Light from Distant Stars

by Shawn Smucker

  He realized he had barely been breathing, and his hands trembled as he moved to put the flashlight away, laid down the bat. He sat with his back against the wall, and the cold night air rushed in over the windowsill behind him and poured down his back. He heard the loud sound of a siren outside the funeral home, and the shouts of neighbors. His father, now moving noisily through the house, stumbled out the door, going to see what was happening.

  twenty

  The Boy

  “What are you thinking, Cohen?” Kaye’s voice comes to him from another sky, some far-off horizon, drifting through the morning light that filters into the room. “Did you hear me?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, pulling his gaze away from his father’s bald head. He notices his father’s hair is coming in around the edges, a white-gray stubble returning now that he hasn’t shaved in a day or two. “I was somewhere else.”

  “What are you thinking about? You haven’t been saying anything. Where did you go last night?”

  “Out,” Cohen says, shrugging. “I needed some fresh air.” He looks into his sister’s imploring eyes. Her being has always oozed with kindness ever since he was young. She was the doting older sister, rarely antagonizing, almost always encouraging.

  He looks at her round stomach and smiles, trying to change the subject. “How are those two holding up?”

  She grimaces. “Heavy. Uncomfortable. I’m so ready to have them out here, where I can hand them off to you or Brent or . . .” He can tell she almost finished her sentence with “or Dad.” She lifts her hand to cover her mouth, composes herself.

  “What is your doctor saying?”

  “About the date? They want to take them three or four weeks early. That’s only two weeks from now.”

  “I didn’t realize it was so soon,” Cohen says.

  She shrugs. “Or the week after that. They’re recommending a C-section, and they don’t want to wait until I go into labor, so at my next appointment we’re going to pick a date.”

  “Will Brent be back in time?” Cohen realizes that in the chaos he hasn’t even asked about Kaye’s husband, how his travels are going, or if he can come back earlier.

  “He’ll be back. As long as these two can hang on for another ten days. These overseas trips have me tied up in knots.”

  “I’m here too, you know. If you need me.”

  “I know you are.” She sits back in the chair, her legs spread as if she might give birth at any moment. She rubs her round stomach with both hands, partially closes her eyes, and groans with the heaviness of it all. He stares at her and the ripeness of her body. The impending birth feels weighty and overwhelming. He would panic if he were her. If he had two humans growing inside of him, nearly ready to fight their way out, he would wilt in the face of what had to be done.

  With her eyes still half closed, she asks Cohen, “Where were you? Last night.”

  He pauses. “I went over to see Father James.”

  “Really?” She seems happy to hear it.

  “Yeah, I needed to talk.”

  “I’m glad you’re still going to church. I’m glad you’re talking to someone.” She opens her eyes, raising her eyebrows, a playful accusation.

  “I talk to you!” he protests.

  “No, you don’t, Cohen. You don’t talk to me.”

  They both turn and look at their father again. Their gazes return to him over and over again, like children running to a window to watch an approaching storm.

  “Do you remember when he used to play monster with us?” Kaye smiles. “When he hid under that brown blanket and stayed completely still until we climbed on top of him?”

  Cohen does remember. It’s a memory from too far away. It resides in a catalog of memories of his father he has not perused in a long time, from before the blank half decade.

  “He terrified me when he did that,” he says. “He’d hold me down until I screamed. It was awful, actually. I felt trapped, like I couldn’t breathe.”

  “Do you remember how hard he would laugh?” Kaye asks, shaking her head as if it’s hard to believe. “He would come out from under that blanket, face all red, breathing heavy, sweating, laughing until he cried.”

  Cohen nods. It’s true. He has completely forgotten so many things.

  “You bring up something like that,” he says quietly, “and I don’t know what to think of Dad.”

  Kaye nods but doesn’t speak.

  “I really don’t.” He looks at her as if she has the answer. “I don’t feel like he and I have had a conversation, a real conversation, since before Mom left.”

  “You say ‘since before Mom left’ like it was her fault.”

  Cohen shrugs. “And even before that, if we did talk, it was about how to catch a ball or how to run faster or how to turn first base. How to check the runner. How to hit the cutoff man. How to properly put a worm on a hook. It was always about something that had nothing to do with us.”

  He stares at Kaye again. He wonders if she knows what he’s talking about, if she can help him make sense of it all. He feels like he might cry, and the emotion frustrates him.

  “He always loved you,” Kaye says. “I could see it. I was jealous of it.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Sure,” she says, but there’s no bitterness in her admission. Only a blooming regret. “The way you two threw that ball back and forth for hours? The way you’d watch baseball games and endlessly debate things I knew nothing about?”

  She pauses as if trying to decide if she has gone too far, said too much.

  “He loved both of us. Loves both of us. I know that. But his love for you was so deep.” She raises her hand to her mouth again, and when she speaks again, it’s in a whisper. “Why do you think I went to live with Mother? Why do you think I signed Johnny up for baseball as soon as I could?”

  Cohen sighs and runs his hand through his graying hair. “I’m sorry, Kaye.”

  “Why do you think I’m having these babies?” She cries quietly.

  Cohen stands, puts his hand on her shoulder, leans down and wraps his arm around her, and lets her drain her tears on him. But for some reason, for some inexplicable reason, he moves on quickly to the hospital room window and stares out into the morning.

  He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Kaye,” he says again, quietly.

  The two of them are there together for what seems like a long time, the equipment beeping, flurries falling outside again, drifting through the air, lost, finding their way. There is a heaviness in the room that comes with confession. There’s a crack in the relationship they once had, and light shines into new places.

  Kaye clears her throat. “Have you talked to anyone at the funeral home?” she asks him.

  “I talked to Beth. She’s got it under control. We had to transfer a lot of our work to the church while the police look around the basement. What they let us move, anyway.”

  “Will we be okay?”

  “To be honest, it’s kind of a relief. You need a break from the place—you’ve been putting in way too many hours. Beth and Marcus are doing what they can. I’ve got the pastor taking over the funerals on our schedule—only one this week, thank God. We’re limping along, but we have some reserves. We’ll be okay for a few weeks, until . . .” He’s not sure how to finish. Until we get through this? Until Dad dies?

  Their conversation is cut short by a commotion in the hall, the sound of an IV rack falling over. Shouts. Expletives.

  Cohen leaves Kaye and his father and goes to the door. He sticks his head into the hallway and sees a boy flopping out of the neighboring hospital room, arms and legs flailing as if he was pushed out. The boy looks like he’s in high school. He wears a green John Deere baseball cap, a green T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, jeans held up by a large-buckled belt, and work boots that add weight to his movement. His face is pimply, and there’s a haze of fuzzy brown hair on his top lip with matching patches of it on his cheeks. He carries a look that is equal parts surprise, anger, and
disgust, and a sadness he can’t quite hide.

  Coming out after him is a man who could be Cohen’s age, maybe a little older, dressed like the boy but wearing a heavy coat. He has a mustache that starts above his upper lip then eases all the way down along the sides of his mouth, ending sharply at his jawline. His teeth are a pearl gray, his eyes bloodshot from exhaustion. He grabs one of the boy’s tight biceps in his huge paw, but just when Cohen expects him to erupt in angry shouts, the man says nothing. His grip squeezes tighter, a boa constrictor. His anger continues to grow. But he says nothing.

  The two stand there, a statue that could easily be titled Father and Son. The young one’s face begins to turn to ash, his mouth goes into an even harder line, and though the boy hides most of it, Cohen can see it, can recognize it gathering: pain. The father’s grip tightens even more, his fingers going white. The boy begins to wilt under the clamp on his arm, turning from defiant teenager to compliant little boy. Cohen expects the boy to collapse to his knees or cry out, but the man releases him, takes two short steps backwards, still staring at the boy. He spins back into the room.

  The boy reaches up quickly and rubs the spot on his arm, the spot that is now alive with the disturbed red branding of his father’s hand. He closes his eyes and turns his neck. It cracks loudly. He continues rubbing his arm until he sees Cohen staring at him. His hand stops. His mouth, which had begun to soften, finds its plumb line again.

  The boy stares at him. “What are you looking at?” he asks, and Cohen thinks he sounds relieved to have discovered someone who might be lower on the food chain.

  Cohen shrugs. He doesn’t know what to say. But the kid keeps staring at him.

  “That your old man?” Cohen asks. He doesn’t know why those are the words that come to him. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to do—avoid getting beat up in the hospital? Help a kid deal with an abusive father? Pass the time?

  The boy glares at him for a moment. He takes a deep breath and shrugs, an almost violent movement, like a lion shaking its mane. “Yeah. So?”

  “Who are you visiting?”

  “Why do you care?” the boy blurts, but one thing he still seems to have is a conscience, and Cohen can tell he feels a little guilty for his sharp response. The boy moves nervously.

  “Just curious,” Cohen says calmly.

  “My grandpa,” the boy says, his voice shifting a few degrees into a normal, conversational tone. He starts rubbing his arm again, slowly, automatically. Cohen glances at the fiery red lines the father’s fingers left. “He had a heart attack a few days ago. The doctors screwed up. Someone gave him the wrong medication. Now he’s probably gonna die.”

  Cohen’s eyes widen. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah,” the boy says. He starts to say something else but decides against it, saying only the same word again. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cohen says quietly.

  “Not your fault,” the boy says, staring first at the floor, then down the hall, then at the door to his grandfather’s room as it opens.

  People emerge from the room, walking in single file. First, the boy’s father, still at the edge of erupting, his face red, his hat pulled down low. He is like a bull worked up to the point of charging: one more provocation, no matter how small, will be enough to send him on a violent spree. After him, a woman. Cohen guesses she’s the boy’s mother—he gets his fine facial features from her. She has a delicate nose, downcast eyes with thin eyebrows, wispy brown hair. Her mouth is sad and the only truly beautiful thing about her face. To Cohen, something about her resembles a walking apology, the kind of woman who believes everything is her fault, that she deserves every chastisement she has ever received—and there have been many. She glances at Cohen, but when their eyes meet, she looks away.

  Behind them, a white-cloaked doctor. He looks worried, frustrated. Cohen wonders if what the boy said was true, if it’s this doctor’s fault that the grandfather is dying. The door swings closed behind them. The clicking sound of the latch is that one last thing, that one final provocation, and the boy’s father turns in a red rage.

  Cohen thinks he’ll have to be the one to pull this man off the doctor. But he’s not a physical person—he has never been in a fistfight with anyone.

  The man raises a finger and points at the doctor, but words can’t find their way through the maze of his anger. His breath heaves in and out of his mouth so that small beads of white spit gather at the corners. He rips his baseball hat off and throws it on the ground at the doctor’s feet, and he takes three quick steps in the doctor’s direction. Cohen has to give the doctor credit—he somehow keeps from backing away. The man’s finger is still raised, now an inch from the doctor’s sculpted nose, two inches from his designer glasses. The man’s eyes are wild, two tornadoes, and now that his hat is on the ground, his oily gray hair stands on edge.

  The doctor trembles. Cohen takes a step closer.

  But the man says nothing. He turns away. He grabs the boy by a clump of his shirt under his chin and wrenches him to the ground. “Get my hat,” he mutters.

  The man’s wife falls in line behind him like a shadow.

  twenty-one

  The Current

  “What was that all about?” Kaye asks as Cohen comes back through the door.

  “We need to keep an eye on Dad’s medication,” he says, looking closely at the various IV bags, reading words he doesn’t understand. He walks back around the bed to the chair that has become his and sits down. He’s tired. The long night is catching up to him.

  “While we’re being honest,” Kaye begins.

  Cohen looks at her, eyebrows raised. “You mean, while you’re being honest.”

  “Okay, while I’m being honest. Cohen . . .” She pauses, looks at him. “I feel like you know something about Dad you’re not telling me.”

  He feels a rigidity spread up his spine, immobilizing him. He grips the armrests of the chair like a man afraid of flying. His eyes lock on to his father’s face. His strong features. The lines in the wrinkles around his neck. The small hairs that populate the ridges of his ears. The faded scar at the corner of his eyebrow. Cohen can barely breathe.

  “Did the doctors tell you something you’re not sharing with me?” Kaye asks, almost pleading. “Did you see something at the funeral home you’re not telling me about?”

  “Kaye,” he whispers, shaking his head. “I don’t . . .”

  Before he gets any further, the door to the room opens. A nurse comes in, checking things, looking at clipboards, glancing at the IV bags, and monitoring the equipment. Behind the nurse, Ava.

  “Hi, Kaye,” she says. “Hi, Cohen.”

  “Ava,” he says, surprise in his voice, and a question mark.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” Ava says to Kaye, shaking her hand. “I don’t know if you remember me. I went to school with Cohen. I’m Ava.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kaye says. “Vaguely. I wasn’t around much after seventh grade.”

  Ava nods, looking over at Cohen. “I was wondering if you have a minute?”

  “Have you found out anything about what happened to our dad?” Kaye asks.

  “Nothing for sure,” Ava says. “And my boss has taken me off the case, officially. Unofficially, I’m still snooping around.” She smiles after the last sentence and looks knowingly at them, as if she is doing the snooping as a personal favor to them.

  “Where do you want to talk?” Cohen asks.

  “Actually, my boss is wondering if you could come over to the funeral home, walk through the basement with him, answer a few more questions? He doesn’t know much about how the operation works. He’s hoping your insights might help us out.”

  “Sure,” he says, standing slowly, stretching, a yawn slowing him. “Do you mind if I go, Kaye?”

  “No,” she says. “Go ahead. But can you take the overnight shift tonight? I’m exhausted. And Johnny didn’t do well without me at home.”

  “Of course,” he says. He walks ov
er to Kaye and kisses the top of her head. “I’ll be back soon. After that, you can go get a shower,” he jokes.

  Kaye swings playfully at him, smacking him on the hip, but her hand grasps his jacket for an extra moment before letting go, and her eyes lock with his as if she’s trying to find the answer to her earlier questions, the ones he avoided. Did the doctors tell you something you’re not sharing with me? Did you see something at the funeral home you’re not telling me about?

  He meets her gaze for a moment, and there it is, the face of the girl from his childhood. He remembers seeing her in the back window of the car as she left with their mother. Her chin was on the top of the back seat, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her eyes afraid and wondering. Her hands gripped the back of the seat on either side of her chin, and she raised the fingers of one hand, only her fingers, in a sort of wave. They drifted in a sad rhythm like seaweed in a current. Then they were gone. She was gone.

  He doesn’t know if he wants to tell her their father might have committed suicide. He doesn’t know if he can tell her it might have been his fault.

  He nods to Kaye, trying to be reassuring, before turning back to Ava. One of the machines beeps a long, steady pulse. He gives his father one last glance before walking out the door.

  twenty-two

  The Trailer

  Cohen came home after school the day after seeing the Beast, not thinking of where he was or where he was going. He wandered into the basement, not aware of his father working at one of the examination tables, wiping tears away with the back of his wrist. And what Cohen saw right there in front of him, what his father’s job demanded of him that day, was too much for him, too much for any fourteen-year-old.

  He stared for a moment, and at first he didn’t know what he was looking at, the two blackened pillars side by side on the table. He wondered why his father would take such care in examining burnt wood, two pieces about Cohen’s size. A realization came up to him out of the depths of his mind. They were children, and he saw the vague chalky outlines of faces, of chins. They were burned children. That realization made it into his consciousness before the other urgent message his brain was sending.