WE STOPPED for the night at a place off the highway named the Mille Lacs, in the farm country of northern Iowa. Marge referred to it as a tourist court, a half circle of little houses, bungalows she called them, built around a graveled parking lot with a huge cottonwood at the center.
I lugged my duffel down to eleven, a yard-dog of a bungalow with a small television set on a folding table and a little bathroom with peeling paint in the shower. Above the bed hung a faded cardboard picture of a moose standing in the water at the edge of a lake with mountains in the background.
By the time I’d put my toothbrush and toothpaste in the bathroom and figured out the television channels, it was getting dark outside. I looked at the sagging bed with its two flat pillows, hoping everything was all right with L.A. and Gram and wondering what I’d dream about tonight and sort of wishing I didn’t have to sleep. Hearing a knock at the door, I opened it, and there stood Diana, bright as a candle flame under the yellow bug light over the door. Her snug jeans demonstrated her body in a way that almost vapor-locked my mind.
“Wanta go for a walk?” she said.
“What’d your mom say?”
“Don’t be too late.”
I grabbed my sweater. “Let’s go.”
Beyond the lights of the court a soft darkness surrounded us, the moon not up yet, the sky glowing faintly along the western horizon but black and full of stars overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote yipped a few times and howled, and a few seconds later a dozen more chimed in.
We walked along the shoulder of the road for a while, listening to the crunch of our steps in the gravel. I could smell the wild cherry Life Saver Diana was sucking on.
“How about if we went over into that field?” she said. On the other side of a barbed-wire fence we could make out the slope of a pasture and a few trees blacking out the stars along the skyline.
“You okay for the fence?”
“Sure.” She did a quick skip and hop in her sneakers. “I’m an old cowhand from the Rio Grande.”
I spread the top two strands of wire to let her step through, then she did the same for me. We walked through the short grass toward the top of the low rise, Diana humming “Happy Trails” under her breath. At the crest we stopped. All around us the stars burned thicker and deeper and brighter than I’d ever seen them, than I’d ever dreamed they could be. We sat on the grass.
Diana said, “It looks like forever.”
“There’s no such thing,” I said.
“What do you think’s really out there?”
“I don’t know. Everything, I guess.”
“Maybe people like us?”
“Not like you.”
She considered this for a while, gazing at the sky. “All that space,” she finally said. “I bet there’s at least four.”
I saw a sudden pinprick of new light among the stars that immediately grew into a greenish white fireball, elongating itself across the sky, brightening by the second. It flared and dimmed and flared again, leaving a glowing trail as it tracked straight through the constellations above us. There was no sound, but the thing was so bright I could see our shadows on the grass. The meteor continued overhead and on beyond us until it dwindled and finally disappeared at the other end of the sky.
Diana had scrambled around to watch and was now on all fours looking in the direction the fireball had gone. “Damn!” she said. “What was that?”
“Chunk of rock burning up in the atmosphere, I guess.” Dr. Kepler had actually taught me quite a bit about meteors, but I took so much time weighing out whether saying more would impress Diana or make me sound like a smart-ass that I lost the moment. I stared at the sky, wondering how anything so big and bright and obviously full of energy could be so silent.
Diana turned back around to sit beside me. “My heart’s thumping,” she said.
I leaned my head down and put my ear against her chest, feeling the valentine-shaped locket she wore under her sweatshirt and smelling the soap she’d bathed with and her Life Saver breath. I heard the lub-dub, lub-dub of her heart, a soft faraway thunder that actually did seem pretty fast. It got faster as I listened. So did her breathing.
“Don’t breathe,” I said. “I want to hear.”
“Schmuck.”
I lifted my head and put my mouth on hers, tasting her sweetness and instantly feeling lost in her. She held my shoulders as we kissed. After a minute, I drew back and looked at her. I tried to tell her how beautiful she was, but I don’t think anything came out but a whimper. I grabbed her to pull her to me and kiss her again, but she put her hands on my chest.
“We’ve gotta go back,” she said, breathing hard.
I released her and sat back, listening to her breathing and mine. I looked down at the Mille Lacs a million miles away, imagining Marge and Don in their bungalow watching television and not thinking about us at all. The infinite sky just kept hanging there all around us. After a while I said, “I don’t want to go.”
“I know, Bis,” she said, giving my forehead a little rap with her knuckles. “But we just gotta.”
Finally I nodded, got to my feet and gave her a hand up. She moved ahead of me along a path I was now beginning to see more clearly in the dark field as we walked back down through the stars toward the road.
In my bungalow I sat on the side of the bed and waited for my heart to settle down. After saying a silent prayer for L.A. and Gram and everyone else who had to make it through the night, I turned off the light and was asleep in a few minutes.