Free Stars Go Blue by Laura Pritchett

anyway. No words needed. Oh, Renny. He holds her closer to him. With a desire to be the one for her. Just like their first date. When they were young and giddy and had left a dance to drive up to see the lights from the top of the dam. How they got out of the pickup to look down at the town, the foothills all around them, and he pulled her suddenly to him, violent almost, not out of sexual desire but the other kind. To simply be perfect and whole together. The universe and love and these two particular souls named Ben and Renny. A fire burned up through their spines and was a huge energy that sprouted upand soaked the entire universe. For as long as the hug lasted. Everything made sense. Had a name and no name. The most complete moment of his life.
    He rocks her back and forth, back and forth, and she holds him just as tight. But they cannot stay that way forever, and there’s something he wants to say before the dust comes back, so he says it: “Renny, there’s something to say before . . .” He pushes his lips into an O , so as to form a word. He can feel his body shaking, a small tremor, the tremor of age and effort, and he hates it. He wants to say: I think you are the only person on the earth who will understand what I am going to do. I think you will be proud of me. I think I’ll do right by everybody. I say good-bye to you. I say good-bye to the real you. The one that lives under your white hair and your familiar face. The real and true you that resides underneath the skin. The you I loved. On that night with the lights of the town and the lights of the stars. But none of those words will grow on his tongue. So he says, “Renny—” and then there is a long silence.
    Renny finally hiccups again and touches his arm. “I think I know, Ben.”
    â€œIt’s all right?”
    â€œIt’s all right.”
    â€œAnd so.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIt’s her birthday today.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell then. After lunch I need a nap.”
    â€œYes, Ben. You always take a nap.”
    â€œThey make me feel better.”
    â€œI know it. Ben? Were you ever lonely?”
    He pauses. “Maybe I quit thinking about it. Off my radar screen.”
    â€œSo it got better?”
    When he doesn’t answer, she says to herself, “I never did. Learn to quit thinking about the lonely. But I did start to live more narrowly. Occupying myself with other things. Instead of the big things. Like living well. And deeply. And being passionate about something. And being vital. Ben? Ray wrote us a letter. Today. He wants to come visit.”
    â€œI could use a bite—”
    She bows her head. “Let’s go get a bite to eat, then.” She takes his hand—she’s holding his hand!—and they leave the pink flowers and the smooth river rocks and the snow in this garden of stones.
    But the dust blows back in. The dust of the dead. So he says to himself: My name is Ben Cross and I am seventy-six and I have been a rancher all my life although now I own no cattle. Instead I have a disease in my brain. I own twelve hundred acres of pastureland below the Rocky Mountains and the snow remembers what it’s like to be water. One night I held this woman and it was love, and our lives on the ranch were heaven. There is a man who wrote a letter.
    On the way back to the truck, Renny pauses, looks to the right, and points for him to see. It takes him a moment to find what she’s looking at. It’s a funeral up ahead at the other end of the cemetery. The sky is starting to spit snow on a group of people, on the far end, but even from here, he can see Anton step from the sheriff’s cruiser. But wait. It’s not Anton, it’s Ray. Maybe it is Ray? The man who wrote a letter? He stops, startled. Sees a dark head, sees the wide shoulders and thick stance of a man.
    He finds that his voice is quiet but then rising and soon yelling. His own voice is