Far Beyond the Stars

by Steven Barnes

  "What?" He knew what she was saying, but had a problem dealing with it—

  (Yes)

  "You said the number Four Sixty Two. Were you teasing me? Were you kidding, dear?"

  "No," he said weakly. And he didn't know how he knew that, or why he had said it.

  Only that he was as certain of it as he was of anything in his life. He looked at her, and nodded, afraid of the voices in his head.

  If he was really certain, really that certain, shouldn't he tell her to bet more than her usual pennies? How much?

  (Don't be greedy)

  the voices said. And he knew that it would be wise to listen to them. Knew that they meant him no harm.

  "Remember the money you were saving up to buy me a suit?" he said. He hardly knew what he was saying, knowing only that this was the right thing to say. "Take that whole twenty dollars."

  "Twenty dollars?" she said. "Benny? Are you well?"

  He smiled. "Never been better."

  CHAPTER 17

  " BENNY!" his Aunt was running, her dress hiked up with one hand, her feet slapping against the pavement, almost flying with her excitement.

  Benny was sitting on the tenement stoop with a few of the regulars. Little Cass was there, and his gangling buddy Rike, and puff-eared Swoop, and the rest of the gang. The sun was setting and the long shadows were stretching across the street, but this was a good time, a time for gathering on the stoops, for shooting the breeze, bragging, talkin' trash.

  This might be a time for talking about the latest ball game, or title bout. A time for talking about girls—or, if there were none about, for bragging about nonexistent conquests. In some ways, these gatherings were the centerpiece of the entire day—everything else just revolved around them. It was a ritual he had enjoyed since childhood.

  So when they all turned their heads and saw Benny's Aunt Ardelia, her face lit up like a Christmas tree, there was much good-natured laughter and speculation about what might have been the occasion for such intense exercise.

  They found out shortly. She looked at him with an expression of wonder in her eyes. "I … you …"

  "What?"

  Her wonder was mixed with something like sheepish guilt. "When you told me about the number, I didn't quite believe you. I thought that you were pulling my leg," she said. "So I didn't bet the whole twenty dollars."

  He groaned. "How much, then?"

  She looked at the ground. "Oh, Benny, forgive me. I only bet a dollar."

  He closed his eyes hard, and saw the orb flashing and flashing around behind his eyes, and heard something that was almost like a kind of electric laughter. Six hundred dollars. That was enough to get them out of debt. Back rent and then some! That was enough to get a little ahead. But it could have been a hundred and twenty thousand!

  He felt her hand on his arm. "Benny?" she said. Neither of them noticed that the stoop seemed to have gone quiet. Nobody said a word. "Benny?" she said again. "You can do it again, can't you Benny?"

  He gulped, and backed up from them. He looked around. Every eye was on him and there was something in their eyes, a mixture of greed and wonderment. All except for Cass, who watched him with her lips pursed.

  "Yeah, man—" Rike said. "Can you hit that number for me, too?"

  "What's the number for tomorrow?" Swoop said. And gripped at him with cold fingers.

  "I don't know. I don't know!" Benny tore himself away, and ran, as fast as he could, away from their clamor.

  There was a place that Benny Russell could usually count on to find peace. It was up on the rooftop above the apartment he shared with his aunt, and he was leaning against one of the ventilator ducts when Cass found him. He sat with his knees drawn up against his chest, breathing hard, and eyes shut hard, trying to find the Orb behind his lids. Nothing.

  He heard her footsteps in the silence behind his eyes, and glanced up at her. She seemed a little tentative, but smiled.

  "They're all talking about your Aunt," she said. "Good timing, you know?"

  "I guess we won't be sleeping in the street, after all," he said.

  "All up and down the avenue," she said. "Willie Hawkins and Jenny came by, and you should have seen her eyes light up."

  "They did?" Suddenly all of the fear, all of the doubt and insecurity seemed to vanish.

  She just looked at him, and shook her head. She sat down beside him. "You're not as smart as you think you are," she said.

  "None of us are."

  "I mean, you're pretty smart, but you're not real smart about people. You don't see what I see."

  "And what's that?"

  "Oh … that you're good enough for Jenny when she wants to study, or when she thinks you might make her some money. But she's in love with Willie. You don't want a girl like her."

  He looked at Cass, and just smiled to himself. He didn't tell her what he had seen.

  He had closed his eyes, thinking of Jenny, wondering what this new and sudden gift might conceivably bring to his life, and had been blessed with a sudden image of Jenny kissing him, holding him on a rooftop, gripping him so intensely that even through a mere vision, he could feel the heat. The Orb had whispered to him: "Don't be greedy."

  And he had allowed the vision to lapse.

  Cass looked at him. There was something in her fourteen-year-old eyes that he hadn't quite let himself see before. Just a moment of it. And he realized that Jenny had practiced a kind of prognostication of her own. And that Cass, for all of her boyish ways, was in love with him, and he had never quite let himself see it.

  No, he wasn't really very smart, at all.

  He reached out, and brushed her face with the back of his hand. "I'll just have to do the best I can," he said. "That's all that any of us can do."

  "Can you really pick the number?" she asked. He noticed that there was no second question behind that. No "and will you pick one for me?" There was just a general curiosity. She had been there at the fair. She might be willing to believe.

  "I don't know what you'd call it," he said. "I got something at the fair. It's weak, but sometimes it gets a little stronger. The Orb did something to me."

  She squatted there, watching him, without judgment in her sweet little brown eyes. And finally, she said: "Then you'd better go back."

  Benny was a hero the next day, and the day after. He and his aunt were local celebrities—they had hit the number, and for six hundred dollars! That was big, big news around here. If her bosses had thought Eva capable of rigging the number (as "Dutch" Shultz had been rumored to do) they would have looked at her askance. As it was, there was a flurry of curiosity, and she paid off her debts, bought herself a new dress, and Benny that new suit, and then pestered him, every moment, about when he was going to give her another number.

  And she wasn't the only one. It seemed that everyone along the street knew that his Aunt had hit the number, and that he had given it to her after falling into some kind of spell.

  He had money for movies—Ardelia made sure of that, and they saw Republic chapter plays and cowboy movies, and bought ice cream, and once went all the way out to Coney Island.

  Several times during those days, he thought that he caught Jenny peering at him, but although she sometimes cruised by, or he saw her laughing as she walked along with Willie Hawkins, or once, when he went to a youth baseball game, and watched the local team pound the starch out of a colored team from Bed-Sty, he saw Jenny in the stands. She wore a peach dress that clung to her like sin, and she was eating an ice cream cone. She turned to look at him, licking lazily at that cone with an idly speculative expression, he knew that he was just going to burst.

  The celebrity faded. A number had been hit, but numbers were hit every day. When nothing more exciting happened, life along 127th drifted back to normal.

  And there it might have stayed, except that a week later, he ran into Jenny in the Sweet Temptations ice cream shop.

  She sat in a booth with Willie, who was roaring with laughter and regaling them with h
is latest exploits—these in the boxing ring when he had thrashed some local challenger. Benny sat at the counter by himself, sipping at a coke.

  He heard Willie laugh and then say: "Well, I have to get to practice. Team can't make it without me!" Then he slid his big body out of the booth and hurried out the door, stopping only long enough to slap Benny on the shoulder.

  "Hey Benny!" he said. "Got any predictions about the game tonight? Or maybe what I'm going to be doing after."

  He roared uproariously and lewdly, glancing back at Jenny. She dimpled and turned her face away. The other boys chuckled heartily.

  Embarrassed for her, Benny squeezed his eyes shut and . . .

  And this time, there was something in the darkness. It spun and hummed there behind his closed lids, glowing, and it spoke to him. For almost ten seconds he listened.

  Then he opened his eyes and said: "Yeah, Willie. I know what's going to happen in the game. You're going to lose. Worse, you're going to twist your ankle pretty bad, and the only thing you're going to do tonight is soak it."

  The entire ice cream shop went dead quiet. Willie blinked hard, and leaned close. "What did you say?"

  "I think you heard me," Benny said calmly. "I said you're going to lose, and get hurt. And be too busy limping to chase after Jenny."

  Willie got just a little closer to Benny, and then blinked again, and backed away.

  "Come on, man!" Willie's friends said, pulling him back away. Willie was still looking at Benny, and Benny saw something in the larger boy's eyes that he had never seen before.

  Fear.

  The sound of Willie's car peeling away from the curb was music to his ears. He sighed deeply, and let himself relax. He hardly realized it when Jenny slid onto the stool next to him.

  "Ooh," she said. "You really zinged him with that one."

  "Wasn't what I was trying to do," he said. She was drenched in some kind of mind-spinning perfume, something almost insanely intoxicating. He wanted to faint, or die, or throw her over his shoulder and run.

  "I heard about the number," she said. "You know, I believe that sometimes people can see things, you know?" She shivered, and the action animated her entire body. "You know? A man who can do things like that is a lot of man. I could be interested in him."

  She leaned a little closer, and before he realized what had happened, deposited a kiss on the corner of his mouth. "Bye," she said, and sashayed out of the shop.

  His heart roared, and the blood sang hallelujah in his ears. He didn't know what to do. He was supposed to buy some shoes, but there was something else calling to him now, and he wasn't certain he could resist.

  He left a nickel on the counter, and made his way to the train station.

  SHUFFLE

  CHAPTER

  18

  1953

  BENNY WASN'T completely certain how he made it home. He switched trains automatically, not really paying attention to the stops. He walked as if he had lead weights attached to his feet. God help him, that was exactly how it felt.

  He managed to make it back across 138th Street without being run over, or exploding with grief and anger and fear and simply striking down some innocent passerby. Anyone. Just to have a chance to take the darkness out of himself and put it somewhere else. Anywhere else. Just not in his own heart. It was so crowded in there. He had collected so much darkness in there over the years, there seemed no room left for love.

  He climbed the stairs to his room and fit the key to the door. Forty dollars a month. That was what it took him to keep a roof over his head. He needed every penny from whatever source. And when it came right down to it, wasn't the preservation of life and basic human needs important? Wasn't that victory of a kind? So even if he ignored his muse just a bit, channeled his artistic drive into the fields of commercial necessity, was that so bad?

  Comforted by his lies, Benny drifted from exhausted wakefulness to an uneasy sleep, and there found surcease of sorrow.

  He woke in the morning feeling even less rested, if that was possible. Benny rolled out of bed, staring at his hands, which shook. He needed food, and coffee, and even more than that, he needed a friendly face.

  A quick shower washed his dark, sticky dreams down the drain. He brushed his teeth without enthusiasm. No matter how he scrubbed, it felt as if a thin film remained. No efforts, however sincere, could completely wash away the muck.

  His dreams had been shallow and restless, shifting between scenes without respect for narrative flow (and here Benny realized, ironically, that he truly was as slave to the muse. Even in dream, he couldn't just let his mind wander where it would. Even in dream, he bowed to the compulsion to exert some creative control.)

  He could feel the headache building up behind his ears again, and along with that, something whispered to him, something that grew stronger with every breath. Some revelation was tumbling up from the depths of his unconscious, something …

  Something that would help him to make sense of his life?

  That was a consummation to be devoutly wished. Why couldn't he be happy with the life that he had been given? Why couldn't he be happy moving through the world as other men did, accepting the world around them? There was peace, there was contentment in such bliss. And if there were times when he thought that such peace was bought at the price of blindness, he also knew that it was too easy to criticize those who had chosen the more well-trodden path.

  He looked about himself, at the place in which he lived. He had his father's piano, and a table, and a typewriter. And, of course, a bed on which he usually slept alone. He was thirty years old, and as his father would have said, "you ain't gonna be twenty-nine next year, boy."

  Benny's aunt had feared for her dreamer nephew. It wasn't just Cassie who thought that he was wasting his time. But his aunt had been afraid for another reason: she feared that he was simply trying to follow in his father's footsteps. His father had written songs, and played them with magical fingers on that old piano. And followed his dream even when his dream threatened to lead his family into the poorhouse. And if that dream had ultimately broken him, costing "Fox" his wife, and his son, at least he had followed it, right down the line. And how many people in this world could say that they had done such a thing?

  So if he was in some way following the path that his father had marked out for him, he supposed that there were worse and less honest things that he could do with his life.

  But what about Cassie? Wasn't it unfair to her? Wasn't it some kind of self-indulgent, egotistical dishonesty to continue their relationship? When it came right down to it, he knew that he was willing to starve for his art, for his writing, for the precious words placed on paper. But was he really willing to ask Cassie to starve for his art?

  When it came down to it, wouldn't he be happy to live by himself, even in such conditions as this, and work, and work, and continue to strive, if he managed to put some of his dreams onto paper? What a miracle if some of them were even published, and he would know that someone out there somewhere knew that he had lived, that he had striven, and fought, and made his mark?

  But that was what a man did. A man did things, a man changed things. Men had to do. Women could simply be. And simple being for a woman meant a family. And stability. And marriage. Things that he could not offer her, unless he succeeded.

  Or gave up his dream.

  He was trembling again, and knew it. Outside the window of his apartment, there were cars, and the clamor of conversations and a world that moved from day to day, and deed to deed, and people who had made their peace with the world that was. Perhaps making that peace was the key to opening one's heart, finding contentment.

  As he could not.

  As Cassie could not, so long as she loved him.

  Something had to change, something had to shift. He wasn't sure that he was the immovable object he had often imagined himself to be. There was the muse. And there was Cassie and all that she represented. Both were irresistible forces, before which he was as a st
raw in the wind.

  What will you do? What will you choose?

  "Why me?" he asked aloud. And there was no answer. Why couldn't he just have an ordinary life? Why him? And there were no answers from the room, or the walls, or anyone or anything. No answers at all.

  Eva's Kitchen was, surprisingly, almost empty. He was glad of it, though—right now he had no taste for a crowd, or a boisterous Willie bragging about the game, or even little Jimmy pulling one of his endless scams. Right now he just wanted to sip his coffee and be left alone.

  Then his solitude was ruptured. Jimmy bounced through the door and sat beside him, casually spinning himself around on the stool as Cassie refilled Benny's cup. With perfect—perfectly bad—timing, she said, "I'm sorry they didn't buy your story, baby. Really I am."

  Jimmy smiled grimly, one of those smiles that invite the recipient to share in one of the great and dark secrets of the world. "I told you," he said. "I knew you were wasting your time." He shook his head, but it wasn't just disgust. There was something just a little bit wistful about it. "Colored captain … the only reason they'll ever let us in space is if they need someone to shine their shoes. Ain't that right, Cassie?"

  "I don't know," she said, "and to be honest, I don't much care what happens a hundred years from now. It's today that matters."

  Benny listened to them, wondering if they understood how much their dialogue mirrored his own internal conversations. It wasn't what he needed. What he needed now was someone to say: believe in yourself, Benny! There is hope, keep going—

  But there wasn't anyone, had never really been, and he knew that he was going to have to pull himself out of the depression, or let these people—his friends—turn him into something that they would feel comfortable with. And who would he be then?

  Jimmy was warmed up, and progressed well into his rap. "Well I got news for you … today or a hundred years from now don't make a bit of difference … as far as they're concerned, we'll always be niggers."