Wishing on a Blue Star (11 page)

They made quite a pair in their aging, eclectic neighborhood: the handsome veterinarian and his gorgeous partner with the funny name. Kip told people they could retire and simply sell Crash’s picture over the Internet, maybe even make enough money to live and some left over. Crash frowned at him when he said it, usually following up with a manly thump to his shoulder. But oh, how true it was.

Kip saw Crash turn a smile of confused gratitude on the TSA employee who helped him gather his coat, phone, and laptop into a single gray bin and walked him to a chair where he could put on his shoes. The man grinned back so hard it nearly cracked his spine. Kip frowned as he watched, knowing that the metal detectors could electrocute
him
and no one would even notice his sizzling corpse lying there until it began to stink.

“Sour grapes,” Crash muttered, standing as Kip approached.

“Maybe,” Kip shoved his feet into his shoes and pulled his watch over his hand, clamping the fastening bar. “I don’t care who has their eye on you, as long as you keep your eyes on me,
capisce
?”

Crash raised an eyebrow but continued on to their departure gate. Kip caught up with him when he stopped for coffee. When they boarded, Kip stowed their gear in the overhead bin and moved to the window seat while Crash waited in the aisle. Kip liked to look at the sky when they flew—he kept his eyes firmly on the heavens—because he didn’t care to think about being hoist in a machine tens of thousands of feet in the air. He knew Crash would take his hand when the engines roared to life, squeezing it to impart his strength and confidence. Kip laced their fingers together when the plane began to gather the power it would need to hurl them into the sky.

“You scared?” Kip asked as they began to taxi down the runway.

“No.” Crash told him.

“Because it would be all right if you were,” Kip continued. “It wouldn’t make me think less of you.”

“I’m not scared. I just like to hold your hand.” Crash gave him a reassuring squeeze.

Maybe someone looked over at them at that, Kip had long since ceased to register anyone’s disapproval. “I like to hold yours too.”

“Good.” Crash smiled, outshining the sun beyond the glass.

As they gathered momentum for takeoff Kip felt the plane tug him forward. He had that awful sensation of leaving his stomach behind, waiting for it to catch up, then
swoosh
, his shoulders were pinned firmly into his seat by the laws of physics. He looked out the window of the plane and watched as Santa Ana, then Newport Beach and the entire Orange County coastline dropped away. The plane made its daring ascent, all the more spectacularly vertical because of laws restricting noise over the beautiful and costly coastal California homes. Then there was nothing but the wide, vast ocean below them as they rocketed up and up.

“I had a terrifying dream last night,” Kip said idly as the plane shivered under them.

“You did?” Crash let go of Kip’s hand when they leveled out and lifted his paper coffee cup to his lips.

“Yes. It was so real. I dreamed about when we fell into that hole.”

“Really?” Crash turned his head. His brows formed a ‘v’ between dazzling gray eyes when he frowned. “You did?”

“Yes.” Kip laughed. “I fell into that hole and instead of you being in there with me I saw… something else entirely.”

“What?” Crash’s fingers tightened on his cup. “What did you see?”

Kip shrugged. “Some kind of creature. It was… like an angel from a cemetery. Huge, and powerful, lit by shimmering flames. Terrifying…
Jeez
. Do you remember what we ate last night?”

Crash turned to him. “You saw this? In your dream this morning?”

“I woke up with my heart pounding. It felt so real. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. Never imagined anything like that could exist. Why do you suppose—”

“Kip. There’s something important you need to know.” Crash said urgently.

Kip, cued by the sound of Crash’s voice, stopped in the middle of bringing his cup up. “What is it?” He’d long ago learned not to use Crash’s name on planes. “Tell me.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course.” Kip felt a bump and behind him; something beyond the draperies separating first class from coach started to rattle.

Crash’s normally impassive face tightened. The plane hit a pocket of turbulence and the seatbelt signs went back on. The captain’s voice came over the loudspeakers in the cockpit, but Kip’s attention was focused entirely on Crash.

“Of course. You’re—”

“I am yours, Kipling Rush.” Kip watched Crash’s seatbelt fall away when he rose to stand. He moved to the aisle, right there in First Class, and held out his hand.

“Cr…” Kip stopped himself just in time as he stared at Crash’s hand. The plane shook again, and this time, lights flickered. He caught sight of one of the flight attendants as her hand snapped out to catch hold of the bulkhead wall, and she definitely did not look pleased.

“What is it?” Kip whispered.

“I am yours, Kipling Rush” Crash said again. The plane gave a terrible shudder. A cracking noise rent the air as the aircraft heaved, knocking people to the ground. Screams erupted as the rumble of twisting, grinding metal grew louder and louder. People panicked and the plane rattled, wracked with a kind of mechanical cough. A man Kip assumed was a federal air marshal barked an order for Crash to sit down and assume the crash position. Crash ignored him.

Kipling stared at the man he’d loved for most of his life, his mouth dry with shock. He knew.
He knew
, and he’d probably known all along, that Crash wasn’t—

“
Take my hand
,” Crash commanded him in a voice he’d never used before.

Kip put his hand in Crash’s, feeling it enfolded in a warm grip, and allowed himself to be pulled close. “I saw
you
in my dream,” Kip whispered. “Saw you as you really are, didn’t I?”

“Do you trust me?” Crash asked him again, urgently, as the plane fought to stay aloft. The cabin filled with flames and smoke, making it hard to see. Crash was untouched by the chaos surrounding him. His eyes were soft. His voice was warm and imbued with the strength he’d given freely to Kip at the best of times. It flooded Kip with peace, even though this was surely the worst.

“
Chemuel
.” Kip understood. The awful noise, the terror, the panic and despair of the other passengers fell away as if they were dust particles floating in Crash’s light.

“Yes.” Crash nodded. “I am Chemuel.”

Kip’s eyes adjusted to the brightness of Crash’s fire as his clothing burned away and his wings unfolded. The flames licked away at Kip’s clothes, but they didn’t stop there, they burned away his flesh, tore at his muscles and bones, eked their way inside his body when he tried to draw in breath and filled his lungs with pain and smoke. He knew he was crying, but he couldn’t stop. He gripped Crash’s hand like a lifeline. Crash’s eyes never wavered. He never looked away. Kip felt his touch and heard his song— deep within him— in a place the fire couldn’t touch. Inside, where Kip discovered he was as ancient and eternal as Chemuel seemed to be.

“Is this…?” Kip swallowed hard, knowing his life was over, knowing he’d left so much unfinished. “Are we saying goodbye?”

“No. We will never need to say goodbye.”

“My G—”

“Shhh.” Crash hushed him.

“But… All these people. What about them?”

Crash shook his head. He grew taller and light emanated from his skin. “They are not mine.”

Crash’s wings spread with a
snap
, like great sails on an old fashioned ship. Crash held him, even though Kip knew there was nothing—there could be nothing left of him—after the fireball that had blown through the cabin when the plane burst into flames.

Whatever Kip was, whatever was left, Crash pulled it into his arms and rose with a thundering beat of his leathery, feathered wings, away from the twisted, burning metal just as the entire mass of fiery wreckage hit the Pacific ocean with a horrendous, dying hiss.

“Are you mine, Kipling Rush?” Kip heard Crash’s voice as a rumble all through his being as he was lifted up, away, skyward.

“Yes, I am yours Chemuel.”

“Then come with me.” Air pulsed around them and Crash’s song found Kip’s heart, weaving what was left of him into something entirely new. Strange and different. Powerful and eternal.

Chemuel-who-was-
his
sang their song.

Chemuel, whose music could bring him back to life.

As surely as Kip knew his life was over but had only just begun, he understood the words of Crash’s music for the first time.

“
In all the world, there is only we
.”

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Butch, meet bitch.

For a creaky old ‘mo, I’m generally pretty solid. I like that in a man, so I like to be that kind of man. I can handle problems, have a fairly stable outlook on things large and small, and for the most part, I’m unflappable when it comes to stuff that truly matters.

But once in a while....

A few posts back, I used the analogy of jumping hurdles as a way to describe the day to day dramas we all star in.

I wonder how many fans of the sport would ever admit that aside from the thrill of the race itself, the chief, albiet ilicit attraction is waiting for someone to take a tumble. Aside from relays, there is no greater potential for sheer mayhem than a bunch of people hopping over stationary, not not terribly stable, obstacles.

Usually a runner hits a hurdle and by design, the thing drops flat and the guy continues on. If he can successfully recapture his timing and speed, he might even win. Occasionally though, the drop flat design of the average hurdle will work to disadvantage, and the crash will be spectacularly gruesome. Human bodies were simply not designed to juggernaut through metal and plastic obstacles and in such a confrontation the runner will always lose, in more ways than one, and blood will fly.

Today I tripped over a hurdle that simply refused to fall away.

I woke up at 7:30 or so, delighted that I slept for four whole hours. Answered a couple of the seemingly endless rounds of emails, and promptly fell asleep again. Three hours later, I woke up again at 11:00 with one thought on my mind; I miss my truck.

Even the folks who knew me before the writing and before the cancer cannot truly understand the symbiotic relationship I have with my truck. For almost twenty years, mine has been transportation and load hauler as you’d expect, and every summer or when I was working on location, it was also my house. To put it mildly, it’s tricked out in greater detail than most full blown RVs. Just... smaller. :)

On a more esoteric level, it’s also a manifestation of my independence, though I suspect that’s true for many, many people.

I’ve not driven in over a month. Legally, I can but I decided I shouldn’t simply because that damnable fatigue hits so suddenly and without any warning at all. I could just see myself tooling down the highway and feeling that drain which signals a crash. Too likely it would become literal if I didnt have a place to pull off and damn fast.

So I dont drive. Yet this morning, for the first time in ages, I felt like I could, and boy did I want to. Just to the gas station to flip lottery tickets or something. It didnt matter where I went. All that mattered was that I did.

Silly boy, dont you know the universe conspires against you?

Before I could make my great escape and prove my self sufficiency, I discovered one of the cats mistook the counter for either a convenient tree, or a litter box. By the time I had that cleaned up, and the toaster sitting outside, plugged in and burning off any possible “overspray” in the coils, I was sweeping the back porch, waiting for the charcoal that was once bread to do it’s job.

Sweeping is such an innocent task, yet it proved to be my undoing and it robbed me of whatever reserves of energy I foolishly thought I had.

As I set the broom aside on a nice sunny day and sat down, landed really, it hit me like the proverbial truck yet again that my contract for independence, the option and ability to pick up and go at the drop of a hat without hold or hindrance from anyone, was expired.

All I had wanted to do was get in my truck, turn on some audio book, and drive. Such a simple thing that we take it for granted, maybe sometimes even see as a chore, and dont fully appreciate until it is gone.

“Butch, meet your new life. His name is Bitch.”

I wont tell you about the crying jag while sitting in my truck with the engine running and going nowhere, nor the almost fundamental need to get out and escape for a while, nor the sense of complete hopelessness that tripped me like a hurdle that didnt fall away, tangling my feet and slamming my face into the asphalt. No way could I even describe the sense of depletion that stole away my self control and showed me in unequivocal terms that no matter how desperately I wanted my life back, it simply wasn’t going to happen any time soon, if at all.

While all of that did happen, it doesnt really matter because I got a reprieve.

The kids came over to raid my Christmas boxes for decorations for their house. There is no one in the world who can shout at me from the sidelines to get up, get going, ignore the blood streaming from my nose, and run like my kids.

Very likely there is no one else for whom I’d even try.

If Doc has his way, I will be here forever, or I may be gone tomorrow, snatched out of his carefully tenacious grasp by an errant bus. Either way, for however long the race lasts, I will continue putting one foot in front of the other, running with the sound of a baby’s laughter in my ears and never looking back.

Patric

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Bludgeoning the bird