I sat across from my father at the kitchen table, and we did not share a word. I looked to him. He looked to me. We sat there, still as stone like two western gunslingers waiting patiently on the draw.
“Birthplace of Paul Revere?” he suddenly asked.
“Boston,” I replied in haste.
“There’s a mountain lion ten feet away. What do you do?”
“Make myself appear large and hold my ground.”
“Phalanx fighting formation. Who invented it?”
“The Greeks.”
Our white-walled kitchen sat silent for a time save the faint scraping of windblown hackberry branches against the window. My father broke his stillness and leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, holding the pose of an oil magnate weighing a business proposition. Finally, the corners of his mouth began to rise and there a grin appeared.
“Look at my little man,” he said. “You’re quick this morning. Happy birthday.”
“Thanks,” I said.
This was how most days began: My father and I would sit across the kitchen table and before we could eat or speak, he would rattle off a series of ridiculous questions. Most would concern military history or strange survival situations, but he’d also throw in the occasional pop culture reference to an obscure Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. We’d seen them all.
Of course at the time I thought these impromptu grillings were for my benefit. So that I might become wise and worldly and resourceful like my father. In reality, he was a fool. This was a truth I would soon uncover on the battlefield of Thayer Creek. Two days after my birthday, I would watch my father fall from mentor to moron in the afterglow of pistol smoke.
We ate our breakfast. Scrambled eggs and burnt bacon, every day. My father seemed to think his skinny and unathletic twelve-year-old son required the protein of an Olympian. I was nervous. Between little bites of egg, I kept looking up towards my father and his large, red face hunched over the food. His blocky, military haircut. The yellowing American flag pinned above the refrigerator, the constant backdrop to my breakfast.
I was nervous because I wanted to make a suggestion for my birthday present. Little did I know this was not something a son should need to do. I’d spent every night leading up to this birthday buried in old editions of Astronomy and National Geographic. My grandma had encouraged my proclivity for science and so swiped old magazines from her doctor’s office for me. I devoured them. I’d been going through the back of each edition with a pair of scissors, carefully cutting out the types of gifts I’d like to receive. Some microscopes. Mostly telescopes.
I enjoyed looking through lenses at worlds over- or undersized. Maybe because I was not content with my own. Maybe I found more healing in the venation patterns of tree leaves or on the cratered surface of the moon than in my own strange world. Maybe I just liked science.
My obsession with astronomy was at an all-time high, and an unfurnished cove in the corner of my bedroom seemed destined to become an observatory. There, a window looked out on an oak-lined creek bed. By night, all I could see were the stars and a lonely cell tower flashing red above the plains like the spine of some crimson giant that ruled until dawn.
I’d compiled a little pamphlet of my desired telescope cutouts. Finally finding courage that morning, I put the rough little project on the table between me and my father, hoping he would ask me what I wanted for my birthday so I could point right at it.
Any one of them would do, I was prepared to say.
My father didn’t take the slightest glance towards my little advertisement. Instead, he put his fork down and wiped his lips with his shirt collar. He looked at me with a wordless and expectant smile.
“What?” I asked with a grin of my own.
“You want to know?” he asked.
“Yeah, I want to know.”
“Are you going to study tough in school today?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“How tough?”
I wracked my brain. “As tough as twenty tiger sharks.”
“As tough as ol’ Teddy Roosevelt?” he asked.
“Yes sir.”
“Alright.” He nodded his approval. “After school, come down to the basement, and I’ll have a little birthday surprise set up for you.”
That day was the longest of my life. From my corner seat in each classroom, I watched the sky remain cloudless and primed for stargazing. Mercury and Mars would both be out on full display, and I endlessly debated which I’d search out first. My mind pointed me to Mars but my heart, to Mercury.
After school, the front door was unlocked and so I swung it wide, dropping my backpack in the entryway and running downstairs like I was escaping a fire.
I was always a bit wary of the basement. My father encouraged me to spend more time there, but he spoke as if it contained forbidden knowledge. It resembled the undisclosed office of an investigative journalism team. Five desks and chairs were propped against walls in separate areas of the room. Each workstation had its own iron lamp and office supplies and mounted corkboard. Each desk, dedicated to research of some sort.
One corkboard was covered in history book cutouts and maps with red lines, the desk stacked with tomes on military strategy. My father would recreate old battles and genuinely believed if he were left in charge of the Anglo-Saxons at Hastings, or Napoleon’s forces at Waterloo, then the course of history would have been drastically altered. I once asked my father why he never joined the military.
“Because I know too much,” he’d said. I would later discover he was medically disqualified because of asthma.
One desk was dedicated to UFOs. Another to lost civilizations. Another desk was used for my father’s investigation into a local pack of witches he believed were frequenting the public park at night with nefarious intent. Another desk was blank, allowing for future endeavors. And the final desk and accompanying corkboard were covered in a giant, white sheet. Before it stood my father.
He wore a shirt depicting a flaming skeleton in a fighter plane. This was accompanied by cargo shorts, white tennis shoes and tube socks, and a hat that read “Cancun.” He motioned for me to sit at the office chair placed before the desk as though he aimed to give a presentation. I took my seat.
“There’s an elevator falling!” he suddenly cried. “What do you do?”
“Lie flat on my back,” I said, remaining composed.
“The martial art of Aikido. Who invented it?”
“Ueshiba,” I said.
“And who perfected it?”
“Steven Seagal.”
“Who killed Kennedy?”
“An agent of Fidel Castro,” I said.
He nodded solemnly, then placed a hand upon the covering sheet. “I have one more for you today,” he said.
“Okay.”
He gripped the sheet tight and spoke like a showman. “Who was the master battle tactician that was also your great-great-great uncle?”
I bit my lip and shut my eyes, my brain wheeling. I tried to harken back to a hundred lectures on military command but my only thoughts were of my telescope and that I might never earn it if I answered wrong.
“I don’t know,” I finally said. My voice was close to breaking.
“You don’t know?”
I looked at my lap. “No, I don’t know.”
“My little man, you don’t know…because I never taught you. Look up here. Don’t you cry on me, now.” I lifted my chin.
“Your great-great-great uncle was none other—” he flung the sheet off with a flourish “than the mighty Brigadier General John J. Caverhill.”
This revealed, attached to the corkboard a single blown-up, black-and-white image of a hollow-eyed and war-beaten man. He appeared terrified of the device taking his photo, a Union hat clutched tightly in his hands like he was wringing out a rag. He could have been anyone. An old, dead, white guy.
“This is my birthday present?” I asked.
“Yes it is,” my father said, still beaming. “General Caverhill. Our very own.”
“You never taught me about him, Dad,” I said.
“Well, the history books have done him dirty. Not one mention of the man in any of the major publications. But through my research, I’ve discovered his talent and prowess on the battlefield.” My father kept looking from me to the photo of Caverhill, as if he spoke to us both.
“In the Civil War, your great-great-great uncle commanded a Union brigade. That brigade single-handedly won the battle of Thayer Creek. All thanks to our kin, Caverhill.”
“You never told me about that battle, Dad,” I said.
He sighed, “Well it’s slightly lesser known.” My father shook his head and knelt before me. “You’re missing the point here, little man. We share a bloodline with one of the greats. Caverhill knew strategy inside and outside, and we do too. That’s why we got talent. That’s why we got brains and brawn. Don’t you see what this means?”
I looked at my lap again. “I don’t know.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re feeling a little down, aren’t you?”
“A little.”
“I think I know why.”
“You do?” I asked.
“I do. I think you don’t believe it. I think you don’t believe that you’ve got it in you, the very courage of Caverhill. That’s why–” he stood, “we’re gonna stand on that battlefield this very weekend. We’re going to see with our own eyes where our ancestor saved the Union army. And the truth of it all will be made plain as day.”
I kept my face pressed against the window as we drove. Though I believed him right in all things, I didn’t want to interact with my father that morning. Instead, I held my magazines in my lap and looked longingly out the window, believing myself to be a melancholic character in the movie of my life.
The hum of the engine made me tired. I mindlessly looked out beyond the north Texas highway, my view all peeling billboards and grain fields and gas stations and oak groves. When this view became tiresome, I opened my magazines, though they were torn to shreds after I’d taken scissors to them.
I fell headlong into a small, corner image of the galaxy NGC 3254. The more obscure places in space were my favorite. Galaxies named by numbers only astronomers knew. In this image, the Hubble Space Telescope brilliantly rendered billions of stars pinwheeling in great migrations too grand to fathom. Billions of exoplanets surrounding those stars, worlds of stone and ice and methane. Of flora never to be seen and fauna never to be known by human senses. Maybe water. And I might be the only soul on planet Earth thinking of NGC 3254 at that very moment. It was like I had laid claim to it. For a moment it was mine, my very own galaxy to explore.
We passed north out of Texas and into Oklahoma, which my father referred to as Indian Territory. He loved to speak like an outdated historian. Like the authors of his war books but only for the decades he found convenient. He dared not delve too deep into history and unearth that this whole country was once Indian Territory.
We camped beside the Verdigris River in northeast Oklahoma. The following morning, we sat along a countertop bar at a run-down diner on Route 66. My father spoke at length with the man beside him about a series of chupacabra sightings in the area. I guess my father seemed the type of person you could discuss such matters with. I looked down into my pancakes and listened to the red-faced men ramble along on hearsay alone. Our waitress asked them if they could please keep it down as it happened to be eight in the morning in a diner and they were speaking passionately about a creature that sucked the blood of goats.
The problem is, as a child, you believe wholeheartedly the wisdom or the nonsense of your parents. I believed in the chupacabra and alien surveillance and the pack of witches down the street. Maybe my father found these things interesting. Maybe he only half-believed them. Maybe he needed something more because God or love or me didn’t seem to do it for him. All I know is that the chupacabra scared the hell out of me, and I would much rather my father ramble on about Custer’s last stand or Roman battle tactics.
By noon, we stood side by side in a dusty field on the outskirts of Thayer, Kansas. I’m not sure Thayer was large enough to have outskirts. It was one of those towns you don’t notice until you’ve passed beyond it. There were two churches. A single gas station. A brick building the size of a bedroom that read “museum.” A few rows of homes, mostly double-wides. A single, unremarkable building of faded-paint sheet metal that seemed a community centerpiece. Probably the home of many a bingo game. We drove slowly through the town to survey the place. We saw not one soul but an older woman dragging a picnic table across her yard. We probably could have offered to help her.
My father and I parked on the edge of town and gazed across the abandoned crop field. A big rectangle of heat-dried dirt. I tried to imagine two armies clashing here, but the little elementary school on the other side of the field seemed to put a stopper in my immersion.
“This isn’t it,” my father said.
“It’s not?”
“Nope.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I can sense it.” He took a deep, wheezing breath as if to glean knowledge from the air alone. “Caverhill was not far off but he was never here. Close your eyes.”
I did.
“Now smell the air,” he said. “The year is 1864, and the rebels are moving a supply line through the area. You’re outnumbered, you’re running low on rations, and half your men have malaria.” He took another deep breath. “Can you sense it, little man? The history of this place?”
“Yes,” I lied. All I smelled was hot and dusty air. All I imagined was what lay before my eyes. A boring, dying, sun-beaten town on the central plains. Mobile homes of the elderly with memories of better days. Children desperate to take off to Springfield or Kansas City. Wind-ravaged fields and heat-dried creeks lined with patches of elm and cottonwood.
“Can we go home?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “Not until our journey is complete and we’ve found the battlefield where Caverhill made history. I think it’ll be a great inspiration to us both.”
“Okay,” I said.
We took a break from our ridiculous search and ate lunch in Thayer at The Freightcar Cafe. It was fabricated of sheet metal painted sky blue. A genuine bell rang upon our entering, and two men of a bygone time gazed up with bored expressions from a card game.
My father, with great and misguided confidence, asked about the battlefield, but the men simply shrugged. They told us to ask a man by the name of Bernard whom they spoke of with respect. They said he ran the Thayer Museum not a block away.
Over a lunch of reheated cheeseburger, I asked my father why the men hadn’t heard of the battle if it was so important to the Civil War.
He shook his head and motioned for me to lean in. “It’s ignorance, little man,” he whispered. “Some folks don’t know the history of the ground beneath their feet. But you know what?
“What?”
“Caverhill didn’t fight for those geezers. You know who he fought for?”
“Who?”
“The Union.”
We left the truck in the cafe parking lot and walked the distance to the museum. Afternoon was full upon us, and the heat that August day was terrible. The sky was cloudless and roadside shadeless and our short walk akin to the last leg of a triathlon, the world in all directions striated in haze.
The little brick building had been in some forgotten decade a bank, the brick engraving eroded but clearly marking its antiquated purpose. Below, in hasty paint, it read museum. My father knocked. No response. He shook the doorknob, and we tried to look through a dust-streaked windows, but all was still and dark within.
“Hold on eager beavers! I’ll be right over.”
We wheeled around. The man who’d called to us stood across the road dressed like a cowboy and was watering an extravagant flower bed. Even from the other side of the street, I could make out a great black mustache that seemed to split his face into two separate sections, upper and lower. My father watched with crossed arms as the man shook the hose with sudden bursts of speed and inspiration, as though creating splatter art on his petunias.
After some time, he made his way towards us with a duck-footed stride, his weight balanced backwards on the balls of his heels as though he walked against a squall. On closer inspection, I saw that he had all the makings of an old railroad man or cowboy of the great plains, but he couldn’t quite sell it. Something seemed just slightly off. His walk. His expression. A neck-bandana displaying a train that read, This is how I roll! Even the mustache, to a certain extent, seemed off. I picked him out right away as a bit of a phony. How I saw it in him and not my father, I’ll never know.
“Bernard Waters,” he said, extending a hand to my father. I knew from the moment those men shook hands that my father did not like Bernard, and that Bernard did not like anyone who didn’t like him first.
“Come on in,” said Bernard. He led us into his museum and flipped the light switch to reveal what might as well have been a tiny subsection of the Smithsonian. I half-expected heaps of junk but discovered quite the opposite. Dustless, clean glass cases lined the little room. Within them, resting on white-velvet fabric squares were artifacts of the past. A railroad tie. A pair of old dueling pistols. A brick with a bullet hole. A sepia-faded ticket stub. A sign that read “Thayer Station.” All of these items lay evenly spaced apart accompanied with fine-typed information boxes.
Bernard lifted a wooden bar and went around the glass counter opposite me and my father. “Soak it all in,” he said, spreading his arms as if welcoming us to the promised land. “These are A-grade artifacts, all passed down and kept pristine through the Waters family tree.”
My father did his best impersonation of uninterest.
“We’re actually here on some family business of our own,” he said. “Battle of Thayer Creek. Are you familiar?”
Bernard gave a little corner-mouth grin that made the right half of his mustache rise. He waved a hand dismissively.
“You two don’t wanna learn about that little scrap,” he said. “The real history of this place is in the railroads. My great-great grandfather went by the name of Buck Waters. Are you familiar?”
“Never heard of him,” my father said.
“Oh come on now. If you know about that little scrap over in the creek, surely you’ve heard the name Buck Waters.”
My father’s face had gone crimson. He placed two palms on the glass counter separating him from Bernard.
“Well, first off, it wasn’t a scrap.”
“Is that so?” Bernard asked, his mustache rising higher.
“It is. And secondly–”
“Well, I hate to be too harsh,” Bernard cut in. “But I am the lone historian here in Thayer and I do think my word holds some weight.”
“You might want to check your sources,” my father said. It sounded like a threat devoid of subtext.
“My sources are first rate,” said Bernard. “You might want to brush up on your history.”
My father was the one now grinning, and he looked to me as if to say, “Can you believe this guy?”
I offered no support. I simply stared into the glass container as if watching a movie there. An AC vent hummed above our heads, and the little room was ice cold.
“Who led the British in the battle of Quebec?” my father suddenly asked.
“Excuse me?” asked Bernard.
My father spoke slowly, as if to a child. “December 1775. Who led the British in the battle of Quebec? I’d like to see if you know a thing or two or if you’re certified full-of-shit.”
“Is that so?” Bernard folded his arms.
“Mhm.”
“I believe that was…Guy Carleton. Correct?”
My father nodded.
“Who was the Father of Railways?” Bernard asked, turning the tables.
“George Stephenson. Military operation name for the US invasion of Grenada?”
“Operation Urgent Fury,” said Bernard. “How did Cleopatra die?”
“By snake bite,” my father said, their questions gaining speed. “Who invented their own steam engine at the age of fifteen?”
The torrent of trivia subsided. Bernard rubbed his moustache. The AC finally cut out, and the room stood steeped in expectant silence.
“Don’t know?” my father asked. He was beaming.
“I’m not playing anymore silly games,” said Bernard.
“Who invented their own steam engine at the age of fifteen, little man?” My father asked me.
“Henry Ford,” I sighed.
“We stumped the railroad man about a steam engine,” my father said. “I can’t believe it.”
Bernard placed his palms on the glass casing opposite my father.
“You best be lucky the year ain’t 1880,” he said.
“Why so?”
“Because Buck Waters wouldn’t appreciate the likes of you in his town.”
“You know, Buck Waters had quite the…reputation,” my father said.
“So you have heard of him?”
“I’ve heard a story or two.”
Bernard held his face as if he had eaten something foul, his ridiculous mustache forming the shape of a little boat.
“Yeah, ol’ Buck had a reputation,” Bernard conceded. He spoke of the man like my father spoke of Caverhill, as if they shared beers with their old, dead relatives every Friday night. Bernard continued, “But I’d like to know of your kin. I’d like to know why you’re so interested in that little scrap that happened down the road. I want to know why you’re here, waltzing into my museum and disrespecting everything I stand for.”
My father took a heavy breath. As if a pre-meal prayer were about to occur, he took off his hat and held it close to his heart.
“My great-great uncle was none other than the mighty Brigadier General John J. Caverhill.”
My father said the words as if casting a spell. As if the power of the name of Caverhill might render Bernard Waters speechless. And it did, for a time, until the man began to laugh uncontrollably.
“Ol’ Caverhill,” was all Bernard managed to say between fits of laughter. My father stood like stone, his expression lifeless.
“You having a good laugh at my family’s expense?”
“I’m sorry,” Bernard said, composing himself, “It’s just that, you know, Caverhill was a phony.”
“That’s not true!” My father cried. He slammed his fist against the case separating the men but the glass held firm. “Don’t listen to him, little man,” he said to me.
“You’re just going to have to face it, buddy,” said Bernard, “Caverhill couldn’t lead a Boy Scout troop.”
“He was a master tactician,” my father said.
“He was a phony. Caverhill was no better on the field of war than a couple kids playing battleship. No wonder history doesn’t mention him. Only won that battle because his troops had better arms. Simple as that.”
My father pointed a big finger at the skinny man’s chest. “You’re liable to get yourself injured, talking like that.”
“Is that so?”
“Mhm. And you can say what you like about Caverhill, but at least he didn’t sleep with every old lady he laid eyes on.”
Bernard stood aghast. My father, in his embarrassment, had found the fake cowboy’s weakness.
“I bet that’s how your family tree came about, huh?” my father asked. “Buck Waters loved the elderly.”
“You’ve gone too far,” said Bernard in a bleak undertone. His faux old-timey demeanor had vanished and before my father stood a skinny man with nothing to lose.
“No, you’ve gone too far,” said my father.
Bernard slowly shook his head. “You’re gonna pay for those words.”
“Am I?”
“You are.”
“How so?”
Bernard leaned close over the counter. “You’re a man of history, aren’t you?”
My father, too, came closer. Their noses were a foot apart. “I am.”
“Then we oughta settle this like men of history,” said Bernard.
“And how’s that?”
Bernard, his eyes still on my father’s, tapped with an index finger on the glass case between them. It was the same one I’d been looking into for the past five minutes. Encased there, one laid across the other to form an X, were an identical pair of flintlock dueling pistols.
The air conditioner kicked on again as Bernard awaited a reply. My father, open-mouthed, looked from me to the pistols to Bernard. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Well, I had in mind to reach across this counter and give you a few good punches, but… I’m not planning to kill you.”
Bernard took from his pocket a small, silver key and began to unlock the glass case.
“A coward, just like Caverhill,” he said with a grin.
“Are you ready to die for your man?” called Bernard.
“After all you’ve said, I have no choice,” replied my father.
They spoke the right words, but their voices lacked confidence. They stood twenty paces apart on the actual former battlefield. Another dusty Kansas field, this time backdropped by a little cottonwood-lined creek where in the summer of 1864, a “battle” unfolded. The casualties: two men and two horses.
The heat had lessened as the sun neared the horizon line and all was bathed in shades of amber. My father stood resolute in his Velcro tennis shoes. Bernard eyed him dangerously, dressed just as Buck Waters might’ve. I was told to stand on a rise not two hundred feet away and not watch.
From where I stood, the two men looked out of time and out of place. As if the 21st and the 18th centuries had each chosen a representative they could do well without.
“Last chance, Bernard,” said my father. “I can feel the spirit of Caverhill on this very field. My aim will be straight.”
“You can’t feel shit,” said Bernard, “and everything you’re looking at, horizon to horizon, was once called Waters Wonderland. This is my town!”
Their voices shook. They sounded like high schoolers misquoting lines in a spring musical.
“On ten, then,” said my father.
“On ten,” said Bernard.
They counted together, the heavy pistols trembling in their outstretched arms. My little heart raced a million miles an hour as I prepared myself to watch my father die.
Around the five or six mark my father cried “For Caverhill!”
“For Waters!” called Bernard.
I closed my eyes as they neared ten and wished I were somewhere a billion light-years away. On a planet yet unnamed with alien animals that were fluffy and kind, with trees that stood like towers and mountains made of diamonds. Or at least, I wished my father would’ve bought me a telescope. I wished that I could have had a normal birthday and a normal relationship with my father where his love was not measured by my knowledge of the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge or how to eat a snake, if deemed necessary. I wished that mom was still alive and that my father wasn’t– They fired.
I wished that my father wasn’t such a fool.
Their pistols sounded like cannon fire, and I felt as if I’d been violently shaken. My ears rang. I opened my eyes onto the battlefield of Thayer Creek to see my father and Bernard Waters both lying flat on their backs, pistol smoke wavering all about them. A few startled cows watched on from a neighboring field. Some wind turbines gently pinwheeled in the distance.
I ran to them. My father lay splayed, his hat in the grass beside him. The first thing I noticed as I approached was the rapid rise and fall of his chest. I knelt beside him and searched for a wound but could find none. His breathing came in wheezes. He opened his eyes as if from deep sleep.
“Where am I hit?” he asked faintly. He reached for my hand and looked at me with longing, like he believed himself a general dying on the battlefield. I pushed his hand away.
“I hate you,” I said.
He wheezed, and his lips moved to form words his mind would not produce.
“Am I hit?” he finally asked, this time with more suspicion.
“You’re not hit. You’re having an asthma attack. I gotta go get your inhaler.”
Against my desire, I next went to check on Bernard. No major wounds either. Just a little blood trickling from a gash above his eye. Otherwise, he appeared to be sleeping like a baby. I’d later discern that he’d hit himself in the face from the recoil of the pistol. Both men had missed by a mile.
I stormed to my father’s truck parked on the edge of the field and retrieved his inhaler from the center console. I slammed the truck door. It felt good. When I arrived back on the scene, the two men were sitting upright where they’d fallen, heads in hands. They wore embarrassed looks, thinking they’d be martyred for men greater than themselves only to discover that they could not aim.
I threw the inhaler down on the ground before my father.
“I hate you,” I said again. “You only like me when I get your stupid questions right, and you never listen to me. I don’t like what you like. I don’t care about history or about surviving disasters, and I think Steven Seagal can’t hurt anybody and he pays all the actors in his movies to flop around like fish whenever he touches them. I don’t like battle tactics and the chupacabra scares me, so stop talking to me about it.”
They were the most passionate words I’d ever spoken. More than I’d ever said to my father in months. He looked up at me like a sad, dumb, scolded baby. It only doubled my fury.
“And I don’t think anyone talks about Caverhill because he didn’t do anything. Just like you,” I said. It was a nice finishing touch.
“That’s what I was trying to tell him,” said Bernard.
“Shut up,” I said. I turned on my heel and marched back towards the truck. Once in the back seat, I slammed the door shut behind me, grabbed my magazines, held them close to my heart, and eventually fell asleep.
Night had fallen full when I awoke. I lay in the back seat thinking about my father and about Bernard. I thought about my little life and where it might be heading. The sounds of cicadas permeated everything. I wiped my eyes, opened the door of the truck, and their thrums were magnified tenfold.
I looked out. On the battlefield of Thayer Creek, a campfire burned. Behind it, on mismatched lawn chairs sat my father and Bernard. They were smoking cigars. They were laughing. Behind them, two tents were staked.
When I closed the truck door behind me, the two men looked up, lowered their cigars, and ceased laughing, like two teenagers caught smoking pot. My little lawn chair was prepared beside my father. I went to it and took it and moved it a few feet away from the men and sat down. I glared into the logs.
“I roasted you some wieners,” said my father.
“I don’t want them,” I said.
The wood cracking in the fire and the cicadas crying and the smell of cigar and woodsmoke and my comfortable little lawn chair, they all put me at ease, though I did my best not to show it. I had to remain angry, though the night was working against me.
We sat for some time, just participating in a world that was sunless. A little breeze danced in my hair, and I could have fallen back asleep where I sat.
“I’m sorry,” my father said.
I turned to him. In the firelight I could see in his eyes that he had been humbled. He looked to me with desperation, pleading. I’m sorry, he mouthed again, this time inaudibly.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m sorry too,” said Bernard.
“That’s alright, Mr. Waters,” I said.
“Have you looked at the sky tonight?” my father asked me.
I hadn’t thought of it in the slightest. I looked up and drew breath. The night was a gallery of all the finest art. I’d never seen so many stars. They weren’t all just white lights, like you’d expect, but there were violet stars, quicksilver stars, and stars of the deepest blue. There were stars whose light wavered like an old and failing light fixture, these celestial bodies all peppering the moonless night. And in a broad band of color, from pole to pole, ran the spiral arms of the milky way, like an ocean current or jet stream. An interstellar highway.
“Which one is that?” my father asked me. He pointed to a silver star that seemed to pierce the night and dim the other stars surrounding. I bit my lip and didn’t answer. I wanted more than anything to tell him, but I could sense he was trying to fix things and I was still angry enough to not give him that satisfaction.
“I think it’s Saturn,” he said. “Saturn looks really bright tonight.”
“That’s not Saturn,” I said. “It’s not a planet.”
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s the star Sirius. It’s the brightest one in the sky.” I couldn’t help myself.
“So it has to be the closest star since it’s so bright, right?” he asked. He’d never once shown interest such as this in the night sky.
“It’s the seventh closest,” I said. “And astronomers theorize it’s so bright because of the chemical composition of its atmosphere and the mass of–” I stood, pointing and passionately speaking, an astronomy lecture in the works on the great plains of Kansas, where the cicadas cry and the wheat bows beneath a silent summer breeze, and the same stars that shone on a hundred generations of fighters and failures and fools continue, on and on.
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Mason Kiser is a fiction writer working in aviation. He lives outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma with his wife and dog. His fiction has been published in The Missouri Review.
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Charles J. March III is a quasi-writer, pseudo-musician, and counterfeit-artist currently living in California. His pieces have appeared in such places as the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, in the toilet, and in the trash. Last year he poured his blood, sweat, and tears into Blood Tree Literature’s hybrid contest, and wound up winning third place. PBS once contacted him regarding his work, but it didn’t pan out.
Another Chicago Magazine 