My plan for that night, August 11, 1972, was to watch the Perseid meteor shower. I wanted to see more meteors before I died. But a call came in at midnight about a disabled car on the highway south of Farmington. I took the smaller tow truck––the flat-bed––and started down New Mexico state road 44. The night was warm and clear, and I could hear the high desert all around me, breathing and stretching in the dark. Even as a little boy, I could see things––beyond what others saw––but now I could hear things too. Especially since my diagnosis. Everything on the plateau hummed: the volcanic ridges and the red desert floor; the San Juan River and the Aztec Ruins; the spiny edges of rabbitbrush and piñon, moving on the breeze.
All I knew from the call was that a station wagon with Wyoming plates had hit two steers on the road about fifty miles from Farmington. I was driving south––away from the radiant in Perseus––but I still saw three meteors on the way down. I knew that each one was a tiny piece of comet-dust hitting our atmosphere, flaring into flame as hot as ten thousand degrees, and burning up.
Because the accident was on Navajo land and the steers probably belonged to a Navajo rancher, an officer from the Navajo police force was on the scene. Young guy in a white shirt with Shiprock insignia on the sleeves. His long ponytail, his jeans and running shoes, looked casual. But his belt held a holster with a not-casual sidearm. When I got there, he glanced up from his flashlight and clipboard and nodded at me.
His squad car headlights shone across the wreckage: gray Plymouth with its front end folded up like an accordion and radiator fluid all over the road. One steer dead on the highway and another bellowing in agony in the ditch. Death can be loud or soft, and this was loud.
A man and his little girl, maybe eight years old, stood together on the gravel edge of the road. Unhurt, as far as I could tell. The dad was tall and tanned in a dark polo shirt and crumpled khaki shorts. If he was on vacation, all vacation calm had been shattered. His jaw was tight, and his hands were clamped on his daughter’s shoulders. She was the brightest thing there. Her clothes were all light pink––t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers––and her hair was pale and cut short. Her outline was the same gleaming silver of the shooting stars. She leaned against her father looking watchful, as if daring anyone to blame her dad.
I backed the tow truck into position, turned on the hydraulics, and lowered the ramp. After I dragged the chain and hook from the back of the truck, I had to lie down on the road under the car to find a good place to hook up. When I looked straight up into the sky, I saw the full sweep of the Milky Way, the gift of it, all its colors and generosity.
Static-y bursts of Navajo came from the police radio, but the young officer ignored them. He was studying the man’s registration and frowning. These steers were valuable property, and there would be hell to pay. He probably wanted to find out about insurance and get us non-Navajos out of there.
I got the chain tightened and winched the car slowly onto the ramp. Again and again, the injured steer in the ditch exhaled full-bellied groans of pain. I could feel blood filling its lungs as if they were my own.
“What happened?” I asked the dad.
The officer looked up from the clipboard and cut me off. “Just do your job,” he said. He was half my age and wanted to show who was in charge. I wasn’t there to interview the driver. I threw the switch to pull the ramp and the car onto the flat-bed.
The little girl pointed to the sky and said, “Look, Daddy.” The meteor––coming straight out of the radiant to the northeast––cut a crystal-white swath that looked very close to Earth and lasted a full four seconds, the kind they call a fireball. The injured steer chuffed out another deep and hard-edged groan.
As we gazed at the sky, still in awe, the officer pulled his gun, clicked off the safety, and fired a single round into the steer’s head. The sound was enormous. So was the resulting quiet. He ignored our stunned reaction and stepped down into the ditch, knelt there, and placed a hand on the animal’s neck. Maybe ensuring it was dead. Maybe apologizing for the bullet, although he hadn’t had a choice. He climbed out of the ditch, holstered the gun, and took up his clipboard.
I was preparing to strap down the wheels when the girl again said, “Look, Daddy,” but this time she pointed toward the now-silent steer in the ditch.
“I know, honey,” he said. “It’s all right.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. He lifted his gaze to me. “She sees things,” he said. “It’s hard to explain.”
I wasn’t surprised, not really. I knew from her outline there was something. I wrapped a tire strap around the left front tire and threaded the strap into the ratchet. Yes, it’s hard to explain, I thought, tightening it down. It sets you apart, and people think you’re nuts. I was a half-orphaned kid on a ranch, about this girl’s age, when I realized nobody else saw energy moving, souls departing, darkness clinging in corners. Nobody else saw omens, auras, colors. I once cried over a sheep dog––a day before he died––and then was cursed as if I caused it. After that I kept quiet. I pretty much kept quiet for fifty years once I realized nobody cared that even a hacked-up rattlesnake returns something to the earth and air. Even a tumbleweed trapped under barbed wire has purpose. I loved that ranch, but it was the wrong life for me. I never denied the gift, if that’s what it was, but it came with loneliness.
As I moved to strap down the left rear tire, I glanced toward Perseus––nothing happening––and then watched the dad, over by the squad car, as he unfolded a paper from his wallet and gave it to the officer. The officer in turn handed him the flashlight to hold while he copied the information.
When I came around to the right side of the car, where it was darker, the little girl was there. While I strapped down the right rear tire, she watched me, her energy now blue and calm, less electric. Before she asked her question, I knew what it would be.
“Mister, are you okay?”
I’d wondered since my diagnosis if anything had changed. If anyone would notice. She stood inside her own circle of stillness. There was no point in lying, but I did hedge.
“I’m okay for now,” I said. “I’m good right now.”
She nodded in the slow way kids nod when they are deciding whether to believe you.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
“Farmington,” I said. “I’ll take you and your dad back there tonight.”
“Is that a good place?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s good.” I moved past her to the right front and pulled the straps over the tire. “I’ve lived there my whole life.”
“Your whole life?”
“Most of it.” I tightened down the last tire strap and tested the tension.
“So, is that where––” she rubbed her nose and took in a breath, weighing the words–– “Is that where you want to be?”
It was my turn to weigh words, but what the hell, she knew that I knew she knew.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s where I’ll be. It’s all set up.” That last part was a stretch. The doctor had explained how it might go, hospice and everything, and I nodded along with him as if we were discussing a new alternator for the truck. But not much had been decided. I kept putting it off.
“Almost finished here.” I pretended the strap needed adjusting. I wanted to stay there in her company.
She took my hand––my calloused, grease-grimed hand––as if I might need help walking to the front of the truck. Her touch carried a charge that went all the way into the ground. I felt we were standing on the exact square mile of Earth we were promised to.
“Stars are falling,” she said.
“They’re meteors,” I told her. “It’s the Perseid meteor shower.”
“I know,” she said. “My dad told me. He knows things.”
The officer––friendlier now that we were leaving––waved goodbye, and we climbed into the truck cab. The girl sat in the middle on the bench seat and hummed lightly. Maybe she heard the same desert frequency I did.
“There was a rise in the road,” the dad said, finally able to answer my question. “When I crested it, those cows were right on top of me. I had no time to react.”
I turned the truck around, and we started north towards Farmington. The huge night held us in our small circle of headlights. We were facing Perseus and it was about 2 a.m. The dad leaned into the windshield and looked up. “This is perfect,” he said.
“What is?” the girl asked. As if in answer, one small meteor winked at us and disappeared but was followed immediately by another one, a monster streak of liquid silver close to the horizon. The entire plateau lifted towards it.
The dad explained to her about the radiant. “It’s the part of the sky where the meteors seem to come from,” he said. “In August, it’s near Perseus.”
“What’s Perseus?” she asked.
He pointed toward the constellation. He did indeed know things. He even told her how Perseus was a half-mortal son of Zeus. I liked his knowledge and the way he talked to her. I wanted to ask if he was a scientist, maybe an astronomer. But it was hard for me to take it all in. The night was too crowded with joy. And the desert was making all that noise. And next to me, the girl was so solemn and yet so alive. With every shooting star, she touched my arm and whispered, “Ooh, Mister, look.”
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Andrea Lewis writes short stories, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction from her home in Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in over thirty literary journals, including Prairie Schooner, Catamaran Literary Reader, and Briar Cliff Review. Her collection of linked stories, What My Last Man Did, won the Blue Light Books Prize, and was published by Indiana University Press.
“Radiant” originally appeared in the Raleigh Review.