The Language of Stars

by Louise Hawes

  “This book,” he told us, “includes poems written by all the miracle workers at this table. It is my gift to Margaret and Shelly.” He held out copies of the green book, and Margaret and the girl from Shore stood up the way you do at the Oscars and took them from him. “To Sarah and Hector.” He held out two more books, and H and I stood, too. I felt H’s pride beside me. This wasn’t graduation, but it sure beat marching across a football field.

  When Rufus gave me my book, we couldn’t do the two-handed shake, but I settled for one. Plus a patented Rufus Baylor grin. Next, Coral Ann and the boy named Adam from Shore High got their books. And yes, Thatcher got one, too. Along with everyone in class, including Charles Fenshaw, who was seated next to our poet and who, as usual, was speechless.

  As the books were handed out, Rufus lost his audience, or at least the part of it at our table. We couldn’t wait, we started right in, leafing through our copies of Good Poems from Bad Kids. They were beautiful, bound in green and decorated with silver lettering and a small picture of purple flowers. Inside, after the title page and the table of contents, was the poem we’d written as a class, and after that so many poems it made your head spin to see them. They were all mixed up, so you had to shuffle through the pages to find yours. And of course, you got stopped along the way, surprised again and again by how good other kids’ poems were.

  And yes, Rufus had even printed something by a poet no one expected to be included, one Shepherd Ryan. It wasn’t exactly a poem, and it was very, very short. But it was on a page all by itself, like a dedication at the very beginning of the book. H smiled when I showed it to him. “Remember?” he asked. “The class where Rufus couldn’t work the player?”

  I studied the page, and it came back, the question my poet had asked Shepherd. Can you tell us why you shut your eyes? And there it was, my father’s answer:

  Give the music room,

  space of its own,

  a place it doesn’t have to share.

  Pretty soon, we were all looking at each other’s books, high-fiving and pointing and reading the best lines out loud. Which was when my poet decided we’d forgotten the other people on the patio long enough. He tapped on the mic with his spoon. There was a hideous raw squeal that made everyone hold their ears. “Fellow poets,” he announced, once everyone had stopped talking, “this book is worth sharing. As first editions go, it isn’t a large run—only about two hundred copies.” We could hear the wink in his voice, if we couldn’t see it in his eyes. “Course, that only means it will get more valuable as the years go on.”

  Charles Fenshaw, smug as a magician’s assistant, set another huge pile of books on our table. “I think I have enough for everyone,” Rufus said, “so if y’all would help me distribute the booty, the rest of us can read along.” He held out a book to the boy next to him. “Well, don’t just sit there keeping the good stuff to yourselves,” he told us. “Let’s pass these around.”

  And we did. Each person at every table on the terrace got one. The teachers, the mayor, the families, even the reporters from the Whale Point Watch and the bigger dailies in Charlotte and Raleigh. And yes, the waitstaff and kitchen crew, too. You should have seen Manny’s face when I handed him his copy—he wiped his hands on his apron before he took it, and then, well, “beam” doesn’t really describe it. I never knew the man had so many teeth.

  “I said ‘read along,’ and that’s just what I meant.” Rufus wore a look I recognized by now, a look that meant he was going to take us on another adventure. “Poetry is spoken music,” he explained. “There’s all kinds of music—lyrical, discordant, sorrowful and slow, dizzy and fast, sneaky, lazy, sweet. But there’s one kind of music you’ll never hear, and that’s silent.”

  He studied the faces around him at the head table. “Poetry is meant to be read aloud. And part of being a poet is reading your work to others. No one, anywhere, knows better than you how it’s meant to sound.”

  You guessed it. The world’s most famous poet was inviting us to read our poems. Not to each other, the way we had in class. But right here, right now, in public. I know that “butterflies in your stomach” is just a figure of speech, but I can testify that the second I thought about reading my poetry in front of all those people, something in mine was fluttering.

  Rufus told us that anyone who didn’t want to read didn’t have to. But he said he hoped we’d take advantage of the mic and the flowers and the audience. “You won’t have this chance every day,” he said. “Besides, I’m getting tired of the sound of my own voice. I’ve marked my favorite poem by each of you in my book here, and I can’t think of a more splendid good-bye from y’all than hearing them in your own voices.”

  When he put it that way, of course, I wanted to read. To him. But I was still in no hurry to get up in front of parents, duly elected officials, and all the other “important people” my mother had invited. So it was the brave, nervy kids who started it. H was one of the first, and though you might have expected him to ham it up, you’d have been wrong. I don’t know if it was the poem Rufus picked or the fact that Margaret was watching him, her chin in both hands, like she was waiting for the secret of life. Whatever the reason, H didn’t hog the spotlight. He read his short poem about the smell of coffee with just enough heart, and since it didn’t rhyme, it sounded more than all right. And then, while the whole room applauded, before they’d even finished, he sat down.

  Why was I so nervous? I’d had more stage experience than most of the kids there, hadn’t I? Why was reciting my poetry harder than saying lines? Why did it feel so different when the words were my own? So many kids, even people I thought were terminally shy, were standing up now. Walking to the microphone one by one. Giving Rufus the kind of good-bye that meant the most.

  Yes, I finally got up the nerve to read. Right after Margaret. And walking to the head of the table was the hardest part. After that, I mostly forgot about me, me, me. I could have cried when I saw the poem Rufus had marked with a pencil check in the book he handed me. It was the one about Nella, and I’m not sure I read it very well. I didn’t imagine the audience naked or take calming breaths before each line; I simply watched my poet listen, head bent, to every word. I don’t remember now whether the applause was long or short, loud or soft, because while everyone clapped, I just sat there, swimming in his smile.

  Eventually, nearly our whole table, including the Magician’s Assistant, had marched up to the mic, and it seemed the crowd on the patio was clapped out. But they weren’t, because there was still someone who hadn’t read his work. Rufus stood, finally, not exactly smiling, but clearly content. “I wrote one, too,” he said. “Y’all want to hear it?”

  In the category of silly questions? That one ranked pretty high. Everyone there had come to see Rufus. Oh, they probably liked our poems, but years from now what they’d be telling their kids and grandkids was that they’d heard Rufus H. Baylor read a poem.

  “You teachers know that learning goes both ways.” Rufus glanced over at the table where Miss Kinney sat, and she nodded, though I think she would have agreed with anything her idol said. “I learned more than I taught this time round, and part of what I learned is that there’s no need to give up on life until it’s over.”

  Give up? Is that what he’d been ready to do before he came back to Whale Point? Had he hated growing old? Fading into retirement? I pictured him alone in the mountains, folding up all that love and music, like old clothes in a trunk. Putting them away because he didn’t think anyone needed them.

  Suddenly, he was grinning at our entire table, as if we’d given him the greatest present in the world. “I hadn’t written a poem in over five years when this group got hold of me,” he told the audience. “I’m writing again, and I don’t plan on stopping until they bury me. School’s never out, is it?”

  He read a poem then. It wasn’t long, but it stayed in your mind and heart after he’d finished. I was glad it was printed at the end of the book, because that way I could find it wh
enever I wanted to remember that night. Whenever I needed a Rufus fix.

  What Have We Learned, Class?

  We’ve learned trees,

  their wind-tossed alphabet.

  We’ve studied sunrise

  in the throats of birds,

  the charity of dew on moss,

  the forgiveness of rain.

  We’ve learned hunger

  from a dimpled shell

  on a wide beach. We’ve seen

  how beauty trips you up,

  makes you stoop,

  brings you grace.

  If we’re smart, we’ll

  play it dumb, never quite

  get it, always have to stay after.

  On the board, the sea’s song,

  the language of stars

  over and over,

  again and again.

  My Poet Goes Home

  It was a perfect scheme. Charles Fenshaw would take my father’s place as Rufus’s right-hand man. He’d travel with my poet to Asheville, and help him hobble around until the cast came off. He was most thrilled about his second job title, though: amanuensis. It turns out he jumped at the chance to fill the position I’d turned down: He would be my poet’s literary assistant—he would take dictation, collect Rufus’s poems, and help shape all those butterflies into a new book. He took a leave from the college, and for the few days before they left, he followed his idol’s every move, a dutiful Rufus shadow. When Rufus stood, so did his new secretary; when the older man sat, so did the younger one. Ditto for laughing, looking stern, sporting a pencil behind one ear, or air-conducting classical music from that album with a lightning bolt on the cover.

  Best of all, rather than drive back to Asheville, the two of them decided to fly. Which meant—thanks to some proactive whining on the part of Sarah Who Needs Happy Endings— my father and I would drive the beater out west when my poet needed it again. Which also meant that by Christmas, I’d get to visit the house where Rufus lived. (Not a nursing home, it turned out, but a cottage he’d built with his own hands when his family was new.) I’d finally see the mountains he’d written so many lines about; the deer and pheasant that roamed his backyard; the study where he still planned to work every day, hatching haikus and sonnets and villanelles, and poems there weren’t even any names for yet. We’d go on walks together. We’d drive to a valley where seven mountains circled a lake. He’d teach me to call down barred owls and find fox dens. And yes, we’d write together again, desk to desk, side by side.

  “So this isn’t really good-bye.” That’s what he told me at the airport, and that’s what I believed. Right through the end of summer. Right through the start of school. And I suppose it was true, since we talked on the phone. A lot. I fell into a pattern of calling Asheville at least three times a week. I loved getting updates, checking in. Those calls were like life rafts I sent out from my ordinary existence in Whale Point to Rufus’s mountaintop home. After a day of mind-numbing differential equations and my new English teacher’s lackluster lessons, it was like snuggling into down to curl up on my bed and hear that voice, ocean deep, tumbling and purring at the same time.

  As soon as he’d shed his cast, Rufus began taking short walks along the mountain trails that wrapped around his house. Usually, his faithful shadow went with him, though sometimes he managed to steal away by himself. He was full of near poems about those times, unconscious riffs on the busy, natural world he loved tramping through. “The vole finally got that fig tree,” he’d say. “But she made me a fair trade, let me see her nestlings, all five of them huddled under the roots.” Or, “A deer and I came nose to nose today! Three feet between us, then a twig cracked and it was gone.” He sighed. “How must it feel to carry fear around with you all the time like that?”

  And of course, he always checked on my work. “What have you been writing, Sarah?” Or, “May I hear the latest poem, Miss Wheeler?” If he called me Miss Wheeler, I usually read him something, even if it wasn’t long. Even if I’d written it only because I knew he’d ask.

  But if I was just plain Sarah, I could confess that I’d been AWOL from poetry, that I’d had too much homework or too many rehearsals. I told him that I had tried out for the fall play. And that, yes, I’d actually gotten a good part—not the lead, but sixteen lines, and ten of them mattered. I wouldn’t die, which would have been perfect, but I would suffer meaningfully!

  He laughed his rumbling laugh, and I knew my boring existence was good for something. If you can make someone like Rufus happy, you feel good about yourself. Even if you have to hang up the phone afterward and go down to dinner, sit in your maroon-cushioned chair with a napkin glued to your lap, and listen to your mother and your aunt talk, talk, talk. Even if you have to go back to your room, half do your homework, set your alarm, and repeat everything all over again the next day.

  I couldn’t wait to break up this hamster-wheel routine with a visit to Asheville. But early in November, my phone rang. At first, I hoped it was Rufus wishing me happy birthday, but as soon as I heard Charles Fenshaw’s voice, I knew something was wrong. “He fell again,” Charles said. “He asked me not to tell you. But—”

  “Is he okay?” I held my breath, as if I were diving into ice water.

  FENSHAW

  He wouldn’t let me contact anyone—not his friends, not his publisher.

  (A long pause, too long)

  I had to sneak out to call the doctor.

  ME

  But how?

  FENSHAW

  He slipped on some ice outside the patio doors.

  ME

  Ice? It’s not even winter yet!

  FENSHAW

  There’s been snow in the mountains for weeks.

  SARAH BERNHARDT

  (From the poster above my bed)

  “Down, thou climbing sorrow! / Thy element’s below.”

  GODZILLA

  (From my window seat, beside the rest of the monsters)

  REEwoOOOrrrrrrrwwwwwww!!

  ME

  But he was fine last time we talked. Just fine.

  FENSHAW

  He could hardly move. He was up for three nights before I got the doctor in. That’s when they took him to the hospital.

  SARAH BERNHARDT

  “O sir, you are old. / Nature in you stands on the very verge / Of his confine.”

  ME

  He saw a deer. They were nose to nose.

  KING KONG

  HMMMMRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

  FENSHAW

  It was pneumonia. It was the second fall. It was . . .

  (Almost whispering)

  too much.

  ME

  Wait. Where is he?

  (Louder, nearly yelling)

  I need to talk to him!

  FENSHAW

  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

  THE HULK

  NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

  * * * *

  There was a funeral. There were speeches and tributes and obituaries in every newspaper and on every TV station in the country. There was a will. And some money for his “second-chance daughter” to study “whatever she wants, whatever feeds her.” There was even a fund for a Whale Point Youth Center, which made the town council extremely happy. (Before they started wrangling over exactly how to spend it.) There will be a final book coming out next year, with all the new work Rufus did after he got home. He’d written every day, sometimes well into the night, according to Charles. As if he were in a hurry, as if he knew there wasn’t much time.

  And of course, there wasn’t. Hadn’t my poet told us that in so many words, over and over? Hadn’t I pretended it wasn’t true? Hadn’t I assumed someone so full of life, so important to me, would go on and on?

  Of all the things my poet left behind, the one I wish I could make disappear is the hole in my heart, a hole the wind blows through. Every day. Every night. Sometimes I walk to the Hendricks’, so I can visit with Carmen. And remember. She puts up with me, so do the Hendricks. But it isn’t the same. Un
less I pick up a pencil and start to write.

  My poetry isn’t for showing to anyone. It’s just for the two of us. Because yes, it feels as if Rufus and I are still writing together. It just takes a quiet time, my notebook. And maybe, as Emily Dickinson said, “a certain Slant of light.” Mornings are best, when the sun is just catching the edges of the pines, lighting them up like a backdrop. That’s when I can feel my poet reading over my shoulder. I may change a line three or four times, saying it over and over till the music is right. And then, of course, that means another line needs to be tweaked. And another. And suddenly, in the middle of my frustration, I hear his voice:

  Which part feels wrong, Sarah?

  I read again the lines that clunk, that don’t come close to what my heart wants to say.

  Which part feels right?

  I sound out the words that sing, that work without effort.

  That’s good enough to eat!

  I sigh, long and theatrical, because I know what’s coming next:

  Okay, throw them both out.

  I groan. I think of the hard way I’ve come, the missteps, the false starts. The history it took to make what is close, tremblingly near, to being a poem.

  Nothing’s ever wasted, Sarah. It’s always there when you need it.

  It’s as if, finally, I can read his mind. As if he’s in my head forever.

  Good. Close your eyes. Now start all over.

  And I do.

  How long would our poem be?

  How much would it weigh?

  The first verse would be yours, of course—

  Age before beauty, you’d say.

  You would not rush so much as crest,

  a wave that spreads and breaks

  across the eyes and ears to fill

  some deeper, inner space.

  The next verse would be mine,

  self-conscious, yes, it’s true,

  and full of fits and starts

  but bits of music, too.

  Would we share some lines then,