The Same Stuff as Stars (11 page)

She could see the star man's outline against the night sky. He was hunched over the telescope in such a way that she could not tell where the man ended and the instrument began. What marvel was he pointing to up there in the sky? The black velvet sky alive with diamonds. Diamonds that were the light from whole systems of worlds millions of miles away, racing through the black emptiness of space for unimaginable years to come to her very own eyes this late-summer night.

Did the stars know about her? Or was she truly nothing—not even a speck of dust—to whatever or whoever was there in those blazing, whirling worlds?
I'm here!
she called out silently.
It's me, Angel Morgan.

At first, he seemed not to know she was there. She didn't dare speak out. He was still too close to a man from a dream, despite his very real trailer. You didn't interrupt people in dreams; you waited to see what they had to say. Without taking his eye from the eyepiece, he spoke at last. “Did you know that always somewhere out there, there is a new wonder to be seen?”

“No.”

He stood up. He had a lit cigarette in his right hand, which he put in his mouth. “There was a time,” he said after taking a deep drag and slowly blowing out the smoke, “there was a time I wanted to be the first person in the world to discover something in the sky. People do that, you know. People not so different from me. Just a few years back a man in Essex Junction discovered a nova. He looked for fourteen years. Every clear night for fourteen years.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth to cough, a rusty-sounding cough. She wanted to tell him not to smoke, that it wasn't good for him, but she didn't quite dare.

“How old are you, Angel?”

“I'll be twelve next April.”

“So fourteen years must seem a long time to you.”

I guess.

“It takes the light from Andromeda two million years to get to earth.”

“You told me,” she said.

“So that doesn't make fourteen years seem so long, does it?”

“No.”

He took another long drag. “1 stopped looking after only eight years. Do you know why?”

“No,” she said again.

“Because one night I realized I was looking and looking and forgetting to see.” He propped his cigarette on the little stand between the telescope legs and put his eye on the eyepiece again. “I guess that sounds crazy to you.”

“No.” In her daytime world it might sound crazy, but not in this enchanted nighttime universe.

“Here,” he said, drawing her to the telescope. “Right here, meet Albireo; that's the beak of the swan. They couldn't see it in the old days, but it's really two stars.”

The twin stars blinked gold and blue like jewels in a heavenly crown. She wanted to ask him about the swan, since she didn't see anything like a swan in the sky—just jewels. She didn't have to ask, as it turned out.

“Long ago,” he began, “people just like you and me looked up at the sky and they began to tell each other stories about what they saw. The stories helped them map the sky.” He put one hand upon her shoulder and laid the other lightly against her ear, pointing her gaze away from the eyepiece to the sky itself. “They called that group of six stars Cygnus, which means ‘the swan.'”

She nodded, though the cross in the sky above her looked nothing like a bird.

“Albireo is the beak. Deneb, that bright star up there, is the tail. The three stars almost in a line making the breast and wings of the swan are Sadr, Gienah, and Azelfafage.”

She giggled, then quickly covered her mouth. She didn't want him to think she was laughing at him.

He went on seriously. “Sadr means ‘the breast.' It's the one in the middle. Gienah and Azelfafage mark the wings. And no, I am not sneezing. I'm speaking Arabic. Didn't expect an old broken-down Vermont country boy to speak Arabic, did you?” She knew then that he was smiling, though it was too dark to see his face clearly.

“I was wondering something,” she said. His joking had made her bold enough to ask.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think that sometimes they told stories about the stars so they wouldn't be scared? I mean, the universe is so huge, and you look up at the sky and feel so like, well, so like nothing?”

He picked up his cigarette and took another puff. “Could be,” he said, and began to cough again.

“Maybe it's not my business.” Angel couldn't help herself; she had to say it. “But it's not good for you to smoke. It really isn't.”

“No, and it's not good for you to stay up so late listening to an old man carrying on. I'll put out the cigarette, and you get yourself to bed, okay? There'll be other clear nights.”

She hated to go, but she went, carrying the heavenly swan inside her. She'd look it up and surprise him by learning the names of the stars. She could remember Albireo. How could she ever forget those twin stars? And Deneb—but the others she'd have to practice. They did sound like sneezes.

Maybe there was a library in the village. She'd ask Grandma, tell her that besides the five basic food groups growing kids needed to read lots of books. If there was a library, she and Bernie could walk there and get books to read. They might have a book about the stars that would be easier to understand than her musty encyclopedia. Bernie wasn't crazy about books. They reminded him too much of school, and he hated school. He'd flunked first grade for spite. He wasn't stupid, just stubborn. Angel would make him go with her to the library, though. Welfare wouldn't separate a little kid from a big sister who made sure he ate right
and
read him lots of books.

At the kitchen door she stopped to take one more look at the sky. She couldn't find the swan. It was as though it had flown away and lost itself among the stars.

 

 

ELEVEN

When Angel and Bernie came downstairs the next morning, there was a brown grocery bag on the kitchen table.

“Where did that come from?” asked Angel. For one wild minute she imagined that Verna had come back in the night.

“It was at the door when I opened it to see what the weather was,” Grandma said. “I guess Santy Claus must have brung it.”

“Santa Claus don't come in the summertime, Grandma,” said Bernie.

“Well, maybe it was the tooth fairy. How should I know?”

“Grandmas aren't supposed to lie to children,” Bernie said.

“Oh, be quiet, Bernie. Grandma's just teasing you.” Angel didn't care who had brought the bag. She wanted to unload it. Milk, a whole gallon—good. A plastic bag with grapes and some bananas—good. Another box of the cereal Bernie hated, so it couldn't have been Verna who left the groceries. She would know better. A canned ham, not as good-tasting as hamburger but at least another food group, and a loaf of sliced white sandwich bread. Looked like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus or whoever had been boning up on nutrition. There was still “room for improvement,” as Ms. Hallingford used to write on report cards, what with the white bread and no vegetables, but they were definitely “showing progress.”

“Me, oh my,” said Grandma. “I think I'll have me some of that ham for my breakfast. Why don't you open it and fry some up, Angel?”

“I don't like ham,” Bernie said.

“Well, who was asking you, junior?”

“I'll just fry up some for Grandma and me. You can have cereal.”

“I don't like that kind of cereal. It's yucky.”

“Well, it's all we got now. You ate up all the Sugar Pops.”

“We can buy some more.”

“Not till Grandma gets her check. So what'll it be? Ham or cereal?” Angel went to the sink. The ham had to be opened with the little key that was stuck on the top. She'd watched Verna do it once when there'd been a canned ham in the Salvation Army Christmas basket. She'd never heard Verna cuss as much as she did trying to open that can. Angel pulled the key off and pried up the metal flap. The trick had to be to wind it absolutely straight. “Grandma? Have you ever opened one of these before?”

“Eh-yup.”

“Would you mind doing this one?”

“Not on your stuffed cabbage. I tore my hand open last time.”

All the time she was talking to Grandma, Bernie was jumping up and down, jabbering, “You not listening to me, Angel!” he said.

“I'm trying to open this can, Bernie. Be quiet.”

“I'm starving to death, and you won't give me nothing to eat. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.”

“Shut up, Bernie. There's lots to eat. You're just too picky. That's your problem. If you're starving to death, you eat rats and weeds. That's what really hungry people do.”

He began to wail. “I don't want to eat no rats!”

“Well, shut up whining and eat your cereal, then.”

He plunked himself on a chair. She left off trying to roll up the metal strip with the phony little key and got him a bowl, filled it with the hated cereal, sprinkled sugar on top, and slopped in milk. “You want a banana with that? We got bananas today.”

She knew he wanted a banana, but he kept his mouth in a line and shook his head.

“Okay. You had your chance.” She handed him a spoon and went back to winding the key around the can.

“Where's my banana? You said I could have a banana.”

The key broke off in her hand, leaving the wretched metal strip less than half pulled off. “Dammit, Bernie, look what you made me do!” Her hands were gucky with the juice seeping out of the partially opened can. “Get your own stupid banana.”

“You said a bad word,” he muttered, but he got up from his chair and fetched himself a banana.

Now what was she supposed to do? If she tried to take the broken metal strip off the key, she was sure to cut herself to ribbons. There probably wasn't a doctor for miles.

“You could get the pliers out of that bottom drawer and pull it off,” Grandma said. “It's a pain, but it'll work if you're careful.”

She washed her hands under the faucet. Bernie getting his own banana, Grandma making a smart suggestion—speak of minor miracles. “Thanks,” she said to them both, though neither of them acknowledged it.

It
was
a pain, but she finally unwound the strip from the key, pulled it out of the slot, and started winding up the strip still left on the can as slowly and carefully as possible. No one spoke. They all seemed to be holding their breath. “There!” she cried. “I got it.”

Grandma clapped her hands. Bernie looked up from his banana, which he was eating monkeylike between bites of cereal. “What's the big deal?” he asked, but he was having to try hard to keep from grinning.

Angel lifted the slimy pink meat out of the can. She had to wash her hands again before she could slice it.

Grandma was well into her second large slice of ham before she said, “Nothing like fried ham for breakfast.” She was talking with her mouth full, but Angel wasn't about to correct her manners. The ham was the best thing she'd had to eat since the hamburger on the way here.

“Ever make gravy?” Grandma asked.

“No.” In fact, the only time she could remember having gravy was in a Kentucky Fried place once.

“I think you should learn to make gravy. Me and Bernie would like that.”

“You got a cookbook?”

“Aw, you don't learn to cook from a book, girl. You just do it.”

Angel sighed.
Then you do it,
she wanted to say. She waited until she'd carefully swallowed her next bite. “I'm just eleven years old, Grandma. Nobody's taught me much about cooking from scratch. I usually just make stuff from boxes. Maybe you could make us some gravy.”

“Aw, I ain't really cooked in so long I can't hardly remember how to do it.”

“Maybe,” Angel said slowly, “maybe the library has cookbooks. There is a library around here somewhere, isn't there?”

“Used to be. That little house next to the store. That used to be a liberry. Maybe still is, if that goody-goody Liza Irwin ain't dead as some might hope.” She took a large bite of ham and chomped down on it as if it were the despised Liza. “I ain't been in there myself since I was in grade school. Ain't what you'd call a book lover.”

“Me, neither,” said Bernie, his mouth so stuffed with banana that Angel could hardly understand what he was saying.

“Why don't me and Bernie go down and see? I know you don't approve of cooking from a book, but I don't know any other way to learn, and if I'm supposed to give you and Bernie a well-balanced diet, I got to get some help somewhere.”

***

Bernie whined all the way, but she half cajoled, half dragged him the two miles to the village center. This time she remembered the taxi money, but she didn't tell him. Better to surprise him with a treat than make a promise that in the end she couldn't keep.

On the green between the store and the church, there was a tiny house. It was set well back from the other buildings, in line with the graveyard, and she hadn't even noticed it the last time they had walked down for groceries. “Come on, Bernie. We got to see if it's open.”

“I want to go to the store.”

“Maybe, if you're good, we can go after.”

“Now.”

She ignored him and walked up the path to the little house. Over the door painted in large black letters were the words
ELIZABETH FLETCHER IRWIN MEMORIAL LIBRARY.
The sign was almost bigger than the building. There was a hand-lettered pasteboard card in the window giving the hours:
MON. WED. FRI.
12
NOON TO
3
P.M.
Today was Monday—she felt sure about that, but she didn't have a watch so she had no idea if it was noon yet or not. She tried the knob. It turned, and the door opened. They were in luck.

A bell tinkled as they walked in. From the back came a strange little voice. “Make yourself at home. I'll be right out.” The witch in Hansel and Gretel! Angel's heart skipped a beat.