Shooting Stars

By S. M. Jake

Let me tell you a love story. No, it’s not a fallin’ story—fallin’ in love’s the messy bit. This one’s about old love, the kind that’s lived a handful of years, that’s aged into something stronger and softer. That’s where the best stories are found.

Slim was a man of few words, yet he never had trouble speaking his mind loud and clear with a perfectly pointed look. Nearing seven feet tall and one foot wide, he had to wrap his gun belt double to keep it round his hips. He could hit a flea at a hundred paces, though he likely wouldn’t bother. What’d the flea ever do to him?

Talli, on the other hand, would spill a dozen words to find a pair that suited her. Though the flow of her thoughts poured out steadily, it was a gentle stream most days, bubbling and quiet with a bit of meandering. And she was tall in her own right, with a mound of brown curls and a waist that some would fret about, though she seldom did.

Slim could hardly recall a time when Talli didn’t love him, and never a time when he didn’t love her. She and him just fit; her hand inside his, his stride matching hers.

On this particular night, they walked home from the opry without rush. The warm dark wrapped their shoulders softly while bullfrogs and coyotes sang a two-step song, mosquitos squealing falsetto in their ears.

“I wish it wasn’t so dark,” Talli said, staring up at the inky black sky. Back in those days—not so long ago, but the past often gets slippery in the retelling—there weren’t quite so many stars as we have now, and on that night, the moon had waned to barely a sliver. “It makes it hard to see the path home. Tomorrow night I don’t suppose there will be any moon to see by.”

Slim nodded.

“Makes me fearful. No, fearful ain’t the right word.” Talli chewed the thought. “Makes me worried. Concerned? Concerned. That’s it.”

Slim’s blond brow arched just a hair.

“I’m concerned that someday I might be away from home and won’t be able to find my way back to you,” she said. “It’s silly, I know. But when the sky is this dark, the path blends with the brome. And you can’t see the light of our window until you crest that last hill.”

Slim tipped his head left toward the tree line.

“True,” Talli said. “That cottonwood is large. But if the night is good and dark, its leafy limbs look just like passing clouds in the night.”

Slim glanced to the trickling water to their right before closing his eyes with a contented smile.

Talli smiled. “The creek is lovely. But sometimes when it’s dry, the frogs hunker down and don’t sing so loud.”

Slim’s head tipped. He looked down at her, a brow arching nearly to his hair, though a smirk tugged at the corner of his cheek.

“I know I’m being silly.” Talli chuckled. She squeezed the crook of his arm tight. “I just want to be able to find my way home to you. Always.”

Slim considered this. He gently unlooped his arm from hers, eyes twinkling. He pulled free his Colt, measured one thumb’s width over from the moon, and popped a single shot into the blue-black sky. The frogs went silent as the crack echoed across the hills, the scent of spent gunpowder mixing with grass and dust.

Slim holstered his Colt, nodding at the new pinprick of light in the sky.

“A way home.” Talli smiled, taking his arm again. “Thank you, my love.”

Now, I know you don’t believe it, that a man could shoot a star into the sky, but God works in miraculous ways, and I assure you, he did. And it warmed Talli’s heart, knowing that no matter how dark it got, she could find that star and follow it home to her Slim.

Yet, the very next day, all that was tested.

Talli had gone to town, needing more red thread and a bit of sugar, while Slim stayed home to mend a fence.

The spring sky turned from blue to gray to orange, a sure sign we all know in April. A twister dropped. Its time was short, but its path was wide and terrible.

Slim saw the twister pass from the cellar door and prayed the whole time it touched the earth. Once it passed, he stepped out, not recognizing the land around him in the fading twilight.

The path was gone, the brome ripped clean away.

He scowled. The cottonwood was stripped bare, hardly a rugged trunk remaining.

He leaned an ear toward the creek. The bullfrogs were silent, either terrified or relocated by the twister.

He looked up. The moon was gone. His star was still there, but in the deepening black, he felt an itch between his shoulder blades. It wasn’t enough.

Slim took out his Colt. He could add another star, but pairs weren’t uncommon. Perhaps a cluster would stand out more distinctly. The itch between his shoulders grew. He wouldn’t risk it. He’d make sure she found him, no matter what.

Slim gathered every bullet he owned, digging out his reserves, and walked out into the night in front of their house.

He fired every shot, creating a path that stretched from one side of the sky to the other. Thicker and thicker he painted it. More and more stars he added. Loading and reloading and reloading again.

As he fired his last bullet, he looked up at the path he’d prickled across the sky, his shoulders tight and his arm exhausted. White stars gleamed overhead, thick and overlapping, their path uneven.

Yet, as his eyes followed that milky way of light across the moonless sky, a lone figure with bushy curls crested the hill before him.

And Slim’s smile shouted a welcome that could reach the heavens.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S. M. Jake is an author of fantasy stories for those who love romance, family, and dad-jokes. She often draws inspiration from fairy tales and tall tales, and will take every opportunity to add a touch of the Midwest to her writing. Her other loves include her husband and two boys, gardening with a brown thumb, and what she affectionately refers to as ‘chaos-sewing.’

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