Chasing Orion

by Kathryn Lasky

  “My goodness, Georgie, you look as if you are about to cry.” Some Saint Georgie! I thought. It took all my willpower not to cry. “Come sit down, dear, here at the table. Can I get you something?”

  “Mrs. Keller.” My voice cracked. She looked at me suspiciously. “Why do you do this?”

  “Do what, Georgie?”

  “Do this to Phyllis.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  I don’t think she did. “Why do you dress her up like she’s some sort of doll?”

  A shocked look swept through Roslyn Keller’s eyes. “Why, Georgie!”

  “Why do you want Dr. Keller to invent some contraption so she can needlepoint? Why do you just see her as only part of this horrible machine?”

  I expected her to be mad at me. But she just shut her eyes tight for several seconds as if summoning up the strength to answer me. “But that is what she is, Georgie. She is just that — part of this machine. This marvelous machine. She must be able to live as fully as possible with her limitations, but the machine offers her —” She paused.

  “What?” I said.

  “Why, life, Georgie. Life.” Then it seemed as if her jaw became unhinged. Her lower lip began to tremble, and her mouth moved as if trying to shape a word. “It’s so hard.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just got up to go back into the other room. Mrs. Keller grabbed my hand. “I know it’s hard for you to understand.”

  I shook my head. No, I wanted to say. I understand perfectly. But we just have a different idea about life and so-called life. But of course I didn’t say any of this.

  “That guy’s gigantic.”

  “Seven feet,” Dad said.

  We were in the Westridge field house. The opposing team had just come onto the court. It was this new player, Cyril James, who had moved to Indianapolis from Kentucky. “How are they ever going to get around him?” I wondered aloud.

  “They’ve got Emmett,” Dad said. “And Emmett’s fast. And they’ve got Buzzy Philby and Skeeter. They’ll do fine.”

  Emmett just sauntered across the court as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He passed the ball to some of the other guys. Stumbled once. Missed a few shots. All this was typical Emmett in a warm-up. It was almost as if he had to get all the mistakes out of his system before the real playing began.

  But he didn’t quite get all the mistakes out. Well, they were not exactly mistakes. He just seemed to be moving differently. His timing seemed off. He wasn’t as fast. By halftime, Buzz Philby had had a bad landing after a layup shot and had to be helped off the court limping. Brian McPhee had fouled out, and Emmett had not once taken command in rebound situations. And Skeeter, according to Dad, was sleepwalking.

  Dad was having a fit. “Emmett’s not reading the defense at all. He’s not making the fast breaks. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. The whole point of being a center is to be a little arrogant, snotty.”

  Dad was right. Even though Emmett was quiet off the court and shy, almost mousy despite his size, he had a completely different personality on court. But that personality was not there this evening. “He’s lost his focus,” Dad said.

  These four words sent a chill through me. Phyllis! The question became suddenly so clear. How much was Emmett willing to lose for Phyllis?

  The Westridge Wildcats’ defeat was humiliating, 64 to 22. The only consolation was that it was a pre-season game. So it didn’t count toward the sectionals, which was the World Series of high-school basketball in Indiana.

  Christmas had come and gone. And a cold hard spell had settled in. There were days on end when the thermometer outside our kitchen window never got out of the teens. And there wasn’t any snow, either. No sledding. So I concluded that this winter was about as boring as last summer, with its brutal heat and no swimming. New polio cases did drop off in the winter. I guess that was the only good thing to be said.

  Basketball season was in full swing. Emmett hadn’t improved much. He was faster, but as Dad said, he was not playing with authority. I heard Mom and Dad talking about this one night in the kitchen. They shut up almost as soon as I came in. They looked like they were kids with their hands caught in the cookie jar.

  “You’re talking about Emmett and basketball, aren’t you?”

  They both hesitated, and then Mom said, “Yes, we are concerned.” And from the way she said concerned, I knew it was not about scouts, agents, or getting a basketball scholarship.

  “It’s Phyllis.” I didn’t blurt it out. I just said it. Mom and Dad looked surprised.

  “What do you mean, Georgie?” Dad asked.

  “I mean that . . . that . . .” I wasn’t sure how to say it — that he thinks about her all the time? No, that wasn’t quite it. “She’s very powerful,” I said softly. The color drained from Mom and Dad’s faces.

  “What do you mean?” Mom asked again.

  Good Lord, I certainly hadn’t meant to scare them like this, but in an odd way it felt good. It felt like a relief to be saying this, telling Mom and Dad this. “I just mean she’s, you know, kind of bossy, and it’s hard to have authority if there’s someone more powerful around.”

  Dad rubbed his chin and looked at the floor. “What’s there to do?”

  “You’re asking me?” I said as I opened the refrigerator door for some milk.

  “No, no, you’re just a kid.” Dad reached out and tousled my hair. I never thought I would feel good about being called a kid. But I did.

  Teachers’ convention came at the end of January. Although it was a great vacation for kids, teachers had to go to workshops or something. So I was shipped off to Grandma and Grandpa’s for three days on the farm. Emmett got to stay home because of basketball. I didn’t mind going to Grandma and Grandpa’s during teachers’ convention. There was always stuff to do. In the evening I went over the Dairyman’s Breeder’s catalog with Grandpa. All dairy cows were artificially inseminated. I don’t think they even allowed them ever to do it the regular way. Dairy cow farmers just ordered up the sperm of the stud they wanted and it was shipped to them packed in dry ice. Then they put it in the cows. “Think this studly fellow looks like a good bet, Georgie?” Grandpa asked.

  “Bases Loaded? That’s his name?”

  “Yeah, sometimes these breeders try to get a little too cute.”

  The catalogs always had these weird descriptions of the animals. So here were the wonders of Bases Loaded. He was described as being a winner from “calving ease”— Yeah, easy for him, I thought. But I knew they were talking about the cows that would be delivering his offspring — to his lovely legs. And his daughters were described as “extremely wide-rumped with beautifully attached udders,” big milk yielders. All this is good in a cow. “I guess he seems good,” I said about Bases Loaded, “but I don’t like his eyes.”

  “She’s never going to see those eyes, darlin’,” Grandpa said, referring to the cow intended to receive the sperm.

  “I know, but his kids might get them. But I guess he’s pretty good.” I flipped the page. “Look at this, Breeder’s Bonus and Breeder’s Delight, Grandpa.”

  “I’m always suspicious of those economy packs. They’re just for people starting out. Starter kits basically. Vernon’s coming out tomorrow. I’ll ask his advice too.”

  Vernon Albert was the veterinarian Grandpa used.

  “I’m sure he knows more than I do,” I said.

  The next day, Dr. Albert came out to treat a sick cow and give some sort of injection to the piglets born last spring. They weren’t exactly piglet size anymore, but they weren’t quite hogs yet, either. So I sometimes called them poglets. Seemed a reasonable name for a piglet on its way to becoming a hog. Vernon Albert was very nice, and he always let me follow him around. I got to help him check all the goats for hoof rot. One goat had pinkeye, and he let me help put the ointment on.

  I liked Dr. Albert because he always treated me in a very grown-up way, never talking down to me but asking m
y opinion about stuff even though I hadn’t gone to veterinary school. He would grab a goat, for instance, and hold its jaws, then fold back its lips and tell me to look at the gums, and then do the same with another goat and ask me which one’s gums looked healthier and why. I might say something, just a guess; then he’d ask me another question and kind of teach me how to look for the first signs of something he called blue gum, which wasn’t good, and before you knew it, I really had learned something.

  I said, “Dr. Albert, I think they should send you off to that teachers’ convention, because you could teach those teachers a thing or two about teaching.”

  “Oh, you do, do you, Georgie?” He cut off a plug of chewing tobacco and jammed it in his teeth.

  “That stuff taste any good?” I had always wondered. Grandpa chewed it sometimes, and all the baseball players on the Indianapolis Indians did. They could spit like nobody’s business. Dad said they could spit a heck of a lot better than they played ball. Anyhow, Dr. Albert just looked at me and said, “Wanna try a plug?”

  “You gotta be kidding.”

  “No, try it.”

  He cut me off a little plug — a pluglet, I suppose you could say — and I put it in my mouth. I don’t think I did more than half a chew. Good Lord, that plug came flying out of my mouth and hit a haystack. “You spit better than a ballplayer.” He laughed.

  “Worst-tasting stuff ever!” I was almost gagging.

  Luckily I had a Tootsie Roll in my pocket. So Dr. Albert and I sat there in the barn, he on his examining stool probing a milk cow for a carbuncle in its groin area and me watching him, both of us just chewing away. When I polished off the Tootsie Roll, I thought of something. “Dr. Albert, you ever treat a monkey?”

  “Naw, I’m a large animal vet. It’d have to be a gorilla.” He laughed.

  “I saw this thing on television where they are using monkeys to test some new polio medicine.”

  “Oh, that they are. Yes, indeed. That’s a little out of my bailiwick, as they say.”

  “Well, I still got a question.” I took another Tootsie Roll out of my pocket.

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “What do you think about iron lungs?”

  “What about them, Georgie?” He looked away from the cow’s carbuncle.

  “What do you think about people being kept in them, like forever and ever?”

  “I think I’d rather be dead. You know what they call them? The iron lungs, I mean.”

  “No.” It was so quiet in the barn, and in the dim light I could still see little bits of dust circling slowly. It was as if the whole world had slowed down and everything suddenly stood out sharp and with a hard, bright edge, despite the dimness.

  “Coffins with legs — that’s what some people call them.”

  “I think you’re right, Dr. Albert.” I felt a really bad, deep sadness begin to fill me up, but it was different from when I had stood in the Winklers’ television room and Evelyn’s mother had pointed her finger at the TV. I can’t explain it, but I just felt it was different. I didn’t feel that there was anything dangerous here. I felt real comfortable, very safe just sitting there in the barn with Dr. Albert chewing, the both of us, just chewing silently in the cold barn air on this winter afternoon.

  “You got old Missy here with a carbuncle in her groin, Ed,” Dr. Albert said to my grandfather when he came in. “I’m going to drain it with the help of my able assistant here. Then I’m going to have to put the cow on a course of antibiotics, so you’ll have to take her off the milk wagon for a while.”

  “It wouldn’t be January if I didn’t have a cow off the milk wagon,” Grandpa said. Being off the milk wagon meant that a farmer couldn’t sell that cow’s milk for a time.

  Draining the carbuncle was kind of neat, even though it was terrifically disgusting. I had to go wash my hands with some solution that Dr. Albert carried with him, then put on rubber gloves. First he shaved the area with a battery razor he carried. He let me swab on the antiseptic to the spot with a giant Q-tip that looked more like a baseball bat. Then he rubbed on some stuff to numb the area. Missy was very patient through all of this. After the numbing stuff set in, he took out a hypodermic needle and put in another anesthetic that would go deeper. Next he pulled out a thin rubber tube and put a needle on the end. My job was to hold an enamel bowl and make sure the other end of the tube was in it. He inserted the needle, and in about thirty seconds the most disgusting greenish glop started to drop into the bowl. When he had finished “the procedure,” as he called it, he let me swab down the hole where the needle had gone in. Then he put a kind of large Band-Aid over it. “Tell your grandpa to take that off tomorrow evening. Missy’ll be fine by then.”

  That night Evelyn was coming out to spend the night. I was pretty excited. I had told her to bring her skates because Grandpa and Grandma had a pond right near the house that was perfect for skating. The ice was so thick, and Grandpa had had some of his “boys,” as he called the men who helped him on the farm, clear it off for us and give it a good scraping. So it was really smooth.

  After dinner Evelyn and I bundled up and went out to skate. There was an immense full moon. And between the full moon and the snow on the ground, it was as if God, or maybe so-called God, or somebody had just bleached the night. You couldn’t see that many great stars. We still skated around with our heads flung back, looking for constellations. But I knew there was one that we would catch, always could no matter how white the night — Orion rising in the East.

  “I see his belt!” I cried. I felt a great relief: Orion was back in the sky. This was the first clear sighting I had of him. His belt was sparkling.

  “Look there’s his foot, his left foot.” I spun to a stop in the middle of the pond.

  “Where?”

  “Look, see the top of that tree over there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now see the edge of the barn’s roof?”

  “Yeah.”

  “OK, right between the tree and the barn — there’s a really bright star. That’s his foot star, Rigel. Now let’s see if I can find his armpit.” I skated off a few yards. “Yeah, I got it. That’s Betelgeuse, and if you follow it out, you can find the stars of his club. Muscle boy: he bulges with stars.”

  Evelyn laughed. “That’s good, since he’s blind. He should have something going for him. Look, it does seem as if he’s sort of stumbling, doesn’t it?”

  Evelyn was trying to do one of those spins where you draw your arms in and go faster and faster.

  I had stopped skating. I looked at Orion’s legs. He really did look as if he were falling down. I didn’t like thinking of Orion stumbling blindly across the sky, his club raised in vengeance as if he were doomed. It seemed almost pitiful.

  “I’m cold. Let’s go in,” I said.

  I skated off, my shadow lengthening in the glare of the moon-bleached pond. I vowed that when I made the sky part of the Orion diorama, he would not look as if he were stumbling. He would run straight no matter what.

  When I got home from Grandma and Grandpa’s, I knew right away that something was beginning to change in our house. I walked in the door with Dad, and I saw Mom’s back as she stared out the window toward the Kellers’. It was just something in the way she held her back, so tight and rigid, her shoulders hunched forward a little. There was a new tension in our house. I was wondering if they had said something to him after that night in the kitchen. “Where’s Emmett?” I asked.

  “Over there.” She turned around, and her eyes looked a little too bright and she had a kind of funny smile. Her smile looked as if it had been drawn on, not well, by one of her kindergarten students.

  The next few nights were warmer. So Emmett could roll the Creature out onto the patio, and he and Phyllis watched Orion in the waning of the February moon. I didn’t go because these were school nights. Then by the weekend the weather turned cold again and the moon was completely gone. This had been such a cold winter.

  Valentine’s Day
was coming up. I was wondering if Emmett might give Phyllis a present. I was really hoping that he would not ask my assistance. He didn’t, thankfully, but he did seem quieter than usual, not that he ever was a really chatty guy.

  The weather right after Valentine’s Day became a lot warmer, almost unseasonably warm, as it sometimes could. So there was lots of star watching. It was a Friday night, and Phyllis and Emmett had ordered in pizza and I was invited. It had been a while since I had been there. I was wondering if I could figure out what gift Emmett had given Phyllis for Valentine’s Day. Would I see anything? A bouquet of flowers? Another velvet ribbon, or something for Ralph?

  “Hi, Georgie — Saint Georgie,” Phyllis said with her eye to the telescope. They had been out on the patio for a while when I came. “Long time no see,” she said cheerfully. I always liked seeing Phyllis look through the scope. The mirrors in the scope brought the stars closer, and for some reason I thought of them as more honest than the reflections in the Creature’s mirrors.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “We’re going to the dogs tonight,” she said with a laugh. But it made me shiver. Did her laugh sound sort of phony? I couldn’t help but think that behind the dogs, in a few months, Scorpio would be rising. I hadn’t forgotten the naked terror of that dream of the spider’s web and how that spider had become a scorpion.

  I looked up. I could see them scampering, all right. Little Dog and Big Dog, Canis Minor and Canis Major. Big Dog chasing at the heels of Orion, Little Dog at his shoulder. There would only be one more month that was good for seeing Orion in all his glory. By the end of March he would begin to slip out of the sky. By May he would be gone entirely, and the first glimmer of Scorpio would show on the southern horizon. Often just a slight stain of red from Antares. It was as if a time bomb had started to tick. Soon Scorpio would dominate the summer skies. I didn’t have much time to figure out how Phyllis would reel Emmett in on her own silken threads.