Stars Go Blue (10 page)

She shakes her head, like a horse, and comes out of her daze. “I guess I'll try to think of that moment when I die, Satchmo. That and the first kiss and today at the cemetery.” When she says this, the dog picks up a slipper in her mouth and trots off into another room. Inviting her in. Indeed, when Ben is gone, after tonight, perhaps she can move back here. She'll tell Carolyn and Del to leave her alone and she'll leave them alone. The grandkids can visit, but she won't insist. She'll not worry about the state of Carolyn and Del's finances or marriage; about whether or not Jack is gay, because he is and it's time she loved that about him; about whether Leanne will become a silly language arts major and therefore never be able to support herself; whether Billy will ever do anything with his life other than ranchwork;
whether Jess will end up like her mother, pregnant, drinking, on drugs, and dead too soon. No, she'll just let them conduct their symphony, their own lives. She'll go out to town twice a week to grocery shop and see a movie, maybe with Zach. Otherwise she will sit and rest and rest and rest. And by god, she'll appreciate that no one, nothing, is depending on her, which will mean the first time in fifty years—or possibly forever—that she will be her own person. Of course, she realizes, this will also be very lonely. And then she will die. And like every human, she should brace for it. For all she knows, death could happen for
her
tonight.

Satchmo nuzzles the sleeve of Renny's jacket and so she says, “You got that right. I don't think I want to move into town after all. If I live in a condo, I'll have to listen to babies cry and dogs bark and other people. Horrible.”

The dog whines, more insistent, and licks her hand.

“Okay, we'll go. I'm just trying to figure out what to
do
. You can visit me back here, but only if you're quiet and respectful.”

On her way out, she stops again in the main room, and from this angle she can see the corner not visible from the door. There is a deck of cards scattered on the floor. She stares at it and then registers the folded-up sleeping bag tucked back between the wall and couch. There's also a pillow, backpack, a cardboard box with a few items, such as tampons, and she understands Jess has been sleeping here.

“Huh.” She says it aloud, surprised, then says it again. Well, good: At least the cabin is getting some use.

Life, she once heard, is the combination of two things: Certain points of interest, which stand out. And the flux of experience, which is one big blending of time and space. And they come together to form the important stories and moments in your mind. The stories that define you. She reckons that that's how folks survive the ache of it all.

On her walk back across the ranch the sky turns to a dusky blue and reflects a lighter blue off the blue landscape and the snow picks up the blue again. The dog races ahead, toward home, leaving her alone with the expanse of blue snow to either side. Walking is hard out here, although she follows Ben's track that he's worn down. She sees what he has always seen, the sheer beauty of the place in twilight, the shadow of willows and foothills and cottonwoods along the river. A dark figure—probably a bald eagle, she figures—sits on a branch far to the north. She is simply not sure what should come next for Renny Cross. Although she knows that tonight everything will change and that it's high time she thought about it.

Ben's screaming and hollering, and her understanding of what he is grappling with now, has worn her out. It is such a deep exhaustion that it borders on peace—a dictated and unavoidable peace, she thinks. She wonders if she should have told Ben more about Ray's letter that came today, but no, he would have felt the same way: that it was simply not enough. It was adding insult to injury. It makes her sick. Sick that Ray is out of prison, sick that he offers these little tiny bits of effort, sick that he didn't remember Rachel's birthday, not because she wants him to know a particular date, but because she wants him to know the
details
of Rachel. He knew only what he wanted to know. Ray only wants his conscience off his back, but no, she won't allow that. And Ben wouldn't want it either.

At home, she stamps her feet to warm up and starts up the woodstove. She wipes the tears from her eyes. She feeds Satchmo dry dog food and makes Tuna Helper and frozen peas for herself. Pitiful. She leaves Ben's plate in the microwave and goes to watch the news. Mainly, though, she is shaking—a real tremor—and she watches the new snow come down outside the window, lit up by the outdoor barn
light. Then suddenly it is really starting to snow, now, and the bottom of the TV screen warns of a blizzard. She starts to sob-cry and she considers calling someone, just to talk, but she's not sure who, and in any case, she would need an excuse—to report a cow on the road or ask if anyone has chickens for sale—because she's never called anyone without a pretense for calling. She has no friends. She breathes out and considers this room in the old farmhouse, big and open and yet dark and full of plaster cracks.

At that moment, the phone rings. She startles. Maybe it's Violet or some other local checking in, or maybe it's Zach or Esme from the Alzheimer's crowd, or maybe it's Carolyn or Jack or Leanne or Jess or Billy, and she is thinking of these possibilities as she jumps for the phone and picks it up.

“Renny, it's Ruben,” she hears, and she winces. The one person she didn't want to talk to.

“Why, Ruben. I'm just watching the news—”

“Did Del and Carolyn get off okay?”

“Yes, yes. And we've got their stupid dog and—”

“Jess is okay?”

“I guess. She's off in her own world and—”

“Well, good. That's good. Listen, Renny. I have a question for you. When I came over last week to put down Don Quixote—and I'm sorry about that, I sure am—my sodium pentobarbital went missing. We vets call it pink juice. It's what I use to put down the animals.”

“Oh, Ruben. We've been ranchers long enough to know about pink juice.”

“Well you know, then, that it's a controlled substance. I have to account for every cc of it that I use.”

“Oh, I'm sure you do. Dangerous stuff.”

“Yes, yes, in fact it is.”

“And it's gone missing, you say?”

“I had the bottle out, I remember, as we were kneeling around the donkey. I had it propped on a stick in the pasture, on the snow. I remember withdrawing the pink juice into the syringe, and I thought I put the bottle back in my bag. My black bag. I remember . . . injecting the donkey, I remember listening for the donkey's heartbeat. I remember chatting with you two. And then I remember leaving. But I don't have that bottle now. I just don't. I don't remember what I did with the bottle.”

“Poor Don Quixote,” Renny says. “You know, even when Billy and Jess were young teens, they used to ride that donkey all over the ranch. They just doted on that sweet girl. She was way nicer than Norm. Norm was a bully. Norm was the only donkey we ever had that I didn't like, and that's because his soul was mean—”

“I know it, I remember him. Listen—”

“Of course, the best donkey we ever had was—”

“Yes, but Renny, I hate to ask this, I'm so embarrassed, but I simply don't know what happened to that bottle. I'm wondering if you've found it, or if you think maybe one of you picked it up and put it somewhere. I took the liberty of stopping by your place today. After I saw you at the post office. You and Ben were gone, but I figured you wouldn't mind me looking around. Her . . . carcass is there, still . . . the animals have . . . well, that doesn't matter. I walked that back pasture back and forth. No sign of the bottle, though.”

“I haven't been out there myself,” Renny says. “Not since you put her down. Of course, that's why we put her down way back there, because no one
goes
there—”

“I didn't go into the house, of course.”

“Well, it's not inside the house.”

“Well, I'm just wondering . . .”

Ruben pauses and for a moment Renny wants to tell him the truth, wants to blurt out everything, only she is completely frozen, she cannot, she will not, because she believes that the pink juice exists for putting animals out of suffering, and Ben deserves that. She purses her lips in order to keep them shut. The tears leak out, though; those she cannot stop. Finally she says, “Ben didn't mention anything. He sure didn't. I'll ask him, but he's sleeping right now. If you don't mind waiting till tomorrow. If you wish, you could come over and we could search the place together.”

She waits. Finally Ruben clears his throat. “It's a big problem, you see. I could lose my license for this sort of thing. I've searched high and low. I've gone through my vet bag and I've gone through the back of the truck. I just don't understand how I could have forgotten to replace it. You don't think Ben has it, do you? Would you mind, uh, looking through his things? You wouldn't think that he . . .”

She feels so calm. Calmer than she has in years. Calm and quiet and at peace. She lets Ruben pause, and she tells him that she'll go look right now, that she'll search through Ben's things, and she ends the conversation with him. She stands by the phone for a long time, holding the receiver in her hand.

She knows she should go in and check on Ben. She knows what she will find.

Ben and the bottle and death.

She can't bear to break the peace until the last minute, because after that, there will be no peace, not for a long long time. Everything from casseroles to people pestering her endlessly to her grief. Finally, she puts down the receiver, looks around the silence of her living room, and walks slowly to the
bedroom. She steadies herself on the doorframe, breathes in. She pauses, wills herself to be strong. Then she looks at the bed. “Oh, god,” she says aloud. Because he is not there. Not dead, not alive. Ben is nowhere. There is nothing except the twilight-blue comforter that she pulled tight this morning.

III.

 

“When he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine.”

—
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Romeo and Juliet
(act 3, scene 3)

BEN

T
he snow whirls and circles and makes Ben dizzy, but he loves looking outside the window of the bus anyway, because the snow seems so alive and so charged with energy, and because he likes to think of the molecules of water, frozen, that will unfold when the temperature is right. He's alone in his seat, and the bus is nearly empty, and he feels the strange sensation of excitement in his chest and closes his eyes to better feel it. He hasn't felt this way since he was a child. Or maybe, no, when he fell in love. During sex. Pure energy, pure joy.

Tonight is a good night. Is it wrong to be proud of a moment like this? He's done everything right. He left their truck in the driveway—the pink card he made Renny still on the dash—and instead he took the old brown Ford that rarely works and which was parked on the far side of the barn. He had the presence of mind to get his suitcase and wallet and Carhartt jacket and even steal the rest of Renny's money from her purse while
she was out doing chores, and he waited until she was in the chicken house to pull out of the driveway. He had the presence of mind to park at a 7-Eleven and walk to the Greyhound station and buy a one-way ticket to Greeley, which cost $15. He had the presence of mind to pay for the ticket with a $100 bill and accept the change even though he wondered if he was supposed to leave a tip.

He sits now, with his suitcase on the floor and balanced between his knees and looks out the window. The seat is soft, a blue fabric.
Oh Ben, oh Ben,
he addresses himself,
you're doing it
. What a simple thing, but a grand thing!

He loves this night sky, when everything is merely shadow. It's snowing, snowing, snowing, and from the passing car lights he can see how the flakes toss in air currents. For a moment, he is startled to know he can't remember the name of the man he knows he's going to see. But then he tells himself not to worry because he will remember and besides he has written it down somewhere on a piece of paper, and so then, calmed, he watches the snow.

When the bus stops, he walks up to the driver and the driver says, “This is only Loveland, sir, and I think you're bound for Greeley,” and so Ben turns around and finds his seat again. He feels that it is still warm from him sitting there before, and he appreciates the simple fact of blue cloth. He doesn't need to go to the bathroom and he isn't hungry, and he's happy to be left alone by his body and its needs. He can simply watch the snow. The bus is stopped for a long time, it seems to him. People are getting on and off, and cold air seeping in, and the wind is picking up and the snow is starting to fall heavy, and the driver is talking on the radio. But he can ignore all this, corral it into only a small corner of his mind, and instead just watch the storm.

When he faces forward, though, he finds that another man is sitting next to him and the man is saying, “Hope you don't mind, I like to sit near the front, otherwise I get sick,” and Ben does mind, he glances around but it's true the bus has filled up. There's a woman-girl behind him that looks so much like his dead daughter that it startles him. He wonders, for a second, if she isn't really dead. That he has been mistaken.