Stars and Satellites

Jimmy Johnson was born into the cold of a late fall morning, in his single mother’s bedroom. Aided by his three aunts, with old rags and a tin bucket of warm water, he opened his eyes to a new world. He, his mother and his aunts all cried, each for different reasons. Thirty four years later, Slimmy J closed his eyes to an old world. Nobody cried.

Frank sat on the hillside overlooking the park, finishing a half-pint of whiskey in the damp grass. The night was clear, he wished his mind would be that way. He’d come here many times in his years of homelessness. He always came alone–always, and only when he’d lost one of his friends. The park was as empty as Slimmy J’s alley. And that’s why he came here. He took the last shot of whiskey and, dropping the bottle, laid back waiting for the ghosts to whisper in his ear stories of a life past.

Out of the alcohol, upon the wind they came, and carried him to another hill, in another time.

“Look,” Frank pointed to a dot of star-like light, “it’s a satellite.”

Lauren looked in the direction of his finger. Her young eyes, much sharper than his.

“See it, moving across the sky there. It looks like a star.”

“Oh yeah!”

He loved her enthusiasm. It reminded him of a place he hadn’t been since he was a kid. A place where anything was possible, where imagination hadn’t been dowsed by commercials, bosses, taxes, products… She lived in a place where dreams were as real as the blades of grass poking them through the blanket.

“What’s a satt’ite?”

Frank cringed. This wasn’t going to be easy, “It’s a machine that floats around the earth, like the moon.”

“Why do they do that?”

He felt himself getting into a quagmire that would make Vietnam look like a lazy day in the park.

“People use them to talk to each other and to figure out where they are.”

“How do they do that?”

He pondered a moment.

“Well, hold out your hands. Hold them up in the air.”

She lifted her small hands and giggled.

He lightly pinched her left hand, “Imagine this hand is a mountain.”

She giggled again.

He pinched her right hand, “Imagine this hand is a person on the other side of the mountain. Now keep holding your hands so they’re lined up.”

He turned on the flashlight and aimed it at her left hand, “Now imagine this hand,” He pinched his left hand holding the flashlight, “is a person that wants to send a message to your hand. See, the mountain is in the way and your person can’t see the light.”

“Okay.”

He held up his can of Coke and held it over her hand, “Now, imagine this is a satellite.” He aimed the flashlight at the can, adjusting it until the light reflected onto her right hand, “See, I can bounce the light off the satellite, over the mountain, and your person can see it now.”

“OH!” Her eyes lit up in a way the flashlight never could, not even the sun could.

As a teacher, he was happy she understood, but as a father, he was a bit saddened that he had stolen some magic from her.

“Are the stars satellites too?”

“No, those are suns. Some of them are much, much bigger than the sun.”

“How come they aren’t as bright?”

“Because they’re very, very far away. You know how the lights of the city look small and get bigger as we drive closer?”

“Oh.”

“If they’re suns too, are there people closer to them, like we are to the sun?”

“There are so many stars that there must be other people around some of them. There are more stars than there are blades of grass on all of the earth.”

He pulled a blade of grass from the ground, “If I just pull one blade of grass from the ground, there may be a bug on it, but probably not.” He showed her the blade, free of any life, then pulled up a handful of grass. A firefly that had been hiding in the clump was startled, lit up and flew away, “But if I pull up a whole bunch of grass, then I probably will get a bug.”

“Oh. Who put the stars and people there?”

His brain seized. There was no way he was going to try to explain even his own limited understanding of astrophysics to a five year old. That isn’t what she was asking anyway. He contemplated telling her some crap about God or Nyx and the golden egg but decided the truth was always best, “Nobody really knows.”

“Oh,” she replied, with some disappointment.

“But you can believe whatever you want about that and it’s as real as anything else.”

Lauren concentrated on the sky. He could see the gears churning in her head. Several minutes passed with nothing but the sound of crickets and the occasional buzz of some winged insect zig-zagging past them. Finally she smiled, and Frank learned the origin of all the stars.

It seems that a little girl was at a huge pond one night with her dad. She was playing in the mud and decided to make mud-balls for the fireflies to play with. She made many many mud-balls and her father poured honey on them for the fireflies to eat. Soon, all of the mud-balls were covered with an unimaginable number of fireflies and they lit up. The fireflies tried to get away, but were stuck to the honey and the balls ended up rolling into the pond and floating in the sea of night reflected in the water.

Frank shook away the memory, sent the ghosts away. He gazed up at the night sky. The stars dimmed and brightened like fireflies in the midnight park. He didn’t know whether it was real or the whiskey.

He held scant hope that some muddy little girl might be gazing back.