Hornets and Others

by Al Sarrantonio

  "Are you sleeping well, Donald?"

  She thinks she is so sweet, Donald thought. She thinks she knows. I won't look at her, and then she'll go away.

  "Donald? We'll be here a long time, if you continue this way."

  She's not sweet.

  Her hand out, she touched him gently. "Donald?"

  He felt her leaden hand on him, knew how to make her go away.

  "I'm fine," he said, turning to look at her. "I'm sleeping well lately,

  Doctor."

  "Dreams?"

  "No dreams that I remember. My journal is empty, I know."

  He waited, then said, because she wanted, "I'm sorry."

  "There's nothing to apologize for. But it would be better if you wrote down your dreams. You have been dreaming. Your parents heard you."

  The intercom. I forgot about it.

  "Perhaps," he said.

  "Can you remember any of these dreams?"

  He looked at her, thought, I can lie. Then: No, she will know.

  "I don't remember."

  "Is that true, Donald?"

  He looked at the wall again. "I don't know."

  She sighed; always sighed.

  "Have you ever felt it?" he said abruptly, loudly. He had startled her. "Stardust has a feel. Everything around us is stardust, but when it's formed into real stars, it has a different touch. Like petting something.

  A cat." His eyes became momentarily fierce. "Alive."

  She looked at him with heightened interest. In her eyes she was saying, Go on. Please go on, we're making progress.

  "Bits of stars come to me. I summon them—Mizar, Alcor, Markab—and they send tiny parts of themselves to me. I want all of them to come, not just bits—"

  He was suddenly silent. He looked away from her again, at the wall, her plaques and framed certificates. A part of him felt pulled to the night. "Donald, what do you think this means?"

  "I don't know" he said.

  A minor breakthrough, Dr. Smith termed it. In the back of the car, the song went through Donald's head. In the front, his parents argued contentedly about dinner, were happy; his father glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure he was still there. They wanted him to be well.

  "Donald," his mother finally said, speaking as if he would break, "would you like to dine out?"

  He made no answer, but they wanted to so badly, he said nothing to stop them.

  The restaurant was darkening when they arrived. Recessed lights blinked on as the sun lowered outside. Too bright. They were seated near a long window, his father knew the management.

  Donald sat facing the lowering sun, trying to stare beyond it.

  Soon! Soon!

  The menu lay open in front of him, so his mother ordered. The food came, and when his mother started his own hand moving to Donald's mouth with a fork, he continued the motion and repeated it himself. His father talked about sports, television shows, an architectural commission that might come.

  Outside, the sun went down, as a sprinkle of stars lumined the bluing horizon.

  Yes!

  The song rose in Donald's head:

  These are the suns of endless night—

  These are the burning orbs so bright—

  These are the things that fill my sight—

  STARS!

  He didn't hear the shouting around him. To him, it all went away. He was stretching his hands out, standing up as high as he could go, shouting for the stars to come to him. They bulged out of the darkening sky toward him, then pulled back and hung waiting. He wanted them to dance around his head; wanted to feel pieces of them brush against him like furred things. He shouted for them to come. A yearning joy filled him, but the stars stayed coyly planted, distant—

  The lights of the restaurant were turned up bright, washing out the night sky. His mother's crying made him look down. He was standing on the table. Most of the dishes had been kicked aside, spilled. His father was holding Donald's pants leg tightly, trying to steady him.

  The restaurant had gone quiet. Donald and his parents were surrounded by a frightened circle of waiters.

  With his father's help, Donald stepped carefully down. His mother cried all the way to the car and then home. "Why can't we have even a dinner together? Why can't I have even that? Seventeen years old, and he can't even let me have dinner!"

  He unhooked the intercom wires. His mother and father didn't come with the rattling key until late in the night, after hours of dancing and joyful shouting. He was exhausted. The stars, more of them, bigger bits, rushed back out into the deep sky all at once as the door opened, leaving him giddy, feeling as if he were in a sudden vacuum. His knuckles were bloody, there were marks on the ceiling where he had tried to push himself up and through. The window bars were marked with blood, and with scratches from the furniture he had broken.

  "Why do you do this!" his mother screamed from the doorway. She would not enter.

  His father came in, looked at the damage, and told his wife to be quiet.

  "I won't be quiet! Why do you do this, Donald!" she shouted. "You used to be a normal little boy, you played baseball and read books and watched television—you were just a little boy!"

  She turned and ran off, sobbing.

  Donald looked after her, and remembered, but she was not correct. He saw himself in his crib, staring out past the rotating mobile: little moons and planets turning over his head in nightlight, playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, staring out through the softly blowing curtains to the real stars in the sky twinkling for him, flashing in the dark night, reaching like a mother's soft hands down to him—

  He remembered playing baseball, the summer games at night, the lights glaring angrily down onto the field, the pitch coming to him, his father in the stands. But Sirius was rising on the eastern horizon in front of him, over the outfield, and he stood and dropped his bat and they called him out—

  He remembered reading, the book about stars, the sun spilling through his window onto his desk. He learned their names. But already he was dreaming of the night to come, when he would kneel and hold his palms out, secretly wishing as the real stars spread their beautiful blanket overhead—

  He remembered watching television, going to birthday parties, throwing a football in the backyard with his father, a thousand other things, but always the stars—the stars!—called to him, up through the earth during the bright day, out past the blue-skied sun in the darkness of space, their call deeper, richer, more insistent than the movement of his own blood.

  And now, and now!—

  These are the suns of endless night—

  These are the orbs that burn so bright—

  These are the things that fill my sight—

  STARS!

  He sang loud, laughing, thrusting his hands up, watching Arcturus through the barred window rushing down toward him, Vega, Deneb and Aldebaran and all the rest, yellow, blue, red, white, dwarf, giant, hurrying pieces of themselves toward him, toward him!

  He leapt to meet them, hands grasping, and faintly heard his father shout as he hit the bars, tried to push his face through to meet the stars, his father shouting, "For God's sake, Donald!" before he brought his face back and then swiftly forward, wanting to meet the stars halfway to heaven, and then, his father's grip on him now. His father suddenly let go, staring out through the bars with his mouth open, before blinking and then taking hold of Donald once more. Donald hit his head against the bars amidst his father's repeated cries—

  Every day was Dr. Smith day.

  He was put in a room with no window. White walls: he could feel the winter stars pulling like burning magnets through the thick concrete. When he tried to ram his head through, they transferred him to a smaller room with padding over the cinder blocks, no sink or toilet. There was a thick door with a convex-lensed porthole, through which nurses gaped like fish. He could smell the fragments of stars, ever larger, knew they were just outside the walls, waiting to rush upon him, nuzzle, claim him.

&nbs
p; So he began to dig toward them, a tiny quarter inch at a time, pulling back a flap of padding to work on the concrete wall with a spoon from supper they didn't miss. All night, each night, he sang to himself and burrowed, hiding his progress.

  His parents came and he sat between them in Dr. Smith's office, knees up, head down.

  They talked as if he wasn't there.

  "Acute schizophrenia," Dr. Smith said. "This is the way it progresses, sometimes. The manifestations get worse as they get older."

  So sad she sounded: a voice to soothe his mother, who sat rocking herself, sobbing into a handkerchief.

  "Doctor," his father began, uncomfortably, "is there. . . any chance that what Donald sees is real? There was a brief moment the other night when I thought I saw something, what looked like particles of light—"

  "Tiny bits of stars visiting your son?" Dr. Smith's look of indulgent superiority quieted him. "I'm no physicist or astronomer," she said, "but I think that if the stars moved in the sky we would know about it. And, of course, if even one entire star were to actually 'visit' the Earth..."

  She trailed off, aware that in her eagerness to be clever she had spoken too dogmatically. She quickly added. "It's quite possible you saw something, of course—or at least thought you did. Dust motes, perhaps. But I would characterize it as a sympathetic illusion, a way of identifying with your son."

  Donald's father looked away uneasily, and his mother was taken by a renewed bout of weeping.

  "And now," Dr. Smith continued, "we must think about how best to care for Donald..."

  Later, in his cell, Donald continued to dig, eating powdered concrete, spoonful by spoonful.

  In the middle of May the hole was nearly finished. All winter he had felt the winter stars pulling at him, finally giving way to spring. The constellation Orion left him, but the stars of Leo pulled high overhead, calling out, growing stronger as the wall gave way.

  Soon!

  Soon!

  One night the spoon poked through to darkness.

  It was as if electricity had shot through him. He pressed his face to the tiny hole, heard the singing stars outside. He began to cry with happiness. He widened the tiny opening, pressed his straining wide eye to it, staring out.

  He saw little, the outline of a low, close row of bushes, the leg of an outdoor bench on the path that wound through the grounds. He looked up, and saw the merest flicker of a tiny light—Regulus, the Lion's paw—singing to him!

  These are the orbs that burn so bright—

  These are the things that fill my sight—

  STARS!

  He wept, pressed his hands to the wall, tried to move it out, biting at the bottom of the tiny opening with his mouth, tried to swallow the wall and make it go away:

  STARS!

  Donald screamed. He felt a singing, magnetic, painful need in his body. Pale blue-white Regulus held its hands out to him, sent a scintilla of itself to dance in front of him, called to him, strained toward him—

  STARS!

  He beat at the wall, willed the wall to go away, to let him hold his own hands out to Regulus. And as he screamed in need again, pressing his wide eye tight to the opening, reaching out with his sight, all the stars of Leo—Regulus, Denebola and Algieba and Zosma—all the stars!—sent fingers of themselves rushing at him, swirling and dancing, holding their bright atoms out to him, pulling at him and he cried and screamed and beat his hands on the unmoving wall—

  And then suddenly he stopped screaming and turned, wide-eyed, to see human faces staring in at him through the fish-eye porthole.

  As he pulled himself back away from the hole, he saw the particles of stars whirl up and fly back away from him.

  "No!"

  But already it was too late. Dr. Smith and the others were through the door and running at him, bending down, their hands on him—

  "No!" he screamed, straining his eye back to the hole. The star bits returned, whirled and stopped near the hole and again he heard their singing—but already it was too late. The hands were strong on him, many hands pulling him back. Donald bit and screamed at them and his eye grew wide and strained against the hole as the hands sought to pull him back and his own hands tried to reach out through the walls.

  They could not pull him from the hole, his wide eye squeezed tight to it—and now he felt himself going through, his eye and then the rest of him would squeeze through the tiny hole and the stars were waiting, dancing, singing for him and they would all finally come to him!

  And then they pulled him back mightily, many hands, and he cried, "NO!" and pushed his eye out of its socket and through—

  For the tiniest moment he felt the stars touch him, their warm fingers on him, holding tight, almost coming to him, particle by atom all of them ready to spring upon him, caressing his eye up through his optic nerve, almost, almost!—before there was a quick shutter of blackness and pain and the attendants yanked him back and away—

  Late in the night they had him strapped into a straightjacket, in Dr. Smith's office in a chair. His hands were bandaged, his head heavily dressed around his empty eyesocket. He had bitten two of the attendants; they gave him sour looks as they passed the open doorway.

  "...it will be better, and, I'm afraid, legally necessary at this point, to move him to the state facility," Dr. Smith was saying.

  Donald's father looked tired and limp in his suit, looked at Donald briefly and then away.

  "I can't believe he did that to himself!" his mother said. She did not look at him, but at Dr. Smith who received her anger. "Why in God's name did he do that?"

  Donald sat quietly in his chair, smiling.

  His parents rode with him in the rear seat of Dr. Smith's car. The hospital wanted her to take an ambulance, and two burly attendants, but she convinced them that this was better. Donald sat between his parents, in his strait jacket. His father rested his head wearily against the side window. His mother sat erect, alert, hands clenched.

  They pulled out from the underground entrance of the hospital and moved up the ramp. Mercury vapor lamps illuminated the long roadway to the front gates, the road beyond.

  As they rolled out from beneath the lights, the night closed in, and Donald saw the stars.

  They were there, up through the rear window! He tilted his head back—and there, through his one eye, they waited and sang to him. Leo was falling, but in its place was Hercules with his club, Ras Algethi and Marfik and Ruticulus, swirling from their places toward him. Reaching their tendril fingers out. Trying, finally, to get to him.

  He leaned back, and his father said, "Doctor!"

  Dr. Smith braked the car. His mother shrieked, "Donald! No!" and put her hands on him. But he was clawing through the straps of the strait jacket, thrashing and crying and arching up and back toward the rear window.

  The stars—all the stars!—wound into a whirlpool and tore down at him. His blood sang.

  Dr. Smith opened the front door of the car, and ran back toward the hospital, shouting for help to the guard at the front gate.

  The guard began to run toward her.

  "Donald!" his mother pleaded.

  He was fighting his way out of the jacket, biting and pushing. His father's and mother's hands on him would not stop him.

  And then he was out of the jacket! The straps flew away, hitting his father and mother, and he thrust his hands mightily up, punching out through the back glass of the car, kicking himself up off the back seat. He felt his arms go through the glass, which shattered around him in a thousand tiny beads of glasslike stars.

  "Yes!" he cried.

  The star bits flowed down towards him—twirling, dancing, rushing like a vortex.

  "Donald, stop this immediately!" Dr. Smith shouted, stopping before the car with the startled guard.

  "He's crazy!" the guard shouted, fumbling for his gun.

  Donald climbed out onto the trunk of the car. Shreds of the strait jacket fell away as the swirling bright orange red white star atoms rolle
d down out of the night and rammed toward him—Aldebaren and Sirium and Thuban and Aifrik and Deneb:

  These are the suns of endless night!

  These are the orbs that burn so bright!

  These are the things that fill my sight

  STARS!

  He felt the tendrils of their fingers on his face—and then felt something more—finally! Yes!—of a vast straining, a movement behind the heavens—

  "Donald!" he heard his mother's voice cry, as he held his hands out in welcome—

  The guard aimed and fired his gun wildly, and Dr. Smith looked up and gasped, "Oh my God—"

  The sky was filled with light—

  Here they came.

  Bags

  Miss Debicker was not prone to self-pity, but something about this cloudy morning waiting outside the Grand Central luncheonette, and the bottom of her coffee cup, made her think briefly of the last twenty-five years of loneliness, and her lack of companionship. But I am successful, she thought, and immediately felt better.

  On her way out of Grand Central she stopped at one of the large newsstands to buy a magazine in which one of her articles had been reprinted, and encountered a bag lady. The woman sat just inside one of the entranceways to the terminal; she was dirty and disheveled, mumbling to herself, and clutching a plastic shopping bag to her breast. Miss Debicker turned away, and hurried outside. That's what failure is, she thought.

  It came as a bit of surprise, then, when she arrived at her office to find that her next assignment was to do a story on bag people. She took an instant dislike to the subject, and let her editor know it.

  He told her, in his soft-spoken manner, that he thought the assignment was a good one. Bag people were defensive and hard to talk to, and though some of them appeared to be nothing more than destitute or winos there seemed to be some sort of bond—a hobo-like code of living—that linked them together. "There's a good story in that," he said. "And their numbers seem to be growing."