Light of Falling Stars Read online

  In this way he passed the morning and early afternoon. By three o’clock the paper was dense with crisscrossed paths. Many overlapped; others strayed off alone and looped erratically, often when Hodge was distracted by insects or drifting motes of dust. The paths converged on several loci: the food bowl, the corner of the bed, and Lars himself. From where Lars sat he could see into the bathroom, and he had followed carefully as Hodge drank warm water from the dripping faucet in the sink, or tightroped around the perimeter of the tub. Mostly the lines stayed near walls, then veered off toward objects.

  The game ended when Hodge walked to the door and stopped. Lars got up and opened it. For a moment he thought about following the cat through the neighborhood—he would have to draw the park and the river, and his neighbors’ houses, and the streets and trees and the patches of dirt where Hodge liked to roll—but he only stood at the open door and squinted in the bright sunlight. It was Saturday afternoon.

  He went to the kitchen and toasted bread. He spread each slice with butter and jam and put them on a plate. He held the plate with both hands, then set it down on the counter and left it.

  On his way back to the couch, the phone rang. Lars stopped, terrified by the sound, and then by the fact of the sound. It rang again, and again.

  He sat on the couch first, then pulled the phone onto his lap. It rang again. He had no answering machine.

  It rang again.

  He knew when he picked it up. There was an antiseptic quality to the air around the earpiece, an official hiss he knew could not come from a friend. It was three-fifteen, and finally they had found her.

  3

  At the end of July, Trixie Bogen got a letter in the mail:

  Trixie,

  Well, I suppose you’re surprised to hear from me. Caitlin’s dead now as you probably heard and with her kids gone and me retired, I’ve got a little extra time on my hands. I’ll get right to the point. I want to come see you there in Marshall sometime around the end of next month. I’m thinking the 25th.

  If you don’t want me coming, you ought to say so. But I’m going to go ahead and make the reservations, in the hope you’ll say yes.

  I know it’s been a very long time, Trixie, but I think we would have a lot to talk about. I got your address from Bette Spraycar, who I saw in the city. She was visiting her kids. I hope you don’t mind.

  Write soon.

  Hamish

  When she first pulled it out of the mailbox, it was no shock; the handwriting was as familiar as it had been thirty-five years before and for a second it was thirty-five years before, and their children were still children and the letter was only something she’d seen lying around the house. But then she saw it for what it was and opened it, wondering what he could have to say after such a long silence.

  Hamish was her husband; she still thought of him that way. He’d left her alone with their children and an eternity of unpaid debts, had gone off to Seattle and remarried, but still he was her husband, because nobody else was before him or after him. And for some reason he wanted to come see her again.

  She wrote him back immediately, telling him no, of course he couldn’t come. She stuffed the letter into the mailbox at the end of the drive and raised the red flag. But all that morning she eyed the mailbox out her kitchen window, and when she saw the mail truck coming in the distance she ran out and took the letter back. What was the harm? It was his dollar, his disappointment, whatever he thought would happen here, whatever he thought he would get. Her next letter told him to come. She made it as cold as she knew how. If you think it’s a good idea, she wrote, I won’t stop you. But a few days later a postcard came:

  Trixie,

  Your letter made me very happy. I’m coming on Air-America, flight 114. That’s Aug. 25, 5:42. You can pick me up if you want but if you don’t, okay, I’ll get a cab.

  No more now—see you in a couple weeks.

  Love, Hamish

  The first time she saw Hamish, he was carefully signing his name to the accounts ledger at Paris Dry Goods. A pair of blue jeans and a stiff brown work shirt lay on the counter at his side. This was in Great Falls in 1950, when she was twenty-seven and thought she would never marry. Years before, it seemed inevitable, her right, but the war was on then and it was all boys were interested in. It wasn’t the war that bothered Trixie, but the boys’ singleness of purpose, which to her defined men. What could she talk to them about? She got a job typing for one of the cattle companies, lived at home. And when the boys returned they were no longer boys, and she was unpracticed with them, and evenings out felt wrong, as if she had not been asked on the date but had asked to be dated. There were others for them to marry, and they did, and she gave up on them without particular bitterness. Men liked Trixie but she had managed without them, and this suited her.

  But Hamish was a different story. She read his name in the ledger when she bought the thread she’d come for, and its rhythms seemed to her to match the self-possession and easy motion of his body: Hamish Bogen. She asked around. Ranched with his father outside town, no wife, no fiancée. Her friend Netta, a seamstress at the dry goods, set up their first date, blind for him: a dance at the Grange Hall at the end of summer.

  He drove a truck to town to pick her up. His skin was dark, his suit pressed, his hat black and unsullied by dust; he stood in the center of their living room with the slightest of smiles on his lips.

  “Your friend Netta told me you were pretty.”

  “Thank you,” she said, feeling like a child, though she didn’t know if this was a compliment or merely a statement of fact. Netta told me. Trixie’s parents, who’d introduced themselves to Hamish when he came in, had found some reason to go up to the bedroom, where they certainly listened.

  Hamish leaned toward a wall hung with photographs: recent ones of Trixie and her parents, a few old pictures of grandparents and great-grandparents from the East.

  “Who’s this?” he asked, pointing to a tall girl in a family portrait, whose arms encircled Trixie’s neck. “Do you have a sister?”

  “She died,” Trixie said, ashamed to tell him this, as if it would curse her. They called the sister Schatze, and she had died of pneumonia at ten.

  Hamish looked at her, weighing his words. “Was it long ago?”

  “A long while.”

  He nodded, seeming to know that any condolence would only embarrass her, and for this she was grateful.

  Nearby was hung a photograph Trixie’s father had gotten at the dry goods. According to the label on the back, it had been taken in 1895 in Giant Springs. In it, a man with a white mustache stood on a railless footbridge over a shallow sluiceway of the river. He was looking down and to the right, at a man in a white suit who appeared to have fallen; the fallen man’s hand was in the air and his back to the camera. Nearby, two women in long dresses held parasols. Though nobody seemed to know the identities of the two women or the fallen man, the man with the mustache was the writer Mark Twain, who had visited Montana at the turn of the century and written about it. Trixie’s father loved Twain; so did Trixie. Sometimes they sat together looking at the photo, making up wisecracks for Twain. If you want to try the water, James, just jump in. Do you want me to help you, or are you only saying howdy?

  “Who took this picture?” Hamish asked her.

  Her dress itched and she tried to keep herself from scratching. “Don’t know. My father got it at the dry goods.”

  He nodded. The way he stood—his hands behind his back, holding his hat, his legs relaxed and parted just slightly with a cowboy’s easy dignity—made her itch in the chest and want to take his arm.

  “That’s Mark Twain,” she told him.

  He leaned closer. “Which one?”

  “The man who’s standing.”

  Hamish nodded. “He came here, did he?”

  “Yes.”

  He turned around and smiled at her, and she thought, Yes, that’s it, he’s the one. He said, “Did you read any of his books?”


  She nodded. “My father’s read them all. He used to bring them home from the library.”

  “I read Huck Finn when I was in school. Then later I read the other one about the river.”

  “Life on the Mississippi?”

  “But I never finished it. There isn’t much time for reading.” He turned again to look at the picture and said, “I’ll bet it was the very same book, the one your father borrowed.” His voice was full of wonder as he said it. “Now isn’t that something? There I was, reading a book you’d read, and now here we are.”

  “Yes.”

  He spun and stuck out his hand. For a second Trixie wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with it. “Are you ready to go? I’m not much of a dancer, now.”

  “I’m ready,” she said. “And I don’t mind.”

  * * *

  Now she sat in the old wing-back chair, looking at the photo. It was one of the few things she had from the house in Great Falls. The chair was another, and the ottoman that went with it. It was five o’clock and the sun was still high. In an hour or two the house would start to heat up and fill with evening sunlight, and just when she thought she could take it no longer the sun would set, and the air would turn cool. By then she would be sitting in the kitchen with Hamish. She’d open the good whiskey, to let him know she hadn’t forgotten about his drinking, and drink it with him to show that all was forgiven. She had forgiven him; she’d done that a long time ago.

  She had decided to go meet him at the airport. Driving bothered her—the sound of the tires against the pavement put her to sleep, and she sometimes found herself stranded at traffic lights, forgetful of her destination or direction—but to sit at home and wait would be agony. Though she lived alone, she was rarely lonely; only when she was forced to wait for someone else did the quiet take on weight and become a palpable enemy. She made a cup of tea to keep her awake on the drive, and drank it at the table. At quarter past five she picked up the phone and dialed the airport, to make sure the flight was on time.

  “Wait a moment,” a woman told her. “I’ll check on that for you.” Trixie heard the plasticky clacking of a computer keyboard.

  “Oh, I’m afraid that one is running a little late,” came the woman’s voice.

  “Well, how late exactly?”

  “One moment.” The woman said some words to someone else, and a man’s voice answered. She couldn’t make out either. “I’m afraid we don’t yet have any information.”

  “I see.”

  “Are you picking up?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Why don’t you call back a little later?”

  “Well, all right,” Trixie said. “How much later?”

  “Oh, twenty minutes. Even half an hour. You won’t miss your party.”

  Miss my party, she thought, hanging up. Nobody’s thrown me a party in fifteen years.

  * * *

  She decided to take a walk. Her body still worked, even if she had a few more aches than she used to, even if she did seem to be getting smaller. She stopped wearing her dresses about five years ago, when their hems started dropping, getting tangled up in her ankles, and she switched back to jeans, which she’d worn on the ranch with Hamish when they were first married. She even wore some of the same pairs she’d packed away when they came to Marshall. All they meant to her then were the old problems. Now, she liked the feel of something a little closer to the skin, something to keep the tall grass and bugs off her in the woods. And rolled up, they looked good on her: where before they were a young girl’s way of kidding herself, now they were an old lady’s way of slogging through the mess of life.

  She followed a well-traveled trail through the woods behind her house. The house was the second she’d lived in here; the one they came to in 1958, the one they sold the ranch to buy, was downtown. She used to drive past that house sometimes on the way to the library. The grass was worn away to dust now and the door always propped open. Children played with toy guns in the yard. She didn’t feel much like passing it these days, though; her own house was perfect. It was small and made of logs, and her few neighbors were kind and quiet. Though she didn’t need it yet, they checked in on her from time to time. She gave them tea, the way old ladies are supposed to.

  Trixie still thought of trees as a luxury. On the ranch, the only trees were in the windbreak, and they always seemed in danger of drying up and dying. She sat under them whenever there was time, which was rarely, and all the water she used to wash dishes and clean the house she tossed under one or another of her favorites, to keep them alive.

  At first the ranch wasn’t so hard. She took the ailing Mrs. Bogen’s place as cook and nurse to a succession of part-time hands, a job she enjoyed. The men were friendly to her, and Hamish’s company each evening was a delight, far better than anything she could have imagined. They lived together in a small house Hamish had built with his father in anticipation of their marriage. They planned to run the ranch together when Hamish’s father retired, and eventually build a larger house where they would raise their family. Every Sunday Mr. Bogen (and sometimes Mrs. Bogen, when she felt well enough) picked up Hamish and Trixie in the truck, and they drove to town for church; afterward they always bought a newspaper from the drugstore on Central Avenue and read it over lunch in the kitchen of the big house.

  Trixie had never been much of a churchgoer. Her parents weren’t religious and only attended the Catholic church in Great Falls on Easter, for the spectacle. But this new routine suited her. She read along silently when the congregation said their prayers, and during sermons she imagined their new house, the children they would someday have. She made mental lists of things that needed to be done at home.

  One Sunday when Mrs. Bogen was too sick to come, they didn’t stop for a paper. The ride home was unusually quiet. Trixie knew little of Mr. Bogen’s relationship with Hamish; the older man didn’t say much in Trixie’s presence that wasn’t specifically about her and Hamish or their plans. But as they pulled into the long dirt road that led to the ranch, Mr. Bogen turned to Hamish and said, “I hope you prayed for her.”

  Hamish nodded. “I did.”

  “She hasn’t been up all week, you know. I’ve had to bring her food to her.”

  “Figured as much,” Hamish said. Trixie was sitting between them and he squeezed her hand.

  Instead of driving the extra quarter-mile to the big house, Mr. Bogen stopped at the gate in front of their small one, and let the truck idle there a moment. “Well,” he said.

  “She ought to be in a hospital,” Hamish said, staring out the windshield.

  “Doc comes by, gives her a few things.”

  “Doc’s a vet.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “She’s dying. He doesn’t know a thing about it.”

  Mr. Bogen shook his head. He and Hamish seemed to be watching the same thing, something distant that Trixie couldn’t make out. “Not the kind of talk for a Sunday, Hamish.”

  Hamish opened the door and stepped out, held it open for Trixie. She patted Mr. Bogen’s arm. “Thank you, Dad,” she said. She’d never called him that before. He looked surprised but said nothing, and she got out of the truck.

  Before he closed the door, Hamish leaned back in. “People are still sick on Sundays,” he said. “As many people die on Sunday as any other day.”

  Mr. Bogen nodded. “You going to close that door?”

  Hamish did.

  That night, while she stood at the counter drying the dinner dishes, Hamish said to her, “I’m not going next week.”

  “You’re not?”

  “It doesn’t sit right with me anymore.”

  They had only been married a year, and Trixie was not yet sure how to respond to such a comment. Their conversations had all been practical or speculative: what to do, what would someday be done. She said, “But your father.”

  “He can keep on going.”

  She stopped working. “I don’t understand.”

  “He does
n’t want to admit it,” Hamish said. “He likes to think God will fix her or God will take her. God doesn’t have a thing to do with it. It’s cancer that does, not God. She’s wasting away, it’s obvious. And that vet knows it too.”

  “Maybe it’s what she wants. To stay home.”

  “She’s in too much pain to stand up. They could give her medicine.”

  “I’m sorry, Hamish.”

  He looked up at her. “You’ll stick with me. Next Sunday.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  The following week his father came as usual. Trixie watched through the window as he stepped down from the truck.

  “Why aren’t you dressed?” he said when Hamish opened the door.

  “I’m not going.”

  Mr. Bogen looked from Hamish to Trixie, who stood behind, by the sink, and then back to his son. It’s all wrong, she thought. We should have talked to him sooner.

  “What’s the matter, then? You feeling all right?”

  “I just don’t want to go anymore.”

  “Anymore!” He turned to Trixie again, this time his face red with betrayal, with embarrassment. “You too?” he said to her, and she had to turn away.

  All three waited, and when nothing changed Mr. Bogen said, “Well, all right then. We’ll talk about this tonight, Hamish.” He turned to go, his shoes scraping on the porch boards.

  “I don’t have much to say,” Hamish said.

  “I got plenty.”

  That night, as Trixie lay in bed in the next room, their words came to her muffled through the walls. Why was he rejecting them? Mr. Bogen wanted to know. How could he insult them like that?

  I’m not rejecting you, Hamish said. I just don’t think God is responsible for everything. I don’t think God made Mom sick and I don’t think praying’s going to make her better.

  So what is He responsible for? his father said. You think he’s responsible for some things and not others? You think you know what He wants, is that what you’re telling me?