“Hope it tramples you down,” Howling said.
“And what’s the most important thing?” Vern asked, ignoring Howling’s outburst.
“Doing what you say,” said Feral.
“Howling, I want to hear you say it, too. I know you’re mad, but you listening to me will be the difference between making it or not, you understand? So what do you got to do?” She stopped and knelt in front of him, placed a firm grip on each shoulder.
“I got to do what you say,” said Howling, hating it.
“Why?” asked Vern.
“Or I won’t make it.”
“And what’s not making it mean?” she asked.
“I never see you or Feral again.”
“Good bear,” she said, and stood up to walk. “Come on. Keep up.”
Vern brushed her hands against the trees, feeling for the marks she’d made. Soon they’d be beyond her previously explored territory.
“Can you see the stars, Howling?”
The trees, at least, had begun to thin.
“Of course I can, dummy.”
“Can you see the very bright star?” she asked.
“The north one?”
“Yes.”
“Is it pink?”
Vern shook her head. “That’s Mars,” she said.
“One of them is moving!” Howling said. “And flashing red.”
“Pay no mind to that. Find the bright, bright star, brighter than all the others. Standing still in the sky,” she said.
“I can’t find it, damn it.” That child was already a perfectionist, holding himself to impossible standards.
“Can you find the Drinking Gourd?” she asked.
Howling pranced around, running from tree to tree to get a good look where there were breaks in the canopy. It took him a moment, but soon he pointed upward. “That’s it! That’s it! That’s it!”
“Now, you see the two stars that form the edge of the bowl part of the ladle, farthest from the tip of the handle?” Vern asked.
“Uh-huh,” said Howling.
“Follow those two stars in a straight line down, you should see—”
“I see it! The North Star!”
Vern smiled, struck by Howling’s easy nature. That child, mercurial as a Southern winter, could go from cold to hot in moments. “Can you find the Little Drinking Gourd?”
“Of course, Mam. It’s right there. Oh! The tip of the Little Drinking Gourd’s handle is the North Star!”
“Yes. Exactly,” said Vern, confident that he’d found the right star. Based on where he was frantically pointing, Vern had maintained the correct course.
Feral always listened closely as Vern described constellations and asterisms, though, like her, he couldn’t see them. When the woods were far behind them, she’d find some paper and draw them out for him from her memory. He’d appreciate their delicate relationships. She would tell him that despite their apparent closeness, they were farther apart than any two things on earth could be.
“Mam?” Feral said.
“Mm?”
“Do you ever wish you could see the stars?” he asked, his voice intrigued rather than regretful.
As a child she had. Folks were always bringing them up and talking about them a great deal. Everybody had a star story, a star memory. “I prefer the moon,” said Vern. “Big and glowing. A pupil-less eyeball.”
“Blind like us?” asked Feral, his voice ever so serious, this inquiry of utmost importance.
“In its way,” Vern said.
“Will I ever see the North Star?” Feral asked. His voice had grown husky with fatigue, sounding lower like his sibling’s.
“I don’t know,” said Vern. “Maybe in a telescope. But even if not, there are many ways to love a thing, to know it deeply. Your uncle, Carmichael, liked to collect facts about things. Did you know the North Star is three stars? Three stars in orbit with each other,” she said. “He told me that. All joined up. Like you, me, and Howling. Bound.”
* * *
CARS WHIRRED BY. “Hear that?” Vern asked. “Like gusts of wind.”
“Breaths of a hungry giant,” said Feral, intrigued.
Vern led her babes out of the woods onto the shoulder of a backcountry road.
“It’s like a river you can’t jump into,” said Howling, inspecting.
“Hold my hand,” she said, reaching her arm out to him. He jumped back from the road and grabbed her hand.
“What now?” asked Feral. “What you do with it? Does it move? You ride in it like a boat? Why’s it made of rock?”