Stars Go Blue (16 page)

The wind is smacking into her face, and it snaps her awake. She'll go out, shovel the headlights out, and then get back in. She'll move fast, one surefooted trip, and it will be her one act of courage, to at least give it a good try.

She slides off the door and into the snow. Immediately, she feels attacked. She can't fully open her eyes, she can't fully move forward in a straight line.

With head ducked and eyes open only a slit, she tries to step away from the truck. Satchmo is barking and trying to claw out and she yells
STAY
but is pretty sure all words get lost in the roar.

She thought Ben was going to die last night. She knew about the pink juice, she knew about the syringe, she assumed he had two syringes because a needle might break, as they often did. She knew he was capable of this, how he would want to go. She didn't know if he'd give himself the injection in bed or sneak out to the back pasture. All along, she figured he'd wait until spring, though, if not to see the flowers and the greening, but at least to make the burial easier. But after the cemetery today—was that today? Was that centuries ago?—after his weeping, after her weeping, she had assumed it was time. That he was going to take his life.

It hadn't occurred to her that he might have another plan. That he might want to face down Ray. That he might be planning to
kill
Ray. Could that be?

She stumbles through the snow, doubled over to keep the shards of snowflakes from piercing her skin. Funny, she thinks, how much snow can hurt, how the sheer force makes each bit pierce her skin.

In front of the truck, she reaches up to clean off the top headlight that is crusted over. Immediately a beam of light shoots over her into the cloudy light. She has done it. Then she bends down to shovel out—with her hands—the snow that has piled up around the one that is buried. Two beams of light. Two.

The sun is about to rise, or has perhaps even started, and until then, in the dark, she has this.

She remembers Jess, her quiet sullen granddaughter, who once whispered,
He's not dead yet, Grandma, he's
in
there
, and Renny had demanded,
What, what did you say?
and Jess had shrugged and refused to answer. She knew then that Jess was right.

She is panting now, and hot, and drops the blanket to the ground. Her skin feels as if it's overheating, as if it's on fire. She needs to get her clothes off. She doesn't know if Ben made it to Greeley before the storm or not. But once there, what would he do? Find Ray?

Maybe it was just instinct. Operating like she is now. A little uncertain, but by god, going to give it one strong try before going.

She wants so much to know what Ben was thinking, she wants so much to be the sort of woman who was warm enough to have curled next to Ben and listened to his plans, warm enough that he would have shared his secret. This one and all the other secret workings of his heart and mind. She wishes so much she could hold him one more time.

Don't be such a coward.
That's what she wanted to tell Carolyn the other day, when she realized Carolyn was going to Mexico simply to escape. But now she understands. Ray's release has set loose an invisible and horrible wind. Ben will get caught in the wind, she knows it. Ben is perhaps the only one, in fact, who will stand up to that wind.

She wipes the tears. “I don't want to die yet,” she says to the bright light that is now shining directly on her. Then she is on her knees, hunched over, convulsing into the snow.

She is so sorry. Sorry for her coldness, sorry for the way it has settled in her cells. Sorry to lose Ben. Sorry to lose herself.

BEN

H
e watches the snow change colors as the sky begins to lighten. Watches a branch of the cottonwood tree outside the window break from the weight, crack, and come down. Across the street there is a beautiful brick building, the old depot, and a huge metal grain silo. Oh, all the history and stories they contain.

He goes back into the bathroom, and he stares at himself in the mirror. He wants to see himself one last time. Blue eyes and curve of the nose and line of the jawbone that has been his for seven decades. There is Ben Cross. In all his versions. Boy and young man and man and middle-aged man and older man. There is his soul and his body and his mind and all that is him. Staring back at him.

From the bathroom, he hears the ding of a door. Inside his own brain, he hears the roar of water, a dam breaking. It's true he's sweating. It's true he's scared. He's been this way before, breaking a horse or facing down a bull. He knows he can weather it.

Rachel, dark hair, pajamas, clinging to his back, hugging him tight around the neck. Despair, then. Daughter in her coffin, the impossibility of that little girl now laid out, dark long hair still at her side.

Renny, holding the baby and another baby and Renny's eyes were sparkling, then, sparkling with water. And the life ran with water, greened the fields and his heart. The water trickled into the cells of his daughters and they grew and he would walk the fields with them, irrigating or checking cows, and it was spring, always spring, always the best time for water, always water.

He looks around, confused. This bathroom. This is not his bathroom. It is not a bathroom he remembers.

Then he hears the voices outside again. He hears a particular voice outside the bathroom. It is a friendly, easygoing voice that says,
Hey, man,
and it is the voice that has been speaking to him in letters and then in his own head. It is a voice that has been arguing with him, pleading his case, making excuses, whining.

He remembers. Now that he has heard the voice. The remembering room in his brain has sparked alive.

Two syringes are filled, in the pocket of his Carhartt jacket. He had his gun, but now he does not. He must get the syringe right. He must be careful and fast, all at one time. It will be the greatest act of his life.

His hands are sweaty—he's so hot! He wants to take off this jacket—the bathroom heater is going full blast—but he must keep it on—he must accomplish this. Still, he keeps his hands in his pockets, fingers of each hand curled around a syringe that is now filled to capacity. He needs to take his hand out of his pocket to open the bathroom door. And yet he can't. He stands there, in the bathroom, and waits.

Go slow. Take it easy. Make sure you know what you're doing, see.

He was always saying that to his girls. When they learned to ride horses, give cattle shots, stick their hands in a cow's rear end to pregnancy-check.

Go slow. Take it easy. Make sure you know what you're doing, see.

His chest hurts, his arm hurts. There's a heavy pressure in his chest. Something is wrong with him, he knows it. But he can still take it easy, be careful. And that is how he removes his hand from his pocket, opens the bathroom door, and walks out to face the man who is turning, thirty degrees, forty-five degrees, ninety degrees to face him. Like a math problem.

Ray. Ray who looks the same, nearly, with dark hair and dark eyes and a face reddened by life and sun and broken blood vessels, Ray who stands there, clearly nervous and watchful, Ray who stands there like a man struggling to find the bravery to face the consequences of what he has wrought. Ray who is succeeding—just barely—in that bravery, and Ben, for a moment, hesitates, because he knows how hard it is to be brave. The woman who has been selling someone a ticket has grown quiet and the world is quiet and the snowstorm outside is quiet. But quiet is not exactly what he needs now. He needs the rage of before, the constant battle in his mind, the arguing and pleading with Ray that lives as part of his brain now. And indeed, in the distance, he can hear it.
Out, Ray. You coward, Ray. You fake. You bastard. Don't give me excuses. Don't give me reasons. Give me my daughter back. Give me my time back on earth, the time that was beautiful and full. The time before you.

“Ben. Ben Cross.” Ray pulls himself up tall like a brave man, but a bead of sweat meanders down the side of his face,
a tremor visible in his jaw. “It's good . . . it's more than good . . . for you to come. Although you picked a hellofa night.” He clears his throat and Ben studies him. To know the measure of a man. Such a fine, small distinction. That is what Renny used to tell him. That she'd fallen in love with him because he could mark the measure of a man. Ben has always believed that you do this by noting what's in a man's eyes the instant you look at them, before the real self has time to put up a mask and conceal and act out whatever particular story. For a moment, if you glance into the eye of a human before they have the chance to do this, you can see what's real.

What he sees: A charm, but not a core.

What he sees: An actor and a bully.

What he sees: Jess and Billy and the rest of his family, with this man always on the periphery. Always pushing in.

What he sees: He's never killed a man, but if he does, he will have birthed peace.

What he sees: That perhaps this is a sin, perhaps it is wrong.

What he sees: He needs to decide one way or another and hold true to that decision.

He looks once again at Ray's eyes, and he sees fear and he sees a flinch, a flinch that means that Ray has judged his own self as less than he could be. Ray is disappointed in himself. Ray sees at least a little bit of what Ben does.

Ben walks up to Ray, as if to hug him, and he does hug him, and Ray holds him and says, “Ben. Oh, Ben . . .”

As Ben backs away from the hug he asks himself,
You sure? Be sure
, and his mind says,
Yes, sure
, and he takes the syringe from his right pocket. He holds it in his right hand and looks to thrust it into Ray's chest but there is a leather jacket there, unzippered, but still covering the heart. He knows he'll break the needle. He knows this. His hands do it of their
own. They reach out, move the jacket to the side, run down Ray's breastbone, move to the left, palpate the ribs—right as Ray is wondering what Ben is doing, touching his heart, and then perhaps comprehending and moving backward—yes, there!—right below the lower right rib, pointing up, he will get the liver.

The poison will slowly spread in this way, throughout Ray's body like water. Through the valleys and watersheds of the body. Through the channels and irrigation ditches. Through the meandering tissue and juicy flesh.

Ben's palm finds the plunger and he is strong enough to stay with Ray, who is bucking around, this is like riding a horse, and with one hand he holds the syringe and with the other palm he depresses the plunger, slowly, slowly—it requires all his strength, his hands hurt and his forearms ache—and the thick liquid disappears into Ray's body. But then Ray is thrashing, pushing Ben's arm away. Ben remembers the gun.
This
is why he wanted the gun, to have the room to make a mistake, to put down an animal that was suffering.

And what is this? A person standing near him. Like an angel. He hears her say, “It's the right thing you're doing, Ben. I can't help you, but you don't need help. You can do it.” And Ben guides the needle back a little, repositions, and pushes the plunger the rest of the way.

Ray starts up a scream. Like a dying horse. Like a dying man. Like fear. Like a human being, every human being, left on a beautiful planet with no god and no hope.

Courage is fear that has said its prayers. Please forgive me if I've done wrong.
He doesn't know if he thinks this or if he hears it, but it helps him continue. Perhaps it takes only a fraction of a second, but time slows and he sees each slow decrease in the ccs, fraction by fraction, as if it were an entire lifetime.

Then the needle bends, and then it snaps.

“What the—what the—oh, Jesus, that stings! What was that?” Ray is making a silent-noise now, like the horse when he finally shot it, at the moment the bullet took hold. Like Renny in one of their fights. Like Rachel's silence in the seconds before she died. Like his heart.

The thing is, Ben thinks, is that Ray's existence on the planet was always going to haunt. Always going to hurt. Some gut instinct that he trusts. Ray has never really
been
sorry. Always selfish in this fundamental way. He will take more then he will ever give.

Ben turns to see the girl. He can see now that the angel looks like his granddaughter, only she looks different. Different hair. Different color. Is it Jess?

“Shhh,” she tells him. “I just wanted to be with you. I didn't want you to be alone.”

He cries out. A bellow of thanks and of pain, to the universe and at Ray and at the people who hurt children and the people who hurt land and the very fact of his disease and the very fact he is dying. The screaming of Ray and the howl of Ben roar like water and ricochet around the small room like a beast, and now the woman is sobbing too and the sirens are far away.

Had he gotten the heart, it would have killed Ray fast. But now it will take a bit and Ray will be mobile for a moment and Ben knows he needs to run. Ray is coming at him now, his face angry and red, the same face—the same face!—that he saw running in his house right after his daughter!—and the face that once said
goddamn bitch can't leave me
, and the face that Ben does not want haunting his family.

Ben stares at his legs because he needs them to move. They are the legs of an old man, which surprises him. How did that happen? Gray pants over bone and thin skin. How did they dry
out so much? But the muscles flex and the bones move and he is running. Out the front door, which jingles behind him, right out into the blinding snow. His heart gallops. The cold is astonishing.
Two for two. Two for two.
He must be outside, he must. As he gallops along—his legs gallop with his heart—he turns to the right, toward the old depot, and takes out the second syringe from the left pocket and takes the cap from the tip and throws it to the ground.