Pie
All things shining
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The Red Star Moves!
There was a restless feeling in my gut that had encouraged the trip. Lately, things had not been right between me and the girl. No matter how hard I tried to fight it, I felt that she didn’t love me anymore, at least not in the same way that I loved her. She was often gone, visiting other places that I had never seen and meeting people I would never truly know. Our hearts were in different geographies; the distant between us could be felt at the coffee table. It was with this that I decided to make a trip of my own.
I had not seen Dewey for at least a year. Here was that blonde haired blue eyed child of reckless drunken youth that was my enemy at first but now my friend. I remember us riding bikes and swimming in pools and talking about girls and smoking pot and doing all those things over again with a fuzzy slanted new angle. Ah yes, I thought, he will be the one to see, living now in Vermont with his grandparents after being discharged from the Army.
“Why?” the pretty girls would always ask, and I’d always smile when Dewey would smile and say, “They said my heart was too big,” (when we were alone Dewey would tell me it was because of a heart murmur he’d had since he was a child.)
And now here I was, in an emotional rut with a girl I loved, on the phone with Dewey, telling him I’d be there in a weeks time.
Flat hot Florida was all I knew as of late, and seeing the pink purple voluptuous mountains of Vermont with that clean crisp air with a tinge of manure, a hint of life, was a shock to my senses. Dewey announced immediately that we would be hiking and camping straight from the airport. We stopped for provisions at a small grocery store and got a small tent and sleeping bag for myself at a sporting goods store and after getting a little lost (being saved and given directions by a redheaded angel of the Green Mountains, a baby with baby-blue Jesus eyes in her arms that I swear was a baby version of Dewey), we found an entrance to the mountain hiking trail.
(Now I should explain at this time that I was completely sober and had not time for indulging in things like alcohol or marijuana or meat. This was mostly for the girl’s sake.)
The climb was strenuous but it was good—felt good—Dewey a little slower and winded from drinking too many beers lately and having a bit of a belly—we made it to the peak by sundown, seeing all those glorious colors of truth: purple and yellow and orange and blue and black night as the big ball of wax melts on the horizon and the stars shine at our backs. We had met some other hikers who offered us a smoke, which Dewey obliged and I declined. I asked them to take a picture of Dewey and I, and Dewey agreed but reluctant and shy and not one for photos, for that is why I love him, that is the best thing in people in my opinion, the shy ones who you can get to talk and say something and you find out “My, I know you so well, you’re beautiful!”
We set up the tent, cooked some beans and carrots over a small fire, and fell asleep early. I couldn’t get to sleep at first for fear of some unabomber type fellow living in the woods and waiting to kill us, a fear from my youth which I have never gotten over.
In the morning Dewey sat up and announced we’d be going back to his grandparents because it was cold and we’d run out of water. I wanted to hike and camp another night or two, but did admit it was uncomfortable and wouldn’t mind a nice bed to sleep on, although the mountain is never a bad bed.
After hiking down the mountain at a good pace that was probably too fast and too dangerous (with our lack of sleep and nourishment it would be too easy to slip and fall and crack our skulls), we arrived at Dewey’s grandparents which rested right on the edge of the Lake Champlain.
We walked in and Ferg and Gladys were in the sun room, he reading a newspaper and she resting, with her hand on her cheek, looking out the window, out at the lake, upwards, toward the sky. It was as if they had been sitting there since time immemorial. They heard the screen door slam and soon we were shaking hands and saying How Do You Do’s and Gladys offered to cook a breakfast for us, which was very good despite the moldy bread that she had tried to toast for us and the meat that she offered (I had tried to tell her as politely as possible “No meat, please.”)
And of course what I didn’t know was that Gladys was old and had Alzheimer’s, which I didn’t realize until she asked where I was from for the third time. What I thought was strange about this was that Dewey never had sad anything about it, so I wasn’t expecting it and was quite surprised by it. Dewey shrugged and couldn’t reason why he would bring it up.
That day we hopped in the boat and went out on the lake, crossing over to New York and doing a bit of bare foot hiking and Dewey showing me a cliff where his cousin jumped off into the water once, and me, being so afraid of heights that I can’t get close to the edge without crawling over and peeking at the steep drop and water below. We set up the tent close to the water and built a fire in a tin barrel and cooked red peppers and corn and squash and drank beers and talked about girls and women. I said we should find some girls to go camping with, but Dewey wasn’t into it, saying he had a girl in Colorado, and knowing that I had a girl at home and he being a good friend and looking out for my best interests. In the dying light Dewey pointed out the peak where we were the night before, and it looked so distant and tall, I couldn’t imagine me being up there and looking down at where I was now, or if it were even possible to see where I sat now from way up there. This made me think of her, at home, and if she were thinking of me, too. Suddenly I was filled with an unreasonable sadness, and I said I was going to bed.
In the morning we swam silently in the cold water but not for long. I couldn’t help but to feel Dewey was sore at me for not drinking and smoking enough and not having a good time like he wanted (although I did suggest the girls). We rode the boat back and I went up to read and write and sleep in the guest room above the garage. When I woke it was night but I had left a lightbulb on and when I looked at the wall above my head I saw many many many small bugs, little aphids, or shadflies as I would later know to call them. This startled me and I then remembered that I had left a window open and I suddenly felt like I was going to get in trouble for leaving the window open and letting all the bugs in. When I went downstairs I saw that all of the windows were open there too, and I found Ferg and Gladys eating by candlelight, surrounded by the lake bugs. Many had run into the dancing flame of the candles and were dying on the table top. Ferg drank coffee, looked up at me and smiled. Either they did not notice the swarm around them or did not care. He said that Dewey was out back and was building a fire, so we all went out there, Ferg and Gladys with coffee and Dewey and I sharing some wine that he had bought somewhere near Middlebury. He greeted with me with a smile and we said Cheers and I knew my suspicions about him being sore, if they were ever true, were over now.
Again, for the third time now, we watched the sky and the dying light and dance of colors that each night was unique and would eventually reveal the familiar stars that wise people know how to use to get home, but not I. I had not talked to Ferg much but now we talked about history and books and the possible end of the world due to human interference (All that timber cut at Rapa Nui, for instance). Gladys had not taken her eyes off of the sky since the sun had long past set, they were transfixed on the stars, and one in particular, a red one. Then, that moment, out of nowhere, she uttered, “It’s moving,” and we all look up and doubt, even Ferg doubts Gladys—his sweetheart since the tender young age of fifteen, when they both grew up together in old Florida (and this, making me think of my Uncle and how he married his high school sweetheart, and making me think of how I broke my high school sweetheart’s heart, for how could I not when I was born with a broken heart?)—then we all very soon realize that the red star standing solo in the sky IS moving, it is setting, catching up with its big brother. We all smile and laugh at each other, at having had doubt, such self-assuredness that we knew more than Gladys did and the star was still and silent and unmoving and that was that. We didn’t have the patience to wait and see. Gladys smiled and laughed with us, but couldn’t remember why.
I went home the next day. Dewey had to work at the Brewery so it was Ferg and Gladys that took me to the airport. They asked me about my girl and I said I loved her, but I knew otherwise by now. I didn’t blame the girl for not loving me; I realized now she was right to feel that way, because that restless feeling that brought me here, it was gone and I knew it would soon be over between us. I got home and three months later we packed the things up in the old apartment, trinkets and all. That was when I found a picture of Dewey and I on top of a mountain in Vermont and I smiled and remembered thinking of looking up at the mountain from below and being unable to fathom how I was ever there at all, and I felt that same way now looking at the picture. How was I ever there?
I remember the red star moving and realize the stars can take a while to travel that empty gulf and tell us our way home. I remind myself to be patient, to wait and see.
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We wrap up the carpet
We wrap up the carpet
with flowers
and our knees bump
criss-cross ‘neath the coffee table
as we eat soup
and watch T.V.
The bookcases now
just bare shelves
like your shoulder blades
when I first saw you:
finger tips and black lips.
Your face
small like my hands
as they pack up
delicate souvenirs
messages in boxes
in closets
in glove compartments
in kitchen drawers
in cigarettes
in vine ripe tomatoes
in paper plane tickets:
Reminders
of a hummingbird
in my backyard.
It speaks in whispers
but more often it shouts
wanting, waiting, wishing
for the door knob
to be left alone.
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Seven Years
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Theme: Linear by Peter Vidani
