Walking Backwards - Episode 23
A starr falls from the sky and Drew is given a mission.
This is the twenty-third episode of Walking Backwards, the third collection of not quite true tales of Texas. Previous collections are:
The Cold Days of Summer - If you are new to these tales and the type who likes to know how things started I would recommend starting here.
The Hollow Men - the second collection of not quite true tales of Texas.
New episodes are posted (almost) every Sunday. You can move easily between episodes via links to the previous and next episode.
If you are new to these not quite true tales of Texas but are the type who likes to dive right in you could start with the prologue to Walking Backwards. The prologue provides a summary of the first two collections and descriptions of the major characters you will be reading about in Walking backwards.
In our previous episode, episode 22 of Walking Backwards, the dogs and the dead spin a lesson for Drew to ponder, and Mark lets Drew know that once again he bas been completely confident but utterly wrong.
Falling Starr
I'm in the field. No one is waiting for me. The land looks the same, trees in the distance, ankle to mid calf high wild grass swaying in the light breeze but this is a part of the field I don't think I've been to before. It just doesn't seem familiar.
I start walking. Might as well, if I don't know why I am here, then I might as well walk and see if anything or anyone shows up.
I had been walking for awhile when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye, off to the left. It was like there was a line running across the field. It looks man-made and that is something new for me in the field. I've seen the glow on the horizon, according to Tommy the glow of the street lights of a small town, but I've never seen the town. I've never seen anything man-made in the field.
I walk towards the line and as I get closer I realize what it is: a fence. A wire fence, with fence posts, probably cedar, every 20 feet. Once I get to the fence I see it is a knotted, not barbed, wire fence. The posts are three feet tall, and three lines of knotted wire run parallel from post to post, the first line about 12 inches off the ground, the second 24 inches and the third running an inch below the top of the fence posts.
I look over the fence and damn if the grass isn't greener on the other side.
I look out across the field and see nothing new. The field on the other side of the fence seems like the field on this side of the fence, save for the fact the grass is greener on the other side. When I look far out past the fence I can almost see a haze, like how you sometimes see the air wavering near the horizon on a hot summer day.
I wait to see if anything is going to happen. Nothing does. I step over the fence and see the field, the world, beyond the fence.
I do notice is that it is hotter on the other side of the fence, not much, but noticeable. I step back over the fence, back to the side I came from and immediately notice the temperature is cooler. I step back over again and the temperature is warmer. Something is going on, but I'm not sure what it is. I start walking out into the new field, away from the fence, towards what I do not know.
Time passes. That's the thing about the field. I really don't know how to measure time there. It doesn't seem to be in synch with time back in the waking world.
The air continues to grow warmer the further I walk from the fence. There's noise here, noise beyond the gentle sound of the grass moving in the breeze. I can't identify the noise and it seems to be increasing in volume the further I walk. I can't tell what direction the noise is coming from, other than than it seems to be coming from above me. I look up, nothing but bright blue sky, with a handful of scattered clouds. I can see nothing that explains the sound.
Then I hear another sound, this one from my left. It is a familiar sound, that of a dog barking. I look to my left and I see a dog running towards me, barking loudly, announcing his arrival. The barks aren't warning barks, they're just barks, barks of "Hello, do you see me? Don't leave." I see him and I don't leave. The dog is a large yellow lab, running hard and fast. As he runs and barks every once in awhile he looks up at the sky. I look up and there is still nothing I can see but I do notice the sound I heard earlier is a little louder.
The lab reaches me, panting hard, but wagging his tail just as hard. He sits down next next to me and I reach down and pet him. He's wearing a collar and on the collar there is a tag. I kneel down to read the tag. Hunter, nothing else, no owner information.
"Hello, Hunter. How are you? What are you doing here, boy?"
Hunter lifts his right paw. I shake it and he smiles at me. He doesn't say anything to me, he just smiles and looks up past me, beyond me, to the sky. I follow his eyes and I see something falling from the sky. At first it is a dot, no shape at all, but it grows larger and as it grows larger, the sound grows louder.
Larger, louder, larger, louder, larger, louder.
The shape has taken form, it has legs, arms and a head and all of them are flailing wildly. It is a man falling and as he falls from the sky he grows larger and the sound grows louder. I can finally tell the sound comes from the man. He's screaming.
"Sssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhheeehhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeiihhhhhiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttt!"
And then bam! The man falling from the sky hits the ground a few feet away from Hunter and me. The man hits the ground hard, so hard that a dust cloud rises up from the impact. As the dust settles, I see that Hunter is prancing, waiting for the man to rise up.
"Damn, that hurt!" said the man as he sat on the ground, trying to collect his bearings.
"Are you all right? I've never seen anyone fall from the sky here."
He nodded his head, looked at me and said "You've been here before?" I nod my head yes as he looks around and says "I've never been here. What is this place?"
"I don't know. It's a place I come to see the dead. This is a different part of the place, different than what I'm used to, but I'm guessing it's all a part of the same place." I kept talking, but the only part of what I said the man paid attention to was the first part, about being this being a place where I see the dead.
"The dead, you see the dead here? What does that mean for me?"
"Odds aren't good. I've only seen one other live person here, and he died shortly thereafter."
The man stood up, dusted off his clothes, straightened his jacket, stretched and worked the kinks out from his fall. "Sucks for me, I guess, but I had a feeling this wasn't Ft. Worth. That's where I'm from. Fell asleep last night, thought I was dreaming about falling from the sky then when I hit the ground wondered if it was more than a dream. Don't feel too bad, even after that fall. Scared the shit out of me, the falling."
I nodded my head in agreement and realized that the man looked familiar. Guess the same thought came to him because he said "I know you." He then looked at Hunter, who by this time was nearly out of control trying to be calm, but so excited to see the man.
"Hunter?" Hearing his name spoken by the man Hunter leaped up, charged the man, knocked him back down to the ground, and stood over him, licking him furiously. Hunter acted as if he had found his long lost best friend. That's when it all clicked for me. The man was Hunter's human and I did know the man, or a younger version of the man. I had known Hunter too, a long time ago.
"You're Starr Feeler. We knew each other in junior high at Bonham. Hunter was your dog. I came over to your house a few times. You never showed up at Permian. What happened to you?"
Starr was sitting up now, giving Hunter a good rub down.
"Yeah, I'm Starr. And, yeah, Hunter was my dog back then. You're... Drew, right? I remember you coming over, one time with another guy, I think Rick was his name, yeah, that was his name!"
I nodded yes.
Starr kept petting Hunter. "Guess that it's for me then. Hunter died when I was a senior in high school. We moved to Crane the summer between 9th and 10th grade. I graduated from Crane High School in 1976, probably the same year you graduated from Permian. That was a long time ago. Hunter has been dead a long time, and now I see him with you. I'm dead, I can take that, but what does that mean for you? Are you dead?"
That's a hard question to answer, considering how the last few years have been. I could say part of me was dead and I wouldn't be lying.
"No, not yet anyway. But I come here in my dreams and sometimes I see people I know who have died."
Starr continued to pet Hunter. "You know, his name is a bit of a joke. My Dad bought him to be a hunting dog. He was the right breed, real smart, trained easily, but couldn't stand the sound of a firearm. Fire a shotgun or a rifle and Hunter would cower. My Dad tried to break him of his fear on a couple of hunts, but didn't have any luck. He became my dog. He was a damn good friend until the end."
Starr paused for a moment, I guess taking in everything as best as he could.
"Hunter is the only dog I ever had. When he died it hurt too much, I couldn't even think of having another dog. We grew up together. I would go to school and he would wait for me every day in the backyard. When I was in elementary and junior high he would would hear or smell me as I walked up to our house. I tried to sneak up on him more than once, but never could. He always would know I was there before I got to the gate. He would bark twice, two loud, joyous barks. I would open the gate and he would be sitting there, tail swishing hard, just so excited to see me. Every day he would be there, every day, just glad to see me. He could turn the worst day around. No matter what happened I always knew Hunter would be glad to see me.
"Then we got old. By the time I was a senior in high school he was fourteen years old and his last year was hard on him. He lost his energy, spent most of the day sleeping, sometimes in the back yard, but most times we left him in the house. My Dad would leave first, he left for work every day by 6:00 am. My Mom would leave for work a little before 8:00, then I would leave a few minutes later. Most times that last year we walked out of the house with Hunter dead asleep by the kitchen door. I would kneel and pet him before I left, his tail would swish and then I would leave for school. Hunter got old.
"That last year when I got home from school I would walk in the house and call out his name. For awhile he would walk over to me, lean against me as I petted him but the last couple of months, April and May, I would find him lying on his bed by the kitchen door. Sometimes he would be asleep and he would wake when I knelt down and petted him. His eyes would open slowly, but there was always a shine in them, like it was the greatest thing in his day to see me. Many times it was the greatest thing in my day to see him. "
All this time Starr had been petting Hunter, who was lying on the ground next to Starr, his head in Starr's lap, his tail swishing back and forth as Starr petted him and talked about him.
"That last day in May. That was hard. I walked in the house, called his name, walked into the kitchen and found him on his bed. I knelt down to him. He lifted his head slightly, so I could hold it in my hand, his tail thumped once. For several minutes I petted him, telling him what a good dog he was. Then he took in a shallow breath, shivered for a second and that was it. That was it. He was dead. I sat there, kneeling bedside him, holding his dead head in my hand. I didn't cry, but God damn, it hurt like hell on the inside. That was it. I swore right then and there I would never let anything break my heart like that again. Nothing.”
I looked at Starr and I could tell he didn't hold true to that promise. In this land of the dead you can ask anything so I did.
"Well, did you hold true?"
"True to what?"
"Your promise. Did you hold true to your promise to never let anything break your heart like that again?"
Starr laughed and said "Ah, hell no, hell no. I got my heart broken, damn, so many times. And every single time I swore to myself 'No, never again. Never again.' And then I let it happen again."
At this moment Starr looked very sad and tired, much older than the age we were, our late-thirties.
He sighed and said "You know, you can only break a heart so many times before it stays broke. I guess when that happens, it's over."
I asked Starr "Do you have any regrets?"
"Regrets? Hah, ah, Hell yeah. Tens, thousands, fucking millions. I lived with them every single God damn day. There were times I wish I had been one of those callous son-of-a-bitches, one of those careless people."
Starr stopped for a moment, looked at me and then said "I remember you used to read a lot. You know what I'm talking about don't you? Careless people?"
I thought for a moment and I realized I did know what he was talking about, at least I thought I did.
"Yeah, I know who you are talking about. You're talking about people like Tom and Daisy Buchanan, The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Careless people, breaking things, leaving the mess behind for other people to clean up."
Starr nodded his head saying "Yeah, that's it, that's exactly it. I wish I had been one of those people. Life would have been a hell of a lot easier, a hell of a lot less painful. Just never giving a shit about anything, just living. Never worrying how others felt, just... going... on..."
I looked at Starr. I looked at myself, I looked deep inside before I said "Starr, you don't want to live that way. You don't want to live that way. It's a hollow life, there's nothing on the inside of you. You just go on, you get numb. You don't want to live that way. I did for awhile. Part of me is still that way. You don't want to live this way. That's the last thing a person should do is live like that."
Starr nodded his head and said "Yeah, you're probably right. You got to be true to your way, even if you don't know what that is."
Hunter had fallen fast asleep, his head still in Starr's lap. I sat down on the ground and the two of us kept talking, about what had happened to us, where we had been, where we still wanted to go, where we had fallen and the last time we stood up and started walking again. It seemed like Hunter was listening to us the whole time because every once in awhile his tail would thump, as if in agreement with something we said.
Somewhere in the conversation we started talking about movies. I had mentioned East of Eden with James Dean and that stirred Starr to action. He patted his jacket, like he was trying to find something.
"You've got to go to Crane, to my funeral, it's this Sunday."
"What? Shit, Starr, Crane is 500 miles away from West Columbia. It's Wednesday night, damn near Thursday, I haven't seen you in over twenty years and you want me to go to your funeral?"
"Yeah, I do." He kept patting his jacket and with a smirk on his face he pulled a photo out of an interior pocket. "You have to give this to my Mom. That's why you have to go."
He handed me the photo. It was a photo of him standing under a street sign. He had a rakish but boyish look.
"A friend of mine took this photo a few years ago. As she took it she laughed and said I looked like James Dean. My Mom loved James Dean and I always meant to give her this photo, but I never got around to it. You're going to take it to her. You're going to give it to her in Crane. That's where they will be. They will get there Thursday or Friday. That's where you need to be."
"Why me?"
Starr turned his head left and right. "You see anyone else around here?"
I didn't.
"There you go, you're the only one around, and you can get back to the living world. So you're going to take that picture, you're going to Crane and you're going to give this to my Mom. You're the only one here so you're the only one who can do it."
You can't deny the dead. Believe me, I've tried, but you can't deny the dead. They just keep pestering you until you break down and say yes. I didn't have the energy for it, and I knew how it would end.
"Okay, okay, I'll go to Crane, I'll take the photo, I'll give it your Mom. Any insight on what I should say, how to explain how I got the photo, how I came to be in Crane, any of that shit?"
The field was changing, fading, usually a sign my visit was about over.
"Starr, I'm about to leave. What are you going to do?"
"Yeah, you just changed, you become almost translucent, I can almost see through you. I wondered what that meant."
Starr stood up, looked around in all directions, stretched and sighed. Hunter was on his feet now too, rested, excited, ready for what might come next.
"I think I'll walk that way." Start pointed over my shoulder behind me. "I see something glowing over there."
I turned and look in the direction he was pointing. There was a glow on the horizon, a familiar glow.
"You should walk that way. I've been told there is a small town that way. I know some people there."
"Well, then, that's where Hunter and I will be going. Right, Hunter?"
Hunter was in complete agreement, his tail swishing rapidly in joy and anticipation.
The field faded away. I was in bed with Ann next to me. In my hand was a photo of Starr Feeler looking a bit like James Dean. I placed the photo on the night stand and fell back asleep.
The next morning before I left for work I told Ann that an old friend of mine from West Texas had died, that his funeral would be in Crane on Sunday and that I was thinking of going to the funeral, driving out Saturday morning, then coming back Sunday afternoon evening. Her first reaction was that I was crazy, to drive a thousand miles in two days. She thought if I was going to go I should stay a little longer, see my Mom (Odessa was about a 30 minute drive from Crane), maybe come back on Monday or Tuesday. I didn't tell her, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay that long or see anyone else while I was there.
During some down time the next day at work I learned that Crane had one motel, the Best Budget Inn, twenty rooms total. I reserved a room for Saturday and Sunday night. I told my boss that I needed to take Monday off for a funeral. The plans were firming up.
That evening I went through my travel plans with Ann. I would leave West Columbia Saturday morning around 7:00 am and drive west. I estimated that the trip would be 7-8 hours of driving, add in another couple of hours for rest breaks and lunch. I expected to be arrive in Crane around 4:00 pm. The funeral was Sunday at 3:00 pm. I would say goodbye to people Sunday evening, get a good night's rest and start the drive back Monday morning and be home in West Columbia by the time Ann and Rae arrived home from school.
I hadn't mentioned my old truck in quite some time. I still had it and drove it once or twice a week to Houston.
The first month on the new job I found Sal's on Westheimer, a good mechanic shop in Houston not far from the office. I dropped the truck off with them one morning asking them to look it over, up and down, and recommend what should be done to get it back in good highway shape. That afternoon I was told it would cost about $1500 to get it in good shape as a lot of parts needed replacing. I told them to go ahead, guess I was feeling a bit sentimental. They did the work and when they were done, the truck was like brand new, or as brand new as a truck as old it was could be. Why did I bring up the truck right now? Well, it didn't seem right to make a solo drive to West Texas without my truck. Ann wasn't all that thrilled about the idea. She had visions of the truck breaking down on the highway but I convinced her it would be all right.
Friday morning I dropped the truck off at Sal's, asked them to give the truck a good look over as I was about to embark on a 1000 mile journey over the weekend. They had the truck safe, prepped and ready to go by 3:00 pm. I walked from the office to Sal's and stopped on the way to pick up a few books on tape for the road.
Friday night I packed the truck with a suit, dress shirt, dress shoes, a tie, jeans, t-shirts, a few other things, the photo of Starr and a small ice chest to keep some water and tea cold on the road. We were all in bed by 10:00 pm. I slept well, no dreams and was up a little before 6:00 am, feeling well rested. I brewed coffee for Ann while she fixed breakfast for all of us. Rae woke up at 6:30 to the smell of eggs and bacon. Sam and Mike had been anxiously awaiting their breakfast and were happy to see that far more eggs and bacon had been made than could be consumed by three humans. They were confident that their coats would be shining this day. We ate, had the kitchen cleaned up and I was ready to go by 7:00 am. Several hugs, kisses, pets later I was out the door and on the road.
Author’s note: I wrote most of Falling Starr in late 2013, a few months after the death of Starr Feeler. It is a long chapter and for this medium, I’ve broken it up into two parts.
Hunter the dog is based a little bit on reality. Close to 25 years ago we lived in West Columbia, Texas. One Saturday I was mowing our front lawn when a large, friendly, white, shaggy dog walked up to me. I stopped mowing, said hello to the dog, knelt down and petted it. I looked at the dog tag on the collar, learned the dog’s name was George, offered him a pail of water, and told George I had to get back to mowing. I expected Geroge to go about on his way, but he didn’t. Instead he trotted on to our covered front porch and laid down in the shade. I kept mowing for roughly half an hour while George rested on our front porch. While I mowed I wondered why George hadn’t gone on his way when the reason why he didn’t popped into my head. I stopped mowing, walked on to the porch, petted George, who quietly swished his tail, and looked again at George’s dog tag. There was a name and telephone number on the dog tag. I told George that I was going to call his human and that I would be right back. I went in the house, called the number and talked to George’s human. Turns out George escaped his yard quite often, but had learned that if you were friendly to another human, swished your tail, and let the other human look at your dog tag, your human would magically appear in a few minutes. In about ten minutes George’s human drove up to our house, George got up, let me pet him goodbye then trotted to his human, climbed into the car, and went home.
Sal’s on Westheimer is a real place. For twelve years of my working life (1985-1987 with IBM, 2000-2005 with Bindview, and 2008-2013 with Behavioral Recognition Systems) I worked in the Galleria area of Houston. Sal’s was a few blocks away. During the 2000-2005 and 2008-2013 stints I drove a 1996 Toyota Rav4. I put over 360,000 miles on that Rav4. One of the reasons it lasted so long is because I found Sal’s on Westheimer. Sal, Roger his shop foreman, and the crew at Sal’s serviced the Rav4 from 2000 to 2013.
In episode 24 of Walking Backwards, the second part of Falling Starr (Starr rising), Drew completes his mission for Starr, learns an important lesson of gratitude, and realizes he has more than he thought.
a great memorial