Starlight

by Richard Wagamese

  “Don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, but all the shops are on these few blocks so let me know when you see somewhere you’d like to look,” Starlight said.

  “Right there seems fine,” Emmy said and pointed at a small clothing store.

  “I’ll just go to the bank. I’ll be outside when you’re through and ready to cash out.”

  He strolled off. Townsfolk were everywhere, drawn by the mild weather and sunlight, and he walked easily to the bank and stood in line waiting for the tellers and eyeing people in their busyness and scurry. He was drawn to people. He found them fascinating. They were as idiosyncratic as creatures in the wild and he admired them for the sprouts of wildness they showed when they weren’t doing the expected or the proper thing. He mused that if he were a better talker he might even have wanted to photograph them the same way he did the animals.

  A tall whip of a man in a Stetson, roper boots, and a faded denim shirt with his dress pants strung by suspenders turned to address him. “See you took in that shoplifter and the child, hey, Frank?”

  “Took in a woman and a child that needed help is all.”

  “Seems to some of us that that might come across as peculiar for you. You and Roth. Couple bachelors under the same roof as a woman who don’t give off much in the way of proper.”

  “Well, you know, Chapman,” Starlight said slowly. “There’s two things that you and your friends know about me without question.”

  “And what’re those?”

  “Well, you know that I’ll help anyone anywhere needs a hand if I can do it at all. That’s one. The second is that I don’t brook disrespectful talk from no one about anything.” He canted his head and raised an eyebrow and looked at the man earnestly.

  Chapman blanched. “No disrespect intended, Frank. Apologize if it seemed that way. It’s just that, well, you know. It’s a small town. Stuff gets around.”

  “Ain’t no stuff to get around.”

  “It’s just that you bein’ Indian and all and her bein’ white…”

  Starlight shook his head sadly but never broke eye contact with Chapman. “Me bein’ whatever I am never raised no concerns with nobody about nothin’ all my life. Never expected it to start now.”

  “I’m not saying anything specific, Frank.”

  “Then why say anything at all then?”

  “People talk is all.”

  “You’re people. Whatta you say, Earl?”

  Chapman glanced quickly over his shoulder toward the tellers. There were still three people in front of him. He turned and looked at Starlight, agitated and nervous as a fence-caught steer. He huffed out his cheeks and shuffled his feet and stuffed his hands in his pants pockets. He glanced over Starlight’s shoulder and out the door to the street. “I guess I’m saying be careful, Frank. This kinda thing? Well, it’s not done around here. People get nervous.”

  “I been the same me year in year out.”

  “I know. I’m sorry I said anything.”

  “Good you done, Earl. Good I know how some folks are feelin’. Some folks. Not all. You hear?”

  Chapman stared at him soberly. “I hear.”

  A teller summoned Chapman and he turned and walked to the counter and leaned on it with his forearms. Starlight felt a hand on his elbow and he turned. There was a prim-looking lady in a brown skirt and natty ruffled white blouse peering at him over the top of her glasses.

  “Main Street,” she said. “You can always depend on something worth recounting later, can’t you, Frank?”

  He grinned. “Sure can, Mrs. Gaines.”

  “Don’t you worry about anything. This town is better off having a proper young man like you being a part of the community. I for one applaud what you’re doing, and if you or that woman or girl should ever need anything, you know where I am.” She smiled at him.

  “Emma,” Starlight said. “And the girl is Winnie.”

  He heard his name called and he turned to take his place at the counter.

  “You make sure to give Emma and Winnie my best then. And Chester’s too,” Mrs. Gaines said.

  “I’ll do that,” he said over his shoulder. “And tell Chester I got room to graze twenty head if he needs the range.”

  “I’ll let him know. Take care, Frank.”

  * * *

  —

  Emmy was just finishing up at the store when Starlight walked through the door. He held out an envelope to her and she took it and held it in both hands in front of her waist and gazed up at him. She was tall but she had to raise her head to look squarely at him. She felt at a loss for words so she peered into the envelope.

  “This is too much,” she said.

  “Thought you could use a few fresh things too,” he said.

  She put a hand to her mouth. He could see her blinking and felt embarrassed and glanced about the shop.

  “I could,” she said finally. “I’ll just pick out a few things.”

  “Take your time,” he said.

  She nodded. Neither of them moved. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked on the balls of his feet but that made him even more uncomfortable so he reached out and fingered a man’s shirt while Emmy slipped away. He ambled around and found the girl holding up a sweater and pirouetting in front of a mirror. She saw him in the glass, lowered the sweater, and looked at him worriedly.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “For what?” he asked quietly and sat in a chair beside the fitting room door.

  “You’re buying us this ’cause we can’t get things for ourselves. Ma says I’m s’posed to be gracious.”

  “You just enjoy it is all.”

  “What is gracious anyhow?”

  He splayed his hands. She came and stood in front of him, the sweater draped along the floor, so he reached out and picked it up and hung it across her shoulders. She smiled.

  “Me’n words like that don’t often collide,” he said. “Eugene is the word man. But if I was to guess I’d say it meant we’re supposed to be all serious and grim.”

  “How does that look?”

  He put his face into a stern-looking grimace and stared at the floor. Winnie laughed.

  “I don’t think I could do that without laughing,” she said.

  Starlight grinned. “Me neither to tell ya the truth. But I think gracious is all about acting like you’d kinda wanna do the same for someone else.”

  “I would,” Winnie said. “Really. I would.”

  “Then I think ya got gracious nailed.”

  She went back to her slow spins in front of the mirror. Emmy strode up to him with her arms full of clothing. Her face was flushed. “What you give me will take forever to pay back,” she said. “But I used it all.”

  “Ya earn it out is all,” he said. “You don’t owe.”

  “We ain’t had new things in a long, long time. We’re used to used. Or the Goodwill. Sometimes the clothesline discount too I’m ashamed to say.”

  He regarded her kindly. “Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.”

  “You done that?”

  “Me? No. But I ain’t had much use for lots of things. Few simple ordinary clothes and such always felt most right to me. How I learned, I suppose.”

  “Seems a good way. Still and all, it’s good to have some things back of what you got on.”

  “Good for the girl.”

  “Yes. I thank you most for that.”

  “What it’s all about. You go on ahead and cash out and I’ll wait outside and help you tote it to the truck.”

  Emmy turned and waved at Winnie, who joined her at the till and looked over her shoulder and waved at Starlight. He raised a hand awkwardly and held it there until she turned away. He stepped out of the store and sat on a wooden bench to the side of the door. People moved passed him and he nodded to those he knew. He thought about a cigarette but there was no ash can nearby so he held his makings in his hand and leaned forward with his forearms on his thighs and studied the traffic moving by. He hadn’t
liked the exchange with Chapman. It bothered him but he had no words to organize his thoughts around it so he sat and let his guts settle and when he felt at ease he stood and stretched and leaned against the wall to wait. Emmy and Winnie emerged a few minutes later. He reached out and took three bags from her and left her with a smaller one to carry in each hand. They walked slowly to the street with Winnie skipping ahead of them and he made sure to make eye contact with everyone passing by. He lifted the bags into the box of the old truck and prepared to walk to the grocery store across the block and down another.

  “You just going to leave this here all in the open?” Emmy asked.

  “It’s a good town. No one’s gonna bother your stuff.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “As sure as I am about anything.”

  “Not the kind of place I’m used to.”

  “It’s easy to find your footing here. Just walk. You’ll see.”

  “They must think I’m not much of a person.”

  “Way I reckon, it’s how you regard yourself that counts. What I seen? You got no reason to look down in front of nobody.”

  She stopped and faced him. “You don’t know me.”

  “True,” he said. “I don’t. But like I said, I guess I’m drawn to wild things.”

  “I know. I wondered about that. What did you mean exactly?”

  He pursed his lips and stared at the sky. She watched him consider the question and when he looked at her it was earnestly and she waited for his words to form.

  “I can’t rightly say exactly,” he said finally. “But I kinda think I could show you.”

  * * *

  —

  They walked into Deacon’s and the buzzer announced their arrival. Deacon was on the phone and while he looked surprised to see him he waved at Starlight and then bent back to his conversation. The three of them wandered about the studio. Winnie was captivated by the photographs. She stood gape-mouthed and stared at them and when Starlight led them past the office and into the anteroom where his work hung she ran ahead and stood in a pool of light and gazed raptly around at the images. Emmy roamed from print to print. She squinted hard at the creatures captured by the lens and rendered so magically within the frames and glass. Starlight stood and waited while they took in all of the prints.

  “These are unbelieveable,” Emmy said. “The same photographer took all these shots.”

  “Yeah. Same guy.”

  “It’s like you can see them breathe. I can see why you like them. I like them too. Love them, really.”

  “Do you think I could have one of these for our room?” Winnie asked.

  Deacon entered the room with a flourish. “Well, little girl, I’m sure Frank would be happy to let you hang one of his prints in your room. I’m Deacon. This is my studio.”

  He held out a hand to Emmy, who took it wonderingly and eyed Starlight as he looked at the floor. Then Deacon knelt on one knee and held out a hand to Winnie. She took it with surprise and stared at Deacon, who smiled and reached out and ruffled her hair.

  “Emma Strong and her daughter, Winnie,” Starlight said.

  “Emmy,” she said.

  “Well, I’m mighty proud to meet you, Emmy. You too, Winnie. I see you have an eye for good pictures.”

  “It’s like going to the zoo,” Winnie said.

  Deacon laughed. “Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. Frank is a real magician when it comes to getting close to creatures.”

  Emmy looked at him, startled. “These are yours? You took these?”

  Starlight merely nodded.

  “Frank is a marvel,” Deacon said. “His photos are becoming famous. I’m proud to be his agent. We’re becoming quite a team actually.”

  “How? How do you get these kind of shots? I never seen anything like this,” Emmy said.

  Starlight glanced around the room. Then he walked around and examined several of the images and the three of them stood where he had left them, watching his silent appraisal. When he turned and faced them the bowl of light he stood in rendered him darker, harder, with the gaunt expression of an ancient warrior, and when he raised his head to look at them there was an obsidian glimmer in his eyes and they stood mesmerized, waiting for the words to fall.

  “Wild things,” he said. “Always kinda felt wrong to me to say that of them. They ain’t wild. Not how most people come to mean anyhow. You watch ’em. See how they are with each other. They’re tamer’n us. I think on accounta they know how to love outright and us we gotta learn how to do that. I see that in ’em. How they’re tamed by love. Not just each other. By the land. The mystery of it. The pull of the moon. The sky. The feel of it all. That’s what draws me. That big open in them. It’s what I try to feel when I’m with them. What I try to see and shoot, if I’m lucky. That realness.”

  He walked across the room and stood facing Emmy.

  “You say I don’t know you. Might be I see more of you than you do. With your girl. That outright love. Me, I figure that’s worth saving.”

  He walked out of the room and they stood there watching him leave. None of them prone to words.

  CADOTTE STOOD LEANING ON THE RAILING of the fire escape behind their hotel room, staring away across the city. The jut and angle of it. There was a low stink of gasoline and smoke and garbage just below the fresh air of morning. He scowled at it. He could taste it at the back of his throat. The slick grime of it. He hated cities. There was no order here. The jumble of things confounded him and he wanted the security of open space, the rambunctious wild where things behaved the way they were intended to and even the sky could be read if you took the time to learn its language. But these were strange thoughts for him. He blamed it on the hangover and wanted a slosh from the crock laid under his bed. He took the time to light a cigarette and ran his eye the length of the avenue to where the garbage trucks lumbered along with their amber lights blinking and wondered if they would find her here. Wondered where she might have chosen to hide. Wondered if she could feel him hunkered down and prowling. Wondered if that keen edge of fear tickled at her belly and made her nights long and daunting. He hoped so. He wanted that for her. He wanted her to feel the crush of his vengence approaching, relentless as a thunderclap. He ran a hand along the puckered ridges of scar at the back of his head. Bitch. He still got dizzy, found it hard to concentrate in those periods between the addle of drink, like now, leaning on a rusted fire escape behind a rat-trap room over an alley desperate with discarded syringes, condoms, clothing, trash, busted televisions, and the splayed forms of drunks and street kids and the mugged and lost and broken who would rise soon to take their places in the grim lines into places where they ate and shat and cadged relief in whatever shoddy form it was offered. He had no time for these desperate losers. It was only her that brought him here. Another score to settle when he found her. He’d find her. He was certain of that. This was only Calgary. This was only the beginning of his search. When he lent his head to it he could see the two of them stalking her the way they’d flush deer. Slowly, patiently, bleeding into the background unobserved and stealthy, knife blades honed and ready for the quick, deliberate slash of the throat that would bleed it out quickly, the sticky tack of it on his palms and fingers and the coppery, dusty taste of it on his lips. He wanted that. It was what drove him. That and the feel of the fire on his skin. It wouldn’t leave him. Those scorched and sere places where no hair would grow and even blood seemed wont to avoid so that he rubbed at them throughout the day and the dry rustle against his palm rendered him rageful again at the nearness of a death he hadn’t invoked on his own.

  He heard Anderson groan through the open window. He crushed out the cigarette and flung it it into the alley. Today they’d start their hunt.

  He opened the door and walked between their beds and sat then reached under for the bottle and raised it, unscrewed the top, and guzzled. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Anderson lay on his side eyeing him. He looked back at him and held out the bottle. A
nderson rolled onto his back and hiked backwards on the bed and leaned on the headboard and reached for the bottle and drank. He set the crock between his legs.

  “So what’s the plan, Jeff?”

  “Much as I got, not much,” Cadotte said.

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “Hell, it’s a big town. So I figure we take it area by area. She ain’t got much so she’ll be trolling for some mark to take her home. Could be she already found him. They’ll be around. We just find the bootleggers, the rubby-dub joints or the low-end country bars and Bob’s your uncle, there she is.”

  “That easy?” Anderson asked.

  “She’s gonna leave a trail wider’n a drunken moose.”

  “Figure?”

  “Hell, yeah. She only knows what she knows. Only goes where she goes. Chooses what she does. Not exactly no rocket scientist.”

  “Suppose not. Still, gotta be a wrinkle or two we ain’t thought of.”

  Cadotte took the bottle and held a slosh in his mouth and nodded. “Could be. But I doubt it. She never shown me no gumption to wrinkle nothin’ but bed sheets.”

  “Might be she’s diff’rent. Likely knows we’d be trackin’ her.”

  “She don’t even know for sure we’re breathin’. Far as she figures you and me got ate up by that fire.”

  “Wonder why she never set it to burning right?”

  “She did do. That friggin’ cabin would go up like dried tinder. She knew that. And that knotty pine’d be throwin’ embers right off the hop. She knew that too.”

  “Wonder if she was givin’ us a chance?”

  Cadotte flopped back onto the bed and let his boots dangle off the end. He took another drink and held the bottle out to Anderson without looking at him. “That’s soft talk. She figured the fire boys would find the grate on the stove wide open and believe we was drunk and fell asleep with it that way. Caused it our own selves. Only smart move she made. Gets her offa suspicion.”

  “Exceptin’ for the knife wounds and the thumpin’.”

  “Told ya. We’d be figured drunk and disorderly. Fightin’ each other.”