Nestled among the hills and valleys, hidden under the trees and the mist, lay the little town of Minerva. John dreamed of his childhood there as the boxcar rocked quietly though-out the night. He dreamed of running across the hillsides with a little girl in a blue dress. White, fluffy, pieces of dandelions blew through the air. He couldn’t remember the girl’s name, but he went on dreaming anyway. He saw the stars reflected on the surface of Crystal Creek as it wound through a field with a row of trees lining each bank. The starlight flickered in the ripples of the shallow water as it broke against the rocks. He sat up in one of the trees with the little girl. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. He turned red and they dropped down out of the tree and chased each other across the field. He smiled in his sleep.
His sleep was suddenly broken by the harsh scraping of the boxcar’s door as it opened and the glaring light that burst through. He blinked and squinted and shaded his face which was smeared with soot and dirt. His denim clothes were faded and filthy in some spots and ripped in others. A group of angry silhouettes climbed into the car. “End of the line buddy. Get the hell off my train.”, one of them growled. The others kicked at John as he gathered up his things and rolled out the door. He lay on his back in the dust.
“Where am I?”, he asked. His voice cracked from thirst.
“Get out of here.”, was the only answer he received. He picked up his bag, shook the dust from it, and started off.
It was a bright grey morning and he found himself in the middle of a busy little town. Traffic zipped along the main street. The door of a corner drug store was propped open and a metal fan sat close by on the floor. The owner was out on the walk watching his new electric sign being put up as he wiped his hands on an old towel. The buzzing of the razor could be heard outside the barber shop. A man came out reading a newspaper. John approached him. “Good morning sir, do you mind telling me what town this is?”
“Marionette.”, the man replied without looking up. He kept on going. John stood watching him with joy slowly dawning on his face. He spun around, kicking up dust.
Marionette! That wasn’t far from Minerva. It was still quite a few miles away, but if he could catch a ride, he could be there by tomorrow morning. Back in Minerva! He recalled his dream. How could he have ever thought of leaving? He recalled his rude awakening. How could he have stayed away so long? He set off at once to find his ride. The train whistled as it pulled out of Marionette. John whistled back, “So long. Thanks for the ride.” The sun appeared from behind the clouds, and the shadows of the trees wound along the sidewalks and streets of Marionette.
It was late afternoon by the time John caught his ride. Two men were sitting high in the cab of an eighteen wheeler parked in the shade as he walked up. The driver looked down at him and sipped his coffee. “Hello.”, John smiled. The driver just stared with the same sour face. John squinted and stood with his hands in his pockets. “You guys wouldn’t be passing Minerva along the way would you?” The driver turned and looked back at his partner in the passenger’s seat.
“Five bucks.”, he said as he looked back.
“Fine. Fine.”, John pulled the money from his shirt pocket and handed it to the driver. The driver stretched the bill out in his hand and sat there looking at it as if verifying its authenticity. He crumpled it in his fist and then motioned John over.
“It’s going to take another hour or so to get loaded. Climb on up.” So John climbed in on the passenger side, and the other man crawled back into the sleeper compartment. John sat there in the passenger seat drifting off as mosquitoes flew around in the open window. He stared out at the picnic table that sat under a tree in front of the truck. A man in a greasy work shirt sat there holding a white sandwich in his dirty hands as he watched the cars pass by on the highway. Far off somewhere, someone was laughing at a joke.
Somewhere between waking and dreaming, John thought again of Minerva. But his thoughts were different than they had been earlier. His mind dwelt on a different time. He thought of the day he had left Minerva. He had taken the road out of town that led up along the hillside and just as he was about to top the crest of the hill, he turned back to look at the town laying in the valley below. His face twisted into an ugly shape and he let out an inarticulate cry of rage. He poured all the years of loneliness and alienation into that cry. He remembered the rainy days after school spent all alone in his room. He remembered the shoe box he’d kept under his bed, saving up money for his trip. He remembered all the years it took to fill it. But most of all he remembered the Book of Stars.
The book had been a present from his grandfather. On his eighth birthday his grandfather took him aside and showed it to him. It was an old book, bound in a leather cover. Book of Stars was inscribed in glittering gold across the cover. There was no author listed anywhere. Inside there were illustrations of constellations unlike any John had ever seen before. Below each illustration there was a brief story. John’s grandfather patted him on the shoulder and winked as he looked up. “Years and years ago, someone looked up into the night’s sky and imagined a whole new world of legends and found a new galaxy of constellations. He wrote them all in this book. When I was a boy, the book was given to me and I loved it. So now I give it to you. But you must be careful who you show it to.”
“But why?”
“They won’t see what you see. You won’t believe that it’s possible for them not to see. Nevertheless, they won’t. See, a person is only as deep as they let their gaze fall among the stars. They are only as wise as the mysteries they’ve peered into. But most people laugh at mysteries, and they think that looking at the sky is a waste of time.” The old man stopped to laugh with twinkling eyes. “As if life itself were a waste of time. But still”, he grew serious again, “a moment will come for each of them. It could be a moment of joy, or pain, even absolute horror. It doesn’t matter. The moment will come. Something will happen in their lives that will spark something deep inside them, and their eyes will just...open. They’ll look around them and everything will look so strange and wonderful. They’ll wonder who they are. They’ll wonder where they are. They’ll look into the eyes of people they’ve known all their lives and they’ll feel as though they’re complete strangers, as though they had never truly known them. It’s hard to explain, I suppose. But until a person reaches that moment, they’re not ready for things like this.” He tapped his fingers against the leather cover of the book. He patted the boy on the shoulder, and John went away with the book, his mind full of questions. His grandfather died the following spring. The funeral was held on a warm April day with a slight bit of rain; the kind of day his grandfather loved. There was a glow of light along the horizon, as if the rain clouds were a blanket that couldn’t quite be stretched across the sky. The procession of black umbrellas moved across the graveyard. John kept the Book of Stars hidden under his coat.
He fell in love with the book. He spent hours up in the attic with his head hanging out the window on clear nights, looking for constellations. Each one he found he made a little ink dot beside the corresponding illustration in the book. He sat at his desk in school and drew pictures of all the heroes in the book, and dreamed of all their adventures.
As his love for the book grew deeper, he often thought of his grandfather’s curious warning about showing the book to anyone. As time went on, he found himself less convinced by it. “How could they not love it? The book is incredible. It’s beautiful. There’s no way that they won’t be able to see that.” So he took the book to school, and he stood up to read passages of it during astronomy class. There were a few snickers and giggles from the back of the room, and finally the whole class erupted in out-right laughter. The teacher rapped her ruler and reprimanded John for making up such outrageous lies. “Those aren’t the constellations we learned about in class.”, she declared with indignant ignorance. John was crushed. He sat with his head down at his desk for the rest of the day. When the bell finally rang, he took off running for home.
There was a marsh he always passed on his way home. As he passed it that day, some boys from his class jumped out of hiding in front of him. They laughed as they tore the book out of John’s hands. They tore the pages out one by one and tossed them into the marsh. The pages drifted around the cat tails and out of sight. The boys left John crying on the bank of the marsh. So the day had come when he had turned his back on Minerva and topped the crest of the hill and went on out to the world.
The driver’s door popped open and woke John up. He blinked his eyes and looked out to see that they were still sitting under the shade of the tree and the man was still eating his sandwich at the picnic table. He felt as though he’d slept for years. The driver climbed up, started the rig, and pulled out onto the highway.
It was a clear night and John could see all the old stars in the sky as the truck neared Minerva. Near dawn he spotted a new constellation in the east. Six stars arranged in a simple circle. He made a note of the constellation and wondered why he’d never noticed it before. At 7am the truck driver let him off on the outskirts of Minerva at the crossroads of Hickory and Chestnut Rd. where the same spreading willow tree still presided over the corner. John picked up his bag and started down Chestnut towards home. Somewhere far off he could hear church bells ringing.
---oOo---
Everyone filed into the little country church house as the bells rang. A group of kids were playing in a mud puddle outside, but as the bells rang, they ran joyfully for the doors of the church. The entire town of Minerva was gathered together and all the rows were filled. They took up their song books and began to sing.
As John walked along the streets of Minerva in the dripping early morning mist, he found the whole town deserted. He looked everywhere for people, but he found no one. A faint sound pricked at his ear. He followed it slowly, cocking his head. The sound grew a little louder. It was beautiful. It was dozens of voices in perfect, majestic, harmony. The music lifted higher and higher and on to greater and greater joy. John spun around in the empty street. Everything looked strange and wonderful in the golden light. The sun began to rise over the rooftops as though the music were lifting it into the sky. Was this the moment his grandfather had spoken of? He listened carefully to the music. Eventually it led him to the church house.
As the song ended, the congregation settled quietly into their seats. John took a seat in the back of the room. Simon, the old book keeper, came forward to the pulpit. He opened a leather bound book and began to read. As Simon began the first sentence, John lifted his head. It was the Book of Stars. Simon had been walking along the marsh later in that same day that the boys had ripped up the book. He had found the loose pages drifting on the water, and he had taken them home, dried them out, and carefully bound them back together. Many of the pages had been lost, and many that had been found were damaged and ruined. But Simon managed to save a great deal of the book, and for years he kept it a secret. Then one year hard times fell on Minerva. Everyone struggled, but as they struggled each one felt something spark within them and one by one their eyes were opened. Simon saw this and he began to go about in the evenings, reading passages from the book. People found new hope in their lives because of it, and soon they all began to gather in the church house on Sunday mornings to hear Simon read from the book.
Tears welled in John’s eyes as he looked about the congregation. He saw some people he once knew, seriously listening to the stories, even the boys who had been there that day on the bank of the marsh. Their eyes were filled with wonder. John stood up and made his way to the head of the church. As he stood before the congregation some of them gasped in recognition. “I have something to say.”, he began. “This morning, on my way here, I noticed a constellation in the east that I had never seen before. There were six stars in the form of a circle. I propose that from this day on, these stars should be known as the Stars of Minerva. There is a long story of a long journey that goes with them, but I need to rest and gather my strength before I get into all that. Know only that this book once belonged to me. One day I lost it, and having lost it I went out into the world to find it again. I had to travel far out into the world and come all the way back around the circle before I finally found it.” The congregation cheered. They rushed forward and gathered around him. A girl pushed through the crowd and stood before him, smiling. She was grown now but John still recognized her. All these years he was convinced that she was just a creation of his dreams. He leaned over and kissed her cheek.
