filled to capacity. He needs to take his hand out of his pocket to open the bathroom door. And yet he can’t. He stands there, in the bathroom, and waits.

  Go slow. Take it easy. Make sure you know what you’re doing, see.

  He was always saying that to his girls. When they learned to ride horses, give cattle shots, stick their hands in a cow’s rear end to pregnancy-check.

  Go slow. Take it easy. Make sure you know what you’re doing, see.

  His chest hurts, his arm hurts. There’s a heavy pressure in his chest. Something is wrong with him, he knows it. But he can still take it easy, be careful. And that is how he removes his hand from his pocket, opens the bathroom door, and walks out to face the man who is turning, thirty degrees, forty-five degrees, ninety degrees to face him. Like a math problem.

  Ray. Ray who looks the same, nearly, with dark hair and dark eyes and a face reddened by life and sun and broken blood vessels, Ray who stands there, clearly nervous and watchful, Ray who stands there like a man struggling to find the bravery to face the consequences of what he has wrought. Ray who is succeeding—just barely—in that bravery, and Ben, for a moment, hesitates, because he knows how hard it is to be brave. The woman who has been selling someone a ticket has grown quiet and the world is quiet and the snowstorm outside is quiet. But quiet is not exactly what he needs now. He needs the rage of before, the constant battle in his mind, the arguing and pleading with Ray that lives as part of his brain now. And indeed, in the distance, he can hear it. Out, Ray. You coward, Ray. You fake. You bastard. Don’t give me excuses. Don’t give me reasons. Give me my daughter back. Give me my time back on earth, the time that was beautiful and full. The time before you.

  “Ben. Ben Cross.” Ray pulls himself up tall like a brave man, but a bead of sweat meanders down the side of his face, a tremor visible in his jaw. “It’s good . . . it’s more than good . . . for you to come. Although you picked a hellofa night.” He clears his throat and Ben studies him. To know the measure of a man. Such a fine, small distinction. That is what Renny used to tell him. That she’d fallen in love with him because he could mark the measure of a man. Ben has always believed that you do this by noting what’s in a man’s eyes the instant you look at them, before the real self has time to put up a mask and conceal and act out whatever particular story. For a moment, if you glance into the eye of a human before they have the chance to do this, you can see what’s real.

  What he sees: A charm, but not a core.

  What he sees: An actor and a bully.

  What he sees: Jess and Billy and the rest of his family, with this man always on the periphery. Always pushing in.

  What he sees: He’s never killed a man, but if he does, he will have birthed peace.

  What he sees: That perhaps this is a sin, perhaps it is wrong.

  What he sees: He needs to decide one way or another and hold true to that decision.

  He looks once again at Ray’s eyes, and he sees fear and he sees a flinch, a flinch that means that Ray has judged his own self as less than he could be. Ray is disappointed in himself. Ray sees at least a little bit of what Ben does.

  Ben walks up to Ray, as if to hug him, and he does hug him, and Ray holds him and says, “Ben. Oh, Ben . . .”

  As Ben backs away from the hug he asks himself, You sure? Be sure, and his mind says, Yes, sure, and he takes the syringe from his right pocket. He holds it in his right hand and looks to thrust it into Ray’s chest but there is a leather jacket there, unzippered, but still covering the heart. He knows he’ll break the needle. He knows this. His hands do it of their own. They reach out, move the jacket to the side, run down Ray’s breastbone, move to the left, palpate the ribs—right as Ray is wondering what Ben is doing, touching his heart, and then perhaps comprehending and moving backward—yes, there!—right below the lower right rib, pointing up, he will get the liver.

  The poison will slowly spread in this way, throughout Ray’s body like water. Through the valleys and watersheds of the body. Through the channels and irrigation ditches. Through the meandering tissue and juicy flesh.

  Ben’s palm finds the plunger and he is strong enough to stay with Ray, who is bucking around, this is like riding a horse, and with one hand he holds the syringe and with the other palm he depresses the plunger, slowly, slowly—it requires all his strength, his hands hurt and his forearms ache—and the thick liquid disappears into Ray’s body. But then Ray is thrashing, pushing Ben’s arm away. Ben remembers the gun. This is why he wanted the gun, to have the room to make a mistake, to put down an animal that was suffering.

  And what is this? A person standing near him. Like an angel. He hears her say, “It’s the right thing you’re doing, Ben. I can’t help you, but you don’t need help. You can do it.” And Ben guides the needle back a little, repositions, and pushes the plunger the rest of the way.

  Ray starts up a scream. Like a dying horse. Like a dying man. Like fear. Like a human being, every human being, left on a beautiful planet with no god and no hope.

  Courage is fear that has said its prayers. Please forgive me if I’ve done wrong. He doesn’t know if he thinks this or if he hears it, but it helps him continue. Perhaps it takes only a fraction of a second, but time slows and he sees each slow decrease in the ccs, fraction by fraction, as if it were an entire lifetime.

  Then the needle bends, and then it snaps.

  “What the�
��what the—oh, Jesus, that stings! What was that?” Ray is making a silent-noise now, like the horse when he finally shot it, at the moment the bullet took hold. Like Renny in one of their fights. Like Rachel’s silence in the seconds before she died. Like his heart.

  The thing is, Ben thinks, is that Ray’s existence on the planet was always going to haunt. Always going to hurt. Some gut instinct that he trusts. Ray has never really been sorry. Always selfish in this fundamental way. He will take more then he will ever give.

  Ben turns to see the girl. He can see now that the angel looks like his granddaughter, only she looks different. Different hair. Different color. Is it Jess?

  “Shhh,” she tells him. “I just wanted to be with you. I didn’t want you to be alone.”

  He cries out. A bellow of thanks and of pain, to the universe and at Ray and at the people who hurt children and the people who hurt land and the very fact of his disease and the very fact he is dying. The screaming of Ray and the howl of Ben roar like water and ricochet around the small room like a beast, and now the woman is sobbing too and the sirens are far away.

  Had he gotten the heart, it would have killed Ray fast. But now it will take a bit and Ray will be mobile for a moment and Ben knows he needs to run. Ray is coming at him now, his face angry and red, the same face—the same face!—that he saw running in his house right after his daughter!—and the face that once said goddamn bitch can’t leave me, and the face that Ben does not want haunting his family.

  Ben stares at his legs because he needs them to move. They are the legs of an old man, which surprises him. How did that happen? Gray pants over bone and thin skin. How did they dry out so much? But the muscles flex and the bones move and he is running. Out the front door, which jingles behind him, right out into the blinding snow. His heart gallops. The cold is astonishing. Two for two. Two for two. He must be outside, he must. As he gallops along—his legs gallop with his heart—he turns to the right, toward the old depot, and takes out the second syringe from the left pocket and takes the cap from the tip and throws it to the ground.

  Now he must move fast. Through the snow, which sends him tumbling down. He’s never seen the likes of a winter like this. He rises up, stumbles, falls, rises again. Ahead is the depot and the silo and a cottonwood. The cottonwood is hibernating like a bear now but soon enough full of sap and greenery and he stands below it, turns to see the police cars pulling up, screaming sirens, turns to see Ray staggering through the snow after him, and his very movement will speed up the spread of poison, this Ben knows.

  Ben turns away from them all, and the snow is falling beautifully now, in large warm flakes and the sun is breaking through the clouds. There is the smallest little area of blue sky above the depot, above the silo, above the tree. It is there that he will ascend.

  He wonders how his life looks to the stars. He wonders if the universe has remembered the planet and her people. He wonders if, even, the earth is the remembering room of all that is.

  He would have liked to die on the ranch. But he can imagine it, conjure it into being, and he does now. There is the line of willows, bright red and orange against the snow, becoming redder as the weather warms, nearly so bright as to hurt his eyes. There is the bald eagle flying over. And there is the snow melting and the first greening of the grass, and the small crocuses by the house turning out their first curl of green, and then the first bloom of color. There is the sky and the mountains and the green pasture and the spread of his beautiful ranch. There are the first rainfalls of spring and the huge thunderstorms of summer. The aspens will first have their catkins, then they will unfurl their first small heart-shaped leaves.

  He wishes he had written a note to the others, for it seems like something he would have wanted to do. The note he wrote himself, that was a gift he must now have the courage to accept.

  He stays facing this direction so he can see snow and blue sky, and he shrugs off his jacket, all the while looking up. One last time, he looks around. He sees the girl in the distance, standing like an alert deer, watching him. He takes the syringe from his pocket, holds it with one hand and palpates his ribs with the other, and stares at it for a moment, at the beautiful liquid, the water that promises peace.

  RENNY

  And so finally at this last moment, Ben has deeply communicated with her. She feels her mind becoming what his was. Slow. Frozen. He has come to her after all, shown her what it was like to be him, stuck with a mind that is failing. Communicated at last. It is much scarier than she thought it would be, and oh, how he has handled this with courage, handled the rising, choking fear with a calm bravery.

  As she hangs on the truck’s door, she imagines voices. Imagines colors. Imagines lights. She tries to pull herself up and over the side of the truck, but she simply cannot. She falls. Feels her body convulse. The wind. It’s screaming and whistling like a creature that is alive, like a siren. Her body convulses again, and then again.

  She stands—or thinks she does—and puts her arms on the truck window and tries to pull herself up, again, but it can’t be done. It can’t be done. She can either sit in the snow or lean against the truck, and so she tries to do this, to prop herself upright. She is struggling against something. The wind that feels like arms, pushing her this way and that. She should have found a way to protect them all—Ben and Carolyn and the grandchildren and herself—a little better.

  If she can keep her mind active, going over the same litany of things she used to ask Ben, perhaps she will stay alive. She closes her eyes and thinks of each person in the family. How Carolyn will take care of Ben, and how, when things get bad enough, Carolyn will have the toughness and the sense to move him to an assisted living place.

  She thinks of Jack. Wonders if he’ll become a lawyer. Pictures him roping a steer, which he was good at, but never did enjoy. She knew early on that he’d become a city kid, which was fine by her. Although, she realizes now, she never quite told him that.

  She wonders if Leanne will stay single for a long time. Leanne has career in mind, and less mothering instinct than any of them. Good. She’ll do something else with her life, and be very sturdy and bossy about it.

  She wonders about Billy and what sort of man he will turn out to be, and hopes he doesn’t become an oil-rig worker and get hooked on meth. But perhaps he will find someone to love and will live an honest and decent life, working the land. She can easily imagine him gathering eggs from chickens.

  She wonders about Jess, and wonders if Jess and Ben share some particular genetic code. They are so much alike, see the world with so much quiet stillness, like an evening sky, and she has never understood it. Perhaps she has unfairly disliked them for it, because it is hard to appreciate things you do not understand. Perhaps the fault was only hers all along.

  The dog is whining, then barking. Or at least she dreams it. She’s so blissful and tired. Good dog. The rising sun gives a weak slant of light through the clouds, and she stares up at the gray sky, one small patch of morning-lit blue.

  There are many things she should have done. Told someone where she was going. Told Carolyn and Leanne and Jess and Jack and Billy good-bye. Put the ranch in a conservation easement. Donated some money to the Alzheimer’s Association or some group that helps people die. Put a new cover on her book, one that read THE DAMN INTERESTING STORY OF RENNY AND BEN.

  One story in particular she should have put down. It comes to her now, like a dream, only not. It’s more like reality curved in on itself. It’s happening to her again. The spring after Rachel died, after Ben had moved out back. A cow was having trouble giving birth, she’d called for him and the vet, and when Ben came and put his hand inside the mother and pulled on the tail of the calf inside, there was no movement. Dead inside the mother. They’d need to do a fetotomy. And while they waited for the vet, Renny and Ben stood in the mucky corral, spattered in blood, and Ben had pointed out the bald eagle that had been hanging out above the river. She wanted to tell him, then, that she let the dogs slee
p with her on the bed, so that there was some weight and warmth beside her. She wanted to ask him if he did the same, and if he responded with a yes, she wanted to make a joke about how the dogs’ situation, at least, had improved since their separation. But when she turned to say something, she saw that he was staring in the direction of the river at the blue sky with some thought that has stilled him, and he was blanketed in light snow, a dusting of white settled on his hair and jacket, and she did not speak. When the vet arrived with his black vinyl bag, and took out the long wire strung between two metal handles, she tried not to watch. But she couldn’t help it. How he looped the wire in a circle in his palm, closed his fingers over it, and pushed his fist into the cow. How he rubbed the cow’s hind legs with his left hand as he worked inside her with his right, and hummed a long conversation to her. You’ll feel better soon, mama mama mama sweet mama girl, bet you’re hurting but it’s almost over, sweet old mama. How she took those words to be personally directed at her. How she knew he was looping the wire behind the hind quarter and was going to saw the calf apart inside the mother, so as to help her live. There is Ben and the vet and they alternated pulling, the whir of the wire, and Renny stood at the head of the cow, consoling her. The cow, she could tell, was straining once more with this feeling of something moving inside her, and her ears flicked backward at this new sound coming from her rear end.

  Ben talked about the calf they would graft on. And she knew, from his face, that he felt sick. In all their years of ranching, they’d had to do this only twice before, and they found it unacceptable. And she saw his face pale even more when the tension of the line met the bone of the unborn calf’s leg, and again when the vet reached inside the cow and pulled out the calf’s hind quarter, severed from the groin, and even more when it slushed out in a waterfall of blood at Ben’s feet.

  The cow tried to turn, then, but the halter kept her head in place, and Renny was there anyway, scratching her ears and blocking her view. She kept her eyes on Ben, then, so she didn’t have to see the chunk of calf. At first, Ben’s face was so familiar that she couldn’t really see Ben. Who was this man? This human being? She had to concentrate. Note that his hair was now nearly white. That he’d cut himself shaving just below the jawline. How his eyes looked soft and calm, despite the fact that he hated what he was doing. Her knowledge of him was so limited, so incomplete. So she turned to the cow, instead. “Just get through this, Mama,” she’d said into the cow’s ear as she scratched it. “I know just how you feel. Carolyn was easy. But that Rachel. I thought she was ripping me apart. The plight of mothers, I tell you.”