Stars Go Blue (12 page)

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.

But there is no time for her to succumb to that. There is now a flurry of activity. Anton comes back, ice crystals on his face and eyelashes, stomping his feet and sending snow across her floor. When he hears the report of the missing truck, he promptly leaves for town. Eddie and Ruben hear the news too and drive into town to look around as well. And Renny, as Anton requested, starts to look around for clues. For slips of paper or writings or anything that might offer some suggestion as to whether Ben had a plan or just up and left. She finds only the usual scraps—lists of places or things to accomplish:
New fence posts with Carolyn
, one note reads.
Tell Renny thank you
, another note says.
Call Jess and ask how she is
. It's all the mishmash of a brain trying to right itself, like a boat at sea seeking balance.

Between the dark hours of midnight and daybreak, while the blizzard is in full force and the sky is socked in with black thick fury, she calls Carolyn's cell phone. She tells herself that she's calling for one reason, which is that Carolyn will not forgive her if Ben is found dead and frozen and Renny had not
called. But really, she only wants to hear another human voice. There is no one, though. Only a clicking noise. Perhaps there is no service.

She walks to Ben's drawer and rifles through it again. Then she goes through his laundry, pulling scraps from his jeans. Now she's angry. She's tired and wants to go to sleep. Where
is
he?

She searches in earnest now, throwing clothes and items all over the place. Satchmo runs around her, excited, picking up shoes and dropping them. In one corner of the closet, she finds more lists.

Feed chickens (7 chickens)

Feed donkeys (4)

Feed horses (2)

Check cabin

Call Eddie

Ruben

Or:

Check on Jess. Watershed of the heart

Goodbye = back away = water runs backward

Or:

I am married to Renny. I am Ben Cross. Born May 5, 1934,

Greeley Colorado. Hell's Bottom Ranch. Two daughters.

Or:

I am a dummy.

That last one slows her down, but she tosses it to the side and keeps up her search. She finds pocketknives and the
glasses he has been missing for weeks. She finds money, stashed away in the toes of his cowboy boots. She finds river stones that must hold some meaning. She is disgusted that everything is so dusty and that she let it get that way. She finds the bleached white of a raccoon skull. She finds an envelope labeled
Instructions to Ben Cross
, but when she opens it, there is nothing in there.

She walks through the house and then sits at her desk, littered with her calendar and various farm bills and receipts and bookkeeping, the bill of sale from the cattle they sold a year ago, and which she needs for this year's taxes, paper clips and tape and an old letter from Jess.

When Anton calls to report that they haven't seen him and to ask if she has any news, she tells him she's found nothing. He ends the call by saying, “Renny, do you think it had anything to do with today, at the cemetery? I saw you two, and then I saw him yelling. What set him off? Did he want to go somewhere?” and Renny's brain feels like a snowstorm, she can't think, but all she says is, “No, no, I don't think so, it's just that you look like Ray, is all, we've both noted that before, and maybe this time, when he saw you across . . . well, I think he mistook you,” and Anton says, “Renny, this storm. It's ten below right now,” and Renny says, “I know it, I've been watching the news,” and then there is a pause before he hangs up, a pause that means
Renny, prepare.

Renny closes her eyes and thinks of the cemetery, of the yelling. Ben was angry, more angry than she's ever seen him. At Ray. Ray. Ray.

And then she knows. She picks up the phone, pauses, puts it back down. Son of a bitch. She stands, walks to her bedroom quickly, dresses in warm thick fleece pants and hiking boots and a sweater. She packs a small bag quickly, she calculates
things in her mind: buses have many stops, her truck has four-wheel drive, Ben knew Ray was in Greeley and could remember that because it was also the town of his birth, and she wouldn't mind seeing Ray herself. She and Ben will face him, one last time, together.

BEN

T
he restaurant's lights have been dimmed so that people can sleep. It appears that most are, heads on hands, although a few have stretched out on the gray tile floor. The waitress, the one with the belly growing in her stomach, has sat down next to Ben and fallen asleep leaning against him. She breathes like a small windmill. He can hear the cook still making something and a few people murmur over in one corner, but it is mostly quiet.

Ben wishes he could sleep but instead watches the woman's belly, which is round like the moon and rises and falls just like the moon. Across from him, the boy-man has fallen asleep, leaning back against the wall, his legs out across the seat of the booth, and Ben recognizes the horse on his shirt, which is the Bronco from the football team. The boy snores about every third breath and moves his jaw and scratches his arms in his sleep and sometimes says a whole bunch of words mashed up together or sometimes simply says one word, which is always
fuck.

Ben can't remember why he's here.
That's okay
, he tells himself.
Hold steady. It will come to you.
Besides, he knows Renny will come help him. She'll be here soon. He misses holding Renny and he misses sex, a word that comes to him suddenly with the shock of memory of what it was like, and for a moment, he is happy. Then suddenly some dust blows and he remembers Ray.
Go away, Ray, get out of my brain, Ray, bring my daughter back, Ray, you are in Greeley, Ray
. And then he thinks a calmer thought which is
I miss you, Rachel. I hope I get to see you, Rachel. In the next life, Rachel. Are you there?
And then his brain circulates like a dryer that is going round and round:

Go away, Ray.

I miss you, Rachel.

Hell's Bottom.

Go away, out of my brain, Ray.

What are my granddaughters' names?

Leanne. Jess.

Yes, Leanne. Jess.

Renny.

Where's Renny?

I miss Renny.

Are there other grandkids? He can't remember. But he does remember the games Renny used to play with him to keep his mind active: list your grandkids, list all the dogs we've ever had, list the places you've been.

He bit off the tip of his tongue. That's what it feels like. He can't remember the words that live on the tip of his tongue.

Then he is crying, and the crying wakes the waitress, who sits up and says, “Oh, honey, it's going to be okay.”

He wants to say that his brain feels worse than ever, that he is terrified that he soon won't realize it, that this is the last thing he will ever know about his brain.

“The storm will end soon. I bet they have the roads cleared by morning. You can get back on the bus. Where you heading, anyway?”

He shrugs and wipes at his eyes with his sleeve.

She regards him. “You should get some sleep, hon. It's going to be okay.”

“My brain's not so good,” he says now, and he realizes, with a pang of clarity, that this waitress chose to sleep next to him because he needed her, he was the most fragile, she was worried that someone would rob or hurt him, that she was taking care of him the way a rancher would take care of an injured animal. Her pregnancy makes her this way. He's so grateful. What a kindness. “My brain . . . But I'm not as dummy as people think I am.”

“Aw, now, mister, you don't look like a dummy at all.”

“I just can't find the right words. I know I can't find the right words. But that doesn't mean I'm not thinking them. That I don't know what I want to say. I do know. I do have things to say.”

“Well, that must be awfully hard then.”

“But there's no use complaining.” He hears the sorrow in his own voice.

“Well. But sometimes it helps.” The woman sits up and stretches and rubs her belly. “Oh lordy, my feet hurt. See? It helps a little to say that. To share it with someone. And there's always hope.”

“No!” He says it suddenly, surprising them both. “There's not.” After the doctor said,
Dementia, probably Alzheimer's given your age
, that's when he'd understood again that hope is a bad emotion. Because then you're hoping about the future
and not paying attention to now. Because hope is sometimes just a joke. He touches the moon-woman's arm. “Tell ya what I'm gonna do, see. I'm not going to hope. Now, you don't either. Don't hope your life will get better. Just make it so. Don't hope you are able to handle this baby. Just do it. Just be glad, just move fast, just do what you need to do. But for god's sake, don't hope. Just be . . . Just
be
. . .”

She looks at him sadly and says, “Sure, sure.”

“Rachel. I had a daughter named Rachel.”

“Oh?”

“And her husband. Whose name is Ray.”

“Okay.”

“Ray, who killed her.”

“Oh, my god. I'm so sorry. That's . . . horrible.” She leans into him. “We forget how some people are horrible, don't we? Your own child. Oh god. We just assume . . .” and then puts her arm around him.

“He was in Cañon City.”

“Yes, the prison.”

“They released him now. His time is up, they say. But it hasn't been very long. And I don't think he's a better man.”

“Oh,” she says. “I'm so sorry. That makes it far worse, huh?”

“I'm going to visit him.” He sees that startles her. “Because I need to see him. Because I gave my family bad genetics. Bad DNA. That protein. That lysosome,” and now he is crying, tears sliding down his cheeks like a quiet rain, and the words come out more freely because of the tears. “But he did it on purpose.”

The belly-woman reaches out to hold his hand. He realizes he has hurt her, that she is crying, and he nods when she says she better attend to some things but that she'll come back with something for him to eat. He remembers Renny yelling at him
about watching football and how it was a waste of time, of precious time. Why couldn't he ever talk about something real? Renny was right about everything.

He puts his jacket under his head and stretches out, his legs along the booth, although the booth is not long enough. Across the room is a young woman, a girl even, who had been on the bus. The one who looks like his dead daughter. She's in a booth, sleeping with her head turned away, and the wool shirt she wears is just like one he used to have, gray plaid with a bit of red. Probably she is alone and scared too.