Silences of Fallen Stars

Chapter 1 Though his mother told him evening would be the most polite option, Jim McCutcheon chose right after breakfast to make his visit to the Mayer home. The sun already burned bright as he aimed his ‘61 Ford Fairlane through Clearview’s wide streets, signaling another scorcher of an August day. He’d just washed the car, so the light glinted off the gleaming gold hood, forcing him to squint to see clearly. He couldn’t miss the parade of cars packed with teenagers that passed him, however. Their laughter floated through the open windows as they headed out of town to wile the hot hours away at nearby Big Blue River. None of them noticed him. They were too wrapped up in their joyous freedom, glad to be too young to worry about the draft or a job or anything else determined to steal their innocence away. As he idled at a stop sign, he watched the third car disappear in his rearview mirror. Enjoy it while it lasts. The Mayer driveway was empty when he pulled up in front of the white bungalow, another reason he’d opted for a morning visit. For as long as he could remember, Mr. Mayer always left for work at eight ten sharp to get to his maintenance job at the Clearview Municipal building by eight thirty. He never came home before six thirty and often much later, thus ensuring Jim wouldn’t have to see him at all. If Ronnie was as bad off as Mom claimed, he’d have better luck without Mr. Mayer’s strict shadow casting a pall over everything. Climbing the steps to the porch that ran the full front of the house, Jim ignored the tightening in his chest. He hadn’t been in the Mayer home in six years, not since the fall of ‘62 when he moved to Omaha to launch what he was convinced would be an illustrious education at the University of Nebraska. Ronnie had come to the McCutcheon homestead when Jim came home a few months later for Christmas, but by the time summer rolled around, Ronnie had already been drafted. He hadn’t even bothered to tell Jim about it, letting him find out from Mrs. Mayer when Jim came around the morning of his first day of break. Jim hadn’t seen him since. His hand shook as he knocked on the screen door. Would Ronnie answer? Probably not. Mom said he didn’t go out anymore, which didn’t sound like the Ronnie he’d grown up with at all. Jim might’ve been the athlete, but it was scrawny, wide-eyed Ronnie who’d insisted on hiking out to the river or offering their gardening services to the neighbors or racing to the top of Devil’s Hill on their bikes. For all the reputation he had for being a candyass, Ronnie was one of the most fearless people Jim had ever known. The inner door opened before he could dwell too long on the way things used to be, and Mrs. Mayer stepped forward to smile out at him. She had been tiny while they were growing up and was even tinier now that he was full-grown. Gray hair threaded thickly through her short black cut, while the shadows beneath her eyes darkened their normal bright blue. In a lot of ways, Ronnie looked just like her, except taller. Jim had loved her like a second mother for the better part of a decade, but the fact that he hadn’t seen her since he’d returned to Clearview for good pricked his conscience more than a little. “Well, Jim McCutcheon,” she said, her smile genuine as she pushed open the screen. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.” Stepping into the familiar living room was like stepping back in time. The Mayers didn’t have much money, and it showed in the shabby couch and scuffed wooden floors. The drapes that closed off the sun from the worst of the summer heat were the same blue floral they’d always owned, while Mr. Mayer’s chair was shiny from years of his sitting in it after he got home from work. But everything was spotless, the cushions Mrs. Mayer made every Christmas to swap out on the sofa huge and soft, the pictures that lined the walls evidence of how much she truly loved her son. This had been more of a home to Jim throughout high school than his own, even if Mr. Mayer and his quicksilver temper scared the crap out of him. He turned his head and blinked away the sudden tears so she wouldn’t notice. “I’m sorry I haven’t stopped by sooner.” He meant it, too, though he wasn’t sure he would’ve done anything differently. He hated the looks of pity he got from everybody around town as it was. If Mrs. Mayer had ever looked at him the same way, he was pretty sure it would’ve been his breaking point. “What’s important is you’re here now.” She patted his arm before edging toward the back of the house. “Let’s let Ronnie know, shall we?” Jim hesitated, glancing once at the closed door off to the side. “He’s not in his bedroom?” Having his room in the front of the house had made it a hell of a lot easier for Ronnie to sneak out and Jim to sneak in during high school. Mrs. Mayer stopped in the archway that separated the dining room from the living room. “We moved his things to the basement when he came home. He said the sunlight bothered him.” His frown lingered as he resumed following her, through the kitchen and to the narrow door that led downstairs. She knocked on it once before opening, but rather than go down, called out, “Ronnie? You have a visitor.” Jim didn’t hear him respond, but she smiled and stepped out of his way. “Go on. He’s going to love seeing you.” The stairs creaked beneath his weight as he descended. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling at the very bottom, the smell of musty dampness growing stronger the farther he got. It was cooler down here, too, enough for goose bumps to ripple down his arms when he rounded the corner at the bottom. He could count on one hand how many times he’d been down here. The basement had been off-limits, used only for storage, which a young Jim had thought made it perfect for hide-and-seek. Mr. Mayer hadn’t thought so. The day he found them down there playing, he’d sent Jim home and then given Ronnie a tanning to remember. Ronnie tried to wave it off the next day at school, but from the moment Jim saw the bruises on Ronnie’s thin biceps from where Mr. Mayer had grabbed him, Jim had never hated anyone more. They never played in the house when Mr. Mayer was home again. Jim didn’t trust himself not to hit back the next time he saw Mr. Mayer threaten Ronnie. The boxes had been shoved to the walls, stacked neatly out of the way to make the footprint as spacious as possible. The rag rug he remembered from Ronnie’s treehouse covered the middle of the concrete floor, while one of the camping cots they’d made in Boy Scouts served as the lone piece of furniture. It didn’t even have blankets on it. Instead, an army green sleeping bag was stretched out neatly atop its frame. A figure sat on the floor beside it, a plate with half a piece of dry toast sitting abandoned next to him. He was hunched forward, the brittle bow of his shoulder blades sprouting like wings from beneath his thin white T-shirt, with a tattered paperback held deftly in his long, thin fingers. One leg was bent, the book propped against his knee, but the other stretched stiffly out in front of him, an ugly metal brace encircling his lower calf and ankle. Jim tore his focus away from the injury to look more squarely at Ronnie. His black hair was shorn close, which surprised him a little. Ronnie had been discharged months ago. No need for military haircuts anymore. Plus, keeping it short exposed the splatter of puckered scars trailing from his scalp down the right side of his neck. Was that what he wanted? Everybody could see. Maybe that was the point. For all the changes, some parts of Ronnie were exactly the same. The long nose. The full mouth. The razor jaw. His heart twisted. He had waited too long for this visit. Seconds went by where neither one of them moved. The longer the silence stretched, the more uncomfortable Jim got. He knew about the leg. Most of Clearview did. It made the paper when Ronnie got shipped home. Third page, right underneath an article about the renovations at Cameron’s Hardware almost being complete. Jim cut it out and tucked it into the back of Grandma Mac’s Bible, though he hadn’t looked at it since. He also knew Ronnie had withdrawn a lot from his family. Jim’s mom had been very clear about that when she relayed Mrs. Mayer’s request to him that he stop by. Mrs. Mayer hoped Jim would be the one to finally draw Ronnie out from his post-discharge blues. Though he did his best to put on a brave face for his parents, he couldn’t help but laugh at the irony. Depression was what Jim did best these days. In his mind, this visit would play out like the blind leading the blind. But now that he was here, he realized he had it all wrong. Whatever was going on with Ronnie seemed like more than just the blues. Unsure what to say, he opted for action. He flopped down into the space against the wall opposite Ronnie, wincing at the jolt that went shooting up from his tailbone. The floor was cold against the back of his legs, and he plucked away a loose thread from the edge of his cut-off shorts. “Next time I come, I’m bringing a chair down,” he complained. He was rewarded with a glance through Ronnie’s thick lashes. He’d been wrong earlier. Not everything about Ronnie’s face was the same. The gleeful innocence in his bright blue eyes, the excited trust that had wanted to believe in the good in everyone, was gone. When Ronnie’s gaze returned to his book without his uttering a word, Jim scowled. “I don’t even get a hello? Some friend you are.” Still nothing, though Ronnie shifted to the side slightly, hiding the scars that peppered his neck. “I guess I’m not one to talk.” He couldn’t deal with the silence. Throughout their childhood, Ronnie had been the irrepressible one, chattering like a magpie whenever it was just the two of them. Jim didn’t know what to do with this sullen version except fill the void himself. “I knew you were back weeks ago, and I didn’t make the time to come by. I guess I thought you’d always call me, which isn’t really an excuse, I know, but hey, at least I’m here now, right?” He felt like he was talking to dead air. Ronnie continued to read. In the background, water rushed through pipes in a hollow echo. “I’m living out at my Grandpa’s now,” he went on. “I don’t know if your mom told you or not. Dad was pretty hacked off when I moved back, and Grandpa has been needing help out at the farm since Grandma died so it seemed like the best way to make everybody happy. Did you hear Grandma died? Probably not, I guess. I can’t see your mom sending you bad news when you were in the middle of a war zone.” “She told me.” Though he didn’t look up from his book as he spoke, Jim saw the crook of his finger against the page, noting where he was reading. “I was sorry to hear it,” he added softly. “She was the best.” He thought that because Grandma Mac had adored Ronnie just like most women did. Ronnie had a way of bringing out the protector in a lot of people, Jim especially. “How come you’re living down here?” Jim jerked his chin toward Ronnie’s brace. “Going up and down the stairs must be awful.” “They’re good for me, actually. The docs called it physical therapy.” “It doesn’t hurt?” Ronnie looked up through his lashes again, unblinking. “I didn’t say that.” “What about all your stuff?” “Did you take all your stuff out to your Grandpa’s?” Jim’s face flamed. He hadn’t. Leave it to Ronnie to know it already. “I like it down here,” Ronnie said. “It’s quiet.” “And cool.” “You cold?” “Nah,” Jim lied. “I’ve got spare blankets in that top box over there if you want one.” Jim looked at it automatically, but shook his head. “If you can deal with it, so can I.” “You don’t have to stick around on my account.” “I’m not.” Ronnie harrumphed. By the time Jim turned back to him, his nose was back in the book. “I wanted to see you,” Jim said, his voice harder from frustration. “Can’t a guy want to see his best friend?” Immediately, Jim regretted his harsh tone, especially when the muscles in Ronnie’s neck worked like he was swallowing down something huge. He shifted, ready to swing over and sit next to Ronnie instead of so far away, only to freeze in his spot when Ronnie bent the corner of the page down and set his paperback aside. “Fine,” Ronnie said. “Let’s get this over with.” He stared at him in confusion. “Get what over with?” “The inquisition. Whatever it’s going to take to make you feel better about visiting your old crip buddy after ignoring him for six years.” “I didn’t…” Anger burned away any chance he had at eloquence. Ronnie’s bitter tone made his accusation sound valid when Jim knew it was at least partially wrong. “You have no idea what my life has been like since you went away.” “You mean, since you went away. You left first, remember?” “I was always going to leave first. That was the plan!” “Really? All you did when you came home that first Christmas was boast about all your new friends and how much better everything was in Omaha. You didn’t even care about what was going on here.” “That’s not true.” “Which part?” “All of it?” Ronnie c****d a quizzical eyebrow. “So you didn’t spend two weeks talking about that stupid fraternity you wanted to get into? And all the girls who wouldn’t leave you alone? And that flake Howard you were tutoring who couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a flashlight?” He had, but the fact that Ronnie remembered all of it, even down to Howard’s name, surprised him. “You acted like you weren’t even listening to me.” That was why he’d laid it on even thicker. He’d been desperate for Ronnie to keep believing in him when Jim knew he had every right not to. “I always listened to you,” Ronnie replied bitterly. “Have you been mad at me about that this whole time?” It would explain his chilly reception and why he’d never written once after he’d been shipped off. Jim hadn’t written, either, but that stemmed from guilt. Of the two of them, Ronnie had always been the better man. Ronnie’s gaze slid sideways. “No,” he muttered. “But I was mad enough then to sign up.” The confession cut off any further argument Jim might’ve made. His world felt like it had dropped out from under him, even more than it had when he’d first found out Ronnie was gone. “I thought you were drafted.” “That’s what I made everybody think. I didn’t want Mom to be upset that I picked enlisting over everything else.” “So you went off to Vietnam because of me.” He was going to be sick. “You got hurt because I was an asshole.” “No, I got hurt because we hit a bomb in the road and it blew up the truck,” Ronnie countered. “Not everything is about you, Jim.” Such a simple sentence. It put him in his place, though, because he would be the first to admit he’d always liked considering himself as the center of Ronnie’s world. “I hated thinking of you over there,” Jim admitted. “I learned how to take care of myself. I lasted four years before I got sent home. It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been I never came home at all.” That really would’ve been worse, though Jim couldn’t imagine feeling lower than he did right now. “I’m glad you’re here.” “Why?” “What do you mean, why? You’re alive. That’s what matters. That’s all I’ve ever cared about.” Ronnie rubbed a hand over his eyes. In spite of the early hour of the day, he looked exhausted. “I don’t have the energy to fight with you, man. If that’s what you came for—” “I came for you, you i***t,” Jim snapped. “I came because your mom is worried sick over you, and because I thought for maybe a second we could pick up where we left off.” He pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the tingles in his toes where they had gone to sleep on him. “You want to know the real reason I didn’t come to see you before now? Fine. Here it is. I didn’t want to risk finding out what it was like for you to look at me like I’m a big fat failure, too. I can take it from Dad, and I can pretend I don’t see people whispering behind their hands when I come into town, but I knew that if I walked in here and had to put up with your disappointment, too, I’d probably go back to the farm and put Grandpa’s shotgun to some good use for a change.” Though he’d thought of killing himself more than once since coming back to Clearview, he’d never admitted it out loud to anyone. From the way Ronnie paled, it sounded as bad as it felt. “You don’t want to die,” Ronnie said. “And how would you know?” he spat back. “You haven’t given me the chance to say anything real.” “Blowing your head off sounds pretty real to me.” “Yeah, well, I haven’t done it yet. Which goes to show that just like everything else I’ve thought I could do, I’ve failed at that, too.” He was halfway to the stairs when Ronnie’s voice stopped him. “Don’t go.” Without being able to see how the war had changed him, the plea in Ronnie’s tone turned him back into the skinny eight-year-old Jim had found stuck up in the tree he’d climbed to get away from the pack of bullies determined to humiliate him. Jim had seen Ronnie around school, but they were in different classes—Jim had Mrs. Thurston, while Ronnie was in Mrs. Lindemann’s. He was walking home from the bus stop when he’d heard the taunts coming from the park, and when he’d gone to investigate, found three older boys throwing whatever they could get their hands on up at the pale wraith of a boy nestled high in the oak tree’s limbs. Jim reacted without thinking. He knocked down the biggest and pummeled him as hard he could until the kid cried uncle. His pals ran off at the first sign of blood, leaving Jim to coax Ronnie down with promises he wouldn’t let Ronnie get hurt again. From that point on, they’d been inseparable. Until the day Jim went off to college, anyway. “I’m sorry,” Ronnie said when Jim didn’t speak. “It’s just…you’re not the only one who’s tired of the way people look at him. I don’t know what happened with you, so I know it’s not the same, but it’s hard to sit back and take it all the time.” He laughed, a broken rattle of the sound Jim had always loved. “I’ve said more to you than I have to everybody else combined since I got shipped back, so of course you’re walking away. You’re probably better off. You don’t want to know what goes on in my head.” Slowly, Jim turned around. Ronnie had buried his head against the arms he folded on top of his bent knee, retreating from him as much as he’d retreated from the world by hiding out here in the basement. “I don’t want to fight.” Ronnie didn’t move. Jim ventured a few steps closer. “I wasn’t lying about wanting to be friends again, but I get that we can’t just pick up where we left off. A lot’s happened. But I don’t think we’re all that different, not deep down. Nobody ever knew me like you did. I’d like to think nobody knew you like I did, either.” His shoulders hitched, but still, Ronnie didn’t speak. “We don’t have to talk,” Jim said. “But I don’t want to leave.” When Ronnie lifted his head, his eyes were bleak. “I’m not good company.” “Neither am I.” “Are you supposed to report to Mom on everything I say and do?” Jim shook his head. “She just wants to think you’re going to be okay.” He paused. “Are you?” “Seems like that’s a question I should be asking you.” But a glimmer of humor shone for the briefest of moments in his face before getting snuffed out. “No talking.” “Okay. Can I sing?” His joke prompted a small snort. He’d take it. “Only if you want me to kick you.” “With that leg? I think odds are on my side.” With the tension eased, he came back the rest of the way, opting to stretch out on the cot rather than the hard floor again. When Ronnie pulled out a magazine and tossed it at him, he caught it and rolled onto his stomach to read it comfortably. Bart Starr stared up at him, but Jim refrained from mentioning he’d already read this issue of Sports Illustrated when it came out last year. After all, it was new to Ronnie. And they both had a lot of catching up to do.