"Oh yeah?" he said. "Nice. Nice work, Devon." He looked out the window but we were in the tunnel under the river so all he could have seen was black.
We were quiet for a few minutes and, when the train came out of the tunnel, I knew we were almost at the airport.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "Didn't you hear? It worked."
"I'm sad," he said, still staring out the window. He looked at me. "You think me praying had anything to do with you getting her number?"
"I don't know."
"Let me tell you something." He took my shoulders, and I remembered the night before, when he had taken them just after we prayed. "Don't ever become a celebrity, alright? Before you're famous it seems like you're gonna feel a certain way, a way that will fix everything. And it does at first. You feel this glow, this bigness. Like some light is always on and it's inside you. But then you realize that every person you meet is taking a bit of that light, like they're using it to light themselves, to ignite their own spark. And, for a while, that can feel good, too. Like you're helping to light the world. But then one day, you realize it's all gone and your own light is out. She didn't give you her number because of the prayer. Your spark got fanned. You lit up."
He took his hands off my shoulders.
I didn't respond, and a couple minutes later the train stopped at the airport and he got off. I watched him walk to the platform and I didn't follow him in. He waved, but he didn't smile. I could tell he wanted to be alone.
I thought about him on the train back to Cambridge. Each stop, people got on and got off. I looked at each one, too. I don't usually do that.
I don't know why I looked so close that day, but everyone looked gray—like wet ash—and that's when I knew he was right about that whole spark thing, but wrong about being a celebrity.
Deep down, I knew April didn't give me her number because of the praying. I'm not stupid. But what's wrong with going around and lighting people ablaze? A lot of us need it, right?
In the end, I don't care what he said. Celebrities are awesome, and sometimes you need fireworks to see the sky.
The Last Day on Earth of Zelta Jones, Starwoman
The grits was good and smooth that mornin'. And the grease from the bacon was slickin' up the griddle for the eggs. Customers love bacony eggs.
I stood half-frozen, watchin' the yolks harden on a pair of over-mediums and listenin' to the crackles and sizzles and splutters.
Mr. Malcolm shouted across the kitchen, "Ella, quit starin' at them damn yolks. Last table of the shift and they been waitin' ten minutes."
I glanced up and evil-eyed Mr. Malcolm. He was an angular and bony man, probably weighed half of what Peg weighed. She was standin' next to him by the door that led into the dinin' room, smilin' at Mr. Malcolm and smackin' her gum like always. I think the two of them might have been doin' things together in the walk-in after shifts, but that was none of my business.
I said, "Just a minute on them eggs, Mr. Malcolm."
"That yolk ain't the sun, ya know." Mr. Malcolm slapped an ashy hand on Peg's wide back and pointed at me. "Maybe if she focuses real hard she'll land on Mars or somethin'."
Peg laughed and they both walked into the dinin' room. Before the door swung closed all the way, I heard Mr. Malcolm talkin' to a customer, "Sorry for the wait. You know how Biscuit Hands is."
I'd heard it all before, so I just flipped the eggs.
Peg and Malcolm and the rest of them could make fun all they wanted. The thing you humans don't get about space travel is that you've already done it. And I don't mean the silly ships y'all took to the moon. I mean bodies of light movin' across the universe. Truth is, it happens all the time, and most of y'all reading this could do it if you wanted. You just can't remember how, and that's why I got sent here.
To remind you.
You might wonder why I didn't get sent to some big city full of universities and Yankees and Liberals. If you're gonna send someone to teach humans about space travel, why choose Blue Mountain, Alabama, population 485?
Truth is, I don't know. They'll never admit it back home, but I think it mighta been a screw-up. Maybe someone heard the name Blue Mountain and thought it sounded nice. Where I'm from, the billions of stars look like a blue mountain with red and white specs all around, just sparklin' in the sky. So maybe it was that. Or maybe it's 'cause my boss is sweet on me and he knew I would like southern cookin'. I'll ask him when I get back, but I don't think he'll tell me.
Nothing against Blue Mountain. It's a nice enough little town. We got one road, two stores, and a diner. But 'round here people only care about family and Alabama football, so you can see why it was hard to get them to understand when I started tellin' them about space travel. Folks here are too ignorant to be learned anything about what they are.
And that's why I'm leavin' today. Papers will say I killed myself, but I know I'm just goin' home.
I plated the eggs with four strips of bacon and two of my famous biscuits from the warmer, then slid it into the window and dinged the bell. My shift was over, so I took off my apron and hung it on the hook by the screen door at the back of the diner.
Mr. Malcolm and Peg came back into the kitchen and waved at me. Six days a week at noon, for the last twenty-six years, I'd said, "See ya'll tomorrow."
But right then, I knew I wouldn't be back. I said, "Bye y'all."
Mr. Malcolm gave me a kind of funny look as he slid his hand into the back pocket of Peg's jeans.
"Bye, Ella," they said at the same time.
I took a last look around the kitchen, then walked out into a warm Alabama rain to get myself a hose.
* * *
For those who ain't already read about me, in Blue Mountain they call me Ella Jones, line cook at Malcolm's Diner. But my real name is Zelta Jones, Starwoman. Really, my name ain't Zelta, either. I'm just puttin' Zelta 'cause it's the closest word you got for the way my name makes you feel. Sexy and powerful both.
I come from a small system, just gettin' our legs under us. The older systems get all the good planets to look at, but we got Earth. No offense meant. I been one of you for forty-six years, but, by universal standards, you ain't shit. When I was first comin' up as a line cook, sometimes my gravy would get lumpy 'cause I wouldn't mix the cornstarch with water before I dumped it in. Mr. Malcolm would say, "Damn, Ella, looks like you dumped an outhouse in a cook pot." To a lot of systems out there, earth is like that.
But not to me. I love y'all.
Anyway, I got sent here forty-six years ago to help you folks, but for the first thirty of those years I forgot what I was supposed to be doing down here in the first place. See, some of the other systems—the really nice ones—can just visit here whenever they want. They developed themselves such that they can be in two places at once. So, while they're sittin' back at home, they can come down here, check in on you, abduct folks, whatever.
But we ain't there yet. We can't be in two places at once, so we have to do it the old-fashioned way, through a body. So that's how, forty-six years ago, I came to be in the womb of Myrtle Marie Jones, my mama.
When I was little, my mama told me that God had sent me to her and that I didn't have a daddy. But by the time I learned about sex, she admitted she'd been drunk in a bar and let some beer truck delivery guy make her acquaintance in the women's room.
So I was born and came up in Blue Mountain, Alabama, and didn't never know nothin' other than Main Street, my mama's cookin', our little white school house, and the blue mountain in the distance. After high school, I worked a couple odd jobs—deliverin' groceries to old folks and stockin' shelves at the Food Mart up in Anniston. I even went to college up in Tuscaloosa for half a semester, but it weren't for me. By age twenty I'd found my callin' on the grill at Malcom's. And for ten years, that's all I knew.
Four in the morning I showed up for biscuit prep. From the time I was five, I just had the feel for biscuits—overwork the dough and the biscuits get tough, underwork it and they fall apart—so folks
said I had biscuit hands. We opened at five for the first of the loggers. Crack the eggs, keep the grits smooth, ladle the butter, plate it up with bacon or ham and a couple biscuits. Ding. Eight hours a day, six days a week for ten years I did that, but all of a sudden, somethin' didn't feel right.
Thirty years and fifty-two days after I came down here (I ain't countin' the nine months), I looked down at the griddle and somethin' was different.
I cracked the eggs and they sizzled just the same. I stirred the grits, but I found myself lookin' in the pot for a long time. I looked back at the eggs, but my timing was off. I ladled the butter and dropped some corn-cake batter, then went to flip the eggs, but I broke the yolks.
I used the spatula to throw them in the can next to the stove, but instead of going back to the griddle, I just stood there, starin' into the can. The thick black garbage bag was mostly empty, but I could see the whites at the bottom on a pile of coffee grounds. The yolks had splattered the sides of the bag. One big yellow-gold splotch and a bunch of little dots sprayed around it against the deep black of the bag.
That's when I remembered the stars and remembered who I was.
* * *
From the diner, I waddled south on Main Street. I walk like a duck because I'm almost as thick as I am tall. I know what you must be thinkin', but there ain't no shame in waddlin'. People spend a mess of time worryin' about being fat, but I never did 'cause I knew what I really was. Plus, where I'm from, we don't eat, so I thought I better enjoy it while I could.
I was headin' to Ancient Larry's store to get a hose, but when I slid up under his awning to get out of the rain, he said, "Closed today."
"Why?"
"Columbus Day."
"Then why are you settin' out front of your store just like regular?"
He smiled a crooked-toothed smile and picked at something in his teeth. "That's just what I do on Mondays."
"You see the game?"
Larry looked at me like I was even crazier than when I'd first told him about coming from another planet. He said, "What the hell else would I have been doing on Saturday?"
Larry had been friends with my mama before she died and, when I was a girl, he took me to my first game up in Tuscaloosa. He loved the Crimson Tide and, even though I didn't care about football one way or another, around here you pretended or you got run outta town.
So he took me up to the game and I cheered every time he did, but mostly I took in the spectacle of the whole thing. Ninety-thousand people, all that energy and emotion, the stadium shaking. My heart damn near beat out of my chest that day. That's one thing we ain't got where I come from: hearts beatin' out of chests.
I said, "Roll Tide."
"Roll Tide," he said. "What you need, anyway?"
"Hose."
"What fer? Ain't gardenin' season."
"Just need one."
He wiped his hand across his face and looked right at me. "Something peculiar about you today. Always has been but today it's more."
"How you figure?"
"Well there's all that space stuff you started talking a while back. But it was there before that. You ain't seem like you from Alabama."
"I ain't from Alabama." The rain started comin' a little harder and I slid closer to him under the awning. "Any chance you'll get me a hose, even though you closed?"
"If you tell me what's it fer."
I looked at him long and hard for near a minute. It's weird lookin' at someone who doesn't know where they come from.
For the first few weeks after the whole egg in the garbage thing, I could still remember what it was like to not remember what I was. And sometimes I would even forget altogether. I'd go back to how I was before I remembered. Like the time Mean Joe kept sendin' back my grits, saying they were lumpy, but they weren't. After he sent them back a third time, I went out and dumped a bowl of buttery grits right on his head.
Later that night, I thought, "Ain't that funny. I mistook myself for a lady who makes grits." But after a while I just forgot all about it and sometimes I forgot that other people had forgot, too.
Anyway, standin' there and starin' at Ancient Larry, I felt sad for the first time in a long time, and I didn't know what to say.
He must've got uncomfortable with the starin', 'cause he said, "So, you gonna tell me?"
"I aim to kill myself today. Gonna use the hose to carry the tailpipe fumes into my truck. Saw it on TV."
I don't know why I told him. Maybe I didn't want to tell a lie on my last day on Earth. Maybe it was because, even where I come from, you're supposed to respect your elders. Or maybe it was because he took me to that football game or because, of all the people in town, he was the only one who never made fun of me when I started tellin' everyone they could space travel.
He smiled at first, then his face went kinda blank. "Why? I mean, ain't that the easy way out?"
I couldn't tell if he knew I was serious, if he was humorin' me, or if he was just talkin' to talk without knowin' one way or another. He was used to me sayin' weird things, so my guess is he thought I was messin' around.
I said, "Ain't gon' be all that easy if you won't sell me a hose." He smiled and I smiled back. "Plus, how you know it's the easy way out if you ain't never done it yourself?"
He looked away and kinda scanned the road, but nothin' was happenin' worth lookin' at, so after a few seconds he looked back up at me. He said, "Why you think you so special, Ella? We all just come here from somewhere or other, then we go home when God calls us. Ain't up to us to decide. Even if what you said is true, even if you was from some other place, some other planet, they must have a God there like we do. Doesn't give you any right to decide to end it."
"Ain't ending nothin'."
"What if you wrong?"
"I ain't."
"What if you crazy?"
"I ain't."
He shifted in his chair and sorta rocked back and forth for a minute. That was his thinkin' posture. Usually he was thinkin' about the team, but I got the sense that he was thinkin' about me. I also got the sense that he wasn't gonna give me a hose.
"Just tell me straight out, no mumbo jumbo about space and whatever. Why you gonna do a thing like that?"
I shrugged. "Time to go home."
After what seemed like a long time, Ancient Larry broke out into a thin little grin. The grin grew and grew until finally he burst out laughing like I'd said the funniest thing he'd ever heard.
After about a minute of laughin', he said, "You crazy. You know you crazy, right?"
I didn't say anythin', but I guess he'd decided I wasn't serious, because he stood real slow and turned toward the door.
As he unlocked it, he turned back and scanned me, head to toe, then back up again. He let his eyes rest on my face for a long time. His eyes were black and twinkling and, for a moment, I felt like I was starin' down into that black garbage bag at that splatter of egg yolks, or like I was lookin' into a starry sky on a cold winter night.
For just a sec, I started to wonder whether I was doing the wrong thing. But then he stepped into the store and, a minute later, he came back with a twenty-five-foot green hose.
* * *
I left the hardware store and got in my truck, which I'd parked a little way down the block from the diner. I was headed to the Blue Mountain Quarry.
I turned on the radio to listen to some music, but I stopped between stations when I heard that cracklin' static sound. As I drove, I tuned my ears to the static and just let it fill me. In movies, people are always tryin' to find extra-terrestrial life through sound transmission, findin' patterns in the static, that kind of thing. For a while, watchin' those fools turn dials made me mad. Like why couldn't people just look harder at what they were? Why couldn't they realize that they could go there whenever they wanted if they trained themselves right? Why'd they have to go searchin' in some noise from outer space?
I drove past the Oakridge Baptist Church and the Wendell Hill Presbyterian Church and, as I left town, I turne
d the dial. Most of what we get in Blue Mountain is country, but there's also LOVE FM, the Christian station, and WROQ, the college station out of Birmingham.
I stopped on WROQ because I liked the sound of the DJ's voice. He was talkin' about the game, so I tuned out his words and focused on his excited, optimistic tone. Young people give me hope sometimes. Even though the world around them went dark already, some of them still have a chance. Like if they can make it into their twenties without losing their minds, maybe they can figure out for themselves what I figured out.
A song came on, the kind of thing Mr. Malcolm would never let us listen to at the diner. The kid said it was by some band called The Killers and it started slow and low with a little dance beat. A few seconds later, a male singer came on and started talkin' about lettin' go and walkin' through open doors and cuttin' the cord and findin' the answer and all that kinda stuff.
His voice had a yearnin' in it, like he was wantin' to know somethin' so bad but just couldn't figure it out. When I was in my twenties, I walked around like most people, pretendin' to know a bunch of things I didn't know. But when I was alone in the bathtub, or under the covers at night, I'd have to admit to myself that I didn't know anythin' and then I'd just cry and cry.
Nothin' hurts more than feelin' a question, feelin' how big the mystery is, then lookin' out at a world of wrong answers to wrong questions. Nothing is lonelier than lyin' in bed at night with all these questions, lookin' for the answers and knowin' no one around you is even askin' the same ones. All anyone seemed to be askin' was whether Saban would have the boys ready for Saturday, whether the D-line could get to the new Auburn quarterback. But this guy, in this song, I could tell that at least he was askin' the right questions.
But it wasn't until the chorus of the song that I started to really feel him. He said, "Are we human or are we dancer?"
Just like that. Came out of the crummy speakers in my busted-up pickup truck that was almost as old as me, and I couldn't believe what I was hearin'. I listened close, kinda leaned into the speaker to the right of the steerin' wheel. Kept my left eye on the road. At first I thought he said "dancers." But the second and third time the chorus came around I knew he was saying dancer, no s. Like "dancer" was some kind of separate species, different than and probably more divine than humans.
Light Remains: Three Stories Page 4
