What you might do is this: You might tell yourself that you will no longer drive to town with the hopes of seeing him. You will not notice when he’s at the vet clinic and when he’s not. You will no longer bring him up in conversation at the post office, to see what others say about him, or simply to hear his name. That you will not hope, even, that one of your animals becomes ill enough to need vet care. Perhaps you will bow your head and think all these things. But when you raise your head up, still you will tell him to stop by next time he’s in your area, because although it’s not worth a trip up, your horse has developed an odd swelling in its chest and maybe ought to be looked at, and he will tell you, “It might be Pigeon disease, they get it from bacteria in the dirt,” but then says that he might come by, because he needs to make some stops in the area anyway, and at the same time you are telling yourself to let him go, you are hoping that he will move toward you and you know that it will be exhausting, waiting for a thing that’s never going to come.
While all this was going on, Ruben was writing something with a black marker on a piece of cardboard in sloppy handwriting, uneven-sized letters, some caps and some lowercase. Really, if I had not been so enamored, I would’ve been taken aback by such a sorry attempt at writing. When he was done, he turned it toward me so I could read it: WE Do NOt SeLL IodinE PrOducts. He said, “I saw a sign like this at another vet clinic. Actually, we will sell iodine products, but we’ll keep them in the back. So if you need any.”
I said, out of the blue, “Then it’s like most everything else. You have to know whether or not it really exists, where it’s hidden, and how to ask. And then some will get it and some will not.” I didn’t mean to sound bitter about this, although that’s how it came out.
I managed to stay away from town for quite a long time, going in only occasionally, and seasons passed, and then Sy shot himself. Perhaps the archangels had been in cahoots with God, and they were all busy playing tricks on Sy, or perhaps he was simply tired, or perhaps his brain chemistry was very very off, which is something I feel like I can extrapolate from my own life and understand, but in any case, Sy took Joe’s Colt .45 and shot himself through the mouth. Joe felt horrible about it being his gun, but as I told him, along with many other people, Sy would have found a way no matter what, and that since Sy’s guns had been taken away from him for exactly this reason, he was left with no choice, which is what Sy himself wrote to Joe in the note he left. In the note he also scribbled, Archangels’ eyes are blue, pure blue, no pupil; Jesus’s are white, bright white light; and God’s are black circles with a moon and stars, and they say that if I go now there won’t be any more tricks to play on me. There is a beautiful blue firefly creature, and she is very kind, and she is telling me that the time is now. And it matters what light they cast on you so watch for the colors. I wish I could have shared my true self more with all of you. I never wanted to be a fake. It is harder than I realized to remain true. I am so very sorry for doing this to you all.
I felt quite a bit of sympathy for Sy—did not blame him for being selfish like some people did—because I can simply picture moments when I too have wanted to walk out in a meadow beneath Blue Moon Mountain and shoot myself, and indeed, in my most off-kilter moments I have thought about doing just that.
On the day of the memorial, it was still spitting snow, and everything was covered in feet of snow, and the earth was still reeling from the blizzard, and the roads were slick and plowed only where the Vreelands and I had been able to get to in time.
To get to the service, I caught a ride down to the base of the canyon, to the grange, with my neighbor, Wendell, since my truck’s ignition switch had gone out, and on the way Wendell and I conversed in such a way to confirm for each other that we really did not like each other; he thought I was a scattered and fragile woman, and I thought him a dull and stupid man, which in fact he is.
On the way down, I told him, “I was in love with a man once. Once in my life. I don’t think I can forget about him. He’s always with me.”
This comment surprised Wendell, who, after some time, said, “I guess maybe you better try.”
And then I got to say what I’d practiced. “For what? Then I’d remember trying, too.”
I told Wendell this so I could get it out of my system and wouldn’t have to tell Ruben. How many of us are going around telling the truth to the wrong person? Wendell took it as one more piece of evidence of my malformed character, which confirmed for him that he did not want a romantic relationship with me, which is something he wondered from time to time, because we were convenient, after all, and I took my confession as a needed relief to have voiced my love to someone, somewhere, at some point in time. So we were both of use to each other, as usual.
The person I hoped to see at the memorial, of course, was Ruben. I am honest enough to admit that even at a funeral of a fairly good acquaintance, of someone who had doctored my goats and peacock and cats and once, even, my rooster who’d had his throat ripped open by a fox but wasn’t yet dead, even at this man’s memorial, I was selfishly thinking of love, although it’s also true that I was mourning, which is to say, simply, that I felt a very deep ache. Maybe they were related.
I noticed that Ruben was dressed in black jeans and roper boots and a dark blue sports jacket, and I had to avert my eyes so as to find some relief. What I did not realize then, but realized during the course of the after-funeral gathering, as I listened to people talk, was that I was possibly saying good-bye to Ruben as well. Because it is illegal for someone who does not have a degree and license to practice vet medicine, and now that Sy was gone, there was no way that Ruben could keep the vet clinic open, since after all there was no vet. I did hear it mentioned, however, that Ruben, who, wisely enough, refused to go to school to prove what he already knew (and was thus refusing to give into those invisible forces that operate this world), might just drive around in his truck and doctor animals as a “friend who was helping out” and a person might pay Ruben for his help. At least for a few months. Who knows if such a plan would work, he was saying, and that’s exactly what he was doing: testing this idea against the reaction of others. As I listened to a dozen conversations, I knew where Ruben was in the room, at all moments, which caused me to wonder if love is also simply keeping track of a person.
When Ruben came up to me, and asked about my puppy, now grown into a dog, it was not as I had hoped. Now there was nothing in his eyes that showed I was alive to him in some unique way. I kept looking for it, but it was not there. Maybe he saw my reaction to this because he tried to say something nice, then. He said, “I never asked you about ice-skating, long ago. But I imagined you, skating alone, on the Vreelands’ pond. On that foggy day,” and when I whispered yes, he continued, “It’s pretty, the picture I have in my mind. Until the puppy got hurt, that is.”
Ruben was looking at me, kindly enough, though in a tired way, and was starting to fumble for some words. So I shrugged and laughed, which was my way of mocking my own loneliness and desire, even as I presented it to him. I was saying, Here I am, look what you’ve done to me, but please, ignore me all the same! Of course, he had no idea of any of this; I understand that.
I wanted only for him to comfort me in my distress, even though he was the agent of my distress.
I touched his shoulder, then, and gave him what I could. Despite what I’ve said about lacking an essential energy, the truth is that sometimes I have some—a buzzing, golden thing—and when I need it, I summon it into being by closing my eyes and telling myself, Find It, Create It.
That’s what I did then. I reached out to touch his shoulder, and I pushed my energy toward him, down the length of my arm, just in the hopes that it would enter his body, and as I touched his blue jacket, I pushed him gently away, toward the crowd of milling mourners, and I said, “Sy’s death will change us all. It has already changed me. Take care now, Ruben. Good-bye!”
I watched his body move away from me, and took notice
of my ache, and realized that quietness has a strange, buzzing hum that can nearly break you apart.
I think Sy knew this: The world goes on, goes on with great alacrity, and indeed it grows impatient with any sort of resistance to its spinning-forward force. During these last weeks since Sy’s memorial, I have seen Ruben from time to time on the mountain. I try to leave the house occasionally, to prove to myself that I can. When I do, it seems that Ruben and I seek each other out in a vague way, or actually, he does not seek me out, but I seek him out in a way that appears vague but which is not.
When we meet up, we talk about the things that matter to us, and I am always surprised at how quickly Ruben moves into Real Conversation, that is, about an idea he has been considering, how he feels odd these days, how he worries about Anya, how as a child he fell in love with animals because they seemed to love him back and, as he said, we are fools for those who will have us.
When we meet at the post office or Violet’s Grocery, we immediately launch into such a conversation; I ask him, What did you do today? and he responds not by telling me what he’s done, but rather by what beautiful thing he’s witnessed, or what human or animal pain he’s encountered, and I listen a great deal.
What these conversations do for me is relieve me of some bitterness, for if one thing has made me angry at this world, it is the silence of others; their decision not to respond, their holding back of themselves. Although in addition, I am sympathetic, since silence is how we defend ourselves, and we defend ourselves because we need to.
Ruben and I rarely speak of my animals or his girlfriend because for these few moments, we allow that they be invisible so as to create space for these other thoughts. Besides, we do not want to give word to what exists, but to that which does not. On the other hand, we don’t speak of the invisible thing, either, though we both know it is there. I want to tell him, but do not, about my daily mantra: He’s not interested. He’s too young. Not possible. Not reasonable. I want to tell him, Ruben, you have taken over my life, have mercy! I want to tell him, How can I live, never having this love? I want to ask him, Just how much erosion and effort is this going to take?
In the past weeks, I have also gotten to know his new girlfriend by greeting her at the grocery store. Jess is her name, and she wears a wrist brace, from typing, already injured though so young, and she volunteers at the fire department, mainly by bringing food and cleaning up, and as she told me, she had no particular love of the fire department, it was just that it was the only thing around to volunteer for. When I see her, I think: You never feel as large and important as when you are in love. And you are, because you are living in the center of your best and bravest self. You have an appetite for every single second in the day.
Then came this day, which was yesterday: I was out in the Vreelands’ pasture, checking on cows, and I was remembering a different winter, long ago, when Sy had come with me, given that there was an injured cow he needed to check on, and he told me about the angels who visited him—he was not religious and these were not particular angels, such as Catholic angels, although that is the religion he grew up in, but general-all-purpose angels, is what he called them, and how beautiful and kind they were, and that was the first time I realized Sy was ill, or that his version of reality did not match mine, at least, and I was thinking of Sy, remembering him and missing him and aching for the time he did not have anymore on earth, and suddenly someone shot a gun.
The sound ricocheted around the valley, the birds flew into the air squawking, and my dog started to bark, and a horse in a far pasture spooked and started to run.
After some time, I made my way across the ridge and looked down into a draw and saw a man in a jean jacket with wooly stuff underneath. The man was dragging a dead heifer, the cow he had just shot, up a slant, a slant created from a large piece of plywood, from ground to white truck. He had picked the smallest heifer, which was smart, because otherwise the effort of moving her body would have been too great. The dead cow left blood in the snow, and blood up the ramp, and the man was working hard to get her bleeding body into the bed of his truck. He did manage, though, and when he was done, he put a blue tarp on the cow, so as to cover her, and then did something odd, which was to pat the blue mound before swinging himself into the truck and driving away. It had snowed again, and his truck tires left a pattern across the white pasture as he drove around the occasional tree or irrigation ditch. It reminded me of the patterns my ice skates leave on ice; fluid soft arcs of motion.
It is for these reasons—him patting the cow, his tire marks—that I did not tell the police or the Vreelands what had happened. If someone had asked, about the noise or tracks, for instance, I would have told the full truth, but as is always the case in life, the conveyance of information is often reliant on someone asking, and rarely do they ask, which is not a matter of oversight, as we would like to believe, but rather a conscious decision to stay oblivious and separate. Also, I did not tell anyone because by this time, I felt some sympathy for this man and woman. This couple, the meth lab couple, I now knew to live in the run-down house a few miles away, and in my own quiet anxiety I was feeling a bit of commiseration for the things people do to survive, which is not to say that I approved, but I understood.
I walked over there, though, along the snow-packed county road, to their junky trailer house. The man was out by the garage unloading the dead cow and did not notice me, partly because he was absorbed with the dead animal, and partly because his truck radio was blaring country music. The woman—or girl, rather—was inside, sleeping on the couch. I could see her through the window, thin and tall and mousy-brown haired. I didn’t want to bother them anyway. I whispered for Ruby to sit, which she did. From the notebook I carry in my pocket to record births or injuries to cows, I tore a page, and I wrote a note: DO NOT TAKE ANOTHER COW. COME FOR DINNER, SOMETIME, IF YOU’D LIKE—I’M LILLIE IN THE WHITE TRAILER WITH ALL THE ANIMALS. I stuck it in their door and as I left, I imagined white crystals inside, scattered across their bodies and house like fairy dust. On the way home, I sat down in the snow and cried, and Ruby sat next to me, panting and occasionally licking the salty wet from my stupid, contorted face. Before I left, I did something I have never done before, which was to get down on my hands and knees and press my face into the new snow beside me, as deep as I could push it, so that for a moment I could not breathe but did not care since the cold crystals melting on my hot skin offered another form of nourishment.
Once upon a time there was a story, and it ends like this: There is a woman, some figure in the far distance, a shape that’s hard to make out, and she has a task ahead of her, which is to expel a feeling best she can, or at the very least, maneuver it so that the place it occupies inside her is comfortable, or if not comfortable, then bearable. She laughs at herself about this, for what an odd thing to do to love!
I drove into the village, at last, because I needed help doing this. The roads were black, but the pines in the shade were dripped in white from the blizzard, and so there was a nice contrast to the world. When I walked into the vet clinic, where Ruben was vaguely still practicing, he walked toward me, straight up to me, and took me up in his arms in an embrace. We stayed this way for a full minute, and I pressed my head against his chest and put my hand up to his heart.
From there, I said, “Just tell me. Do you ever wish—?”
He said, “Sure, Lillie. I wish many of us could connect in all sorts of ways.” Then he pointed out a window, up into the blue sky, and said, “Lillie, look at the stars.”
I smiled into his shirt, for he was telling me that the stars are present, even when they are not visible. This brief moment, this impression, allowed me to catch his eye and nod good-bye.
When I got home, I went straight to the pond. I found I could not ice-skate, for the ice was suddenly slushy, the sun having come out today. I kept hearing noises; I thought an animal was moving about in the dry grasses near the edge. But there were too many sounds, fir
st here and then over there, and it took me some time to realize it was the ice melting at the edges, slipping into the water below.
Ruby ran out on the ice anyway, and the ice supported her, though it cracked in displeasure, and she nudged a chunk of blue ice with her nose and chased after it as it sped far and fast across the pond. I could have called her back, but I did not, because her joy outweighed the danger.
I began to walk alongside the water and noticed that in certain places, the snow had formed tiny ridges of intricate crystals that jutted up at an angle from the ground. I was surprised to discover the degree to which patterns create snow. Then I looked up and saw the degree to which patterns create the world. Then I considered the degree to which colors create the world. Then I considered the degree to which light creates the world. After I came to, I continued walking, and continued to create the collateral damage we all do as we go through life, but then I could no longer crush those snow crystals with my feet in such a clumsy manner, even though I knew they’d melt anyway, and so I retraced my steps carefully as I walked back to the pond. I sat in the grass at the edge and watched the ice slip into the absorbing water, and sometimes I helped it along by brushing and dabbing the slush down with a stick that had been left to rest beside me.
Chapter Four
Calypso
It was eight in the morning and still they were in bed. The sun was only now above the mountain—winters were so dark, the shadow of the mountain so long—and Ruben kept his eyes on the strip of weak blue outside the window as he rooted around the back of her neck with his lips. “But really? You don’t ever want to get married?”
Jess pushed herself backward, more fully into his chest, her rump against him. “Give me a break. Have you ever seen a good one?”
“There seem to be some solid—”
“Enviable ones, Ruben. Enviable marriages?”
The Blue Hour Page 5