When the Stars Begin to Fall

by James Lincoln Collier

  The funny thing was, I didn’t feel sore at Helen. I just felt so sorry for her. It was going to be terrible for her to ride for six hours in the truck with Dad. He’d hit her. He was bound to do that. He wouldn’t feel sorry for her at all. He’d bawl her out the whole way and belt her if she answered him back. But that wouldn’t be the worst of it. The terrible part would be going to school and having all the kids stare at her and talk about her. Nobody would want to eat with her at lunch. They would get up and move if she sat down near them. I didn’t know how she would be able to stand that. I felt so sorry for her.

  That night, sitting on the back steps, I thought about it. And what it seemed to me was this: Here was poor Helen who’d never done anything wrong to anybody, who only wanted to get some boy to like her; and who had had to wash her own clothes since she was eight years old; and who had never got much of anything from anybody; here she was, a disgrace and an outcast. And Herbst who was polluting the Timber River, lying about it, and bribing people was rich and respected and could do anything he wanted. And the newspaper editor who had known all about the pollution for years and was covering up for it was respected and admired around Timber Falls. And the merchants around town who had pressured the newspaper editor to shut up about it—they were making good money and were respected in the town. And all the other people in Timber Falls who knew about it and had kept their mouths shut. And Dad who had taken a bribe to force me to shut up was going to belt Helen good for what she had done. Was it right? Was it fair? Maybe the stars would never begin to fall.

  Suddenly I didn’t care what people thought of me anymore. I didn’t give a damn, not a single damn. I grit my teeth. I knew what I was going to do: I was going to get revenge on all of them for Helen. I was going to make the biggest stink about the pollution that I could, and close the carpet factory down.

  What was the best way to do it? I wasn’t sure. I could start with the town council. They were supposed to be enforcing the law, weren’t they? I couldn’t remember exactly what the town ordinance said, so I got up and went inside to look for the assignment notebook I’d written it down in.

  The notebook wasn’t anywhere in the kitchen or the living room. I didn’t remember going up to my room since I’d been home. I’d been too busy trying to cheer Mom up. But I went upstairs and looked anyway. It wasn’t in my room. There wasn’t that much stuff in my room that you could lose anything there.

  So I went back downstairs and looked in the kitchen again, and all of a sudden I realized where it was. I stood still, frozen, in the middle of the kitchen, my hand in midair like I was catching something. I’d left the notebook in the truck. It had been lying on the seat beside me, and when Mom had come running out of the house shouting that Helen was in jail, I’d forgotten all about the notebook and just jumped out of the truck. It must still be there, lying on the seat, opened to the page with the pollution ordinance written on it. Dad would just have to take one look, and after that he’d kill me.

  But maybe it had fallen out of the truck when I’d jumped out. Sometimes that happened. I got a flashlight and went out to the dirt driveway and looked all around where the truck had been when I’d jumped out. It wasn’t there.

  There was still a chance that Dad wouldn’t notice it lying on the seat, especially if his mind was on Helen and all. Or that it fell off the seat onto the floor where he wouldn’t notice it. Or that it slid into the crack between the seat and the door and would fall onto the street when Helen opened the passenger door to get in. All I could do was hope.

  But losing the notebook wasn’t going to stop me from getting revenge for Helen. I don’t know why I thought of it that way—as getting revenge. She didn’t have anything to do with it really. She wasn’t much interested in whether anyone was polluting the Timber River. But still, it seemed like revenge to me. And I was bound and determined to do it.

  Was there any way I could do it without Dad finding out? There might be. I wouldn’t go to a town council meeting. I’d just go to see one of the councilmen privately and hear what he had to say. After that I’d figure out what to do next.

  So I had decided that. I turned off the flashlight and went back to the house. Mom was sitting in the living room watching TV. I figured she was planning on staying up until Helen got home. I figured she would have trouble going to sleep anyway until they were back. But I didn’t see how they would get home until morning, so I went to bed.

  When I got up in the morning, the TV was still going and Mom was asleep in her chair in front of it. I quietly shut it off, fixed myself some peanut butter on toast for breakfast, and went to school. I wasn’t looking forward to it very much because of everybody knowing what had happened to Helen. But nobody said anything, and I figured word hadn’t got around yet. And after school I went back to the old redbrick town hall and went inside.

  For a minute I stood there smelling the musty smell and listening to the radiators bang. A couple of doors down the hall I could see a sign saying TOWN COUNCIL. I went down there and listened by the door. No noise came from inside. I took a deep breath and opened the door. The room was empty except for a couple of desks, some wooden chairs against a wall, some filing cabinets, and an American flag.

  I shut the door again and went back to the town clerk’s office. The same two women were sitting there. The fat one was unwrapping a candy from her bowl. “I’m being naughty today,” she said. “I’ve already eaten four of these.” Then she saw me. “You’re back? What is it this time?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I was just wondering if any of the town councilmen were around.”

  “What’s this about?” she said. She looked suspicious.

  “Mr. Novick might be in around four,” the blond one said. I had a half hour to wait. So I went outside and sat on the steps. I leaned up against the redbrick wall and worked on my English homework. After a while a Volkswagen Rabbit pulled up, and a youngish man wearing chinos and a blue flannel shirt got out. He came up the steps and passed me to go into the town hall. I figured it might be Mr. Novick, so I followed him in. He stopped at the town clerk’s office and asked for his mail. The blond woman handed him some letters. “This kid wants to talk to you,” she said.

  He looked around at me. “Sure, what is it, son?” He seemed like a pretty cheerful guy.

  “It’s sort of private,” I said.

  He smiled. “Okay, let’s go down to the office.” Smiling like that, he was making me feel hopeful. He went down to the town council’s office, and I followed him in. He sat down behind one of the desks, and I stood there until he told me to sit down in one of the wooden chairs. He looked through his mail for a couple of minutes, frowning and dropping the envelopes onto the desk, and then he looked up at me and smiled again and said, “Okay, what is it?”

  I took a deep breath and said, “I’ve got proof that the carpet factory is polluting the Timber River.”

  His smile went away like something you wipe off a blackboard. He looked at me and then he said, “What’s your name?”

  Here it came again. “Harry White.”

  “From Mountain Pass Road.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He put his hands together in front of his face like he was praying into them, and sat there thinking and looking out over his hands at me. All the while I kept getting more and more nervous until I wanted to jump out of the chair. Finally he took his hands away from his face and said, “I figured that’s who you were. I’ve been hearing about you.”

  I wondered who he had heard it from. Herbst? The newspaper editor? The cops? Who else was in on it? I figured it was most likely the cops who had told him. “I saw it myself,” I said.

  “Look, Harry, I think you ought to forget all about this.”

  “It’s against the law,” I said.

  “That’s no news,” he said. “We all know that. But that isn’t the point.” He looked at me some more. Then he said, “I thought your dad told you to drop it.”

  He knew about that
too. He couldn’t have got that from the cops. He must have got it from the newspaper editor or Herbst. “He did. He belted me good and told me to forget about it. I decided not to.”

  “Harry, what got you into this thing in the first place?”

  “I did it on my own,” I said. I was tired of lying about it, and I decided to tell the truth, all except the part about being trash. I would never discuss that with anybody. “I knew they were dumping stuff in the river, because when I went out to the river to watch the fish, I could see it. I decided to investigate, so I went out there and found that pipe.” I figured if he knew as much about it as he did, he’d know about the pipe too.

  He drummed his fingers on the desktop. “Are you telling me that nobody put you up to this—some environmental group or something?”

  I shook my head. “Nobody did,” I said. “I figured it out for myself.”

  “And you saw the pipe. But you didn’t actually see anything coming out of it, did you?”

  “Yes, I did. I went out there with a flashlight one night and I saw it.”

  “How do you know it was chemicals? Maybe it was ordinary waste water.”

  “It wasn’t,” I said. “It was greenish. Besides, nothing was growing underneath the pipe.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s say I believe that you did this yourself. And let’s say I believe that you really saw the stuff. If you make an issue out of it, you’re going to stir up a lot of trouble around town. There are a lot of angles to it you don’t understand. This is something for us adults to worry about. You worry about your schoolwork, and let us worry about this.”

  “Maybe they really wouldn’t close the carpet factory,” I said. “Maybe they’re just bluffing.”

  He gave me a funny look. “You know about that, huh?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, then maybe you can understand that around here jobs matter a lot more than a little bit of pollution.”

  “It isn’t a little bit,” I said. I was beginning to get stubborn, and I knew I was going to lose my temper soon.

  “Okay, a lot. It still doesn’t matter stacked up against people’s jobs.”

  “But maybe they’re bluffing,” I said. “Why can’t you—”

  He slammed his hand down on the desk. “You’re meddling in something you don’t know anything about. You’re going to end up causing a lot of trouble for the people in this town. Stop giving me that baloney that you’re doing this on your own. Who put you up to it?”

  He was angry, and I was scared, but I wasn’t going to give in. “Nobody put me up to it. Don’t call me a liar.”

  He slammed his hand on the desk again. “I’ll call you whatever I want to call you, son. You’re just out to make trouble because that’s the kind you are. You and your whole family.”

  I jumped up. “You can’t say that to me,” I shouted.

  He jumped up, too, and his chair crashed over behind him. “Oh, yes, I can,” he shouted. “If you go any further with this, we’re going to run you and your lousy family out of Timber Falls. You’re nothing but trash anyway, lying and stealing and now your sister—”

  I grabbed up the chair behind me and swung it over my head. “You say anything more about my sister and I’ll kill you,” I shouted.

  He jumped around the desk. I started to swing it around, but he was a lot bigger than me, and he grabbed it before I could get in a good swing. He started to jerk it away from me. I let go and turned and ran out of the office, and down the corridor and out of the building. Once I was outside, I looked back. He was standing at the door of the town hall, but he wasn’t coming after me. I turned and walked on toward home, so mad and hurt I couldn’t stop crying. The tears kept running down my face until I was almost home.

  FOURTEEN

  Helen was sitting in the living room next to Mom, watching a soap opera. “Hi, Helen,” I said. I was glad to see her. I was feeling pretty awful about everything, and I was glad to have somebody I could tell it to.

  She gave me a scared look.

  “I’m not sore at you,” I said. “I figured it wasn’t your fault.”

  She looked relieved and got up and gave me a hug.

  “My poor baby,” Mom said.

  “Let’s go out back,” I said. So we went outside and sat on the back steps. “I’m glad you came back,” I said. “I didn’t have anybody to talk to.”

  She got a tough look on her face. “I’m going to run away again as soon as I can. I’ve got six months probation, after that I can leave. I’ll be seventeen anyway.”

  “Are you supposed to go to school?”

  “Yes, but I’m not going to,” she said. “I’m not going to have all those dumb kids staring at me all day long. I’m not going anyplace where I have to see Charlie Fritz. I’m going to get a job over in Watertown. As a waitress in a luncheonette. Dad says he can fix it up. Dad says he’ll take me to the Watertown bus every morning.”

  I didn’t say anything. I knew I shouldn’t ask whether she was really a prostitute, but I was pretty curious. “What was it like, Helen?”—which was a way of asking so she didn’t have to answer.

  “It wasn’t so bad,” she said. “I didn’t mind it so much.”

  “You didn’t?” I said.

  Then she bent over, covered her face with her hands, and began to cry. “I hated it,” she said. “It was awful. But the other girls teased me for being proud.” She started sobbing so hard, she couldn’t speak for a minute, and I put my arm around her shoulder. Her sobbing eased up a little. “Then I found out that if I got high and drank some wine, it wasn’t so bad. That’s why I got all that coke. I was going to try to make money that way.” She stopped sobbing, wiped her eyes on her shirt, and sat there looking calm. “It was a dumb idea. If they’d caught me just for prostitution, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. They wouldn’t have called up Dad.”

  “Well,” I said. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “I was homesick,” she said. “I didn’t think I would be. How could anyone be homesick for this dump?”

  “Mom missed you,” I said. “She kept saying ‘My poor baby" and stuff like that. She cried sometimes.”

  Helen frowned. “I don’t care,” she said. “I’m going to leave again as soon as I can.”

  “Even if it makes you homesick?”

  “You get over being homesick,” she said. “The other women told me that. They said they were homesick, too, when they first came to New York, but they got over it in a few weeks.”

  “Are you going back to New York?”

  “No,” she said. “Not there. Someplace else. Someplace where nobody knows me and I can start over again from the beginning. Where nobody knows about our family and going to school dirty and Dad stealing, and—” Suddenly she stopped and looked at me. “I didn’t mean to say that,” she said.

  “I already knew he stole,” I said. “I didn’t know you knew.”

  “I found out years ago,” she said. “I didn’t want you to know.”

  That surprised me. “How did you find out?”

  “Remember that bike I had, the first one?” she said.

  “The one you gave me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I knew the kid he stole it from. That’s why I had to paint it—so nobody would recognize it.”

  “You knew it was stolen all along?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I couldn’t give it back. Dad would have thought I lost it.”

  “He hit me—” I began, but then we heard the sound of the truck, and in a moment it came up the driveway. I stood up, feeling scared and nervous, not knowing what to expect. The truck pulled to a stop. For a moment Dad sat in the cab looking over to where we were sitting on the back steps. Then he got out of the truck. He was carrying my assignment notebook. He came slowly across the backyard toward me. When he got up to me, he said, “Come to the barn,” in a quiet voice.

  “No,” I said.

  “What?” he said. He came up so close to me tha
t I could hear him breathing. “I said come up to the barn.”

  “I’m not going to,” I said.

  He stared at me, his face close to mine. “I thought I told you to forget about that carpet factory business.”

  “I’m not going to do what you say anymore,” I said. “You’re a thief and a liar. You’re nothing but—”

  He grabbed me by my shirtfront. I tried to twist away, but his grip was too tight. He slammed me across the face with his open hand. My head rang, and I heard Helen shriek. I felt dizzy, and I swung out, not knowing what I was aiming for, and caught him in the gut. He grunted and slammed me across the face again. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and swung at him again. This time I caught him in the chest. He swung back his arm. Helen shrieked again. Then she jumped on his back and began clawing his face with her fingernails. He gave me a sort of push, and I staggered backward, but I didn’t fall. He reached around behind him, grabbed hold of Helen by the arm, and jerked her loose from him. She fell down. I started toward him, but he didn’t move. Long red lines down his face were oozing blood. His mouth was twisted, and he was breathing hard. I stood there waiting to see what he would do. If he went for Helen, I was going to tackle him. I figured if I got him down, the two of us could do a pretty good job on him.

  He touched his cheek and looked at his fingers to see the blood. “Get out of here,” he said. “The two of you pack and git. Now.”

  Mom came out onto the back steps. “My God,” she said. “Oh, my God.” She put her hands over her face. “What have you done to them, Frank?”

  “You shut up,” he said. Then he went in the house.

  I stood there feeling dizzy. My head hurt, and my nose and mouth were bleeding. “Someday I’m going to kill him,” I said. “Someday.”