Stars Go Blue (20 page)

       
—Well, I don't like Lipton tea either. Let's be honest. Who does?

I watch as Renny prepares for this final moment. She's wearing her down coat with rips and duct-tape patches and hiking boots. This is pretty much how everyone is dressed; it is simply too muddy and sloppy to consider anything else. She gets everyone seated and quiet, except the dog, whom she commands to sit, but who instead runs from person to person to get food and attention. Most people are sitting on hay bales or benches, china plates balanced on their knees and a beer in their hands. Renny announces that she'd like everyone to say a short thing or two, a memory perhaps, and that she'd like to go last.

Anton recalls the time that Ben ate peanut butter that he had found in an old hunting cabin, but it turns out that the peanut butter had d-CON mixed in to put on mousetraps, so they had to take him to the emergency room.

Ruben tells a few stories of he and Ben saving animals together, and Ben's sure and quick hand when it came to swiping gunk from newborn calves' mouths or his sure-footed calmness when putting down an animal that was suffering, which makes us all think of his final act of putting down his own animal self.

Violet blushes and recounts the time that she had first moved to town and bought the grocery; she'd seen Ben for the first time and hoped he wasn't married, but then, nodding at Renny, after the initial disappointment, she was glad to call both Renny and Ben friends.

Eddie recounts the time they went up to save a herd of cattle from the Rattlesnake Fire, as it was called, and haul all the animals down the mountain in their trailers, in the dust and smoke and chaos.

Leanne talks about the time she saw Ben get slammed into a fence by a bull and how everyone stood over him, waiting to see if he would breathe, and it was then that she loved him most, just that one strange moment.

Jack says something about how it was Ben who taught him to ride figure eights across the field.

Billy recounts how Grandpa Ben would sit with him, just sit, after Rachel died.

The pregnant woman from the truck stop tells about sleeping next to Ben in the booth and the blizzard outside. She knew he was confused but figured he was just tired. She wants to apologize for not calling the police, that she would feel better if she could publicly apologize for not doing more, but that she'd just been so tired, too. What with the crowd, the blizzard, and being pregnant and all, she'd found it hard to think. She also says that Ben had changed her life, that he had warned her about hope, that it could sometimes freeze you up and make you not take action, because you just hoped things would get better when in fact they would not, and so after that snowstorm, she broke up with her boyfriend, who had a gambling addiction and was losing money as fast as she could make it. She had moved into her brother's house so she can save up money for a home and that although she was lonely she was
pretty sure this was the right thing to do. She says:
The thing he taught me in our short time together was that any hope ought to be accompanied by action.

This one causes silence. Maybe because it's good to think of Ben quietly changing a life, even at the last minute; and maybe also because everyone is worried about this talkative waitress who's very pregnant and now broke but kind enough to want to attend the funeral of a stranger.

That's when Renny stands up, a letter in her hand, and she says,
I think I'll let Ben speak for Ben.

She clears her throat, holds the paper in her windblown red hands, and starts reading.
Dear Renny. If you're reading this, I'm dead. I have just been diagnosed with dementia, probably Alzheimer's. You just took me to the doctor last week.

At that Carolyn lets out a yelp and Billy jumps a little in his seat and there is a collective surprise that floats in the air. No one knew of any letter. Renny shoots everyone an irritated look. When everyone calms down, she continues
. Renny, I am asking Eddie to keep this letter and give it to you when I die. I want to write it while my brain is still good. I'll probably forget I even wrote it someday.

When Rachel died and we moved to separate ends of the ranch, well, maybe that's something we had to do. But as time went on, I was able to let go of the things that hurt. And instead I saw more and more of the strength and energy. In you, I mean. And I was just working myself up to ask if we could be together again—together in the same house, in the same marriage—when I started getting confused. Writing things on paper. And you moved me right back into the farmhouse, in your no-nonsense way, but I wish I had the courage to ask you if you wanted me. If you were still in love.

Here Renny pauses and looks straight out at us and says, in a quiet voice none of us have ever heard her use,
I was.
She says it twice more.
I was, I was.

Renny squints, glances at the sky, which has moved from predusk to twilight to nearly dark. She stops and digs out a flashlight from her jacket, and reads the rest by a little circle of bobbing light. She reads:
I don't want to die, Renny. It doesn't feel right. Maybe it never does. But it feels like too many good years were ahead of me. I feel regret. Sure, I'd love to be young and strong again—wouldn't we all?—but that defies nature. I mean a different kind of regret. I accept my age, and I accept the facts of my life, maybe even I accept this disease. It's just that I'm not ready to go. I still want days to walk the farm and see the willows and visit with the grandkids. Play bridge with Eddie and irrigate with Carolyn. Bicker with you. It wasn't true that I wasn't interested in people. I was. I tried to take care of the land, which was my way of taking care of my family. I could have communicated it a little more, and asked you to do the same.

Which is to say: I'm just not ready. But if you're reading this, I'm gone.

I loved that we had a life together on Hell's Bottom Ranch, and I love the stories that took place there. All except the story of Rachel, which was a sad one, too sad to bear. But the rest were good and beautiful. I love that we had a history together.

But I want to go out knowing who I am. That, I am sure you can understand. Please bury me by the willows. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to have the bald eagle or the owls watching.

At this, most people turn, but the bald eagle is not on its usual perch by the river. And anyway, it's getting too dark to differentiate between sticks and shadows. We scan the twilight sky, which is black-blue, but there are no birds anywhere. Among the
murmurs and the sniffles, Satchmo looks up too and barks, just one single bark, which makes everyone laugh. The fire is crackling, and someone up front gets up to add a log.

Renny stands there, watching the sky with the rest of us. Then she shakes herself, like a dog getting up from sleep, and says:
Well, let's keep this short. Nothing worse than keeping people longer than they need to be kept. It's getting cold and dark. Anyone else?

For a moment there is silence, and then in the fraction of a second before people start to move, before the gravediggers lower the coffin, before Ben goes into the ground, I stand up.

Tell you what I'm gonna do, see
.

I often hear myself saying it, even now.

I say it to the river, I say it to the water that designs its own path as it spreads across the fields. I say it to water snaking down the irrigation ditch for the first time, and spreading across the field right as the sun is setting and hitting it just right, making it look like a sparkling sea. I say it to the beautiful earth, to the beautiful moon. I say it because to me, he was like a blue star, the kind that dies in the most spectacular of ways. Not, like the others, by shrinking up. But by exploding.

Stories help us perceive and possess our lives. They help us see our lives and then fully embrace them. So, in that way, there comes an afternoon when I look outside, at the clouds that have boiled up over the mountains, at their release of the first spatters of rain. Because of the height of the clouds, and the way
they've formed, and the thunder, and the sudden energy in the air, I know that this will be the first real thunderstorm of spring.

In honor of Ben, I sit down in his old chair on the porch, next to the cowboy boots and muddy work boots and bailing strings. I look out the window and watch. This part of the story feels like it is narrated by the universe itself. The universe that's been watching us and this particular unfolding of a life and of a death. In certain rare moments of time, it all blends into one pure moment. Earth and sky and soul, all these become a remembering room. In that moment, here's what I notice: The felting beat of raindrops. How each individual drop hits the aspen tree leaves just outside the window. Each little leaf moves with the water, a drop here, a drop there. Some of the raindrops roll off the aspen leaf backwards, and others pool right in the center. It looks like the tree is conducting a symphony. A little jazz. One ping there, one plunk there. And here comes the onslaught, the plunks of water speeding up their tune. The green leaves comply, moving here and there, such a small motion, but somehow larger and larger as the whole tree comes to life. I can see Ben's mind, how it tumbled through memory. How our own brains do that, pinging with life when each new memory hits, a river of channels sparking into movement. Melting and freezing and flowing. I know that Ben used to sit here, in the same spot, and I understand that he would sometimes watch these first aspen leaves and spring rain, and that he would consider how the universe itself holds all this motion inside the stars, even as they are turning blue.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Jody Klein and Dan Smetanka: for believing.

To the Ucross Foundation, Earthskin Muriwai, and Playa: for time and space.

To Kent Haruf, Rick Bass, Laura Resau, Laura Hendrie, Dana Masden, Carrie Visintainer, Karye Cattrell, Janet Freeman, BK Loren, and Molly Reid: for your writing, careful reading, and writerly advice.

To James Pritchett, Morgan Smith, Todd Mitchell, Jim Davidson, Sharon Dynak, Andy Dean, Jim Brinks, Mary Dean, Kurt Gutjahr, Debbie Hayhow, Mary Lea Dodd, Gary Kraft, Debbie Berne, and the Alzheimer's Association in Fort Collins: for advice on particulars and friendship in general.

To Jake Pritchett, Ellie Pritchett, James Brinks, and Rose Brinks: for moments of grace.