“Not because I caught him,” Ryan said. “Because I was spying on him. He said I—” He choked up. “Said I was good for nothing.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Ask my Ma. Ask Lee. Ask Lee. I failed her.”
~ 19
To be sure, the Hawkeye State has spawned more than its fair share of shining stars: Marion Michael Morrison, not the Little Duke, but rather, that somewhat famous actor from Winterset, nicknamed after his trusty Airedale; Buffalo Bill Cody, the Cavalry scout turned Wild West Showman; the ill-fated bandleader, Glenn Miller, who would perish on a flight to Paris on a cold December night in 1945 at the ripe old age of 40; the classic American crooner, Andy Williams; James Van Allen, whose “Rockoons” (a seemingly unnatural, yet entirely successful, marriage of rocket and balloon technology) helped discover the radiation belts surrounding the Earth that bear his name; the Friedman sisters, Esther Pauline and Pauline Esther (neither typo nor joke, that), who would go on to advise the lost and the lovelorn as Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren (aka Dear Abby); the orphan, the humanitarian, and later, the thirty-first President, Herbert Clark Hoover … the list goes on. And yet, of all the stars in Iowa—past, present, and dare we say, future—none possess (or will) the lasting memory, the raw beauty, of its sparkling prairie heavens. To leave behind one’s trials and troubles and venture out on a moonless midsummer evening here, taking with you nothing more than a blanket and imagination, the Summer Triangle blazing overhead, the cream of the Milky Way glowing in the velvety darkness with the delicate starlight of billions of suns, some, perhaps, nurturing a home not unlike our own … it is a wondrous pleasure, the deepest exploration of the mind. It is to stir the soul.
And so they lay, dreaming on the blanket they shared.
They had a late supper, and on a whim Kain had taken her on a leisurely stroll along the trail to the grassy knoll. There were no butterflies to enchant them, not at this hour, but the starry view was intoxicating. Neither breathed a word for nearly thirty minutes; the sparkling gems in the sky had taken them away, at least for a time.
“Is that the Big Dipper?” Lynn said, pointing.
“Uh huh.” He guided her by motioning his hand. “And that’s the Little Dipper.”
“I don’t see it.”
He shimmied closer. They were passably cheek to cheek, and with an outstretched arm, he outlined the lovely asterism among the throng.
“Oh! There!”
“And that’s the North Star,” he said. “The bright one at the end of the handle.”
He spent the next half hour sharing what he knew of the summer sky, and when he had run out of constellations—those that had risen, at least, for he knew a good third of the eighty-eight—he ended the impromptu astronomy lesson with one of his favorites from the southern horizon, Sagittarius.
“It does look like a teapot,” she said.
Kain sat up, and she joined him. A shooting star flashed brightly, and then, like a last breath, was gone.
“A wish?” she asked. “You looked like you were back in Oz again.”
“A hope,” he said, after some length.
“Are you all right, Kain?”
“Sure.”
“You hardly said a word at supper,” she said. “Ryan, too. Is everything okay between you two?”
He wanted dearly to change the subject, but was resigned to simply come out with it; it came like a flood. Everything her son had told him. Shown him.
She turned away. Began to fidget.
“You must think the worst of me,” she said.
“Why? Why would I?”
Slowly, she turned back to him. “Kain—”
“Don’t,” he said. “There was nothing you could do.”
She nodded dully, as if believing not a word.
“Do your parents know?”
“Yes,” she said, after an interminable silence. “I’ve never seen my father so furious. I had to beg him not to do anything. I mean, not even talk about it. Not to me … not to anyone. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I think it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done.” She paused, reflectively. “Mom, too.”
He was about to say something, but she had to say it first. Had to.
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“It’s not right, Lynn. This isn’t right.”
“It may not be right,” she agreed. “But I had—have—two children to think about. To call the police … don’t you think I wanted to?”
“They would have put him away.”
“For how long? A few years? Ten? Twenty? Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter. No matter what I do, I’ll always be looking over my shoulder. Always.”
How well he understood. How well.
~
They sat for a spell, the stars sailing slowly through the heavenly sea. Despite the mild evening, the night had chilled, the air fresh and still. Crickets had begun to sing. He gathered some brush and some dry branches, and before long they were aglow in the orange light from the campfire.
“I’m so afraid, Kain.”
She told him what had happened during her trip into town.
“Is Lee all right?”
“Always the brave face,” she said. “She really likes that boy. It’s so hard for her. But I told her she’s old enough to make her own decision.” She paused, clearly uncertain of proceeding. And then: “She’s so tired of being afraid. Afraid of living. For what it’s worth, you inspire her. You really do. She wanted to know if … well … if you could ask Jimmy to call on her.”
“… I guess I could …”
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “And you’re right. The boy has a right to know about the thin ice he’s skating on. And—never mind.”
“What is it?”
She went on.
“You can’t tell people—especially two teenagers—they can’t be together. Trust me. It only makes it worse.”
“Love will find a way?”
“Something like that.”
Kain considered. “I doubt Jimmy knows what really happened to his father,” he said. “I think the only one who really knows is Ray Bishop.”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t have to.
“What do you think he’ll do? Ray, I mean.”
“Maybe nothing,” she sighed. And then she looked up, wanting, as if trying to lose herself in the heavens. “Or maybe the sky will fall.”
~
Time passed. It drifted achingly as they kept their thoughts buried.
“Did you finish?” he said, finally, softly.
She understood. “This morning.”
“I guess it’s time, then.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure you want to do this?”
He nodded, almost out of acceptance. And honestly, relief.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she said.
“Just ask. I’ll answer.”
She sat very still; he could sense her uneasiness.
“I have so many questions,” she said. “I read so much, I … I still can’t believe it. Maybe you should just start at the beginning.”
He did.
~ 20
He was born in 1920, in Newark, New Jersey, a healthy, normal, seven-pound, eight-ounce baby. And while he would endure a most unusual life—though such a description can scarcely suffice—there was nothing unusual about his birth. No dark and stormy night. No full moon. No strangeness in the air. No portents of disaster. In fact, he was delivered quite uneventfully at half-past three on a tranquil Thursday afternoon; in passing, even the doctor had mentioned how smoothly things went. If there was anything mysterious or curious about the event, one might consider the date, April 1, but so many can claim the same. Oddly, it would be ten years to the day when his grandparents would perish in a horrific Battle Creek blaze; at that point in his life, it was the cruelest joke God had ever played upon him. Sadly, it would not be the last.
His childhood was normal enough, but lonely. His father
, Bill (Willy to his mother on the good days, William on the bad), was rarely at home, traveling the northeast peddling books and watches and other trinkets, barely scraping a living. Home was a ragged complex of seven shoebox apartments, across the street from an even sadder row of shoebox apartments; the bigger kids called them Cells. School carried him through the week, but weekends were cold and dark without his father. There were times, of course, when the family was together, but those were few and far between, and consisted, for the most part, of his father catching up on lost sleep. There were no siblings to play with, no pets to comfort him. His parents had tried two cats, a puppy, and even a parakeet, but the last straw had been the hamster that had run itself ragged on its hamster wheel whenever he came near. The neighboring beasties took a distinct dislike of him, and while his mother insisted it was not his fault, he had earned the nickname Boo, and Boo had cried himself to sleep more often than not. He had no real friends, but there was Eddie Lieberman, and Eddie, who lived next door in Cell 5, being three years older and bent more on teasing him with his pet snake more than anything else, wasn’t much of one. As for Jenny McAllister, only the cutest, most precious thing on the planet from Cell 8 across the way, he could hardly get up the nerve to nod, let alone breathe, when she spoke to him.
His mother was equally lonely, but she loved “her Willy” dearly. She did all the things the good wife was expected to; did all the things a good mother did. She loved; she nurtured; she sacrificed. She spent time with her child, read to him, taught him to read, taught him to write (he once wrote a wonderful short story about a young boy who flew to the Moon and solved the world’s green cheese problems forever), helped him with his math (of which he still couldn’t tell you the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides for the life of him), took him for walks (not his favorite pastime, but when there was ice cream involved he kept pace nicely), and sometimes, although it seemed a cruel thing, took him to the park and sat with him while he watched the other kids play baseball. He was small and shy and often lived in his head, and as the other kids were throwing strikes and swinging bats and catching flies and running bases, she would often watch him daydream … and when he caught her watching, she would only smile, call him “her little dreamer” and tell him that one day he was going to be something, something very, very special.
Were it were true. How he loved baseball; it ached in his daydreams. He loved the Giants, loved to hate the Yankees. He would dream of playing right field beside Mel Ott or Andy Reese, catching an impossible-to-catch fly ball off the Babe to sink the Bronx Bombers. He would hear the crowd so clearly, so loudly, in his head. He was just a dirt-poor kid from Cell 3, but he would be something, all right, just like his mother had promised.
And then he met Gramps.
~
Two weeks before his tenth birthday his father had returned from a three-week swing through Pennsylvania, announcing he was taking the family west—to Michigan. His mother hadn’t wanted to go; she feared for her son’s health. He had already missed a good deal of the school year due to an endless ear infection (he had endured one almost every winter since he was five, after that business of wandering off in his bare bottom that Christmas Eve), and what with the bills piling up, how could they possibly afford it. His father, ever the optimist, told her not to worry. Sales had been “promising” (William Richards’ term for not so good, but things would pick up), and besides, he could earn some extra on a side trip to Kalamazoo (he had friends there, always an easier sell, and of course, he could sell ice cubes to Eskimos). And so, on the very next day, they went.
Michigan was bitingly cold, even colder than dark, damp New Jersey. Battle Creek itself seemed the nexus of winter. But Gramps was like a soft warm blanket.
“He had this wonderful laugh,” Kain recalled. “It was like a happy song. He always walked around with this little grin on his face. I don’t think an earthquake could have rattled him.”
Gramps took to the boy immediately. After all, they shared the same name.
“Jonathan?” Lynn said. “I don’t remember reading that.”
“My middle name’s Kain. Gramps, too.”
“Jonathan’s nice.”
“I never got used to ‘Little Jon’,” he said. “I guess he never did either.”
“You didn’t really call him Gramps, did you?”
“I called him Grampa. Dad called him Gramps.”
The first night they were there, Gramps lit a fire to shake the mid-March chill, and stood at the hearth and told ghost stories. He spun his magic for hours, the golden light of the fire bathing his old skin and his old beard as he stoked the coals and the imagination. His arms would rise at the peak of some scary tale, his voice booming with them, the furry tail of his red nightcap swinging and bobbing. Later, when not a mouse was astir, he stole into Little Jon’s room and woke him.
They bundled up and headed outside. Gramps led him out back and showed him the sky. You couldn’t hope to count the stars; there were so many they seemed to pile on top of one another. A thin crescent moon hung over the horizon, and when Gramps stepped away from his shiny brass telescope and gave the boy a peek, Little Jon gasped. He was hooked. It was about five in the morning when they finally went inside, sharing some hot chocolate that the old wizard had warmed up on the woodstove.
“Now’s the moment,” the old man sang in a whisper, “Now’s the time … Make Now count … Every time.”
The boy giggled. Gramps put a playful finger to his lips, Shhhhh, and winked—and then repeated the catchy refrain as he stirred the warm milk.
They whispered it together.
~
They spent the next week under the stars (except for the one night it snowed a devil, and on that night Gramps taught him checkers as they sat by the hearth and sipped cocoa); it was their little secret. Despite the cold, Little Jon’s ear had cleared up nicely (Gramps had suffered a similar affliction for years, and moving to what Canadians called a “dry cold” had been just what the doctor ordered). Then, on a bright Sunday morning, after Little Jon’s parents had gone off to visit in Kalamazoo and Gramma had retreated to her apple pies in the kitchen, Gramps took the boy for a ride.
Gramps’ truck was a noisy old thing, a big old thing, and the cavernous cab swallowed them. Still, it seemed like a very cool fort on wheels. The boy could barely see over the dashboard.
Gramps smiled at him. “You want a try?”
“Try what, Grampa?”
The old man pulled over, then motioned with a playful gesture. Hardly believing it, Little Jon smiled wide, and slid over and moved up onto his grandfather’s lap. Excitedly, he took the wheel and started making surging engine sounds, as if he were zooming down a racetrack.
“Both hands on the wheel, Little Jon.”
Needing but a nudge on the wheel here and there, the boy drove for a good forty-five minutes, his grin infectious. They were far from town on a snowy dirt road, plodding up and down the same lonely stretch, but it was their road. The old man had him laughing and hollering, and singing like no one was watching. Their road.
“You okay, Grampa?” Little Jon said. He could see a strain in the old man’s eyes in the rear-view. “You don’t look so good.”
“Just the late nights, son.” The old man sighed; it came as a deep, heavy sound, a sound of age. “Gramps isn’t as spry as he used to be.”
“Can we sing another song? A different one?”
Gramps considered. “How about this one—”
“Slow down, Grampa! There’s a deer!”
“Where? I don’t see it.”
“Right over there!”
The old man brought them to a soft stop, and the boy shifted to the passenger side. Little Jon pointed across a field toward a thick stand of balsam fir.
“I still don’t see it, son.”
“Just wait! You’ll see.”
And they did. A curious white-tailed doe poked her head out from some bushes, a
shy and beautiful creature with bold black eyes. She sniffed about, and then crept out silently. She wandered through the snow, stepping softly, and then, at the first sound, froze, fearful of the idling vehicle. She looked at them, studied them, and just as they feared she might retreat into the woods, she darted across the road and made her way through the snowy meadow there. She disappeared into the forest as quickly as she had come.
“How do you like that,” Gramps said. “How’d you know, Little Jon?”
“I just knew,” the boy shrugged. “I just knew.”
The old man regarded the cusp of the small hill down the road.
“Can you guess what’s coming?”
The boy looked at his grandfather and gave a cute little smile. His small eyes narrowed as he concentrated, as if this were the hardest thing he’d ever been asked to do.
“A red truck,” he said gamely. “With some people in the back.”
They waited a moment … and there it was.
The truck, fire-engine red, passed, and the driver honked. Five animated kids were in the back, all smiling, calling out, waving. Little Jon turned round and had to prop himself up to see over the back of the enormous seat. He waved.
“How’d I know, Grampa? How’d I know?”
The old man’s eyes sparkled, alive with mischief. And then, with a wink and a nod, his lips curled into a grin.
~
Little Jon tried his very best to guess what the next three vehicles would be, but each time he was wrong. Each time his eyes seemed to narrow even more. He was positively bent on knowing what was going to happen next.
The old man laughed as he tousled the boy’s hair.
“That’s the thing about life, son. You can’t always know what’s over the hill. Keeps things interesting.”
Little Jon frowned. “Maybe it was just luck, Grampa.”
Gramps had fallen a touch of gray; the sparkle in his eye had diminished. He gazed out across the meadow where the deer had passed. He spoke softly.
“You ever hear of Titanic, Little Jon?”
The boy shook his head.
“No,” Gramps said. “Suppose you wouldn’t.” He paused. “It was a big ship. The biggest. Least it was for some twenty-odd years, anyway. Your Gramma and me … we took a trip on it. On its very first voyage across the Atlantic. This was way back. Way before you were born. Around 1912, I think. It was a grand ship. The papers said it was unsinkable.”
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