Light from Distant Stars

by Shawn Smucker

  The hole in his gum where the tooth used to be oozed blood, and he kept spitting it into the sink, gargling water, spitting, gargling. Trying not to choke. He remembered the baseball he’d taken to the nose when he was young, that old familiar taste of blood. When the bleeding slowed, he crammed some paper towels into the back corner of his mouth and cleaned the sink and the mirror and turned out the light. He was so tired.

  He walked over to the sofa where his father still slept and nudged his shoulder with one hand. “Dad,” he said, his voice muffled by the paper towel still in his mouth.

  Nothing.

  “Dad,” he said louder, shaking harder, but his father didn’t respond. He was far away at the end of a dark tunnel, at the bottom of a well, out of reach. Cohen clenched his jaw and rubbed his cheek, feeling where the tooth used to be. He walked over to the wall opposite the sofa, sat down, and waited.

  He realized he wanted more than anything in the world for his father to be concerned by his injuries, even to be angry. Cohen would take anything—derision, fury, sadness, empathy. Especially empathy. Someone else’s hand on his bruises, someone else giving him a glass of water, someone else folding a cold cloth and draping it over his forehead or gently packing the hole in his gums with cotton gauze. But his father slept and the room grew dark and Cohen sat with his back to the wall.

  Then, movement.

  His father moaned, came up from that faraway place. He moved his mouth and licked his lips like a man waking in a desert, and his hand blindly swept the table, reaching for the glass. When it encountered nothing but flat space, he stopped, and for a moment Cohen thought he had fallen asleep again. There was another distant moan, another drawing together of his mouth, now trying to find saliva. Calvin put his elbows on the sofa and sat up halfway, squinting in the dim light that came through the window. He tapped each and every can, a gentle snapping motion with his index finger, hoping that one of them was not empty, but each one leaned lightly, a few falling over and rolling aimlessly on the window ledge.

  “Dad,” Cohen said, this time in a quiet voice, nearly a whisper, but his father heard him and turned in his direction. He stared into the shadows, squinted his eyes as if the darkness was light. When he saw Cohen, a kind of remembering flooded his face. Yes, of course, the look seemed to say. I have a son.

  “Cohen,” his father said, or at least tried to say, but the word stuck in his dry throat. He rubbed his neck.

  Cohen retrieved a glass of water from the kitchen, and his father drank it all down without stopping. When he finished, he took a quick gasp of air, sat up slowly, and placed the glass on the coffee table.

  “Cohen,” he said again, nearly finding his normal voice.

  “Hi, Dad.” Cohen hoped his father would see his wounds, his bruises, his pain, but it was dark in the room, and they could barely see each other through the half-light.

  His father nodded, pondering some faraway thought. “Oh,” he said quietly, as if to himself. He looked at Cohen sideways, out of the corner of his eye, and Cohen sat down on the sofa beside him.

  “The police came,” Calvin said.

  Cohen felt like he was under a spotlight. Did someone find out about the Beast? The gun? Did someone tell his father they saw him riding his bike out of town? He was fourteen. He didn’t have an accurate sense of the kind of things police got involved with.

  “Really?” he managed to squeak out.

  His father nodded, turned to him in the dark room, and stared directly at him. “You need to be careful. They’re still looking. They think the father . . . he might still be . . . coming by here again.”

  Cohen nodded, a wave of confusion moving through him. He remembered what his father had told him when he’d returned that night.

  It’s okay. Son. It’s okay. They’re in a better place.

  A better place.

  He realized he was still nodding, mindlessly moving his head up and down. He stopped.

  “Are you okay?” his father asked, suddenly aware that something was wrong. But it was a concern that came too late.

  “I’m fine,” Cohen said in a monotone voice. “I wrecked my bike, but I’m okay.”

  They sat there in the dark together for a long time, both of them awake and not saying anything. Cohen realized he felt like he understood his father better in those moments of quiet, when he had no expectations, than he did when he wanted his father to say something in particular or ask about him or show some tangible sign of caring. In the silence, he could hear his father’s thick breathing; he could hear the movement of his father’s fingernails on his shirt as he scratched his shoulder; he could hear the rumbling of hunger in his father’s stomach.

  But in the silence, he also felt like they were moving further and further apart.

  Calvin stood slowly, Poseidon rising up out of the water, pillows falling to the side and the blanket slipping to the floor. His shadow lumbered along the wall as he walked into the kitchen, barely lifting his feet, his soles making sliding sounds on the floor.

  Cohen didn’t move, except when his fingertips touched his tender jaw or his tongue hesitantly explored the soft hole hiding under the wad of paper towels in his mouth. He leaned his head back on the sofa and could almost see the night sky through the window. Living in the city meant there were rarely visible stars, but there was always a glow, the culmination of streetlights and office lights and passing cars. There were always sounds too: the wheezing of a truck as it labored to a stop at the next traffic light, the squeaking of old brakes, the throbbing beat of rap music thudding its way from a car with a custom exhaust.

  He heard his father rumble through the cupboards, doors slamming, glasses colliding. The silverware drawer opened, and his father came out and sat at the couch, a plate of food in front of him on the coffee table.

  “Why’s it always so dark in here?” he muttered.

  Suddenly Cohen didn’t want his father to see his bruises. He didn’t want his father to have the satisfaction of worry, because now it would mean nothing to Cohen. It was too late. It was always too late. He went to the door, trying to hide his limp.

  “Where are you going?” his father asked, taking a large bite.

  “I’ll be back,” Cohen said over his shoulder, and again he wanted his father to stop him, to care about where he was going enough to press for information.

  But the only thing he heard was the fork hitting the plate, loud chewing, liquid gathering at the bottom of a new glass.

  thirty-three

  A Shadow You Can Hold

  On that night, still feeling the sting of his father’s inability to see him, Cohen walked into the display room of the funeral home and realized he felt no fear. None. He looked around, and all he felt was peace in the darkness. He wandered among the coffins, his fingers gliding over their smooth surfaces. He meandered to the chapel and peeked in through the door. He walked over to the curtain where he and Hippie had waited, hidden, earlier that day. He crawled under the coffin in front of the window, and he pulled himself behind the drapes. He remembered the sensation of holding Hippie’s hand, feeling every movement of her fingers. Had he really felt even her fingerprints, even the lines on her hand?

  The room was silent except for when the heat kicked on, stirring the air, moving the dust around, gathering up the essence of the newly dead from the basement and scattering it through the house. Cohen thought again about the Beast. He found himself listening intently for any of the doors to open, for footsteps on the sidewalk outside, for the parking of a car on the street. He watched the headlights pass the glass door and willed the shadows to keep moving.

  Exhaustion set in, and the heat from the vent below the curtain moved the fabric in a fluttering pattern, the same way a spring breeze coming through the window would have moved it. The hot air gathered around him, and he drifted into a kind of light sleep, infiltrated by shadows and warm walks on soft grass and the wispy movement of weeping willows. He dreamed of the old days, playing catch with
his dad under a blue sky, smiling over at Ava during a baseball game, running out to catch the bus with Kaye, his family sitting down to eat dinner on a night when no one fought. Deeper into sleep he went, down into darker dreams of wandering through empty churches and tripping in a field of high corn, only to stand and realize he couldn’t see his way out. He ran in one direction, pushing the corn out of his way, the thin leaves stinging his hands and the skin around his eyes.

  He woke up with a start, certain he had heard the gentle sound of bells followed by the glass door easing its way shut.

  Wide awake, he slid behind the curtain as far as he could, trying to disappear. He wondered if maybe he had only jumped awake at the sound of the heat turning off—it usually made a kind of thunking finale—and it could have been the ensuing stillness that pulled him out of that dream. He could still feel the corn like thin razors on his skin.

  He sensed movement on the other side of the room. He tensed, looking out from behind the curtain with one eye, but the room was too dark. He could see nothing. A car passed outside, and a shaft of light scanned the room from left to right like a flashlight sweeping the shadows. He held his breath. Another car passed, and this time he was sure of it—he saw something moving across the back of the room, away from the chapel. Past all the coffins.

  In his direction.

  He swallowed hard, amazed at how loud a swallow can sound in complete silence. He tasted the blood in his mouth, and again his tongue touched the hole left by the missing tooth. His jaw throbbed. He leaned from one side to the other and realized something was behind the curtain with him. His heart nearly stopped. The thing, whatever it was, gradually touched his hand. Cold and moving.

  He screamed.

  Hippie screamed back at him.

  “What is wrong with you two?” Than hissed from across the room.

  Cohen was so scared he couldn’t talk.

  “Seriously,” Than said, disgust in his voice. “Why don’t you babies go to bed and I’ll catch up with you in the morning?”

  Cohen’s flash of fear was being replaced with an indignant embarrassment. “What are you two doing here?” He first looked for Than, but when he couldn’t locate him he turned to Hippie. Her smile was water on a fire.

  “Did I scare you?” she asked, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a giggle. He had never heard her like that, truly and unreservedly happy.

  He couldn’t stop a small smile from pulling at the corners of his mouth. He took a deep breath and let it out in a relieved rush. “What are you guys doing here?” he asked again, shaking his head, still trying to communicate how annoyed he was.

  “We’re tracking it,” Than muttered. He crawled along the floor with a flashlight, trying to hide the beam, staring into the carpet.

  “The Beast?”

  “When did you come down here?” Than asked.

  Cohen shrugged. “Maybe an hour ago. I don’t know. I fell asleep.”

  “Have you seen anything?” Hippie asked in a kind, sincere voice.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Heard anything? Nothing outside?” Than asked.

  “No.” Cohen paused. “Are you guys okay? From this afternoon, I mean. Where did you go?”

  Than grunted. “We took off. Needed to regroup, figure out what’s next.”

  Hippie reached over and tugged on Cohen’s shirtsleeve. “You were amazing.”

  Cohen felt a rushing in his ears at her touch. If the Beast had walked through the funeral home door in that moment, he would have stood to his feet and walked calmly toward it, fearing nothing. But there was no target for him to aim this surge of bravery and emotion at. He froze in place, not wanting her to move her hand.

  “What are you looking for?” he managed to ask Than. His own voice sounded far away, as if it were someone else’s.

  Than waved them over. “What do you think, Hippie?” he asked, and there was awe in his voice, and something that sounded strangely like fear.

  Hippie and Cohen bent down beside him, getting lower, lower, until they were both on their hands and knees. Hippie grabbed a pen from one of the tables, reached out, and slid it along the stiff carpet. Something black and sticky like tar clung to the pen and dragged along the carpet fibers. Cohen’s insides churned. At first he thought it was blood, but it was darker, the color of ink. He glanced nervously at Than.

  “That’s it,” Than whispered.

  “What?” Cohen asked.

  Than turned on the flashlight and shone it at the black substance clinging to the pen—it shone like a liquid but didn’t move. It stuck there.

  “What is it?” Cohen asked.

  Hippie pursed her lips. “The Beast is injured. This is the trail it leaves behind, pieces of itself.”

  “That’s a shadow?” Cohen asked. “Like, a shadow you can hold?”

  Hippie paused. “Now we can track it.”

  thirty-four

  The Last Thing to Go

  Time moves on, and for many hours Cohen cannot look at his father lying in the hospital bed. One of the nurses mentioned that the last thing to go is hearing, and the thought that his father might still be able to hear him, might be aware of his presence, unsettles him. It sends him up out of his chair and over to the window, where he watches as the sky gradually dims from platinum to silver to slate to ash. It is inside him too, the grayness.

  He glances at his father, gives a sort of wince, and turns back, feeling the cold glass. He moves his fingers along it slowly, as if trying to placate winter, convince it to lumber off, make way for spring. The sky and the snow and the fading light divide, separate, become their own elements. They are no longer connected. Cohen also feels disconnected, fragmented, as if all the times of his life are straining one from the other—his childhood, his adolescence, his adulthood. Who is he? Which of these Cohens is standing here in the room with his dying father, looking out over a silent city?

  Confession. Again the concept flashes through his mind, and now it’s dark and he doesn’t know how long he’s been staring out at the streetlights that seem more yellow than white, the brake lights and the long streaks they leave behind on the wet streets. He sits down and falls asleep.

  When he wakes up, a nighttime nurse has crept into the room, moving like a shadow. “Hi,” he says quietly, rubbing his eyes.

  “Hello,” she says. “Anything new in here?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Okay,” she says, adjusting Calvin’s pillow, moving his arms so they’re across his chest. “We’ll move him around a bit more in the morning to try to keep away the bed sores and maintain circulation.”

  Cohen doesn’t reply. He bites his lip. Does she know the situation? Does she know he’s dying, that the doctors have given him up for dead? Why move him now? But he doesn’t say anything.

  Midnight.

  He is suddenly wide awake in a way he has not been for days, and he wonders if he can get into Saint Thomas Episcopal Church. He seems to remember someone saying they usually leave at least the chapel unlocked. There is something about sitting in there at night in the dim lights, staring at the mesh of the confession screen, that seems like it would help. He considers calling Father James to see if he might meet him for confession again, but he also feels bad asking him to come out into a cold night.

  Cohen glances at his father. Should he leave him like this? What if his father dies while he’s gone? Kaye would be mortified if she found out Cohen left him; she would be devastated if their father died alone in the room.

  Cohen looks up at the clock again. He decides to go to Saint Thomas. He’ll walk fast.

  thirty-five

  The Fall

  The sleet, rain, and snow have merged to form inky pools along the street, and Cohen hops lightly through them, the hem of his pants gathering water, darkening, getting heavier. Duke Street is mostly empty, although an occasional car drifts south past him. It’s late. He feels guilty having left his father.

  He feels something strange
in the air, something he doesn’t recognize right away, and he stops at the corner of Duke and Walnut, looks up into one of the small trees. A strong wind kicks up, moving the gray clouds across the sky, sending a shower of stray drops from the branches. The streetlights still drown out the stars, but he imagines he can see them up there, pinpricks of light coming from so far away.

  He is struck with the thought of how long it takes the light to reach him. How much has changed in the universe since that light left its star and traveled through the darkness, illuminating everything. It saddens him to think that some of those stars, perhaps many of them, no longer exist, but their light goes on shining as if nothing at all has happened, as if nothing is wrong.

  He realizes what it is he senses, what it is sweeping through the alleys and moving the small tree limbs until they bob like little kids’ fishing poles: it is the slightest hint of spring. Some stream of warm air has found its way from another part of the earth to that very spot on Duke Street. In the glare of the streetlights, he realizes the tree beside him has buds, minuscule bulges of life preparing to unfold. He reaches up and holds a cold tip in his fingers, the earliest beginning of a flower.

  By springtime, his father will be gone.

  The waters are separating. The waters of the sky are blowing away in the wind and the waters of the earth lay before him, and he walks through them to the church and up the sidewalk ramp. The door is unlocked. He lets himself in.

  Nothing is different. Everything is the same. The Christ is still on the cross, his downward-facing eyes the gentle disappointment of a parent whose child cannot quite get it right. Cohen looks nervously away. He sees the confession screen still standing.

  A shadow shifts behind it, a subtle movement of darkness hovering behind darkness, and he tenses. Two words leap into his mind and send a panic shivering through him: The Beast.