Shooting Starr

She looked sideways at him. They’d begun walking again, swishing their feet through the leaves on his mother’s lawn. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she said, still wearing that little half smile. “The funny thing is, you know, I do. I trust you to behave exactly as you have been, with honor and integrity…” C.J. snorted. Why didn’t he feel complimented? “The problem is, you and I are on opposite sides of the fence, C.J.”

“I don’t think that’s true-” The denial was automatic and held no conviction at all.

She shook her head. “You still plan on being a lawyer?”

“Yes, I sure do.”

“Well, then? As a lawyer, you are bound as an officer of the court to uphold the law. And there’s no getting around the fact that I-” her smile wavered “-for the best of all possible reasons, am often, shall we say, forced to circumvent it.” She shrugged as if to say, That’s the way it is-what can you do?

What could he do? What could he say? The answer to that was: not a damn thing.

“I think I’d like to go in now,” Caitlyn said softly, and she gave a shiver that was only perceptible because his arm happened to be touching hers.

“Getting cold?” he asked, and she shrugged.

It did seem cooler there in the shaded yard, or maybe it was just the chill he felt deep down in his insides…of loneliness, maybe? Of regret?

All he knew was that a few moments ago he’d felt so close to her it had seemed to him one good puff of wind could have brought her into his arms. Now she was a million miles away. On opposite sides of the fence, she’d said, and he couldn’t think of any way to tell her she was wrong. And if she wasn’t, he wondered how in the world he was supposed to help her, whether that meant make things right for her, be a hero to her, save her life or just be there if she needed comforting. How was he supposed to do any of those things with that fence between them?

“Hey, hon’, how’re you doin’ out here?” The screen door creaked, then banged shut. Jess’s footsteps scuffed on the planks of the front porch floor.

It was late afternoon, coming to the end of Caitlyn’s third day in the Starr household. She was becoming more comfortable there and less fearful, gaining confidence as she learned her way around. Her days were already developing a routine: in the mornings, breakfast; then, while Jess went off to her shift at the hospital in town and Betty to her shopping or volunteer work for the church day-care center, long, leisurely walks with C.J. and the dogs. During those walks, C.J. tried, rather touchingly, she thought, to describe everything for her in great detail, while she tried very hard to keep from him the fact that she was counting footsteps and memorizing the locations of trees and fences.

Later, after C.J. had gone home to study for his bar exams, she would help Betty with the housework or in the garden. She was learning how to water by hand with the garden hose during the autumn dry spell, and to tell the difference between crabgrass and vegetable plants by feel.

The hardest times were the quiet times, like now-what could she do if she was too restless to nap? Reading and watching TV were definitely out. She wasn’t accustomed to being idle, but so far, sitting on the front porch listening to the cassette tapes Betty had found for her was the only activity she’d been able to come up with to combat the loneliness of those empty hours.

“You got a minute?”

Caitlyn had nothing but minutes, but thought it would be self-pitying to say so. She stilled the rocking chair, felt for the Off button on the portable tape player in her lap and pulled off the headphones, then turned toward the voice with a welcoming smile. “I was just listening to these ‘Lake Woebegon’ tapes your mom gave me.”

“Garrison Keillor? Oh, I remember those.” The rocker next to hers gave a groan and Jess’s voice came from a new level. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard them, though.”

“My parents always put them on in the car during long trips.” She leaned over to put the tape player on the floor, and her foot nudged a large furry body that twitched and emitted a patient sigh. “Sorry, Bubba,” she murmured.

“He sure has adopted you,” Jess said.

“Yeah, I know.” Caitlyn settled back in the rocker with a short laugh. “It’s funny…it’s almost as if he knows.”

“Dogs have a sense about ’em. The intelligent ones do.” There was a pause and then a laugh-a dry, soft stirring, like the rustling of leaves. “The day I found out my husband had been shot down, ol’ Bubba, there, wouldn’t leave my side. Came right in the house and would not be put out…and Bubba is not a house dog. That night and for a long time after that he slept on the rug beside my bed.”

“Shot down?” Caitlyn sat forward, frowning. She had a vague memory of C.J. telling her something about that, but she rather thought she’d dreamed it. It had occurred to her to wonder why Jess and her daughter were living with Jess’s mother, and what had become of the husband and father, but she would never in a million years have been so rude as to ask. “You mean…”

“Yeah…as in killed.” It was a gentle exhalation. “Didn’t C.J. tell you? Tristan’s officially listed as KIA, although they never did find his remains-and how they could know anything, considering he went down in Iraq…”

“I’m so sorry.” Such a loss seemed beyond imagining.

Jess let out another of those careful breaths. “That’s okay. It was a long time ago-God, eight years. Sometimes I can’t even believe it. But I have accepted it.”

“But you haven’t remarried, or…”

“Or…?” The rocking chair’s creak seemed to accent the question mark. “No, but it’s not because I didn’t-that I wouldn’t have, if-” The chair creaked again, more like a protest this time.

“I’m sorry,” Caitlyn said quickly. “It’s none of my-”

“No, no, it’s okay-it’s just that I haven’t thought about it in a while, is all. It’s not that I wouldn’t have, if I’d found anybody I wanted.” She hesitated, then, “Problem is, Tris is a pretty darn hard act to follow.”

As she nodded her understanding, in her mind’s eye Caitlyn pictured a smile, poignant and sad. Jess’s, she wondered, or her own? She could imagine…had grown up in the shelter of such a love…could readily understand why someone who had known that kind of love would never settle for anything less. She couldn’t imagine, for instance, either of her parents remarrying, should anything-God forbid!-happen to the other. She could understand…but would she ever know? Looking ahead at her own prospects for finding love like that, she saw only a vast and hopeless emptiness.

“But,” Jess said briskly, to the accompaniment of a loud creak from her rocking chair, “that’s not what I came out here to talk to you about. I’ve been looking on the Internet at work-” there was a papery rustle “-and I found all sorts of stuff I think might be really helpful for you. You know-programs, services, gadgets. Technology is amazing, isn’t it? Like, they have this little thingy you put in your coffee cup, so when you pour, it beeps to tell you you’re close to the top. Cool, huh?”

Cool. Caitlyn’s smile had frozen on her face. If she moved, if she uttered a word, it would shatter into a million pieces. She would.

“You wouldn’t believe the stuff they have to help blind people be more independent-gadgets, but more important, they teach you how to do for yourself. There are schools, counseling programs-you know, to help you cope… They even have people who come and help you get set up, organize your clothes, teach you how to use everyday things like the stove, money, how to use a cane. There are Seeing Eye dog- Hon’, where y’goin’? You okay?”

She wasn’t okay, and she didn’t know where she was going. Nowhere. Nowhere. She was standing up, driven to her feet by the desperate need to flee, to escape from the kind voice and well-meaning words, from the intolerable, unthinkable pictures they painted of the future…her future.

I’m not blind. I can’t be blind. Not forever. My vision’s going to come back. It has to come back. It has to.

Fear gripped her; fear such as she’d never known in her life. She felt cold to the center of her soul. She was