Stars Go Blue

by Laura Pritchett

  Then the rest of the calf was dislodged and a waterfall of blood and yellow fluid came with her next strain. The cow shifted her weight, then tensed. The rest of the calf slithered from her in a pool of membranes and blood and flopped to the ground. A blue tongue hung from the side of a small mouth, eyes open in a dead stare. Guts and the spinal cord protruded from the back part of the calf, and steam rose, and blood pooled into the snow. The cow tried to turn and thrashed wildly when she could not break free of her halter. She was trying to get to her calf, to lick it, and that simple need is what broke Renny’s heart.

  When the vet left, Ben skinned the calf and tied the hide to another calf in need of a mother. Renny finally untied the cow, stepped away, and watched as the cow turned to sniff the calf, her nose running across the pieces of hide. Then she moved to where the blood has soaked into the ground and her nose hovered there. She considered the calf for a moment, sniffed it again, regarded it suspiciously. It stepped toward her and let out a meek bawl. Ben and Renny stood quiet, hoping. The cow moved forward then, slid her tongue over the calf’s face and ears, and stood still as it teetered toward her bag of milk and sucked.

  Renny and Ben smiled at each other. “At least,” Renny had said, “we can still do that.” Meaning: smile. Meaning: save a thing or two.

  They began to clean up the mess, and Ben told her that he’d dump the pieces of the calf beyond his cabin, near the gully, in the brush. The dogs wouldn’t dig through the mass of sticks to get to the calf, and besides, the body would be frozen to the ground soon, then covered by snow. And then they spoke of their dead daughter. The only time they truly did. About how she was bones now, and that fact broke each breath of each day. They spoke of how, by the time everything melted, the calf would have decayed. It’s amazing, they said, how a life—laughter, arguments, little arms reaching out for a hug—how everything ends up as clean bones.

  Before they parted ways—he to the job of disposing of the calf and to his cabin, she to the farmhouse—he had told her to wait. He’d wiped his hands on his jeans, inspected them, and reached out to brush a wisp of hair from Renny’s face. She had started to say something, but then stopped, but she knew he understood. That she had no words that could begin to close the space but that she loved him anyway. He nodded his understanding and offered a sad smile in return. They had turned, then, each ducking into the swirling snow. Her heart shining, for a bit, from the soft touch of his hand on her hair, his kind eyes on hers.

  She is there, on that winter day. The past has circled round to this moment. It is a hallucination, of course, she hears her brain whisper. The last hold of her reason-filled brain slipping away. What the brain does in hypothermia. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she is in that moment again. The woodenness turns to warmth.

  What’s gone is gone. Her heart is flipping around. Like a dying fish. Except a fish that doesn’t mind. Only the heart cares what it’s doing, but not the rest of her. She’s never felt so calm. So peaceful. If she had the energy, or if she cared more, she would tear off her clothes, she’s so hot. It must be the sun, burning through the clouds to get her. It’s probably Ben, she thinks, trying to warm her. That was very nice of him, she thinks. Very kind for him to come for her in that swirling snowstorm after all. To say that they didn’t save the calf, and they didn’t save their daughter, but they saved another calf, and they saved the mother, and they could save each other now.

  How kind of him. How kind.

  IV.

  “We two alone will sing like birds in the cage:

  When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,

  And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,

  And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

  And talk upon’s the mystery of things,

  And we’ll wear out, packs and sects of great ones

  That ebb and flow by the moon.”

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  King Lear (act 5, scene 3)

  JESS

  Pretend, if you will, that this is a story, and that I should be the one to tell it, and that it ends like this: Much of the wind-whipped snow melted rapidly, octave by octave, and then the poured and patterned ice underneath melted as well, and the earth was stunned with an influx of seeping water and it gurgled and muddied and transformed into a ripe-smelling soaked mess and, in stops and starts, dutifully absorbed all this water, until, finally, as we knew it would, offered up a slight greening, a twinge of soggy color. There are still rings of snow in the shade, and the north-facing slopes of the foothills remain dusted in white, and there are still ruts of mud on every dirt county road, and there is still the decay and dried grasses of winter. But you understand how things change rapidly, that one good moment of observation will reveal this to you. This one good moment of observation is all we really have in the world and it is called love.

  During this past week, the irrigation ditches melted in pops and zings of twinging ice, the sound echoing across the farm. During this time, the geese and then the meadowlarks returned, the cattle of neighboring ranches dropped their first calves into the snow and they now stand, wobbly kneed, regarding the world with startled white-faced wonder. The owls by the river went to nest, and, as always, it is nearly impossible to see them and it takes a trained and patient eye. The horses, on the other hand, are often easy to spot, out galloping just for the fun of it, running to the edge of a fence and then bunching to a halt.

  During this time, the willows swelled into a bright and pure orange.

  It is only now, gathered here for the funeral, in the same field that Ben walked by every day, it is only now, you understand, that we can stop and see ourselves as the universe might: culpable and proud.

  Ben was the one who stole the pink juice from the vet.

  Ruben knew it. Saw Ben do it. Pretended, as he had to do, that he did not.

  Renny knew it. Found the note that Ben was always carrying around, the one that reminded him where he’d hidden it.

  Carolyn knew it. She found the bottle in the barn when she was putting away the saddles. She barely had the strength to leave it. It was she who was most troubled and it was she who would have told the authorities, and she knew it, and so she left on a vacation to Mexico. But first she broke her own stove—tore at the wires!—in order to spend as much time over there, busy but watchful, as she could. It was the wires that clued me in, and the way her eyes darted to the barn, uncertain.

  And I knew it. Because, you see, Ben told me. Many times. Because each time, he’d forget he had already told me, and so he would tell me again. Always, we were playing cards, out back in the cabin. And he’d say: Jess, there’s something I gotta do, see. And so you understand that I was the only one who knew that he also had Ray in mind. I wasn’t sure he’d actually do it. If what he was talking about was only a hope. Or a dream. Or just a I-would-do-this-if-I-could type of narrative. But some days I felt certain he would. That my own grandfather was going to kill my stepfather and then himself. That he had a reason, and that we went over this reason many times. You understand, perhaps, what a hard story this has been to tell.

  Pretend, if you will, that this is a story, and that it ends like this: Renny’s hospital stay had its moments of fear. The rewarming process was not easy, physically or emotionally. They use blankets with fluid pumped through them. In this way, the fluid can be gradually heated so that the body, too, can be gradually heated. Too much warming at once can kill you. The heart cannot take the rush of cold blood that comes at it with a sudden warming. Heart failure, they say. Explosion of the heart. If it happens too fast. The heart, they say, crashes around, trying to beat. If it’s warmed slowly, it can adjust. The same, in many ways, goes for Renny.

  When released from the hospital, she said that she would probably never feel fully warm again. And still, I know that her feet and arms often tingle and she says she often feels wooden and sore, although she has never once complained. Instead, she put in the paperwork to the county, the Authorization for F
inal Disposition, which is required for burial on private property. It took seven days, which is how long it took everyone to get gathered. That’s how long it took to get the autopsy and investigation done—to determine both the cause of death and also to take a slice of brain to confirm Alzheimer’s and to indicate that it appeared his heart was going anyway. That’s how long it took to make the coffin, to make the necessary preparations.

  I stand in the field, hands jammed in my pockets, and consider: It’s good to see my family slowly start to right themselves after the initial blast and internal swaying-back that the news of Ben’s death caused. Even if many of us knew it was coming. It’s good to see that there is a kind of healing with Renny and that she comes out of her daze.

  She has, for instance, declared the equinox a good day to bury Ben on the ranch, not because of any metaphorical meaning, but because it’s practical and makes sense, which means that Renny has found her dry core again. The ground can be dug up, no one is busy with planting yet, everyone is able to gather, and because she can move without too much pain again.

  But she is changed: I can see it. The way she carries herself, tilting her head and considering the fields or the person or the sky, as if she is considering it all anew. She is in a very fragile position right now. Her heart is changed. And you understand that I mean this literally. When she started to regain warmth and consciousness, in the hospital, it’s then that she was in the most danger. As her core warmed, her body allowed the warm blood to flow to the extremities. That, the doctors told me, flushed a surge of cold blood toward the heart. Cold blood can kill.

  Which is to say: The warming of the heart must be gradual. Like a melting of the spring. Or it can kill. Which is why I’ll be around to help her in this process. I helped Ben freeze and I will help Renny melt.

  I finger the pink Valentine’s Day card that I have folded in my pocket. Construction paper, light pink, soft fibers of paper. It contains the last thing Ben ever wrote, the last thing Renny wrote, although she’ll have time to add to her words.

  I finger it and watch her boss people around. Renny will still want to maintain her position that I don’t speak because I’m stupid and that I will, of course, become pregnant and a drug addict. That I am too much like my grandfather, too calm and watchful to be of much use. I watch her say these words now, at the funeral, and I love her for her particular brand of love and her tenacity and her power. I wink at her and say: I’ll help you find another way to love me.

  My mother, of course, did not receive an Authorization for Final Disposition. She was just disposed, at the cemetery in town, which is where I saw Ben and Renny. I had just driven there myself and put down river rocks and then taken a walk through the tombstones, which is when I saw them stumble through the snow with pink roses. I watched from behind a tree as Ben lost his temper, as Anton guided them home, as Renny soothed.

  I knew that the time had come. If it was going to come at all, well, then this was it. So I followed them home in my truck. Followed Ben back into town. Followed Ben to the Greyhound station. Disguised myself a bit, mainly by demeanor, because, you know, we recognize people by the very way they hold themselves, and much can be achieved by simply changing the way we move our bodies. Although I also had a wig, left over from some school costume long ago. I helped him get the ticket. Watched him get on the bus. Decided at the last moment to go ahead and get on myself. Tell ya what I’m going to do, see. Activity manifests the essence. No one wants to die alone. But I kept to myself and left him largely on his own. This was his decision, after all, and he wanted to be the only one culpable. I did get to run over and hold his hand for a moment, though, before the police pushed me away.

  You understand I was not the only one, though, to bear witness. To watch with careful love and attention.

  Ruben, for instance, had stood in the post office, confused and startled by Renny’s slap. During this pause, he’d happened to look down into the trash can. Recognized the name Ray Steele. Pulled the letter out of the trash. Determined that he’d keep it, in case Renny ever wanted it back. When everyone started searching for Ben, it slowly dawned on him like it must have dawned on Renny. Somehow, all this mess—Ben missing, and then Renny missing—had to do with Ray. So he called Anton. Anton contacted the Greeley Police, who were responding to blizzard emergencies, and who sent out the call for Renny’s truck, and who got to the bus station just a moment after Ben injected the juice. This is important only for a small reason, perhaps, which is that by the time two men were dying in Greeley, and Renny was close to dying in Ault, there were blankets about them, someone holding their hands, others taking pulses and touching foreheads. And to me, that’s somehow comforting. That the two men died with the sure knowledge that humanity was trying to come through for them.

  Oh, Ben: I would sit with him and I would tell him in my silence that he was very real, and very alive, and very deserving of love. I hope he heard me. I hope his heart heard the water in mine.

  The final disposition permit papers are pinned down by two river rocks on the picnic table, rustling and flapping. Ben Cross is inside a homemade wooden casket made out of beetle-kill pine trees, the wood naturally stained gray-blue with the fungus those beetles leave behind. Eddie and Anton made it, even nailed it shut with old handmade nails that have been found on the place, on Hell’s Bottom Ranch. Otherwise known as a slice of heaven. As people around here say.

  The coffin sits next to a hole dug in the ground by all the men yesterday, shovels still stabbed into the mounds of dirt, waiting for the work of filling back in. Satchmo is digging a hole in one of the piles, the dirt flying behind her, tail wagging.

  The sky is so thin. The sky is defined by what it doesn’t have, which is water. It’s so weightless and pure that I know Ben’s soul could easily pass through. It is a sky that is descending from daytime hours to the start of dusk. The moon is rising. L’heure bleue. The blue hour. The time of the souls. Sometimes I wish I could notice the beauty less, because I’ll tell you (although I am guessing you already know), such beauty can shatter one’s heart.

  So here we are, under such a sky: Del and Carolyn and Renny have put out tables and chairs by the orange willows, which are still circled in the remnants of unmelted snow.

  People are starting to park on the rutted road or they’re walking from the house if they don’t think their cars have enough clearance. Ben’s path has never had so much company. Everyone is carrying buckets of KFC from town, or casseroles, or Jell-O desserts, holding their coats and jackets to them since the wind has picked up. It almost makes me cry, seeing this. The absurdity and beauty and weirdness of Jell-O. Of death. Of the human heart.

  It’s still cold, quite cold, and so we’ve all lugged out enough lumber to have a bonfire, which is where I’m sitting now, feeding the fire and being mesmerized by the flames, as all people for all time have been. I have on my jeans and a black sweater and I have painted my fingernails orange, because this was the color that my mother had painted my nails, and hers, the very day she died. It’s a tribute to her, and to Grandpa Ben, who liked the willows. It’s a prayer, even, that perhaps my mother is welcoming my grandfather and maybe even my stepfather into the Great Mysterious Beyond or whatever comes next.

  I watch. It’s true that I am the final record keeper of this family. That is my job. And when Renny asks what I’m going to make of my life, I’ll tell her I don’t know, but that it will ebb and flow, and at the very least, that I do know I am the record keeper, and that this is a true story, and it goes like this:

  The individuals here matter very much.

  For example. There is Ruben. Pausing for a breath, and, I know, trying to come out from underneath both his guilt and his relief. Ben pulled it off, which is what Ruben knows Ben wanted. He’d thought the pink juice was for Ben only, hadn’t envisioned this other possibility, and wonders if he would have turned away and pretended not to notice had he known otherwise. He supposes he would have, truth be told. He supposes he
’s happy that Ben took Ray. Ray being the sort of person that frequently hit a child named Jess, and this Jess is now turning into a woman, and who is too young, and whom he is thus working hard not to love. Although. It’s an odd thing to do to love. He didn’t go asking for this emotion, and it annoys him it just arrived. He needs to expel it. Or, at the very least, maneuver it so that the place it occupies inside is comfortable, or if not comfortable, then bearable. He does not know yet. I’ll tell him on my birthday, the day I become less of a girl and more of a woman, and it still won’t be quite right, but perhaps in a few years it will be. I’ll let him know that I know. That I love him back. He and his way with animals. His calm healing. His sharp eyes. He is, of course, beautiful, and although I have no faith in the longevity of love or have any silly notions of needing to be saved, I would, in fact, not mind growing up with him for a while. I will also tell him that I know of the pink juice. Because Ben told me. Told me that Ruben looked away, on purpose, and that they caught one another’s eye. And because he shouldn’t have to live alone with that secret forever.