Stars Go Blue

by Laura Pritchett

  Tonight is a good night. Is it wrong to be proud of a moment like this? He’s done everything right. He left their truck in the driveway—the pink card he made Renny still on the dash—and instead he took the old brown Ford that rarely works and which was parked on the far side of the barn. He had the presence of mind to get his suitcase and wallet and Carhartt jacket and even steal the rest of Renny’s money from her purse while she was out doing chores, and he waited until she was in the chicken house to pull out of the driveway. He had the presence of mind to park at a 7-Eleven and walk to the Greyhound station and buy a one-way ticket to Greeley, which cost $15. He had the presence of mind to pay for the ticket with a $100 bill and accept the change even though he wondered if he was supposed to leave a tip.

  He sits now, with his suitcase on the floor and balanced between his knees and looks out the window. The seat is soft, a blue fabric. Oh Ben, oh Ben, he addresses himself, you’re doing it. What a simple thing, but a grand thing!

  He loves this night sky, when everything is merely shadow. It’s snowing, snowing, snowing, and from the passing car lights he can see how the flakes toss in air currents. For a moment, he is startled to know he can’t remember the name of the man he knows he’s going to see. But then he tells himself not to worry because he will remember and besides he has written it down somewhere on a piece of paper, and so then, calmed, he watches the snow.

  When the bus stops, he walks up to the driver and the driver says, “This is only Loveland, sir, and I think you’re bound for Greeley,” and so Ben turns around and finds his seat again. He feels that it is still warm from him sitting there before, and he appreciates the simple fact of blue cloth. He doesn’t need to go to the bathroom and he isn’t hungry, and he’s happy to be left alone by his body and its needs. He can simply watch the snow. The bus is stopped for a long time, it seems to him. People are getting on and off, and cold air seeping in, and the wind is picking up and the snow is starting to fall heavy, and the driver is talking on the radio. But he can ignore all this, corral it into only a small corner of his mind, and instead just watch the storm.

  When he faces forward, though, he finds that another man is sitting next to him and the man is saying, “Hope you don’t mind, I like to sit near the front, otherwise I get sick,” and Ben does mind, he glances around but it’s true the bus has filled up. There’s a woman-girl behind him that looks so much like his dead daughter that it startles him. He wonders, for a second, if she isn’t really dead. That he has been mistaken.

  “Luce,” the man says, putting his hand out, and so Ben shakes it. “Where you heading?”

  “Oh, that place,” he says, and then to stall for time, he adds, “I didn’t know so many people took a bus. You know that town? Out there on the . . . plains. Greeley.”

  “Greeley always smells.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “It’s the slaughterhouse.”

  “Yes. But it’s gone now.” Ben thinks of the town on the plains, the town where he was born and where that bad man now lives, with its acres of land and old train depot. He has never heard of a man named Luce and wonders if that’s his brain or simply a strange name. His granddaughter’s name starts with the same letter, L. And his other granddaughter’s name is a J. They are good kids. They will be fine. He tightens his knees around the suitcase and feels for his wallet, which he has put into the front pocket of his gray pants, and yes, it is there.

  “So you got one of those bracelets, huh?” The man says this and it takes Ben some time to realize he is talking about Ben’s safe return bracelet, so that he can be tracked like a cow, branded, returned to the right owner. Since Ben can’t form any words he just shrugs. He hates being embarrassed.

  “My dad had one of those.” The man has pockmarks on his face, ugly ones, and teeth missing, and Ben feels sorry for a young man with a face like that.

  “Oh?”

  “Me and my dad never did talk much, so I never knew it until one Christmas my sister called and said that I better get home and say my good-bye while he could still remember me.”

  “Oh,” says Ben. “Yes, I guess that’s important. Good-byes are important.”

  “So I did. Though he was mean as ever, and I wish now I hadn’t given him the pleasure of seeing me again.” Luce glances up at the driver and pops a wad of chew into his mouth and offers the tin to Ben, who shakes his head, no. Ben wonders if he should sleep or instead listen, but he feels lonely, he feels alert, he misses talking just for the sake of getting to know a person. He wonders if strangers always talk this much, telling personal stories.

  “My dad was and is an asshole. You know what? He’s going to spend all the money he ever had. Jerk. Because money does help. Let’s face it. He could buy some forgiveness with money, that’s a fact. People don’t want to admit to that truth, but it’s true. By the time he finally dies, there won’t be anything left.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.” Ben doesn’t know for sure what to say. He feels so excited and happy, and he just wants to hang on to that. But he should be careful, he knows it. Maybe this man takes drugs and will rob him. So Ben has to be careful not to let the dust out. Not let the dust out of the corral.

  The man unpacks a sandwich, a store-bought kind with meat and cheese, and suddenly Ben’s stomach rumbles and the man tilts half the sandwich at him and Ben shouldn’t take it, he really shouldn’t, but he’s so hungry, and his mouth just says, “If you don’t mind, sure,” and his hand is holding it. He should have remembered to pack food. “I’ll pay you for it,” he says, and reaches into his wallet, and the man objects but Ben is no taker of handouts and so he pulls out a bill and stares at it for a long time to make sure that it is the right size of bill, it has a 1 and two 0’s and that seems right for a sandwich, so he hands it to the man and the man pauses and says, “Huh,” and then, “Well, thanks,” and so Ben knows he’s done a good job.

  The sandwich is very good. He likes the feel of different tastes and feelings in his mouth. He likes the snow coming down.

  “You’re doing all right, though? Traveling alone and all.” The man’s food falls from his mouth and onto his lap, little bits of lettuce and tomato.

  “My body’s doing great but my mind isn’t what it used to be. Although my arm is kind of feeling . . . something . . . I don’t have the word. I’m not as bad as some people who go to those meetings, though. Can’t complain.”

  “Well, good.” The man opens up a bag of chips, which he offers to Ben. “That’s good.”

  “I came up with a new saying. Tell you what I’m gonna do, see. I’m going to stay tuned in as long as I can.” He remembers suddenly an earlier time, when he was a young boy, and he came upon a heifer at his parents’ ranch, and the heifer was dead and swollen with bloat, and her two top legs were sticking out in the air. She wasn’t cut or bleeding or anything that he could find, but when he walked around behind her, half of a calf which was also dead was coming out her rear end, and that was the first time he had seen what birth looked like and what death looked like, all in one snapshot of an instant. Something about that reminds him of why he is on the bus.

  The man is chuckling like a bird. “Stay tuned in. I like that.”

  “Doesn’t take long to kill things,” Ben says. “Takes a lot longer to grow things.”

  The man pauses and chews. “That’s true, I guess.”

  Ben’s mind wanders to a game he once played with his grandchildren—he can’t remember the name of it—but there was an orange card that said GET OUT OF JAIL FREE. Then he finds his voice and his words. “Renny is my wife. I have a daughter and four grandchildren. And a ranch. Later the dust will get heavier. But not yet.”

  “You’ll lose your signal.”

  “But not yet.”

  “I wonder what that’s like.” The man is itching his wrists, then picks at his face, then itches his wrists. “That sure must be strange. Hope you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Oh, it’s a strange thing,” Ben says,
and he wonders if the man has a disease, like the cows get, and needs some ointment for those wrists. “I think you can put it on pause. Like a movie. And it will freeze. Like those fields outside. Someday they will melt, but not now.”

  “You got that right,” says the man. “Looks like we’re going to get a downright blizzard.”

  For a long time they sit quietly, looking out, and Ben hides his bracelet under his shirt sleeve. It looks like the man with the ugly face and the missing teeth has closed his eyes, and perhaps fallen asleep, and Ben is glad for that. He loves the bus moving and the sound of Greeley coming closer and closer. Ray. That’s who he’s going to see, Ray. And there’s a slip of paper in his pocket to remind him what to do.

  And then, startling them out of the hush, the bus driver says on a loud thing, “I’m sorry to report, folks, that I-25 as well as the side roads have just been closed by the highway patrol. Up ahead is Ed’s Place, and I’m stopping there.”

  Ben hears the people groan.

  The man sitting next to him says, “Ah, fuck. I knew I should have left yesterday.”

  Ben wishes he had tied a string from his suitcase to his hand. He must not, he must not, he must not, he must not lose this thing. He tells himself over and over as he walks off the bus with his suitcase, behind the others, and underneath an orange neon sign and a huge sky blowing fast and angry flakes. He ducks his head and the snow is smacking his face, hard, and he follows the others inside and follows a few men into the restroom. He goes into a stall and takes a piss but then he sets the suitcase on the seat of the toilet and unbuckles the suitcase and takes out the bottle and the syringes. He tries to fit them in his sock but it’s no good, they don’t fit. Finally he puts them in his jacket, one that Renny bought him years ago, which has deep pockets. In the suitcase he leaves the gun tucked in with the clothes and the picture of Ray from the newspaper and the name of Ray and some other slips of paper. He can’t remember if they are important or not. The gun is important as backup, because he’s learned the hard way that you should always have backup, you should always be able to put an animal out of its suffering. At the last minute, he takes out one of the newspaper articles and folds it and puts it in his pocket. He makes sure he has everything before he leaves. He double-checks——jacket, wallet, suitcase—so that he will not forget these three important things.

  He finds a booth and orders a piece of cherry pie from the waitress, who is chubby and young, but who he realizes is not chubby but has a baby growing inside her.

  She says, “Well, looks like we’re all stuck here for the night. At least we got food. Could be worse. Pie and coffee? That’s all? Coming right up.” When she returns with the pie and coffee and he decides to order a sandwich—just some sandwich, he says, he can’t remember the name—and she regards him carefully and says, “That’s the order I’d eat my food in too. Hamburger coming right up.” He hopes that this woman has a baby girl.

  “Join you?” Ben looks up to see a man, who is young, in his twenties, more of a boy than a man, with a bok-bok marked face, and some missing teeth, and not handsome at all, in fact, ugly.

  “I’m Luce,” says the man. “From the bus. I gave you some sandwich.”

  Ben is tired. His brain feels dummy and dusty. “Well, hi, Luce,” he says. “I’ll buy you dinner.”

  The man cocks his head at him. “That would be great, thanks. A man can always eat. Doesn’t it smell good here?”

  Ben can’t smell anything and wonders, briefly, why he can’t smell anything. He hasn’t smelled anything in a long time, as if that part of his world has been erased. “That’s the truth, a man can always eat.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  When his hamburger comes, he tries to smell it. There is nothing: only air. But it looks good and he feels his mouth water. The boy-man says, “So, does it piss you off? Make you bitter? I always wanted to ask my dad that, but he wasn’t the talking type, plus now he wouldn’t know what the hell I was talking about.”

  Ben wishes this boy would talk slower and not ask so many questions, but he says, “Yes. I just wish there weren’t such a thing.”

  “You got that right. My mom died of cancer a long time ago. I used to wish that one day we’d wake up on this planet Earth and there would be no such thing as cancer, either.”

  “This planet could do without a lot of things.”

  “You got that right. Ticks, for one thing. I don’t see the point of them. I sure as hell hate ticks.”

  Ben is so tired. He’s scared, suddenly, because he knows he needs to sleep and there is no place to sleep. He is dizzy. He won’t be able to do it. He waited too long. The rooms spins as if he has just stepped off an amusement ride. He is going to sleep, with his jacket on, his wallet in his pants, and his hand on his suitcase. He wants to say something, to this kid. He wants to say, he had many good years, yes. Years when he woke up and he was very happy with the world—and at the end of the day, he would go to sleep and still be happy with the world. He would wake next to Renny, and the canary would be singing from the laundry room and a donkey might bray or a cow might bawl. And when he did chores out back, the canyon wrens would sound by the river. Oh, he was happy. He was useful. He had a good life.

  Except for one horrible thing that ruined it all, and that thing has a name. Ray.

  RENNY

  When Renny calls Anton and blurts out that Ben’s missing and she’s already checked the house and outbuildings, Anton gets up out of bed and dresses and drives through the night and snow. When he arrives, he does what she asks, which is to drive out back to check the cabin and the fields, just to make sure Ben hasn’t wandered back to his favorite places. She could do that herself but she wants to stay near the house in case Ben is there, hiding, or if he comes in suddenly. There are so many crannies in a farmhouse, and on a farm, and she gets the flashlight and the dog and walks through the outbuildings again—the haystack, the shed where Jess hangs out, the corrals, the chickenhouse, the old root cellar—hollering Ben’s name. It’s freezing out and she wants a hot bath and she wants to go to sleep. But she is also jittery, and now that she doesn’t know where Ben is, or whether he’s alive, she feels like an electric wire. She sees her confusion like a huge gaping hole. She thought they had communicated with each other in the cemetery today. She thought she had understood.

  She looks in the barn last, looks for the bottle and syringes. They are, as she predicted, gone. But where is Ben? She realizes he must have gone outside to do it, which makes sense. Better in the natural world, better to not leave a home with the stain of death. The kitchen, for instance, has never felt the same since Rachel died there. She understands, then, that they will find him frozen out in a field somewhere, looking up at the sky.

  It’s then, rounding the corner of the barn, on the way back to the house, that something catches her eye that she can’t quite place until slowly it comes to her. The old brown Ford is missing.

  This is unexpected: He hasn’t driven for a long time. She’s surprised that he would remember all the tiny steps that are taken for granted: the right key held steady and put into the right slot and turned in the right direction. Much less the right gear, the backing out, the driving away. It’s the technical things he’s had the most problems with. He can do uncomplicated things that require only one item: shovel the sidewalk, sweep the floor, dig in the irrigation ditch. But small fine-motor-skill things requiring many steps, no.

  She stands in the snow, hands jammed into her jacket, and blinks at the empty space by the side of the barn, still stunned. She remembers when they first set eyes on each other: she from the mountains of Colorado, he from the plains, meeting at the college where they both studied agricultural sciences, and how the university building was a huge complicated mess—designed by a madman, no doubt—and she was lost on her first day of classes. She was as confused then as she is now. But she remembers how she turned a corner and ran into him, and how he helped her find her room, joking and bragging all the way th
at he had superior spatial orientation, and that he would be happy to help her any time—any time—she got lost.

  He did indeed have an excellent sense of direction. Any time they went camping or hiking or on road trips, he was good at getting them off the usual trails and roads but then getting them back on. He was grounded and comfortable in the world. He knew his way around.

  She shakes her head, coming to. A snowflake has landed directly in her eye and it stings for the moment it takes to melt. She runs inside, decides to call Ruben as she goes. When she explains, Ruben agrees to drive over to Carolyn’s to see if Ben has, for some reason, gone over there. Ben had been so insistent on calling Carolyn, even though she was in Mexico—perhaps, she tells Ruben, he just didn’t understand. Or maybe he wanted to check on Jess. Plus, it’s the only home she figures he can still get to.

  She wants to say the rest of the story, which is that she had thought he was going to kill himself—but how can she admit to or even give words to such a thing? And so she listens to Ruben’s silence, his confusion, his starts and stops to questions; she knows he’s wondering about the pink juice.

  As soon as she hangs up, she calls Ben’s old friend Eddie, and he agrees to drive around to the local spots—although all of them are closed—Violet’s Grocery and Fern’s Restaurant and the Swing Station Bar. He agrees to drive up and down the roads, looking. She can hear the warning in his voice—no one would last long out there in this snow.

  And because Anton is still out back, still looking, she calls Esme, rousing her from a sleep that takes Esme some time to shake off—and Esme calls the police, who put out a bulletin, and within five minutes, unbelievably, the police call the house and tell her that the old brown Ford registered in Ben’s name has been found in town at the 7-Eleven parking lot. It keeps surprising Renny: that Ben took the keys from the hook by the door and chose to drive all the way into town, obviously on purpose, obviously on the sly.

  She does not call Carolyn, she does not call Leanne in Boulder, Jack in San Francisco, or Billy in Europe. She is shaking, now, from exhausted nerves; feels the vomit in her throat; and feels the dark blackness of the loneliness she has been beating back coming to blanket her and suck her away. She stands at the kitchen sink, hands braced there. The light at the top of the barn backlights the aspen trees. She does not, in fact, know where Ben is. That simple fact makes her want to freeze to the floor.