When the Stars Begin to Fall

by James Lincoln Collier

  But when I raised the binoculars, I realized that I didn’t have a very good angle on the shadowy thing. I crawled forward a little farther, then rose up to my knees, and focused the binoculars on the opposite bank. And just when I did that, I realized that the security guard was standing across the river by the steel mesh fence that ran along the riverbank. He’d spotted me all right. Worse than that, he could easily see that I was using binoculars.

  “Hey you,” he shouted across the water. “What’re you doing there?” He put his hand on the butt of his pistol, but he didn’t draw it.

  I slid back into the woods, mighty scared. “Hey,” he shouted again. “Come out of there. I want to know what you’re doing.”

  I was out of his sight now, and I stopped to think. If I was going to get a good look at that shadowy thing, I’d have to go farther upstream. What if the security guard jumped into his car and came after me? What if he called the cops? I didn’t want to be caught with these binoculars around my neck, that was for sure.

  I stood there feeling worried and nervous. I couldn’t decide what to do. It would take the security guard a good ten minutes to drive from the carpet factory into town, cross the steel bridge, and then come on up the beat-up blacktop road to where I was. If he phoned the police, they might get to me quicker, but not much quicker, unless they happened to be on patrol out there. Either way I had a little time, if I moved quickly.

  So I told myself not to be chicken and began to jog through the trees upstream to get a better angle. I was pretty nervous, though, and every couple of minutes I’d stop to listen for the sound of cars, or somebody coming through the brush. But I didn’t hear anything, and in a few minutes I figured I was far enough along to get a look at that straight-edged shadow.

  I dropped into a crouch and slipped along toward the river until I could just begin to see it again through the trees. Then I fell flat and squirmed ahead on my belly, keeping a good eye out for anybody moving around across the river. When I got within four or five feet of the bank, I could see the opposite side well enough, and I slowly raised myself up and had a look back downstream to the place where I’d seen the security guard before. He was gone, and I knew that he was either calling the police or coming after me himself.

  Now I raised up the binoculars and adjusted the focus. And right away I saw it—a black iron pipe about twelve inches in diameter sticking out of the riverbank at an angle that slanted down. There was brush all around it, which explained why I’d had such a hard time spotting it, and I figured they’d planted the brush there themselves for camouflage. But below the pipe there was a deep furrow in the bank where nothing grew. They’d been pouring some kind of chemicals out of that pipe, that was clear enough.

  For a few minutes I knelt there looking at the pipe through the binoculars, hoping I’d see something come out. I was feeling pretty nervous, and I kept my ears open for sounds of somebody moving in the woods. Still, I was pretty happy, for I’d found it at last. Now I knew that the carpet factory was polluting the Timber River: that dead furrow beneath the pipe proved it as much as anything could.

  What I needed to do now was to take some pictures of the pipe that I could show to the editor of the Timber Falls Journal. It would be best if I could get a picture when stuff was flowing out of the pipe. That might be pretty hard. I had a hunch that they dumped the stuff at night, when people were less likely to notice it. But maybe it would be enough to take a picture of the pipe with that furrow beneath it. It seemed pretty convincing to me. There was only one problem: I didn’t have a camera, and I sure wasn’t going to ask Dad to get one for me.

  Suddenly I heard voices. I jumped. They were somewhere in the woods behind me. I couldn’t make out the words. I leapt up and strained to listen. Someone was searching for me. It sounded like they were out by the road, a little downstream from me. My heart was racing and I began to sweat. Moving as quiet as I could, I slipped back into the middle of the woods, halfway between the river and the road, and headed farther upstream, to put whoever it was behind me. Every little bit and I’d stop to listen, and after a while I realized that the voices were gone.

  What did that mean? Had they stopped talking, or had they gone away? I decided to slip carefully back to the road and see if anybody was out there. I went along with my body bent as low as I could, and after a bit I could see the road and the fields beyond it through the trees. I dropped to my knees, and crawled, swiveling my head left and right so as to catch a glimpse of anyone coming from either direction. Then I came to the edge of the woods, and stopped. There was nobody there. I stood up, and just at that moment the police car came sliding slowly by. The cop looked at me and I looked at the cop. There wasn’t any hope of running or flinging the binoculars off into the woods. The car stopped instantly, and the cop at the wheel was out of it before I could move. The security guard got out the other side of the car.

  SIX

  “What’re you doing here, son?” the cop said.

  I knew him. He was the same guy who had come out to the house with Jim Otto that time that Dad stole the chain saw.

  “I told you he had glasses,” the security guard said. “He was spying.”

  The cop ignored him. “What’s your name?”

  It’s a terrible thing to know that the minute somebody knows your name they’ll think you’re a thief. It made me feel hurt and sore and confused. I thought about giving the cop a false name, but I didn’t dare. It would be worse if he caught me lying. I decided that at least I wouldn’t be ashamed of it, and I looked the cop in the face and said, “My name’s Harry White.”

  The cop squinted at me. “You one of the Whites out on Mountain Pass Road?”

  “That’s where I live,” I said.

  “Where’d you get the glasses?”

  There was nothing to do but tell the truth. “My dad gave them to me.”

  “White,” the security guard said. “I know who those people are. Stole the glasses, you can count on it.”

  The cop waved his hand at the security guard to shut him up. “You can’t go accusing people of stealing without proof,” he said. Then he turned back to me. “Sure your dad gave them to you?”

  I was beginning to lose my temper, which I knew I shouldn’t do. “He gave them to me,” I said.

  The cop looked at me some more. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Looking for birds,” I said. “Somebody said there was a pileated woodpecker down by the carpet factory. I was looking for it.”

  “The carpet factory’s across the river,” the security guard said.

  “I didn’t want to get too close and scare it. I figured I’d try to spot it from this side of the river.” I didn’t know if they believed me, but it was a good story.

  The cop went on staring at me. Then he said, “Get in the car.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Get in the car.”

  I got in the back and sat there, feeling scared and sore and confused all at once. I just sat there with my feelings going every which way, wondering what they were going to do with me when they got me down to the police station.

  But the cop didn’t start the car. Instead he began talking into the radio. “Eddie,” he said, “have we got anything on a pair of binoculars?” He turned around to me. “Let me see ‘em.” I unslung the binoculars and gave them to him. “Pair of seven by thirty-fives. Look new.”

  The radio crackled and sputtered, and I sat there waiting and sweating under my jacket as if it was July and not April. Then the voice came back on: “Nothing. Nothing recent anyways.”

  I was so relieved, I almost grinned. But I kept my face still. “See, I told you,” I said.

  The cop swiveled around in the seat and stared me in the face. “Okay,” he said. “But stay away from here. This is private property. Next time I’ll take you in and book you for trespass. Understand?” He handed the binoculars back.

  I jumped out of there as fast as I could, and started walking for home. So
maybe Dad hadn’t stolen the binoculars after all. He hadn’t stolen them from the Sports Center, anyway, because Old Man Greenberg would have reported them missing. You had to do that to collect the insurance. And, too, most other people around Timber Falls would have reported it to the police if they were stolen.

  Still, why had they come without a box and the instructions and all? That was hard to explain. Dad wouldn’t have taken them out of the box and then thrown the box away. He would have brought them home in the box.

  Then something else came to me. Maybe they weren’t new. Maybe he had bought them secondhand. That would explain why they hadn’t come in a box. So maybe he hadn’t stole them after all.

  Thinking that made me feel a whole lot better—not just about the binoculars but about everything. Suddenly I began to feel pretty cheerful. I had a terrific pair of binoculars, and I’d found that pipe. That was the great thing. I’d found the pipe, and now I knew for sure that the carpet factory was polluting the Timber River. There wasn’t any doubt about that. For one thing, there was that furrow: weeds grow up awful quick, especially in the spring, and if they weren’t spilling stuff into the river from that pipe down the bank, there’d be something growing there even in April. For another thing, it was plain as could be that upstream from the factory the water was clear, and downstream from it, it was tinged green, with oil slicks on the surface. The proof was all there.

  But would people believe it? Would the newspaper people believe it if some kid, especially one everybody thought was trash, came in and said that the carpet factory was polluting the river? I wasn’t sure. I needed more proof, and the obvious thing was to take some photographs. It wouldn’t be hard to take pictures of the pipe during the day, if I was willing to chance going out there again. But the best thing would be to go out there some night and get some pictures when there was stuff actually pouring into the river. That would be proof nobody could deny. But I had no camera, and how was I going to get one?

  That night, after supper, I went outside and sat on the back step to think about it. There weren’t any stars out, or any moon, because it was so overcast. I remembered a song we had at school that went, “My Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall.” It was about Judgment Day, when the sinners would be judged. I wondered if that was right, did the people who did wrong ever get punished, or did they go on getting away with stuff forever?

  I sat there thinking about things like that, listening to the peepers and smelling the cool damp of the spring night. The only light came from the kitchen window. It fell on the lawn in a yellow square. There was a little breeze, and I knew I would have to put on a sweater if I was going to sit out there very long.

  I couldn’t ask Dad about a camera, that was for sure. I didn’t know how much it would cost to get a camera with a flash attachment, but I’d seen some advertised on TV for around thirty bucks or something. It was the same story as raising money for binoculars. I’d have been glad enough to work to earn the money, but there wasn’t much work around for kids. Work was so short around Timber Falls that grown men got the odd jobs. If somebody needed the snow shoveled out of his driveway, or his lawn cut, he would hire a grown man. People felt they ought to give the work to a man with a family to support. They even had grown-ups packing bags at the checkout counters at the supermarkets, where in other towns they had kids. I knew because there was a story about it in the paper.

  So I couldn’t buy a camera; and I wasn’t about to steal one, even if I had the nerve to try it. The only thing left was to borrow one, and there was nobody I could borrow anything from.

  I was sitting there worrying about that when I heard a voice, just a quick whisper, say “Harry.”

  At least I thought I heard it. I’ve had that happen before, where you distinctly hear somebody call your name, and you look around and there’s nobody there, and you realize you’ve been hearing things. So I figured that’s what it was this time, because who could be around?

  But then it came again: “Harry.”

  “Who’s out there?” I said.

  “Shss, shss” came out of the dark.

  “Who’s there?” I whispered.

  “It’s me,” the whisper came back. “I’m up by the barn.”

  It was Helen. I jumped up, ran quickly up toward the barn, and stood by the barn door looking around. It was pretty dark, and I couldn’t see her.

  “I’m in here,” she said. “Don’t turn on the lights.” Then I saw her, just a black shape edged up against the barn door. I slipped inside where nobody could see me from the house, and she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me.

  “Where’ve you been?” I whispered.

  “Shsss,” she said. “Let’s go up in the loft. We can turn on a light up there. You can’t see it from the house.”

  She started to climb up the loft ladder, in the dark, and I started up behind her. She was carrying something. “What’s that?” I said.

  “New suitcase,” she said.

  We got into the loft and, feeling our way through the furniture and junk, moved down to the other end. She turned on a little light she had rigged up with an extension cord that ran through a crack in the floor down to a plug below. She’d made a kind of little room at this end of the loft, sort of a private room where she could have guys over. I looked at Helen. She’d changed. She was wearing her old jeans, but she had on a fancy new pink blouse with a lot of frills down the front, and she had a new black purse hanging from her shoulder. She’d changed her hair, too: Instead of just hanging down the way she usually had it, it was piled up on top of her head. She had on a lot of makeup, too—lipstick, and stuff on her eyelashes and cheeks. She was different all right.

  “Where’ve you been?” I said in a low voice, although I didn’t think they could hear us in the house anyway.

  “New York City,” she said. “I’ve been down in New York City.”

  “I thought you might go there,” I said. “Where are you staying?”

  “I’ve got a place to stay with some people,” she said. “Some other girls. Women, I guess.”

  “You mean they just let you live there?” I said.

  “I pay rent.” She seemed proud of that. “I’m earning money.”

  “You got a job?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. She unslung her purse, snapped it open, and held up a wad of bills. “Look,” she said.

  “Wow,” I said. “What kind of job?”

  “Just some kind of a job,” she said.

  “I mean in a store or something?”

  “Here,” she said. She took a hundred-dollar bill out of the stack and handed it to me. “Keep it,” she said.

  “A hundred dollars?” I said. “A hundred dollars?” I’d never had that much money in my life.

  “Sure,” she said. “Keep it. I’ve got plenty of money.”

  I wondered where she was getting all that money from. “Somebody at school heard you were dealing drugs.”

  “Oh, them,” she said. “Those kids don’t know anything. They don’t know anything about New York. Why do I care what they think, Charlie Fritz and those guys? They’re just a bunch of hicks.”

  “Are you sure you’re not dealing drugs?” I said.

  “Why should I deal drugs? I don’t need to deal drugs. I’ve got plenty of money.”

  “You must have a pretty good job.”

  “Yeah,” she said. Then she said, “Harry, you ought to see what it’s like down there. There’s anything you want there. You can go to the movies all the time and eat anything you want to eat. We’re always going to the movies, these women I’m living with, and we don’t bother to cook but eat out most of the time, or send out for stuff. If I want some beer or wine or something, they get it for me.”

  I decided I wouldn’t ask her where she was getting the money from anymore. “How old are these women? Do they drink a lot?”

  “They’re in their twenties, I guess. They drink some, but mostly they get high. They get high a
ll the time. I can, too, if I want. They don’t mind giving me joints if I want to get high.”

  “Aren’t you worried about the cops?”

  “No,” she said. “Down in New York the cops don’t care what you do. Sometimes I can’t believe it, being down there.”

  “Don’t you miss home any? Don’t you ever get homesick?”

  She frowned. “Well, sometimes,” she said. “The first couple of nights I was pretty homesick.”

  “Did you hitch down?”

  “Yes,” she said. “A guy picked me up and took me down to the thruway, and then I got a couple of rides to Albany and after that somebody took me to New York City.”

  “Weren’t you scared riding with strange guys?”

  “Yeah, sort of. The first guy kept reaching over to pat me on the leg or on my shoulder or something, and the guy that took me down to New York wanted me to go out to dinner with him and go to a nightclub and stuff, but I jumped out at a red light. I said, ‘Thanks for the ride, I have to get off here," and I jumped out. But I tell you, Harry, it didn’t matter if I was scared, it didn’t matter what those guys did to me, anything was worth it to get away from here.” Suddenly she looked hard and angry. “I’m never coming back here as long as I live.”

  I didn’t like to hear her say that. I would miss her a lot. “It isn’t so bad here,” I said.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said. “Yeah, sure. You know what they think about us in Timber Falls. They think we’re nothing. They think we’re the scum of the earth.”

  It was the first time she’d ever admitted it. “I used to tell you that,” I said. “You would never believe it.”

  “Who would want to believe something like that?” She was still looking hard and sore. “Who would want to believe that your family is the scum of the earth? It’s because of Mom and Dad. It’s because Dad won’t get a regular job and Mom wouldn’t keep us clean and all that.”