Behold the Stars

by Fanetti, Susan

  She got up and pulled a pair of sweats and a t-shirt out of her dresser. She went through the house and checked. Isaac wasn’t inside. She opened the front door—oh, shit it was cold—and went back to slide into her sneakers and grab a jacket. When she went onto the porch, she saw the lights on in Isaac’s woodshop. She stepped off the porch and crossed the yard.

  She could hear that he was working with one of his power tools: the specific high scream of metal penetrating wood. But it was deep dark, hours before dawn. He almost never left her alone in bed, and he never worked in the middle of the night. She opened the door.

  He was standing at his lathe, turning a piece of dark wood. Bare-chested, in jeans, goggles on his face. Lilli knew better than to come up on him unawares, so she walked to the corner of his worktable and waited for him to see her. She’d often watched him work since she’d moved in. Isaac enjoyed her company in his shop, but he tended to turn deeply inward as he worked. If she asked a question, he would answer it—or, more often, he would begin to answer, then fade out as his focus on his work overtook his attention to her question. So she still didn’t know much about what he did, but she loved to watch nonetheless. It was fascinating, and she was in awe of the beauty those big, rough hands could create.

  He saw her when he paused the lathe and looked up to select a different tool. He turned off the lathe and pulled off the goggles, setting them on the table. “Hey, Sport. What’re you doing awake?” As she walked to him and he put his hands on her waist, he asked, “Did you dream?”

  “Yeah, but I’m out here checking on you.” She brushed wood shavings from the hair on his chest. “Kinda weird time to be working, isn’t it?” When he only shrugged, she asked, “What ya makin’?”

  He turned his head and regarded the wood in the lathe. It was a long piece, maybe four feet, about three inches in diameter at its widest point. Isaac had turned several distinct and seemingly unrelated shapes into it. “I have no idea. I’m just turning. No plan.” Setting her away, he removed the wood from the lathe and held it in his hands, looking down at it like he didn’t know what it was or where it had come from. Lilli was worried.

  “You want to talk, love? Maybe go back to the house and start some coffee?” Still looking at the wood, he shook his head. Then, when she reached out to put her hand on his arm, he jerked from her touch. That surprised her—in fact, it scared her. “Isaac?”

  “Go back inside.” His voice was low, and still he had not looked up. Lilli saw the wooden dowel in his hands begin to shake, just slightly. She’d been around enough freaked out soldiers in her day to have a damn good idea what was going on. She squared her shoulders and cast a studied glance around the room, making sure she knew where things were. Things she might need.

  She spoke steadily, keeping an even pitch. “If you don’t want to talk, that’s cool, love. I’ll just sit and watch you. I love to watch you work. But I’m not leaving you, Isaac. I’m staying put.”

  His head came up then, fast. He glared at her, his eyes red and wet—and angry. He laughed, and the sound was fearsome. “You’re not leaving me? You were leaving me yesterday, Sport. YESTERDAY. You were out the fuckin’ door, remember?” He raised the heavy dowel in one hand and brandished it like a club. Lilli darted a quick glance to his rack of gouges and took a small step back. “Do you know what I came in here to do? To start making you furniture. The furniture you need so you’ll stay. I was going to make you a couch.” He stopped waving the dowel and took a long look at it. Then he laughed again, bitterly. “I don’t know what part of any couch this piece of shit would be. Fucked that up, too.”

  Grasping the wood in both hands again, he turned and swung, his hair flying and his muscles rippling with the effort. He brought it down, full force, on the worktable, about two feet from where Lilli stood. She twitched, but stood her ground, tensed to defend herself if she had to. He slammed the piece—his club, now—down again, and again, until chunks of wood began to shave off. Then, the need that was clearly consuming him still unsatisfied, he roared and spun. Charging at the shelves on which he stored his art show inventory, and roaring incoherently, he bludgeoned the vases, boxes, animals, and flowers that were his meal ticket. Lilli did not intervene. He would soon regret this, but he needed to do it. When he had not slowed after more than a full minute of destruction, she leaned over to his tool rack and pulled out a long, straight blade with a sharp, beveled point. In case she needed to disable him. Otherwise, she stood and waited.

  Finally he stopped and, his chest heaving, soaked in sweat, he turned to her again. “You should leave me. You should get out. Get away. Because this place is dead. It’s not even dying. It’s just fuckin’ dead. People keep looking to me to save it, but I’m the one pulled the goddamn plug. I’m the one that decided to help the fuckin’ cookers instead of running ‘em out on a rail. That was my idea. Took forever to get everybody on board, too. I brought it to the table, I leaned on my brothers to get it to pass. Meth put us on Ellis’s radar. Meth got Will killed. It’s all on my head. And here I stand. None of it’s fuckin’ touched me.” He dropped the splintered wood. “Jesus Christ, Sport, we were in a fucking paint store while somebody was putting a bullet in Will’s head and setting his whole fucking history on fire! We were shopping.” He slid to the floor against a tall metal shelving unit. It rattled at first, threatening to topple on him, but then settled. He drew up his knees and rested his head on his arms. Lilli put the blade down and went to him.

  She kicked the club away and knelt in front of him, laying her hands on his arms. “Isaac.” She said nothing but his name. When he didn’t respond, she said it again. He looked up. She knew the look. Haunted.

  “I love you. I’m not going anywhere. I’m in. I’m here. Because we talked. You talked to me, and we worked things through. I’m not going to say we need to do the same for you right now. You’ll talk when you’re ready. For now, you can listen. Because I am here. You’re not on your own. Not in this house, not in this town, not in this fight.” She brushed his hair back from his face; he was soaking wet. “You didn’t bring crystal to town, Isaac. You just figured out a way to make it do some good, balance out all the bad it does. You kept the people in town, people working at Marie’s and at the feed store, and the hardware store. You did something good with something bad.”

  His expression had eased some as she spoke, and she turned and sat at his side, hooking her arm around his. “What happened to Will is not your fault.” He flinched and huffed, but she held onto him and pressed her point. “It’s not. It’s Ellis. It’s the scum he hired to get it done. You were right to pressure Will not to sell—and he knew you were. Otherwise, he would have sold anyway.”

  They sat quietly side by side on the floor of Isaac’s woodshop. Lilli looked around. He’d done a lot of damage in those few minutes. She thought the damage he was doing to himself, inside, was worse. But she knew he would be deaf to anything more she said. So she sat with him and waited.

  The sky outside the windows was just beginning to lighten from deep black to smoky grey before he spoke. “I can’t do it, Lilli. I can’t. I’m not good enough. Not strong enough. Not smart enough. I’m nobody special. I can’t fight this guy. I’m gonna get people killed. Already have.”

  She hadn’t been sleeping, but she had been deep in thought, thinking about the fire, and Ellis, and Isaac. And her dad, strangely enough. Shooting Comet had called to mind the one and only time she’d killed a deer. That time, she had not shot cleanly with her first shot, and the buck, like Comet, had been screaming and struggling. Her second shot had been true, but the experience had upset her very much. She loved her father, and she’d loved the way he’d been patient with her, had trusted her to make it right, but she’d never wanted to hunt again after that. Her father had taught her well that a gun’s only purpose was death. Lilli found no joy in pulling a trigger—ironic, then, that she’d chosen a career as a soldier.

  She stirred and sat straight when Isaac spoke. Now, sh
e swung around to face him. He was staring at the floor in front of him. “Isaac. Enough. Look at me.” She grabbed his beard and lifted his head. “You keep saying I. You really are an arrogant bastard, you know that?” He jerked his head, but she kept hold of him. “What about Show, and Len, and all the other guys you call brother? What about them? They’re lined up to fight with you. They all agreed to run the town with you. They agreed to the meth. They are there to fight Ellis with you. It’s their town, too. You’re not a monarch, Isaac. You’re the guy at the head of the table, but the rest of the chairs are filled, too. You are not alone.”

  Isaac stared at her. Lilli stared back. She let go of his chin and traced the line of the scar running up his left cheek. That scar, from just below his nose all the way to his temple, was something she’d never asked about. She’d simply accepted it as a part of him. She loved it, in fact. “How’d you get this, love?”

  Blinking at the change of subject, Isaac took her hand away from his cheek and kissed it. “Long story.”

  She wouldn’t push. Not her style. “Okay. You think you’re ready to go in now?” She started to stand, but Isaac kept hold of her hand.

  “My dad.”

  Lilli sat back down. “What?”

  “My dad did it. He was a big drinker. A drunk. And, you know—a nasty son of a bitch. I was…twenty-two. I’d gotten a lot bigger than him by then, and he hated it. I’d had my top rocker about a year, and I voted against him at the table. First time. Swung the vote against him. Didn’t do it to piss him off. Did it because he was wrong. That pissed him off worse, I guess.”

  He cleared his throat and blew out a stilted laugh. Staring at his hands, he continued. “It’s weird. I’ve never told this story. Anybody else who’d care was already there. I’m sitting at the bar, drinking with the guys, starting to think about grabbing a girl. My old man’s at the other end of the bar, watching me. All of a sudden, he’s off the stool, charging me, yelling fucking pussy pretty boy!, and he’s on me, yanking me off my stool onto the floor—catches me off guard and off balance, and I just fall right down—and he’s got his switchblade. He just…slices me. Never manage to put up any kind of fight. Doesn’t hurt at first—shock, I guess—but blood’s gushing like somebody turned on a faucet in my face. The guys pull him away, and he shakes them off. He stands over me, says, see how they like you now.” Isaac laughed again. “Then he just went back to his Wild Turkey, left me lying there, holding my face together with my hands.”

  Lilli was speechless. She rose up on her knees and kissed the scar. But Isaac wasn’t done. “Show took me to get stitched up. I was staying at the clubhouse then, and when I got back my old man was sitting at the bar reading the morning paper. He gave me a look, then went back to the sports page, like nothing. I grabbed his fucking bald head in my hands and slammed it into the bar until he was unconscious. Nobody stopped me. Fucker never touched me again.”

  Because there was simply nothing to say, Lilli didn’t try. Instead, she pulled on Isaac’s legs, straightening them along the floor, and she opened his arms. She climbed onto his lap and held him close. After a moment where he was completely passive, as though he were not entirely in his body, his arms came around her, and he laid his head on her shoulder. They sat like that until dawn broke. Finally, Lilli got him to come back into the house. She took him to bed and held him while he slept.

  ~oOo~

  Exhaustion had finally really claimed him, and Isaac slept hard that morning. Lilli lay with him as long as she could, but when she heard one of the horses—she thought it might be Gertie—raising a fuss, she slid out of bed and got dressed. Leaving a note on her pillow to let him know where she’d gone, she pulled on her boots and jacket and hurried to the barn.

  It was Gertie yelling, but as soon as Lilli opened the doors and came in, she settled and dropped her head over the door, making a series of chuffing noises. Lilli went to her and rubbed her neck. She knew nothing about horses. They didn’t scare her, but she wasn’t comfortable not knowing things. She would have preferred to be out here with Isaac, so she could ask questions about what to do. When and how much to feed them. When to put them outside. Where to put them outside. The back door of the barn opened to a small enclosure which itself opened to a larger grassy area. Isaac had called it a paddock. She assumed that was the horse yard. But she didn’t like to make assumptions about thousand pound animals.

  She looked around. She understood the halter and lead. She’d helped Len yesterday, after they’d led the horses away from the fire. He’d shown her how to halter them properly, and she’d helped tie their leads off, then gotten them water. She was touched to see the way Len cared about the horses. He’d been devastated by what had happened to the horse who’d come running out of the barn—Comet. After the blaze was out, he’d knelt on the ground in his gear, next to the smoldering body, and when he stood and came toward her, she could see he’d been crying. She hugged him. She hadn’t thought about it; she just did it. And he’d cried hard. This beefy biker with tattoos from his fingers all the way up to his jaw. Lilli, herself broken up about what she’d had to do, had been deeply moved by the tenderness of his grief.

  She gave Gertie a pat and went to check out the other two—both black, one bigger, with a white stripe down his nose—Flash—the other entirely dark—Ebony. They were both friendly, if a little more energetic than her Gert. She laughed to herself when she realized that she’d just thought of the spotted grey mare as hers. She should be careful about that. The horses did not belong to them.

  Lilli explored the barn and the enclosures beyond it, trying to decide whether she should let the horses out. The barn was empty of anything they hadn’t brought in from Len’s trailer. There were shelves and racks that looked purposeful, but had nothing stored on or in them. Once she did a lap around the paddock and ascertained that the fence was solid and the gates closed, she went in, picked up Gert’s halter, and strapped it on.

  As she was opening Gert’s stall, Isaac spoke up behind her. “She should go out last, Sport.”

  Lilli turned. He looked better. He was leaning on the side of the open barn door, in his customary jeans, boots, black button shirt, and leather jacket. No kutte; he didn’t wear it at home. His hair was braided. It looked wet—he must have jumped in the shower.

  “What?”

  “Flash and Ebbie are young. They get antsy, don’t like to get left behind. You put Gertie out first, they’ll think they’re missing out, and they’ll be harder to control. Gert’s a patient old lady. She’ll sit and wait her turn.” He walked to her and kissed her cheek. “Morning.”

  “Morning. Do they need to be on the leads?”

  “You want to be in control of a horse when you’re in a tight space like this, so yeah. But take the halter off, not just the lead, when you release them. Want help?” He nodded toward Flash.

  “Nope. I got it.” She went over and haltered Flash. Isaac walked out into the corral and climbed the fence. As Lilli led Flash out, she saw that he was filling a big water tank just inside the corral. She released Flash, and he tore off, bucking as he did a circuit around the enclosure.

  When all three horses were out, the youngsters racing around, Gertie wandering off to eat grass, Isaac and Lilli sat on the fence and watched.

  “You okay this morning, love?” Lilli studied Isaac’s profile as he watched the horses.

  “Better. Not okay. I need to call Liza, and then I gotta get to town.” He turned to her. “I’d like you to come. Breakfast—well, lunch, I guess—at Marie’s, give everybody time to talk to me about what happened. Then the clubhouse, so we can figure out our move.”

  “Yeah. Okay, of course.” She put her hand on his where it gripped the fence rail. “I’m with you, Isaac. You’re not on your own. I love you.”

  Still looking out over the paddock, he hooked his fingers with hers.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Isaac didn’t know how he was going to make this call. He knew Liza had already been
officially informed; Tyler called to let him know they’d reached her early in the morning. That didn’t make what he had to do any easier, though—in fact, it might make it harder. She would blame him, she should blame him, and he would be calling in the midst of her first fury.

  But he couldn’t put it off. He had to do it right. He owed it to Will, and to the family he’d left behind, to do it right.

  He sat at the dining room table and stared at his phone. He didn’t know why he’d come into this room. He rarely came into this room. It had been the living room when he’d been growing up and for all the generations before that, as far as he knew, but he’d switched the living and dining rooms when he took the house over. He’d had no need for a big dining space, and it was just more convenient for the living room, where the TV was, to be next to the kitchen, where the beer was. Plus, the fireplace was in there, and he liked that better in the living room than the dining room.

  The furniture in this room was heavy, ornate, and very antique. The sideboard had actually come over with his immigrant ancestors, and it was carved and turned, stained so dark it was all but black. The table and chairs, chunky and rough-hewn, were handmade and stained to match by a grandfather a few times removed. He’d been surprised when Lilli told him she didn’t want to replace these pieces, but he’d been glad for it. He wasn’t entirely sure why; it was ponderous furniture. But he felt like it would be some kind of sacrilege to remove a piece that had stood under this roof for as long as that roof had been standing.

  Lilli came in from the kitchen and leaned on the newel post of the staircase that bisected the house. “Can I do anything, love?”

  What could she do? She had never even met Liza. But he loved her for asking, nonetheless. “No. I got it. We need to get moving when I’m done, though. You gonna be ready?”

  She walked in and kissed his cheek, her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll jump in for a super-quick shower and be ready in ten. That good?”