by Billy Coffey
Dorothy turns away. She’s walking back with her head low as the woman watches.
“Please say yes, Dumb Willie.”
Dumb Willie thinks long before offering his answer: “It’sa big . . . garden it’sa good. Woeman.”
Dorothy waits until she’s close before she lifts her chin. Her face betrays no hint of what has been said. The woman stands, waiting and still, like a thing hollowed out.
“What’d you tell her?” Abel asks.
“Told her everything, like you wanted. She says there’s room enough. Plenty of work to be done. More’n she can bear alone.”
Abel shakes his head. “He can’t just be a worker, Dorothy. She can’t be treating him like another cow or pig, or we’ll be bringing him to a place no different from the one he left.”
“More than that,” Dorothy says. She glances behind. “What she feels kept her from giving the words, but she’s thankful. I know it. I can’t replace the ones I took from her, but I can give her to Dumb Willie and Dumb Willie to her. It’ll bring a healing.” She shakes her head in an unbelieving way, like the words feel too pleasant to be true. “Death will bring that woman life, should Dumb Willie want it.”
Abel feels Dumb Willie reaching for his hand. He squeezes.
“You take care of her.”
A tear tumbles from Dumb Willie’s eye to his cheek, mixing with the slobber there before falling from his chin. “Kay.” He then lets go, moving past Dorothy and toward the barn, looking back only once to grin at Abel’s good-bye.
“Love you, Willie.”
“Love you A. Bull.”
Dorothy places her arm around Abel’s shoulder. They watch as Willie dips his head and waves to the woman in a shy way.
“They’ll be fine,” she says. “Don’t you worry a bit. Might even be the happiest they ever been.”
“You sure?”
“Feel sure. That’s sure’s I can get. Them two graves out back won’t be three for a long while. Won’t be four for even longer, should somebody stumble by after those many years. And when I come for them, it will be in peace. They’ll both go knowing there’s somebody waiting for them at the end of the path. That’ll be an end worth finding.”
Willie turns, saying, “Bye A. Bull,” and “Bye Do. Tee,” waving once more. The woman does the same. She raises a hand to the woman Abel knows she sees and the little boy he knows she doesn’t, and in her eye is a smile she does not yet know how to speak but someday will. Yes, Abel thinks, someday she will.
Willie always did know how to make folk beam.
-2-
The morning train cuts through Mattingly in the early dawn of Wednesday, the twenty-eighth of June, near three weeks removed from the night Death chose to turn away from what it believed was meant only to fulfill what had been meant all along.
Dorothy counts three as the engines slow near the curve. Their landing is soft and sure. In the corner of the boxcar they leave behind rests a worn leather bag and three crumpled letters that are needed no more.
At the field’s edge where gravel yields to grass, a plain white cross rises from the ground. Bouquets of flowers surround it, some store-bought and wrapped in cellophane, others plucked from the field itself, tied either by their roots or with pieces of twine. Another cross rises farther down at the edge of the tracks. Here are flowers as well, cards and small signs written by the hands of children, even a tiny toy train left to rust in the rain and sun. Dorothy allows Abel to linger. They stand at Chris’s marker first and then Abel’s own. She asks Abel to read aloud every good-bye and wish for rest.
“You think they saw me all that time?” Abel asks. “Not just Momma and Principal Rexrode or Miss Ellie, but everybody?”
“I’m sure they did. Anybody knows you even a little, Abel Shifflett, they know you’re hard to miss.”
Abel looks back toward the other cross—taking in those parts of themselves people left there, grinning at Dorothy that his own pile is bigger.
“You took Chris? That night you saved me?”
“I did.”
“How? You were with us the whole time.”
“You think ain’t nobody in the whole wide world passed since we been gone?” Dorothy shakes her head. “Ain’t the way it works. Even now I’m here and elsewhere, going as I’m called. I’m a wife long passed, leading her husband on. I’m a daddy and a grandmomma. I’m an angel clothed in starlight. I’m a shadow dressed in night. And I’m Dorothy the hobo, who calls you friend.”
“What were you for Chris?”
“The angel,” Dorothy says. “Glowing pure and white with its arms spread wide to show him a goodness he never knew.”
“He was spoilt.”
“He was broke, no less than you and no more than anyone. And now he’s broken no more.”
They take the field back to the curve and Chris’s marker, to where there lies a clean view of the tiny white house at the dead end. The windows are shut, as is the back door, the shades drawn tight. The sliver of driveway Dorothy can see is empty.
“You want to go on down there a bit?”
“No,” Abel says. “There’s nobody home.”
“Think your momma’d be down there? Late in the morning, past time for her to leave.”
He shrugs. “Thought maybe she would be. She’d be . . . waiting. Or something. I’d like to see her one last time. Daddy said she’s sad.”
“Ain’t no last time,” Dorothy says. “This is many things, Abel, but it isn’t good-bye. Your momma mourns you. Looks to me the whole town does. And that’s a fine thing, because it’s more than you they grieve, it’s the light gone out from the world by your passing. It’s no choice for them but to go on as best they can. Your momma’ll cry her tears, and maybe she’ll find when those tears finally dry she can see new things now, things maybe she never thought on before. And that’ll lead her straight back to you.”
“What if she ends up like that woman?”
“So much the better. Woman’s got Willie now. Your momma’s got a whole town of folk to see her through.”
“She don’t believe, Dorothy.”
“There’s time yet. It ain’t her end. And the end’s—”
“All that matters,” Abel finishes. “You think that’s true? I’ll see her?”
“I think she’s being looked after fine.”
“By the town?”
“By more,” Dorothy says. “I got caught thinking I could go against what’s meant, Abel, because I thought what’s meant isn’t what’s best. I have never loved, do you know that? But I think I’ve come to have something of that for you and Willie, as much of it as I can, and I thought that love would be enough to restore you. But I couldn’t, and do you know why? Because there is a love far greater, ever bright and never fading, calling all things back to itself. Calling all things home. And I wonder at that love, because it carries a depth measureless and beyond my reaching.”
“You got to promise you’ll be kind,” Abel says, “when you call on her. My momma.”
Dorothy says, “When it’s her time to take the path, it’ll be the one she loved most who shows her. I’ll make sure of it.”
She sees the light spilling from Abel’s eyes as he takes in all that is around them, green fields speckled with yellows and blues and reds, trees that sing in the breeze, hills and mountains. Abel looks at the house and the tall weeds around it, down that dirt road stretching toward town.
“Reverend Johnny said I’d find healing. Which I did, but it was for Dumb Willie more than me. Because I put him in that spring and left him with the woman. And he said there’d be reward, but that was for my daddy, I think. I think we got sent there for him, not just me. But it was good for me too. It was real good.”
“But no reward?” Dorothy asks.
Abel shrugs a shoulder. “I’m just wondering is all. What my reward is.”
And Dorothy smiles. With her mouth and her cheeks, with her eyes. “Come on,” she says, “I’ll show you.”
&n
bsp; They take hands as they turn toward the tracks, moving slowly between the ties. Abel grips her as he hops onto one of the rails, wobbling to find his balance. He talks of Preacher Keen and how nice he was, and the mystery that was Reverend Johnny Mills. Finding the letters. Their first night on the train and the ones after, all their grand adventure.
He looks at her, blushing. “I never knew Death could be so pretty.”
“I can be,” she says, “to some.”
“You need to be kind to Arthur too. He never meant no harm, really. He meant to kill Willie because he wanted me to get free. I didn’t, but Arthur saved me. Like Willie saved me, and my daddy. Like you saved me, Dorothy.”
“Okay. I promise.” She nudges against him. “But only because I think you saved me too.”
Talking and laughing, acting as friends will. Traveling toward where the rails rise up as a golden path in the long distance and where the sparrows swirl and sing their songs. It is to Dorothy’s joy that the boy does not look back as they make their way. Abel’s eyes remain down to help balance his feet upon the rail. Now forward to the way they go. Now to her. Smiling as they move down that long stretch of rail toward where the sun will arc high and then down, and then farther on, where there waits a place where the shine never fades.
Bound west, toward home.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1.When most of us consider the character of Death from books and film, our first image is usually of the Grim Reaper type rather than someone like Dorothy. Did her character change your view of death in any way? Have you ever thought of Death as an entity, a force, or merely an event that must come to us all?
2.The driving force behind much of the story is a notion of what is and is not “meant.” To Dorothy, the events of our lives are laid out from beginning to end. All we must do is follow. For Abel, our choices are what determine our destinies. What value, if any, do you subscribe to the notion of free will? What weight do our choices carry in the stories of our lives?
3.In what ways does Dumb Willie prove himself to be anything but dumb, and in fact show himself to be perhaps the wisest character in the story?
4.Lisa Shifflett long vowed to keep the truth of Abel’s father from him. Assuming Abel had never found the letters, do you believe she was right in doing so? What are the lies we tell our children, even for their own good, and what can be the consequences they suffer by them?
5.What sort of life do you think awaited Abel had he never gone to find his father?
6.An important moment of the journey comes when Dorothy informs Abel that he isn’t the only one “broken,” everyone is. What do you think she meant by this? Do you agree?
7.There were at least two reasons why Abel played his trick on Chris Jones: one to get even from Chris’s constant bullying, the other to be punished. This last reason stems from Abel’s hatred of being known as “special.” In spite of our desire to stand out, what is it that drives us in equal measure to be like everyone else?
8.Reverend Johnny refuses to heal Abel after the service in the hill country by saying Abel doesn’t have enough faith. Do you think Reverend Johnny possessed any healing ability at all, or was he a charlatan all along? Do you believe that faith is a necessary part of healing? If so, what degree of faith do you believe is needed?
AN EXCERPT FROM
THERE WILL BE STARS
PART I
HEAVEN
-1-
Sometimes, if he was not so drunk or the twins so loud, Bobby Barnes would consider how those rides to the mountain had become an echo of his life. Night would fill the gaps between the trees with a black so thick and hard the world itself seemed to end beyond the headlights’ reach. No future. No past. Only the illusion of this single moment, stretched taut and endless. He loved the lonely feeling, the nothingness, even if the road upon which he sought escape from town was the very road that would return him to it. All living was a circle. Something of Bobby had come to understand that, though its truth remained a mystery too deep for his heart to plumb. Life was a circle and the road a loop, and both flowed but seldom forward. They instead wound back upon themselves, the past leaching into the present and the present shrouding the future, reminding him that all could flee from their troubles, but only toward and never away.
One of the boys said something. Matthew or Mark, Bobby couldn’t tell. The pale orange light off the radio made the twins appear even more identical, just as the music made them sound even more the same. Carbon copies, those boys. When they’d been born—back when Carla still wore her wedding ring and the only future she and Bobby envisioned was one they would face together—Bobby had joked they would have to write the boys’ names on the bottoms of their feet to tell them apart. Now Matthew and Mark were eight. Still the same, but only on the outside.
The other boy joined in, something about a movie or a cartoon, Bobby couldn’t hear. The deejay had put on “Highway to Hell” and Mark asked Bobby to turn that up, he liked it, though not enough to keep from fighting with his brother. He felt the seat move as one twin shouldered the other, heard the sharp battle cry of “Stupid!” Bobby pursed his lips and said nothing. Being a good father involved knowing when to step in and when to let things ride. He relaxed his grip on the wheel and gulped the beer in his hand.
Night whisked by as the truck climbed the high road above town, the engine purring. No vehicle in Mattingly ran so fine as Bobby Barnes’s old Dodge. Let the town speak what lies they wished, no one could deny that truth. He eased his foot down on the gas, felt the growl beneath him and the smile creeping over his face. His ears popped, followed by the come-and-gone sound of a lone cricket. The headlights caught flashes of reds and yellows on the October trees and the glowing eyes of deer along the road, standing like silent monsters in the dark.
“Tell’m, Daddy,” Matthew said beside him. “He’s so stupid.”
“Am not,” Mark yelled. “You’re stupid. You’re double stupid.”
Another shove, maybe a slap, Bobby couldn’t know. He did know if things got out of hand and one of those boys spilled his beer, he’d have to get the belt out when they got home.
“Ain’t nobody stupid,” he said. “Matthew, you got what you think, Mark’s got what he does. Don’t mean either one’s right or wrong. That’s called an opinion. Y’all know what opinions are like?”
“Butts,” Mark said.
“ ’Cause everybody’s got one,” said Matthew.
Both snickered. Bobby toasted his parental wisdom with another swallow. He finished the can and tossed it through the open slot in the window behind them, where it rattled against the other empties in the bed. The sound echoed back and mixed with the boys’ laughter and the guitar solo over the radio, Angus Young hammering on the ax as Bobby’s eyes widened against a heaviness that fell over him, a chill that formed a straight line from the middle of his forehead to his nonexistent gut, settling in the bottoms of his feet. It was as if he had been struck by some pale lightning, pulled apart and pieced back together in the same breath.
“Whatsa matter, Daddy?” Matthew asked.
Bobby reached for the last of the six-pack on the dash. “Dunno,” he said. “Think a rabbit run over my grave. Like you get a funny feeling? Like you done before what you’re doing now.”
“That’s ’cause we take a ride every night,” Matthew said.
“Ain’t that. Know that. ’Member this morning when we was going out to Timmy’s and we seen Laura Beth sashaying like she always does down the walk? ’Member I whistled to her and said I knew she’d be there?”
Mark said, “You always whistle at Laura Beth.”
“I’ll have you know I ain’t never whistled to Laura Beth Gowdy before in my life, boy. Why’d I ever wanna do such a thing? Little Miss Priss. Been that way since high school.” He took a sip. “Didn’t whistle ’cause she’s comely, I whistled because I knew. Felt that rabbit and I knew. Like Jake? I knew he’d be at Timmy’s, too, wanting one a his words. And that woman preacher.
”
“You said you bet she’d be outside the church,” Mark said, “but she weren’t.”
“No, but I said Andy would be pushing a broom when we went to get gas.”
“Mr. Sommerville always pushing a broom,” Matthew said.
“But Junior ain’t always been there. And I knew he would be. Remember? And your mom called this afternoon.”
Mark rolled down the window and let his hand play with the cool mountain air. “Momma’s way finer than Laura Beth Gowdy. Daddy? Laura Beth paints her hair. Momma’s looks like that on purpose.”
That sense (Bobby couldn’t name it, something besides a rabbit, French or what he sometimes called Hi-talian) had left the soles of his feet. The worse feeling of his son’s stare took its place. He kept his eyes to the road. He’d never say so out loud and risk hurting Mark’s feelings, but sometimes the boy got to him. Mark could nudge his daddy in directions best not traveled.
“Your momma found somebody else to love on her, for what grief that cost us all and what good that does her now. Pondering Carla’s fineness does me no good service.”
For a while there were only the sounds of the big tires and the songs crackling over the radio, the classic rock station out of Stanley. Bobby felt the truck drift past the center line and corrected. Matthew leaned his head against his daddy’s shoulder, drifting to sleep. Mark hummed along with Axl Rose about patience. Bobby fell into old thoughts of things lost that could never be gained again.
“Maybe we should get up here and go Camden way,” he said. “All these rabbits could mean Lady Luck’s on my side. Could go up to that 7-and-Eleven, get us a scratcher. What y’all say?”