Falling Stars (6 page)

“Really, all of this is unnecessary…” Sean said, his voice level and calm.
 

He was the only one calm, because Crank yanked the steering wheel over as he braked suddenly, pulling the car into a sickening skid down the emergency lane. All of us, the spider probably included, screamed at the top of our lungs as the car skidded to a stop.

Half a breath later, Carrie, Crank and I jumped over the sides out of the car only to find ourselves faced with a police car screeching to a stop behind us.
 

When the cop saw all of us pouring out of the car, he popped his car door open and shouted, “Everybody on the ground!”

Carrie screamed again, because the police officer, who saw all of us jumping out of the car like clowns, or gang bangers maybe, drew his weapon.

I dove to the ground. So did Crank and Carrie.
 

Everything went silent. Except for Sean, who was still in the car, and held the wriggling, six-inch diameter spider up in the air. He held it firmly by its thorax, and the various appendages waved and wriggled in a nightmarish display.
 

“I told you all, don’t worry, it’s not a tarantula.”

The cop went pale. “What the—what? Put that thing…”

Sean smiled. “It’s okay. This is a Calisoga spider. It’s often mistaken for a tarantula, but his venom isn’t dangerous to humans. He will bite, though.”

“Sean, for God’s sake,” Crank said.

The cop put his pistol away. “Son, can you step out of the car and put that…spider…um….”

“Yes, sir,” Sean replied.
 

Everyone waited in silence. Sean opened the door and got out of the car, still holding the spider in his left hand.

“Can I see that?” the police officer asked.

Crank stirred, and the cop said, “You stay right where you are.”

Crank froze.

The police officer walked over to Sean. “That’s some spider.”

“He crawled out from under the dashboard.”

“That why you all were all over the road?”

“Yes,” Sean affirmed. “Plus, my brother’s a terrible driver. He was speeding before, but I convinced him to slow down. Did you know the likelihood of an accident increases three percent for every additional kilometer per hour?”

“That sounds serious,” the police officer agreed.
 
“You sure this little guy ain’t poisonous?”
 
He poked a finger at the spider, who waved its legs aggressively. I shuddered.

“He isn’t. But his bite will hurt.”

“How do you know it’s a him?”

“Educated guess,” Sean replied. “You can’t be one hundred percent sure. But this one, if you look here…”
 
He pointed at the spider’s…stomach?

Carrie looked up. “Can I see?”

I shuddered again.
 

The cop shrugged. “Come on,” he said and Carrie got up, brushing dust off her front as she approached Sean and the cop.

 
“Right here on his abdomen,” Sean continued, pointing, “you can see
apiandrous fusillade
.”
 

“The
what?”
the cop said.

“It’s um…kind of a silk-spinning gland,” Carrie supplied, which caused the cop to do a double take that she had a clue what Sean was talking about.

“Male spiders have an extra set on their abdomen. Or at least…most do,” Sean explained.

“It’s hard to tell without a female to compare it to,” Carrie responded.
 
“People mistake the gender of spiders all the time.”

“It’s true,” Sean told the cop, who stared at them both incredulously. “Even experts sometimes can’t tell if a spider is male or female.”

I looked up and met Crank’s eyes. The cop hadn’t told us to get up, and I wasn’t going to without permission. Crank looked over to Sean and Carrie, then back to me.
 

He grinned.
 
I did too. Who else in the
world
but our siblings would have known that?

“Well,” the cop said, “I guess if that little bastard had crawled up between my legs I’d have been driving all over the place too. I’m gonna let y’all go with a warning. But slow down and be careful.”

“A
re you sure this is the right place?”
I asked.

Julia was in the front passenger seat, peering at her map. She’d marked a big black circle with a Sharpie showing our destination, back a million miles and almost as many hours ago when she was planning this road trip.

She looked at the map, then back up at the gate.
 
Her face looked frustrated and confused.

Thirty minutes before, we’d passed a billboard welcoming us to town.

SEMINOLE

Gaines County

#1 OIL PRODUCER

#1 COTTON PRODUCER

#1 PEANUT PRODUCER

#1 PEOPLE ANYWHERE

The sign was clear enough. The residents of Seminole, Texas, thought they had everything going for them. The left side of the sign even boasted a twenty-foot high number 1, extending well past the top of the billboard.
 
Not far past the sign, we passed an old, rusted-out hulk of a 1960 Plymouth Valiant. Weeds and scrub grass grew out the rear windows of the car, which was a mottled mix of grey primer and brown rust.
 

The road into town was bordered on both sides by scrawny bushes, scrub grass and dirt all the way to the horizon. For a while, the only sign of human habitation was the power and telephone lines which ran from pole to pole down the left side of the increasingly narrow road.
 
No stripes adorned the cracked and buckled pavement, and in some places soil and sand covered part of the road.

Julia stared at the gate beside the road, her face worried. Then she looked back at the map.

“This must be the wrong place,” Carrie said. “Are you sure we’re in America?”

Sean offered up some helpful information, as usual. “Actually, even though 85 percent of Americans live in cities or suburbs, more than 90 percent of the land area is rural. This is far more typical than Boston or San Francisco, for instance.”

“I’m pretty sure this is…it,” Julia said, her voice trailing off.

It
was a parcel of land that looked close to the size of South Boston, scattered with undergrowth, a mountain of discarded and rotting tires covering the ground to the left of the deeply rutted gravel driveway.
 
On the right, several abandoned vehicles sat rusting in the sun.
 
A dirty and rusted white trailer sat almost on the horizon at the end of the long driveway.

“I guess we just go on in,” Julia said doubtfully.
 

I shrugged and turned into the driveway. The car immediately bumped in a deep rut.

“Can I tell you something?” Sean spoke quickly. “In most states, the Castle Doctrine says that the person inside that trailer can’t be prosecuted if they shoot all of us.”

Carrie raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“It’s true,” he said. “In 1992, it even happened in Louisiana. A sixteen-year-old boy was shot and killed because he knocked on the wrong door looking for a Halloween party.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake.
“Sean, knock it off,” I reprimanded.

“Nobody’s going to shoot at us,” Julia assured us. “We’re at the right place. I’m sure of it.”

She didn’t look sure at all.

“Is that true?” Carrie asked Sean.
 

“His name was Yoshihiro Hattori. He was a Japanese exchange student and got lost and knocked on the wrong door.”

Carrie sighed sadly. “That’s horrible.”
 

“Don’t worry,” Sean said. “Julia’s sure this is the right place.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror.
 
Carrie didn’t look happy at all.
 
The car hit another deep rut, bouncing us all in our seats and probably doing irreparable harm to my car.
 

“It might help if you don’t drive into the deepest holes.” Julia stating the obvious was clearly designed to help me stay calm.

“Thanks, sweetheart!” I replied, forcing myself to maintain a grin.

“I’m just saying…” she began.

“Don’t.”

She folded her arms across her chest and looked off to the horizon.

“Who exactly is it we’re going to see?” Sean asked.

“Barry Lewis,” Julia said.

“He was her bodyguard,” I explained.

“Don’t be snarky,” she countered. “He was the only real parent Carrie and I had when we were in Belgium.”

Of course I knew that. Julia had talked about Barry Lewis a lot, so much so that I actually felt a little envious of him. During her father’s tour as a Senior Chief Muckety-muck for NATO in the early nineties, a security detail was assigned to the entire family. It seemed a little crazy, but true enough. I guess if I was that important of a guy, I’d want to make sure my family was protected, too.
 

I hadn’t met Barry Lewis yet, but I’d never clear my mind of the vision she’d described. A lonely girl, eleven years old, with parents too busy to spend time with her, tagging along behind her Marine Corps bodyguard as he worked on his classic cars in the embassy garage. Before we met, Julia was the loneliest person in the world.
 

I didn’t want her to be lonely any more.

At the end of the driveway, in a loose row, were five cars. All of them classics. Three on blocks, all five of them in various stages of repair and restoration. A truly ancient car, a Ford Model A, was parked a little closer to the house. The Model A was highly polished, chrome and wood paneling gleaming, the whitewall tires flawlessly clean, spokes polished and reflective.

The trailer was a large doublewide with a wood front deck decorated with potted plants. A dog barked inside as I stopped the car, and a moment later the front door opened and a beautiful German shepherd with a shiny coat of grey and brown ran out of the house, followed by a large man.

The man wore jeans and a blood red t-shirt with the USMC logo over the pocket. He was almost bald, with a very short fringe of salt and pepper hair, but he didn’t look old. He had thick pistons for arms and the t-shirt was stretched by tightly bunched shoulder and chest muscles. His nose was flat against his face and slightly crooked. This guy was a warrior and knew it, but his face was round and his smile infectious. I couldn’t figure out his ethnic makeup. It would be hard to find a name more Wonder Bread than Barry Lewis, but his facial features were almost Polynesian. I wasn’t going to ask.

Julia’s breath caught when she saw him. Then she jumped out of the car and ran up the stairs.

Lewis held his arms out and she threw hers around his neck. She didn’t see it, but I did—his eyes went red and wet with tears as they embraced.

“Julia Thompson,” he said quietly, his voice catching. “I never thought I’d see you again, baby girl,” he admitted in a ragged, rough voice.

Jesus Christ,
I thought, looking at him. First, he was massive. Frightening. Second, he was clearly completely undone by the sight of Julia as an adult.

 
Sean and Carrie stepped out of the car. Carrie was tentative as she watched her sister greet the man.

Lewis smiled, breaking off the embrace. “You must be little Carrie. Do you remember me?”

“A little,” Carrie admitted almost shyly. “I remember you were huge, and your blue uniform. That’s about it.”

“Not surprised,” he said. “You was pretty young last time we saw each other.” He reached out and pulled her into an embrace.
 

Even though she barely remembered him, Carrie’s face did some interesting things, her eyes watering.
 
And then she said something in a breathy voice that nearly broke my heart.
 
“Thanks for taking care of my big sis when she needed it.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said good-naturedly, “y’all are gonna make me cry. Let’s get inside.”

At that, the spell was broken. Julia introduced me and Sean, and the four of us, plus the German shepherd, followed Lewis inside. Just inside the door was a surprisingly spacious and well-kept living area. Two couches sat at right angles to each other, surrounding a glass-topped coffee table.
 
The central wall was dominated by a 24x36 inch photograph of a much younger Barry Lewis in his dress blues with the three stripes of a Sergeant, holding a beautiful blonde woman in a wedding dress.
 
He leaned back in the photo, one heel kicked out behind her, a tremendous smile on her face, their eyes meeting each other.
 
The photo was surrounded by a mix of family photos including two little girls, both of them with dark hair and eyes.
 

I paused near the door as the dog began to bark again.

“Monica,
sit
.”

“Your dog is named Monica?” Sean asked.

“Well, yeah. Monica Lewinsky.”

Julia winced and Carrie laughed out loud.

A woman popped her head in from the kitchen.
 
“Hi, y’all. I’m still cooking, but I’ll come introduce myself in a few.”

“You just get in there and cook, woman,” Lewis teased.