The Stars At Night

 
The boy hurriedly pulled out of his work pants and shirt, then began peeling off underwear. One hand pulled shorts off his right leg while the other grabbed at the bedspread, sneaking under the pillow for pajamas.

The old floorboards creaked under his shifting weight. The rag rug was so thin, its colours faded from repeated washings, that it provided scant relief from the cold permeating the floor - and no longer made a pretense at cheerfulness.

Lifting the covers, he took a flying leap into the sagging centre of the iron bedstead. The sheets felt crumpled, cold and uninviting. The bed springs complained. He lay back, squinting over his head at the bare bulb. Flashes of colour swam dizzily before his eyes, and made him think of the night sky outside his window, specked with infinite coloured pricks of light.

As though to complete the nightly ritual, moths made their way through the torn screen and rattled around the bulb. He watched their helpless danse macabre, fascinated, repelled.

He felt vaguely irritated, a residual feeling of anger. That morning his father had awakened him before daylight, shaking him into awareness to tell him urgently to get the others up. The cows had broken into the oats. Stupid beasts would just stay there, eating themselves to a bloated death if they weren't driven out. Not to mention the havoc they would wreak on the crop.

At that time of the morning weak half-light flooded his bedroom. He'd blinked at his father's anxious face and mumbled "yeah, be right down, Dad ... okay", then heard his father rush downstairs.

His brothers had flailed out with their arms at him, convinced he was joking; they'd tried to roll back over to sleep, but he'd prodded them and taken a certain pleasure in doing it. Finally, they'd all rushed into the dim morning to the field closest to the house. Their trousers quickly became sodden, and Timothy was moved to reflect that such an early arousal was bad enough, but getting a soaker on such a bloody cold morning was an intense misery unknown to many outside a farm.

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Now, though, "The Watershed", his book about Johannes Kepler, one of the founders of modern astronomy, kept him awake for another two pages before he began drifting ... recalling the cold cement floor of the David Dunlap Observatory, stamping booted feet, waiting for his turn at the telescope. Uncle Fred had laughed at his obvious anticipation. Laughed not at him, but at his eagerness, his awe at seeing, hearing, the creaking dome move ponderously above them.

Tim jerked awake as the book fell forward on his chest. Just when he'd been about to take his turn and peer through the telescope. He felt cheated, even if it was only a dream.

The truth was, when he'd been at the observatory, after they'd waited so patiently for their 'turn', he'd felt keen disappointment when he finally did squint awkwardly through that extended eye to the sky. Not at all what he'd expected. But what had he expected? He hardly knew.

He was convinced if he had just another chance - even if he did have to wait again for a group of featherbrained Brownies to get slotted through, like that other time - he'd see something phenomenal ... a blazing trail of ice and gas lighting the sky, a comet no one else had yet discovered.

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During the night, the tailless Isle-of-Man cat that had been his grandfather's alter ego leaped silently on the bed, waking the boy. Tim knew, even before he opened woolly eyes, that the cat was there, fussily settling at the foot of the bed. It was as though the animal 'forgot' sporadically, that this wasn't Grandfather's bed any longer.

Timothy had tried, at first, to dredge up some sympathy for the cat as it had searched silently, endlessly, through all of Grandfather's old haunts, but nothing could dispel his hostility toward the creature. And in the beginning, Timothy had felt in some strange way that he was rejecting his grandfather through the cat. Time had erased that feeling and he no longer felt any compunction as he gathered his legs to kick the cat through the bedclothes.

The cat leaped from the bed, mewling piteously, then turned halfway to the door to glare at its tormentor, green eyes reflecting the moon.

Tim turned and pounded his pillow but felt wide awake now. He lay back and let his mind drift; thought about space, about dust motes floating through eternity, falling without direction all about him.

The fields, the top of the barn, the house, even inside the house; everything was littered with a fine particle-covering of the stuff the universe was made of. Particles of star-dust, moon-dust. His heart leaped.

Was he frightened, or was he excited by the immensity of the thought? He couldn't decide which. But he had a place in the universe, of that he was certain. He was an infinitesimally minuscule part of the whole. Every time he moved his feet, waved his arms about, he was displacing particles whose numbers were uncountable.

No, he finally told himself, he wasn't at all frightened. He was, though, overwhelmed by the hugeness of his thought.

He thought of exploding stars, novae, sprinkling the cosmos with matter; matter that through aeons of time filtered through the atmosphere to eventually touch him, Timothy MacLaren.

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During the time of the last Winter Break he had spent a week in Toronto with his Uncle Fred and Aunt Charlotte. His uncle was an amateur astronomer. Although he was also a brake-man with the C.N.R. One occupation was that of material necessity, his uncle had grinned; the other the fulfillment of his soul.

Uncle Fred had given him old copies of 'Sky and Telescope', had told him about black holes and mysterious anti-matter, opening a world of fantastic exploration to him.

From the journals Tim had learned to identify the constellations in the seasons' skies. From his very bed, he had discovered that if he shifted his head sideways and to the left, he could identify Betelgeuse, in the constellation of Orion. "Beetle-Juice", his Uncle Fred had named it, with cavalier familiarity.

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He fell asleep finally, imagining a conversation with Carl Sagan, arguing amiably for the chance of life in outer space: "Surely Timothy, you will agree? In that incredible multitude of star systems there must exist other forms of life...?"

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When his sleep-crusted eyes opened to a pre-dawn softness, Timothy thought vaguely of the night before; tried to recapture the mood of, what was it? Anticipation perhaps. Thoughts of the future. The mood was gone; thoughts remained uncrystallized; the time was not right. He was left feeling a grudging sense of accountability to his place on the farm.

He threw back the covers, irritated with himself for shrinking at anything so mundane as the cold floor. Fumbling with his clothes, he drew them on quickly, then moved through the hall, down the stairs; creeping quietly past the parlour and into the silent kitchen.

Slapping his arms across his chest in an attempt to generate warmth, he approached the sink and turned the tap, then carried a half-full basin to the summer-kitchen alongside where he cursorily splashed his face, neck and arms. He dipped his toothbrush in the same murky water, sprinkled it with salt, brushed. Finally, he swished an old tooth-gapped comb through the water and drew it across his brown thatch. Carrying the basin to the door, he emptied it in a wide sweeping motion where it arced over the hard-packed dirt of the pathway leading to the garden.

He took the path, following an offshoot which led behind the house. In the little shed he unzipped and swung in a semi-circle, amused by the pattern of the hurling stream as it changed direction, hissing into the space below. Outside, he bent to draw his palms across the damp grass, then wiped them on his trouser legs.

Back again at the summer-kitchen, he picked up two newspaper-lined baskets, then half re-traced his steps, down the path worn by generations of MacLaren feet, to the barnyard.

The house was set well above, on a gentle rise, and to reach the barn and outbuildings one had to walk into a valley with the fields sloping gently upward and away from the barn.

His first stop was at the hen-house, set by itself away from the barn. From there, the loft between the granary and the hay-mow, where another flock of hens bedded down. His last stop would be to an out-building on the opposite side, attached to the barn.

He approached the hen-house, breathing in the fresh fragrance of sweet grass, adroitly side-stepping cow pies, while intently watching three orange skippers flit about each other. He admired the butterflies; a far cry from last night's moths. Banty hens wandered randomly through the yard, scratching the dry earth.

An Old English Game Cock with brilliant plumage straddled the fence, puffing its chest, trying to decide, it almost appeared, whether or not it would crow. A beetle whirred past the cock and the bird reached to snap its beak, fluttering wings to maintain balance - and missed the insect. The beetle flew past the boy zig-zagging erratically, screeching its terror.

Inside the hen-house it was warmer; smelly and moistly dark. The dirt-encrusted window ensured the interior was perpetually dim. Once his eyes adjusted, Tim swung the door closed behind him. The hens sat brooding, humming, cackling, a soothing sound to his mother, a warning murmur to him. With his entry, the rustling noises increased. Hens fluttered nervously, adjusting their feathery bulk in their boxes, pushing eggs further under their protective warmth.

Well, he thought, he didn't like it any more than they did.

When Mother collected the eggs they never seemed to mind. Why did they hate him? Could they sense his own dislike of them? At first he had tried to emulate his mother, her soft clucking sounds, her easy assurance, but it hadn't worked - nothing did. The hens had reared their heads at him, staring coldly unblinkingly. they'd refused to budge, to shift obligingly, as they did for Mother, when he tentatively thrust his hand under their brooding forms.

He'd love to swat every chicken that picked at his hands but he knew a disturbed hen wouldn't lay. He had, though, learned to defend himself, to move quickly, feint cleverly, slip sly hands under the moist bodies for the spherical treasures. Recalling school mythology classes, he'd comforted himself with the notion that the hens were his many-headed dragon, the eggs his golden fleece.

Leaving the malevolent brood in the hen-house, he carried the two-thirds-full basket and set it on the grass, its burden ellipsoid patterns of varying light shades. He set off with the empty basket to the barn and, swinging the heavy door open, stepped inside and was about to close the door behind him, when he heard a hard clunking sound, one that defied immediate identification, but which seemed to be moving in some strange manner close to where he stood.

Narrowing his eyes in the half-light of the barn, he made out the smudgy forms of the cows in their stalls, heard the usual snuffling sounds, the shift of hooves. Overall, that same clunking sound. Then it dawned.

The bull, the bull was out of its stall: And not only was the bull out of the stall, he had half the stall with him. The animal hulked down the aisle between the stalls, carrying about its muscular neck a four-foot-high section of stall connected to the stanchion about which hung the massive chain fastening it to the animal's neck. As it slowly shuffled down the narrow passageway, the heavy frame of wood banged against the stalls on either side, bounced off, hit the bull and the sound reverberated through the big old barn. The boy watched, almost mesmerized, as the brute approached; unable for a few seconds to respond to the situation.

Then he turned, ran out the door and swung it solidly shut. Realizing he still held the basket, he dropped it and began to run up to the house. His father, he knew, would be furious. They'd bought the bull a year ago and ever since, the thick-skulled creature had been the cause of one mishap after another.

He tried to think, as he neared the house, where his father might be, and as he approached the side of the building, he heard sounds signifying that his father was at the garage, working. Turning around the corner of the house, he saw his father, head ducked under the hood of his battered old pickup.

"Dad, DAD!" the words rasped from his throat.
"Hi there, Tim" his father responded, lifting his head under the hood, but not bothering to straighten up, as though he found nothing alarming in the boy's high-pitched appeal, as though it hadn't penetrated. "What's up, son?"

"Dad, the bull ... the bull's out!"
"Out?" his father repeated blankly, disbelieving the words. "What...? He's chained to his stall!"

"No!" Timothy denied. "I was just about to go in the barn", he began to explain, forcing himself to pace the words, realizing he was almost unintelligible, the words tripping out faster than his tongue could clearly articulate. "I wanted to go up to the loft for eggs. When I opened the door that damn ... uh, that bull was coming for me ... half the stall around his neck!"

His father swore savagely, knocking his head on the truck hood. He ran crazily down the hill, made a side trip into the tool shed and emerged, just as Timothy reached the barn, with two pitch-forks. He handed one of the forks to Tim, telling the boy to stand out of the way.

The door was pushed open and there stood the bull, still bashing stupidly about. His father approached cautiously, manoeuvering the bull backward, his hands about the stanchion, struggling with the beast to back it into another, empty stall. Sweating heavily with the effort, straining, he encouraged the animal with quick prods of the fork. Finally, positioning it, although awkwardly, in the stall.

The farmer removed the chain and slipped another one over the animal's neck, securing it to the stall. Then with difficulty, the other stanchion and stall-section was dragged out.

"Goddamn thing!" the man raged, red-faced. "As if it hasn't done enough damage! It's not worth its feed nor half the bother! Damn pig-headed beast!"

Later in the day Tim went with his father, to put the bull out to pasture in a field by itself. Several hours later, his father passed the same field and the bull was gone. Calling the boys, he took Tim and Greg and they scoured the nearby fields, carrying pitch-forks. They entered the farm's hardwood bush with caution. Walking as far as the brook which fed the pond at the far end of the property, they looked about, fanned out, circled around, but saw nothing. Taking off in the pick-up, they scouted around back roads. Finally, there was nothing for it but to wait and let what might, occur.

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Every day for a week, Tim went out with his father searching the fields, the bush and nearby roads. On the eighth day they discovered their runaway. The bull stood peacefully cropping in a nearby neighbour's field. In that same field grazed the other farmer's prize Holstein cows. Tim's father paled and swung into swift response.

It was quick work to remove several cross-pieces on the snake rail fence. They drove the bull out, then home.

Tim's father thought of the bull's pasturage with the thoroughbred cattle with unease, knowing himself for a bad neighbour. Tim watched his father struggle with his conscience. In the end, the boy accepted that his father was unable to bring himself to tell his neighbour of the incident and risk the other's surely-instant anger. No farmer would appreciate his purebred stock serviced by a scrub bull; the money lost through carrying the cow through its pregnancy, the loss of her milking services, the cost of raising the calf, itself likely to be sold at a loss, would certainly not endear Tim's father to his neighbour.

Talking more to himself than to his family, Mr. MacLaren decided to load the bull up and drive it to the cattle auction barns. There'd be no profit to be gained in its sale, but neither need they anticipate further trouble from the beast.

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At the dinner table the favourite topic of conversation - Tim and Greg finishing high school, going on to Agricultural College at Guelph, eventually coming back to help their father run the farm in a scientific manner - was forgotten in the general gloom. But Tim knew that thoughts of the future, of running the farm at a profit, were never far from his father's mind. And Tim knew he was regarded as the key that would turn the lock of the farm's future.

But he'd never live that kind of life. Not if he could help it.

Lying in bed at night, looking up at the stars, he thought about his grandfather and his Uncle Fred. "That city fella" was how Grandpa used to describe his own son. And even when he lay dying, he had refused to see him.

The sky, Tim could see, looked like a dark and furry backdrop to a myriad of flowing cats-eyes. He had made his decision and he would confront his father.

He found scant comfort in the stars that night; felt, somehow, as bereft and abandoned as that goddamned cat.