Blue Paper Stars

The cold, Appalachian air rolled down the mountain, filling the valley with a frothy-white mist, so quickly, that it sloshed back up the barren, winter hills like a hastily poured bowl of milk. The mist seeped through Brennan’s gloves and into his knuckles just as fast. Resting a palm on the shovel’s rust-eaten handle and another pushing on the small of his back, He stretched and gazed into the cloud covered sky. The air smelled thick with remnants of last night’s storm, harrowed earth, and iron. Leaning an elbow on his shovel, he began massaging circles into his palms, rubbing off fragmented rust and dried blood from the deep lines in his hands. Noticing how much blood was left, he began to rub his palm feverishly, panting so hard his breath was visible in short bursts, so thick he couldn’t see his hands, so red all he could see was red, so loud all he could hear was -- until a blister popped. The sharp pain brought him back into his body and all he could do was stare at his hands, rubbed raw, pulsating in harmony with the rhythm of his heartbeat.

“What the Hell are you doin’ over there?” A voice echoed, snapping Brennan back to reality.

“I got blisters,” he replied foggily, holding up a beaten palm as proof.

“Well, so do I, but do you see me bitchin’ ‘bout ‘em?”

Brennan shook his head as he tore the bottom of his shirt, fashioning it into a damp, soiled ribbon.

“I’m doin’ most of the God damn work anyhow,” the voice mumbled.

“You best watch your mouth, Talbot,” Brennan barked as he coiled the ribbon around his hand securing it with a tight, angry knot.

“Whatever,” Talbot chuckled, “It don’t matter none; if we wasn’t before, we sure is dammed now.”

Brennan shifted his weight uncomfortably on the shovel causing the blade to dip into the ground as smooth as molasses onto a spoon. He stomped one foot on the lip of the blade, piercing the earth deeper, grunting and huffing as he tossed black soil over his shoulder. He whispered the Lord’s prayer over and over under his breath as he toiled in the dirt, thinking of his daughter, Lydia, laid up in a hospital bed. Her weak heart, small and fragile like a bird’s, still beating, he hoped, still fighting. God will forgive me, Brennan thought as he tried to swallow the burning lump in his throat, He must.

He reached into his deep coat pocket and pulled out a little, black book which he fumbled and dropped in the mud. Cursing under his breath, he picked it up, and wiped it as clean as he could with the crude bandage desperately clinging to his hand. Taking care not to dirty the pages, he flipped through the book, stopping every so often to admire Lydia’s handwriting. Smooth, light, and sure, each letter flowed seamlessly into the next like waves cresting and breaking silently onto undisturbed sand. After Catherine died, Lydia would hide herself away in different rooms of the house, copying her mother’s favorite poems out of old, dusty academic tomes into the little, black book. That way, she could carry them with her everywhere; she could carry her mother everywhere.

Brennan continued to flip through the book until he reached a poem boorishly scratched onto a page. Compared to his daughter’s, the contrast was stark. His letters looked more like the lines in tree bark; jagged, callous, and raw. It seemed almost a sin to have the two in the same book. For the last month, he had been copying the poems down for Lydia out of the old textbooks. Her favorites distinguished by tiny, blue stars colored over the page numbers in the top corners. Brennan would copy a new poem in the book before each visit to the hospital so he could read to his daughter and watch her bird like heart ruffle its feathers after every line.

“And death shall have no dominion,” he whispered as he read.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not

And death shall have no dominion.

“This’ll be the easiest money you ever made, huh?” Talbot’s voice mingled with the mist in the air, “Stretchin’ n’ readin’, takin’ in the view. Go ‘head, take yer boots off n’ wiggle them toes in the mud. I’ll go ‘n fetch you some honey batch whiskey to sip on.”

“Sorry,” Brennan said as he fumbled the book back into his pocket.

“Don’t you sorry me none,” Talbot grumbled as he pressed his shovel into the ground, “I ain’t never had no use fer an apology. Caint eat ‘em, caint spend ‘em, caint do shit wit ‘em. Hell, you think a ‘sorry’ woulda worked fer this sonofabitch?” Talbot nudged a blood-stained burlap sack with the muddy tip of his shovel. “Nope, no sir. He’d a been in the same sack, same hole inna ground, same hole in his head. Only he said ‘sorry’ first.”

Brennan glanced at the lifeless, brown sack quickly looking away, pulling his hat just over his eyes. Both men labored in silence for a few long moments. The only sound made by their shovels scraping up the dark, rocky soil.

“What you think he done?” asked Brennan breaking the silence.

“Don’t know. Don’t right care neither. All I know is, he got one big bounty on ‘im,” Talbot looked up at Brennan and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand leaving a dark streak of dirt in the creases. His mouth stayed slightly open; his breath visible.

“What man is worth twenty thousand dollars?”

“I don’t know, Brennan,” Talbot answered in annoyance. “All I know is, he got one big bounty on his sorry ass, n’ me n’ you is splittin’ the money. Fifty-fifty. Don’t matter what kinda man he was or what he done a’ cause he’s deader than dead can git.”

Brennan nodded, satisfied with the answer. “What you gonna do with yer half?”

“Dammit, Brennan. You got more questions than a babe teethin’ on his momma’s tit.”

Talbot placed his shovel on the bank and stretched his arms over his head before resting his hands on the nape of his neck. “Figure I’ll finally get outta here, ain’t nothin’ but bad luck, ugly memories, ‘n angry people. Stop havin’ to scrape by in the coal mine. Maybe go to Nashville up aways. Get me a pretty girl with yellow hair that smells like fancy soap,” He smiled. “I used some uh that fancy soap once in a hotel. My daddy brung me along for a trip down to Georgia when I was a boy. I cin barely remember my daddy, just lil’ thangs here ‘n now, but I remember the smell uh that soap, clear as day,” He breathed in deeply. “Fresh milk, honey, them purple flowers that make ya sleepy,” he laughed quietly, turning to Brennan, his face turned somber. “How ‘bout yerself?”

“Them hospital bills ain’t nothin’ to laugh at,” Brennan said.

“Lydia, huh,” Talbot said as he pulled himself onto the bank. The entire front of his body now painted black with mud.

“Yessir, ‘n once she gets to feelin’ better, I’ll fix us a quiet, little place up on that hill next to Virgil Hodge’s farm. Hopefully have enough left over, after the bills ‘n the buildin’, to send her to school where her momma went. She’s always talkin’ up a storm ‘bout them fancy books; sendin’ herself into a right frenzy,” he laughed as he reached for Talbot’s outstretched hand.

Once both men were out of the hole and standing on the ledge, they set their shovels aside, and walked over to the burlap sack, each of them grunting as they took an end. Brennan cradled the dead man’s head in his hands before sliding his arms, almost numb from all the digging, under the rigid shoulders while Talbot locked on the dead man’s ankles. Both breathing hard, they heaved and threw the sack into the hole.

“I’ll get the shovels,” said Talbot, turning his back on the ledge.

Brennan wiped his hands together and retied the makeshift bandage over his knuckles. He patted the little, black book over his coat pocket and thought of Lydia. Her raven-black hair pooled around her collarbone. Her light, raspy voice tinkling like bells whenever she read poetry out loud. Her eyes the color of stones in a creek bed soaking up the sun through the water. How much she looked like Catherine. He smiled slightly, gazing at the mountain, thinking how she was nothing like him at all.

As Brennan turned around, the sound of a gun shot echoed in the valley.

He felt dizzy and a dull pain nagged in his stomach much like being hungry after waking up from a long nap. He reached down, touched his belly, and when he pulled away, fresh blood stained the bandage on his hand; a red so dark and deep it looked almost blue.

“Talbot?” he whimpered, looking up in confusion, only to stare down a matte-black barrel of a Smith & Wesson.

“I’m sorry,” Talbot choked. “I hadn’t planned on this, but errybody knows Lydia ain’t gonna make it once winter come, ‘n the good Lord knows you won’t be long for this world after. That money would just git ate up by the bank since you ain’t got no other kin. Yer a good man, Brennan, but good ain’t always enough to make it in the world.” He repositioned his fingers on the gun, “I seen it happen to my daddy. I seen it happen to them other fellas in the mines. They just get ate up by the world. It’s a damn sickness! I seen it start happenin’ to you ‘n I caint let it happen to me!” he yelled to hold back the tears.

“Caint do shit with an apology, Talbot,” Brennan coughed. A small purl of blood collected in the corner of his mouth. He reached into his pocket resting his hand on the little, black book for comfort. Lydia’s little book of poems. Catherine’s poems.

Talbot fired once more out of fear that Brennan was reaching for a gun. The shot echoed just as loud as the first and Brennan fell backwards into the pit. He didn’t feel his body land on the ground, nor did he feel his wounds, only a light throbbing in his hands where the blisters had popped and the cool mist settling onto his brow.

Fragments of light fringed the edges of the clouds for mere seconds before they were swallowed up by the great, swelling pack that crept across the sky. He could hear the ring of Lydia’s laughter and saw her clutching a small library of books against her chest. She began to spin around and around, twirling so fast his eye couldn’t untangle which was her spine or the books’. All the colors seemed to meld into one. The treetops, swaying in the wind, beckoned him, the clouds howled in mourning, and the mountain itself seemed to bow and give way. And death shall have no dominion, he thought.

“No dominion.”

Cited Works

Thomas, Dylan, and Paul Muldoon. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The Original Edition. Original ed., New Directions, 2010.