“I dunno,” I said. “The stars . . . they matter to me.”
Moments like this occurred more and more frequently, and I think that was the biggest difference between us. That we could look at the same stars in the same sky, but not have the same questions. Not want the same answers.
One of those days, not long after, we sat beside each other in our tree house, sunlight filtering through the moss of the larch and casting the entire forest in lime-green light. The air was itchy with a tension that neither of us could articulate.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked awkwardly. “And don’t tell me it don’t matter.”
His face was almost empty, staring off into some other time. His eyes shifted on to mine and stared deep. “My momma.”
“You don’t talk about her much,” I said.
“She said the stars were souls, and every time someone dies, a new star gets put up there in the heavens. I look up there, look and look, but I never see her.”
“What was she like?”
“She was wonderful,” he said. “On days like this, she’d order me outta the house to do something productive, pick a pail of berries. She’d say ‘You’re in my way and I have a house to clean!’ but I knew she weren’t serious because there was a smile in her eyes. And because, by the time I came back with the berries, she’d always have a piecrust ready.”
“She sounds like a nice mother.”
“She was,” Jude croaked. Tears were standing in his eyes now.
“Then she got so sick. She started holding the top of her belly, where her ribs ended, and she would press down hard until the pain passed. She kept a plastic pail near her bed, and she’d spit out mouthfuls of yellow stuff, saying I’m sorry’ every time, like she could help it.
“My daddy was drinking bad by then. He couldn’t stand to see her in that kinda pain, but he never cried in front of her. He’d go upstairs to the little attic space there and howl and drink, and downstairs both of us could hear him. I asked him to take her to a hospital but our old truck had broken down and we didn’t have no way to get her down the mountain. My daddy told me he and my momma made the choice when they moved here to go without things like hospitals. Over time, it was like we all realized, one by one, that she was gonna die. My momma knew before any of us. And I figured it out last.
“But, my momma wouldn’t die. She kept getting worse and worse, and with every turn I’d think this couldn’t be life anymore because it looked so much like death. I spent every day working on the truck without knowing how to fix it. I took each part out and cleaned it and saw that everything was plugged in right but the engine would never budge when I turned the key. When I finally fixed it, it was too late. It was just a little silver cap I needed. My momma died cause of one little piece of silver. It makes me so mad sometimes I just wanna take off running and never stop.
“One morning, my daddy came out back to the truck where I was working. He put his hand on my shoulder and said ‘Son, it’s time for you to do a man’s job.’ He’d been crying and drinking. I could tell because his face was red and his eyes were red. And before he even explained, I knew what he meant. I started running. I turned around and whipped the wrench at him, but it only bounced offa the ground, and he was already doubled over with his hands on his knees. Crying or puking, I couldn’t see.
“I spent two days out in the wild. I never went farther’n the farthest place I’d ever gone. I just couldn’t make myself push past it, to the south, where a big stand of aspens grows. I looked out at those aspens, wanting so badly to lie down in the little hollow between ’em and stare at the stars. But I couldn’t. I walked the entire night, and by the time I woke up the next morning, I knew. I knew what I’d do.”
Jude’s entire body was convulsing with sobs. His speech dribbled out of his mouth with the force of an unstoppable river. I didn’t know any other way to stop him so I covered his mouth with my hand. He brushed it away.
“I walked back the next day, slow as I could, until I stood in front of the door, and walked in, and picked my daddy’s shotgun up from where it was leaning against the wall. My mother saw me, and she closed her eyes and breathed in, then looked up at me and nodded. I plugged two cartridges in, and put the barrels to her head, and—and I pulled the trigger.” His face was screwed up tight but somehow tears still seeped out.