Spring 2014

 

           It was a Class IIIB laser pointer. It was bright as the military lasers they used out on base. His brother Asher had bought it last year. He’d worked for it all summer. He washed cars at the Stop-and-Glo and delivered for Papa John’s and he cradled it like a baby the day it came. He read the manual like some holy book and he wore special glasses when he used it. It’s not a toy, Jeremy, he’d say. It’s a scientific instrument. Its beam touched the stars he was studying. It touched each one and he sat out there between the trees with only his scope and a flashlight and he took notes in his journal. That perfect handwriting and those numbers he wrote down and nobody knew what they meant. His mother kept it on her nightstand now. She said if you love something enough your essence will linger. She called it a penumbra.

            Dilly was driving. He drove his grandma’s four-door Chevy Nova because she’d left it to him in her will. Jeremy sat in the back so he could go between the windows. They were heading east on Route 24, and it was flat as Kansas out here. No sign of the mountains. Past Falcon, Peyton, and Calhan, those little shit towns where nothing ever happened. Past Simla and Matheson and Limon and then there’d be nothing until the border, nothing but barns and churches and VFW meeting halls, some fields planted with winter wheat. All evening they’d been driving fifty miles per hour. People had to pass them on the shoulder or in the opposing lane. A fat man in a rusty blue truck had rolled down his window and given them the finger.

            A GMC Sierra Denali came by with its cab roof lights and its Ramsey winch. “That’s a nice one,” Jeremy said. “It’s got that rear-wheel steering.” He pushed the pointer’s power button and rolled down the rear driver window. The air came in so cold it needled his skin. The truck was right beside them.  He could see the white forearms of the driver.

            “No,” Dilly said. “My uncle drives a truck like that.”

            “So?”

            “I like my uncle. He bought me my first knife.” His face was lit for a second by the truck lights, and Jeremy could see every pockmark on his jaw. The truck passed them on the left and kept on going, up and down the gentle dips, its taillights always visible even as they faded.

            An old VW van came by but that one wasn’t nice enough. A Ford truck and then a Cherokee and they needed to wait. “We’ll know it when we see it,” Jeremy said. He tilted his head to look outside and there were stars enough to make him dizzy. He could see red Betelgeuse in Orion and the blue one underneath. He’d forgotten its name already.

            They were almost at Limon when it came up beside them. A Kawasaki Ninja 650R and it was so green it glowed like the Hulk in the lights of their car. Jeremy rolled down his window as soon as it came close. It glowed like something radioactive and he knew that bike, knew its six-speed transmission and how its exhaust was hidden away so neatly and it didn’t ruin the lines. It was seven grand and change at Apex Sports over on Weber. He’d seen it in the window. The same green and the rubber-mounted handlebars and now some guy was passing them on the right, riding that sweet sweet thing. Leaning low over the bars like a rocketeer. The bike pulled ahead of them and he must have been going seventy, that guy in the yellow helmet, he must have been going seventy or seventy-five but it wasn’t fast enough.

            Just shine it on the trees, Dilly was saying. Just shine it on his tires, and Jeremy pushed the button.

            It took two seconds for the beam to show, two eternal seconds and then it came so strong it looked like a starbeam frozen in the air. The green beam went to that green bike because it was meant to find its way. It lit up his ferring and bounced off the silver of his mirrors and all the gears were turning now and things were falling into place. The bike swerved to the right and then to the left. It tipped sideways and the rider wasn’t more than a hundred yards ahead of them and the friction wore away the green plastic cowling. Sparks shot upwards like fireworks from the metal parts as they ground against the road. The rider was somewhere inside the sparks, somewhere inside that perfect lightshower, and Jeremy hung his head out the window so he could see it better.

            Dilly turned the wheel too hard. They hit some metal pieces and maybe something soft. Steam was coming from under the hood. Shit, Dilly was saying, shit and he swerved over the yellow line and onto the far shoulder. He held the steering wheel like it was a life preserver. Dilly was out of the car so fast Jeremy hadn’t even opened up his door. He was jumping up and down in the gravel, out of fear or something else. Maybe he’s alive, he kept saying, maybe he’s okay. Jeremy got out and stood there with him, and it wasn’t until that moment that he realized his hand was still around the pointer and his finger on the button. He held his left palm in front of that green beam and he’d never see anything more perfect no matter where he went.

#

            Asher wasn’t dead. He was only sleeping. Dilly always got that wrong. They’d gone together to Asher’s room to get the laser pointer. Jeremy went inside the closet and the box was on the shelf next to Asher’s rain gear and his rolled up sleeping bag. He came out with it and set it on the bed, but Dilly wasn’t paying attention. Christ, Dilly was saying. I never noticed all those books before. He must have been a genius. He got the smarts and you got all the other stuff, and he laughed so hard he snorted. He took Asher’s lucky coin from the nightstand. A Franklin half dollar from 1949. The paramedics had found it in his pocket. How much do you think this one’s worth? Dilly said. I wonder if it’s silver.

            Jeremy reached for Dilly’s hand without even knowing he was doing it. He twisted Dilly’s elbow back the way they did it on the UFC. The coin landed on the area rug and rolled beneath the bed, but Jeremy held on to Dilly’s arm. He worked it until it was about to pop and then he let it go.

#

            The Colorado State Patrol came first and then the EMTs and the coroner’s van, which was squat like an armored truck. Cruisers came a few minutes later from two different counties. The body had stopped in Elbert County, but most of the motorcycle was in Lincoln. What were the odds of that? The two deputies stood around the wreckage, an old guy from Elbert and a young guy from Lincoln with a neck like a wrestler or one of those Olympic powerlifters. Jeremy stood with Dilly next to the Nova. He watched the deputies and the coroner lady with her camera. The deputies came over and talked to her, standing in a huddle and pointing with their flashlights. Jeremy could see the helmet from where he was but not the rest of the body. After a while the young guy got back into his cruiser, and he waved as he drove away. The body trumped the bike, which was only right.

            The Elbert deputy came over with a clipboard. He was wearing black snakeskin boots, which seemed wrong for an old guy like that. He needed to ask them questions. Jeremy felt the pointer through his sweatshirt pocket. He cupped his hand against his belly the way pregnant ladies do, to make sure it was still there. Dilly was standing beside him, and he’d started to breathe through his mouth.

            The deputy wanted to know what they were doing almost sixty miles from home. They were driving Dilly’s new car, Jeremy said. He had to say something because Dilly was looking over at the coroner’s truck and the popping of the flash. Dilly’s eyes had gone black. They looked like two polished stones.“He got it from his grandma,” Jeremy said. “It was her Sunday car,” and he pointed to the beige Nova. Both its front doors were still open. “We wanted to take her on the road. My friend Dilly he’s a really good driver.”

            The deputy nodded a little at that. “My ex-wife had one of those,” he said. “Back in ’75.  They made ‘em right back then. They didn’t need any computer chips to keep the engine running.”

            “That’s right,” Jeremy said. “My grandpa says that, too,” and the deputy wanted to see the registration and proof of insurance but Dilly wasn’t listening. He was leaning backwards against the car and watching the coroner lady take measurements with a roller. Who knew what she was doing, but she was rolling back and forth between the helmet and the biggest piece of the bike. They’d need to call a tow truck, the deputy was saying, because the car wasn’t going anywhere the way it was. They needed to call their parents.

            Dilly must have been listening all along because he woke up a little then. He started breathing even harder. “I’m sorry,” he said, and it was hard to understand him. “It’s not right how it happened,” and Jeremy took Dilly’s elbow where it was bruised and squeezed it with all his strength.

#

            Betelgeuse was born in fire. Six hundred forty light years from earth. At first the atoms were just floating, vast clouds of them trailing out in space. Hydrogen and helium and other ones, too, organic ones and nobody knew where they came from. This happened two million years ago, give or take. He learned these things from Asher and then from Asher’s books. The atoms started to gather themselves for reasons that aren’t clear. They clustered together and the clusters grew and the pressure kept getting higher. Their nuclei began to fuse. Closer and closer and they grew as they burnt. They were using themselves for fuel.

Astronomers think Betelgeuse is dying because it got too big. They say it’s starting to wobble. Our night sky will light up like a torch when it goes. We’ll see it if we’re lucky. Things are born and then they die, Asher had told him once. He called it the star cycle. They lay together on the Brindelmanns’ lawn where there weren’t any trees. They didn’t mind because they were never home. Their lawn was soft as any bed, and his mother said it was a crime how they wasted all that water. Asher aimed his pointer at Venus and the baby stars and the ones that were really old. Some of these are ghosts, he said. Phantom satellites. They’ve been gone for thousands of years. All we can see is the light they sent out before they went away.

#

            The deputy wore a big gold ring with an eagle and a star. His name was Schneider. He took Route 24 west to the 86 toward the Kiowa station, and he didn’t break sixty even though there weren’t any other cars. “I’ve seen a dozen accidents with idiots on bikes,” Schneider said. “They’re nothing but a motor and a seat.” It was bad as Binh Dinh, he kept saying, the way those guys were shredded, and nothing he said made sense. He looked old as Jeremy’s grandpa, and his knuckles were hairier than his head. He couldn’t do a pull-up to save his life. He couldn’t run three miles and he smoked as he drove even though he wasn’t supposed to. There was a little sign on the cruiser window with a cigarette crossed out.

            Dilly and Jeremy sat together in the back. It felt like an ordinary car once they were inside. Except for the curve of the backrests and the shotgun up front they could be riding in the Nova. Dilly had gone completely quiet, but his shoulders had started to shake like somebody pulled out from the water.

            “Your friend’s not doing so great. When you get home you better do the driving for a while.”

            “My mom won’t let me get my license. She says I need to wait.”

            “Sounds like a smart lady,” the deputy said. “There’s nothing worse than kids in cars. Might as well give them a loaded gun.” He dropped his cigarette butt into a can of Pepsi that he kept in his cup holder.

            “Old people aren’t any better. And if they hit somebody the judge just lets them off.”

            The deputy looked at Jeremy in the rear view mirror. His eyes were sharp. “Our reflexes start slowing down. That’s the problem. After thirty it’s all downhill.”

            They drove past the empty fields, one after another, and their lights flashed on crosses where people had crashed. Even out here folks tied ribbons to the barbed wire and some frozen flower wreaths, and that’s what the Palmer school had done for Asher, too, even though he wasn’t dead. All those ribbons and teddy bears and what was the point of it, of any of it, when two weeks later it was gone. The deputy wanted to know about Jeremy’s mom. Did she work outside the house? And what did his father do? Was he at Fort Carson?  He looked at Jeremy in the mirror, but not at Dilly. Did he have any brothers or sisters?

            Answer the questions and tell the officer what he needed. Answer them right and everything would be fine. He edged himself closer to the rear window so he could see the road.  His mom was an accountant for School District Eleven. She took classes at UCCS because she wanted to get her Masters. He saw his dad every other weekend. They were very close. His brother Asher loved astronomy. In September he’d be nineteen. Don’t tell him about the ventilator or the feeding tube. The nurses outside with their white rubber shoes and how it was never quiet in the hall. He put stars on the ceiling that first winter. Those glow-in-the-dark stars and he did it so Asher would see them when he opened his eyes. The nurses would have been mad if they’d known. They might have yelled or called his mother, but he stood on the chair and made a sky for this brother one star at a time.

            “Asher’s my best friend,” Jeremy said, and he could feel the laser pointer sitting in his pocket. “He’s smarter than all my teachers.”

            Don’t tell him that his mother was there right now. She was sitting in that chair and some nights she didn’t come home. Just last month a guy in Holland woke up after twenty years in a coma. He’d heard everything in those years, all the nurses chatting and the visits from his mother. She’d read these stories. The world was filled with wonders, and that’s why she needed to sit there and read him his science magazines. She worked his muscles, too, turning his feet in circles, but they’d started to curl anyway like somebody who had palsy. He’d trade every person in the city to bring his brother back. The mothers in the food court with their baby slings and the soldiers at Pete Field. The little kids skating in Memorial Park, and why were they laughing, why was anybody laughing in the world. All the old men driving when they should be taking the bus.

            “I’m close to my girls, too.” The deputy slowed the cruiser down from fifty-five to thirty. They were coming into town, and there was nothing there. They drove on Ute Avnue past a feed store and a Texaco station with all its lights turned off. A sign for the high school in an empty field. Welcome back, Indians, it said. Congratulations, Ms. Stornello. Castle Rock was only twenty-three miles away and Denver another thirty, but they might as well be on the moon or in a prison camp. “It all comes down to family,” the deputy said, and he smiled at Jeremy in the mirror.

#

            A girl in Canada died when her boyfriend kissed her. He’d eaten a peanut butter cup and just a whiff of it was enough because she was really allergic. A grandpa in Sarasota drowned in his bowl of lentil soup. It’s true. It’s all true. An old guy in a Buick ran a stop sign up on Circle. Eighty three years old and both his hips were bad and he walked away from the crash.

#

            Dilly’s mom came to the station in her Blazer. They’d signed their statements, and it was time to take them home. She dropped her purse when she saw Dilly. She ran in for a hug. I felt it, he said into her hair. I felt it when we hit him, and he didn’t cry or even blink.

            She drove so slowly back to the Springs. She kept her right arm around Dilly’s shoulders. Jeremy sat in the back seat and counted the barns. He counted the Chevy trucks. The sky was lightening up, and in another hour all the stars would go away. He needed to find somebody new because Dilly wasn’t going to take him driving. He needed to get his license or find an overpass. There were lots of ways to do it. Last quarter Mrs. Ettenhofer talked in history class about some ancient city. The Romans burnt it and salted the ground so nothing new would grow, and he listened to her story. Who cared about the Romans and their aquaducts? All those marble statues. But she talked about how they plowed that city over and for the first time he understood. Things couldn’t stay the way they were. The churches and the middle schools, the fields with winter wheat. There was a flower blooming in his head and the petals were made of blades.