The Language of Stars

by Louise Hawes

  This was the Shepherd I was used to, the Shepherd who made me feel like a jerk. What were we doing here, anyway? Besides forcing two sleepy waitresses in grass skirts to leave their conversation every few minutes and ask us if we needed anything? When Shepherd ordered coffee, one of them carried it over while the other sat down in a corner and rubbed her feet. (Which would have cost her her job at Mamselle’s, for sure.)

  “So he had this farm,” I told him. “So what?”

  “He had this one particular horse, see.” Shepherd was careful now, trying to remember what Baylor had told him. He stared at the hula girl painted on the wall above our table. She was wearing a grass skirt like our waitresses, shaking a milk shake and her booty at the same time. “Actually, it was more like a pony,” my father corrected himself. “Some pretty little white-footed thing that was running with a herd of wild horses he penned.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Just that little pony horse presented certain problems that only a guy who knew what he was doing could work through.

  “You couldn’t be too gentle, otherwise she’d never learn.” He was actually looking at me now. “But on the other hand, you needed to go easy, let her have her head sometimes.”

  I shook my own head, and would have laughed out loud if I hadn’t been so surprised. “Oh, my God, I don’t believe it,” I told Shepherd. “Now I’m a metaphor?!”

  “You’re a what?”

  “I’m a horse! I’m a freaking horse!” Finally I did laugh. But Shepherd was dead serious.

  “Baylor says you got spirit, in a good way. He says you need someone smart enough to see how to bring it along.” His ice cream had started to melt, but he didn’t seem to notice. He leaned across the table and lowered his voice—another surprise, since I’d never heard him whisper to anyone but big tippers.

  “You know, I wasn’t always easy to handle when I was a kid. And coming down hard on me just made me fight back more.” He took his first bite, buying time. “My old man came down so hard, I left home when I was fifteen.” Another bite, a quick look at me. “Frankly? I think your mother can be a little too rough on you.” I checked his eyes, before I looked back at my straw. Shepherd was for real.

  “All this med-school stuff? It’s not about you, Sarah; it’s about her.”

  ME

  (Speechless)

  MY STRAW

  Tssthththssssss. TssthssssSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

  SHEPHERD’S SPOON AND DISH

  Crreeen. Currreeen. Citcitcit.

  SHEPHERD

  Did you know she was dating a doctor when she met me?

  ME

  (Still speechless)

  HULA GIRL ON THE WALL

  There’s an island across the sea, beautiful Kauai, beautiful Kauai. . . .

  SHEPHERD

  Yeah. Some big deal-cancer doc.

  HULA GIRL

  Where my true love is waiting for me, beautiful Kauai, beautiful Kauai . . .

  I felt cold all over, and it wasn’t just the smoothie. I already knew I’d ruined Mom’s life, but I didn’t know that life had included a romance, one that might have lasted more than a few months.

  “Or heart, something like that.” Shepherd made eye contact again. “She never told you?”

  No, she never told me.

  “She said he was no fun, said he didn’t know how to make her laugh.”

  “And you did?”

  “Hey, your mother and me? We had something going. We were good for each other, you know what I mean? We were okay until . . .”

  I knew what he meant: until Sarah the Surprise.

  “Mr. MD? He was the happy ending that got away. ‘I could have been a doctor’s wife.’ She must have said it a thousand times. ‘I could have had respect.’

  “Respect? What is it with your mother and respect? That and a nickel, right?”

  One of the waitresses, her skirt rustling, brought the check now, and the coffeepot. Shepherd grabbed the bill from her hand and waved the coffee away. “Anyway, between a high school dropout for an ex and a JD for a daughter, it doesn’t seem like respect is in the cards, does it?”

  I guess it was the sly smile he gave me. The way he lumped us together as fellow failures, out to rain on Mom’s parade. Suddenly I’d reached my Shepherd quota—for the day, for the week, for the foreseeable future. “Look,” I told him. “I’m really glad we had this talk and all. But there’s still another week of school, and I’ve got homework.”

  “So, Sarah.” Shepherd leaned across the table again, missing a hint no one else could have ignored. “Do you ever write poetry in school? Rufus says you have a real ear.”

  He let that compliment hang in the air for a while. A world-famous poet thought I had an ear?!

  “He also says he’s jealous of me.” The whisper was back: “Between you and me, Sarah? I think there’s such a thing as being too famous. Rufus is, like, Exhibit A. Here he is, a household name, and he’s jealous of a nobody like me.”

  “Rufus Baylor is jealous of you?!!”

  “That’s what the man said.” Shepherd shrugged. “The point is, this classy, world-famous guy tells me he’s made mistakes, lots of them.

  “I tell him he hasn’t exactly got a monopoly on screwing up, but he says the difference between him and me is I can still fix things.”

  I tried to remember what I knew about Baylor’s life, but it wasn’t much. I wished I’d been curious enough to research the real family that had once lived in “my” cottage. But I’d preferred the made-up one I’d put there, instead.

  “Listen, what I’m trying to say is, I only got one kid and it’s you. I can’t give you the stuff your mother wants me to, but I can give you stuff she can’t.”

  “Have you just found out you’ve got three months to live?” I was only half joking, but Shepherd ignored me.

  “Baylor—er, Rufus says you’re too smart to do what other people tell you. He says I’m the same way. And when we dig in our heels, we may have a real good reason, you know?”

  “What on earth are you talking about, Shepherd?” I looked straight at him now. And guess what? He was looking straight back.

  Mea Culpa

  I forgive the wind, I know why it rattles the gate.

  I love the lunging owl, the lance-eyed hawk,

  whose flights bring death and pain.

  In downward spirals, fits and starts,

  all of us fall because we’re alive

  and rise to stay that way.

  Distance grows the heart, not fonder, but too late.

  I’ve missed the hurt, the heft of your wounds,

  your blood is dried to crusts of shame.

  In comings and goings, ins and outs,

  each of us moves toward a home we miss

  but that we cannot name.

  A Manuscript Consultation

  “I gave you a present for your seventh birthday. A present you never got.”

  It was still true confessions time at Shake It Baby. And if I could believe him, Shepherd had actually tried to be a father to Sarah the Surprise. Trouble is, I wasn’t sure I could believe him. “If it came with a card,” I said, “I didn’t get that, either.” Not any card for any birthday. But who’s counting?

  Shepherd, apparently, wasn’t one for formalities. “I leave cards and stuff to your mother. Wrapping, too.” His face turned harder now, his jaw as stiff as if it were wired. “But Kate never even bothered to wrap the pajamas I bought. She said you were a girl, and cowboys were all wrong.”

  “Cowboys?” Had Shepherd walked into a store? Compared patterns? Chosen one for me?

  “But what’s new? Everything I do is wrong.” He rolled his napkin into a tight ball, pitched it onto the table. “Hey, that wasn’t the only gift that didn’t make the cut. I just don’t shop at the right stores, you know?”

  I knew about doing everything wrong. About giving up on trying to get it right. “Well,” I told Shepherd, standing, wrestling into my sweater, “it’s
the thought that counts. But like I said, I’ve got—”

  “Baylor says you helped him see one of his poems in a whole new way.”

  I sat back down. “I did?”

  “Yeah. Says he’s rewriting it.”

  More news. But this news sounded good. I looked down as soon as I felt myself smiling.

  “Point is, if you decide you want to study something besides medicine? I’ve got your back.”

  “Did Rufus Baylor tell you to say this?”

  “No, this is my idea. If somebody’s good at something, they should do it, you know?

  “Look at Manny. As much as he drinks and as many times as he’s fucked up, I should have fired the guy years ago.”

  It was true. Since I’d been working at Mamselle’s, I’d seen Chef Manny start grease fires, screw up orders, and not show up for work. In the Kingdom of Shepherd, anyone else who slipped up the way Manny did would have been long gone. “Why don’t you can him?” I asked.

  “Because,” Shepherd told the wall, “he’s good.” He studied the bare feet of the painted hula girl. “In fact, when he’s sober, Manny is the best.”

  I didn’t know Shepherd looked up to anyone. I didn’t know he cared about anything. I didn’t know I had a choice about med school. Apparently, there was a lot I didn’t know.

  “Look, Sarah”—he turned back to me now—“sometimes I got a mouth on me.”

  Did he expect me to disagree with him?

  “But I got a brain, too. If you have a chance to be the best at something—anything—you should grab it. I can help.”

  I didn’t ask how. I didn’t say “Thanks.” Or, “No, thanks.” Or, “What planet is this?” I just let Shepherd leave the waitress a too-big tip, pay the check, and drive me home. He didn’t come into the house; some things hadn’t changed. So when Mom asked me what had taken so long, I wasn’t sure what to say. Finally, I settled for the truth. “We were talking,” I told her.

  “Who was talking?” she asked.

  “Me and Shepherd,” I said. I didn’t blame her for the look on her face. I wouldn’t have believed it, either.

  * * * *

  Before I fell asleep, I must have replayed that scene at Shake It Baby a dozen times. All weekend, I thought about Shepherd wanting to give me cowboy pajamas, about Shepherd as a kid who ran away from home and tried to make it without an education. And I thought about the mistakes he said he and Rufus Baylor had made. Especially about those mistakes. Somewhere, in the middle of all that thinking, I stumbled on a brand-new question: Could fathers grow up?

  I had questions about the Great One, too. I Googled “Rufus H. Baylor,” and my laptop practically exploded. He’d done everything, been everywhere. But when I Googled “Rufus H. Baylor” and “mistakes,” I didn’t find any articles at all. First thing Monday, I took two books out from the school library and put a hold on a third. Unfortunately, someone had already checked out the one I really wanted, a biography of our new teacher, four-time Pulitzer winner and former Poet Laureate. But now that his visit had made the papers, I wasn’t the only one in school interested in our poet. Still, Whale Point’s never-say-die librarian, Ms. Sawyer, hated to let a possible book junkie leave empty handed, so she found me copies of Poems for Sale, Baylor’s first published work, and The Wait-a-Minute Bush, his last volume of poems.

  I didn’t have much time after school, but before I went to sleep that night, I opened Poems for Sale. I lay in bed and pretended Baylor was reading to me out loud. I heard every poem I read in that deep, slow drawl of his, and all the words made a sort of music that, instead of putting me to sleep, kept me awake, trying to figure out how he did it. How could he talk and sing at the same time? How could he start out saying one thing and leave me thinking another? Why did it feel like he was right inside my head when he looked at the world? Why did I feel smarter, bigger, better, after every poem?

  * * * *

  Women in Medicine was finally over, I didn’t have to sit through those boring videos after school, and Tuesday was my first trip to the beach with Fry and H. It was also the first chance I’d had to watch Fry surf, except for my pre-princess days, when I’d followed his exploits from a distance. Even the Untouchables were grudging fans. I remembered Eli, the Pack’s resident skeptic, pausing construction on a Victorian sand castle the summer before. He’d raised his ever-present binoculars and studied the handsome boy who was riding waves no one else even tried. “You have to admit,” he’d told the rest of us, “that kid knows what he’s doing out there. It’s like he’s got water for brains.”

  But today the water lay as smooth and shiny as a snakeskin . . . and just as flat. “How come I caught a million monsters yesterday, and now?” Fry looked at the ocean as if it had calmed on purpose just to spite him. “Nothing but ankle busters.” After H and I had watched him float his board on the water, waiting not very patiently for anything that resembled a wave, we all settled for moving back up the beach, spreading our towels out by the cooler, and listening to our budding poet’s new ode to Miss Kinney. H told me he was anxious to get a response from someone who hadn’t been present at his poem’s creation.

  “I want a totally objective opinion.” He unfolded the piece of paper he’d put in a plastic baggie, presumably because it was too precious to get sand on. He lifted his sunglasses to look me in the eyes. “This has to be perfect before I take it to Julie. I need you to be honest.”

  Oh. Oh. I’d just spent the night before poring over Rufus Baylor’s book, so I knew what good poetry was. Now, as I listened to H, sighing after every adjective, shaking the paper for emphasis, I also knew what it wasn’t.

  When he’d finished, I answered slowly, taking my time. “Don’t you think that fourth line is a little bit long?” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, not in front of Fry, anyway. Not here, tucked into the sandy underbelly of a giant dune. Not with one thigh pressed against Fry’s sun-warmed leg and the lazy shimmer of summer all around us.

  “My man and Margaret think it’s great.” H, already defensive, looked at Fry. “Right?” He folded the paper up again and stowed it carefully inside his backpack, then wedged the pack behind the ancient cooler that held melting ice, leftover chips, half a container of pineapple salsa, and naturally, beer. I’d bought the salsa and chips (as well as ginger ale for me, the only reformed drinker in our trio), and the guys had managed the beer. It was a pale lager, not Fry’s favorite, but underage beggars can’t be choosers.

  “That poem has heart,” Fry assured me. “It’s sexy without being rude.” He looked proud enough that I was suddenly afraid he’d had more than a little to do with creating this monster. “It kind of sneaks up on what the poet’s thinking, you know? It’s got a beat you can dance to.” He studied the foam in the paper cup that camouflaged his beer. “Plus it rhymes,” he added, as if this were the clincher.

  I remembered Fry’s face the night he’d listened to me read the role I never played. The way he’d studied my mouth without listening to the words I said. We’d hit the Great Divide again, the place Fry and I always ended up. My prince saw things one way, and except for a few basics (pizza, hugs, and sleeping late), I usually saw them another. The Great Divide made talking hard, kissing easy.

  “Can you let me see it again, H?” I offered. “Maybe listening to it went too fast.” I sat up and watched him sigh, retrieve the pack, unfold the poem, and hand it to me.

  I felt two pairs of eyes burning hopeful holes in me while I studied the page. I was sure that if I read the lines over, I’d find something special, something I could honestly say I liked in at least one of them. But the poem was actually worse the second time around. If those lines had been part of a script, no one could have said them with a straight face.

  Desperate, I read the poem one last time, the silence heavy as the heat. I wished we were back in that surf, even though it was nothing but a placid skim of white lace. I wished H had decided to win Miss Kinney with flowers or a kitten or good grades. I wished he and
Fry would stop staring and start breathing.

  I looked up from the page now, determined to lie. I scanned the horizon, following the shoreline. I waited for inspiration, but none came.

  BEACH

  (Quiet in a waiting way)

  OCEAN

  Shloooom, shhhh, shloooom, shhhh, shlooom.

  Why did it matter, anyway? What were these phony Valentine words next to what Rufus Baylor had told us about the fire? No wonder we couldn’t write the kind of poetry he did. Which of us had hearts big enough to forgive the things he’d forgiven?

  GULLS

  KREEE! KREEE! KREEEEEEEE! KREE!

  ME

  (Quiet in a stalling way)

  MY PRINCE

  HOLY SHIT!

  Saved by whatever had made Fry leap up from our towel and start digging through the cooler, I jumped up, too. “What’s wrong?” I asked, not really caring, just glad I could stop thinking about poetry, good or bad.

  “Beach patrol!” Fry grabbed our paper cups and, forgetting I wasn’t drinking beer, emptied all three of them onto the sand under our blanket. Then he pulled three soda cans from the cooler and passed one to H and one to me. “Don’t look back,” he growled when the two of us turned to check the stretch of beach behind us.

  I handed the piece of paper with the poem to H, who stashed it quickly as if poetry, like beer, might be something the beach patrol was on the lookout for. By the time the orange dune buggy with the leaping swordfish on its side had reached us, we were model, if nervous, beach bums. H high-fived the driver, who was a friend of Span’s, and I small-talked with the girl beside him, who had been president of the drama club when I was a freshman. (She’d gone to acting school in New York, and came back every summer to do open-air theater.)

  It turned out the two lifeguards had just a few minutes before they went off duty, and were simply killing time with us. Weekdays were slow, they told us, especially when the water was this calm. Today’s excitement had consisted of one sick kid and a souvenir hunter who’d tried to rip off a NO SWIMMING PAST JETTIES sign. They were definitely not looking for drama at 5 p.m. Thank goodness.