SKYEYES Read online
SKYEYES
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Emily Dickinson
Part One: Life
XXXII
Earthset Press
5757 WEST CENTURY BLVD, SUITE 700
LOS ANGELES, CA 90045
PublisherCataloging-in-publication Data
Es, Edward Skyeyes / Edward Es p. cm.LCCN: 2003105387ISBN: 0-9728226-0-7
1. Fathers and sons--Fiction. 2. Space flight-Fiction. 3. Healing--religious aspects--Fiction.4. Prayer--Fiction. 5. Science fiction. 6. Religious fiction. I. TitlePS3605.S723S59 2003 813’.6 QB133-1335
03 04 05 06 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
©Copyright 2003 by Edward Es; 2nd Ed 2017
This is a work of fiction. The inclusion of celebrity characters in this story does not imply or represent those persons’ knowledge or endorsement of this material, nor is their inclusion intended as commercial appropriation or a factor in the sale or marketing of this property. Their fictional representations are included respectfully, and in appreciation of their celebrity. Any similarity in name to any other fictional character in this material is likewise for fictional purposes, and does not imply the representation of any such persons by virtue of such name. All accounts and scenarios included in this material are purely fictional.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews
SKYEYES
Edward Es
Earthset Press
www.SkyeyesNovel.com
Preface
John Gardner, a foremost authority on the art of fiction, made great issue of an author’s responsibility to create what he termed “the fictional dream”. This mandate implores the author to reverently maintain that dream, keeping the business of writing transparent. The reader, then, continues uninterrupted in the noble endeavor of entering the dream of fiction, a ghostly character suspended in a stream of consciousness the author has gathered from the rich landscape of his universe, fashioned into a tale that transports the author equally as it does the reader.
The extent to which the reader enters the dream is a function of her or his willingness to suspend disbelief, preconception, and preoccupation, and in doing so be transported across the threshold to the characters, places, and circumstances in that wonderful land of “once upon a time”.
We encourage our children to read for many reasons, none less important than any other. Through books of all kinds, and specially through fiction, they learn to view the fabric and texture of life through magic eyes, eyes that depart the world of everyday life and view the splendor of human emotion, triumph, pain, and courage through the untainted prism of imagination.
This author humbly thanks you, whoever you are, for turning the first page of this story, and further entreats you to put on those magic eyes, build a nest, curl up, and enter the dream of. Skyeyes. We honor ourselves when we swing open the gates to the kingdom of legend and story, and there allow ourselves to be brand new, to be transformed, to meet new people, endear them to ourselves, and most of all, participate in their travails, their watersheds, their discoveries, and ultimately, their reconciliation and rebirth.
I, your fellow traveler through this dream, join you.
Edward Es
For the three stars in my heaven,
Melody,
Noel,
and Dustin
And for Tom
Peace be with you, brother
See you in Forever Land
Against The Wind
Facing The Enemy
Spirit Set Free
Child of Skyeyes
Star That Runs
Et Itur Ad Astra
One wish, two, I have for you,
Wish number three is just for me.
Wish number four for my friends next door,
Wishes left over when you need some more.
I was eight years old when I died.
Most of all I remember the colors. It wasn’t like they said. It wasn’t a white light. It was all around; the colors were inside me and I could feel them.
There was music, too. It came from the colors and sounded like them, and I could see what the music was saying.
He told me to sit next to a bright little river that had the music and the colors in it, swirling around and falling over stones I could see through. I remember the water in the river sounded like where the music was coming from.
It was all green grass, bright emerald green like the green came out of it, green like that ring Mama wore, only brighter. Brighter even than the time I looked through it at the Sun and it hurt my eyes. I didn’t see any sun or light, other than what came from him.
There was a nice warm wind that went all through me. It didn’t come from anywhere, or go anywhere, but where it was inside me. When he talked to me, the wind came from him, and all the colors and the music were saying what he said.
I asked him if he was going to tell me a story, and he told me to tell him one instead, so I thought about my life and it was all there like it just happened. I didn’t have to say anything. It was there already, all the people in it, and everything that was, and it made me happy. That’s when he told me that there weren’t really any stories at all, but there were the people who told them. It was the telling that happened, not what was told. Then I understood.
Angel’s Landing
Against The Wind
CHAPTER ONE
If God Were A Child
I dreamed a dream two nights ago
That blew across my soul.
It took me hours to fall asleep,
Afraid, alone, and cold.
But when I did I found myself
Adrift on angry seas,
Inside the pea-green boat I knew
From Nonsense poetry.
The night was cruel and dark, no Moon
Above to light my way.
I only saw when visions froze,
As lightning flashed like day.
Mountain waves were breaking high,
White burning crests of foam
That sprayed on me a salty fear,
A taste I’ve grown to know.
The clouds above rolled thick and deep;
They rained on me the tears
I’d cried so hard in bed that night,
With no one there to hear.
Bolts of blinding pain, they struck
The places where I hurt.
Thunder shouted rumbling words
Of death, and shoveled dirt.
That’s when I felt a shadow cross
My heart from overhead.
Something with wings I could not see
Cast shades of hope or dread.
I wondered then, from in this dream,
From under sad, forsaken skies:
Were God a child, a child like me,
What ear would hear his Holy cry?
If He were on this wooden arc
Of sorrow, floating hopeless seas,
In all this universe, what heart
Daybreak on an overcast morning approaches as if the world were hesitating to reappear. Above, the Sun rises, spraying dawn colors across a soft undercast. That great celestial drama, the grand illusion of stars vanishing behind a veil of vibrant blue, continues in silent, spinning wonder, unnoticed under the damp gray sky.
The Cardona building, painted earth-browns over cement block, lends a pale hint of warmth to an otherwise dark, cold, San Fernando Valley morning. Louis Cardona’s Mercedes 500 rolls into its reserved spot in the empty parking lot. He steps from the car and walks toward his machine shop’s side entrance when he notices someone with his head lowered in the trash dumpster near the alley. Louis moves over cautiously, trying not to alarm him, typical of his gentle manner.
“Can I help you with something?”
The stranger in the dumpster straightens up, banging his head on the heavy rusted lid he’s holding up with one arm. Marshall Thomas Holmes would not look his age but for the toll of grievous times.
“Tom. What are you doing?” Louis asks, his cobalt-blue eyes empowered by thick black hair. Louis’ compact Colombian stature carries the build of an amateur weight lifter.
“I thought I saw titanium down there,” Tom says, brushing off his bluejeans and straightening the red flannel shirt. He too is solid, strong, but not as muscle bound as Louis.
“I’ve got that part ready,” Louis says. Tom’s hair, a little too long for a forty-five-year-old, stands on end from hanging in the dumpster. He finger-combs as Louis leads him toward the shop entrance. Louis unlocks the metal door and smiles, watching Tom enter ahead of him. Amusement turns to concern when he spots an unfamiliar car parked silently across the street. Louis stares, unable to make out figures through the tinted windows, darkened further by the gray of the morning. He hesitates, tempted to investigate, but thinks better of it and continues in.
Tom and Louis weave their way between unnaturally still lathes and mills to the inspection room, which Louis unlocks. He enters, but Tom stops to look around the shop he once worked in, lifetimes ago when he’d lost his job. Cardona Manufacturing has doubled as an employment agency for nearly every relative, friend, or relative’s friend that needed work or a green card. Tom remembers the smell of metal and oil, the droning of electric motors and grinding wheels, screeching burrs from parts of turbine engines and fighter jets.
For years he walked through the shop as the owner’s son-in-law, the workers looking upon him as a favored class, married to the boss’ daughter. Then he was one of them, among them when misfortune fell. Memories flood in: the time he met Louis and his daughter at the flight school, spotting for each other at the gym, the marriage. All landmarks of a life gaining momentum, then falling into that swirling wormhole of sorrow. And out the other end is now, the twisted, otherworld where everyone is a caricature, distorted, including himself; mirrored images of what should be, or never will be. A cruel, elongated dimension that never ends.
Tom walks out among the iron monoliths, standing at attention to grind out parts for things more complicated than they, controlled by remote computers waiting to drive them to a drilling, turning frenzy. They stand there, industrial green, shining and cold, over-lit by bank after bank of fluorescent lights.
Unexpectedly, he encounters a young dark-skinned boy pushing a nubbed broom across the battleship-gray concrete floor. The boy stops and looks slowly up at him. Tom stares into his face, round, nearly a circle, browned by generations of sun, eyes as bright as the smile beneath them. Suddenly the shop melts away and the boy stands in a Mayan jungle, noble, dressed in loincloth and adorned with necklaces of teeth and bone. He shines, a prince of some ancient nation, beaming his people’s wisdom and glory, from generations of generations. He holds in his hand a scepter studded with crudely cut jewels, the head a gold god grimacing at those who would worship him. The boy smiles wider and gestures toward the sky with his other hand. Then, in a flash of light, they stand where they started, the scepter once again a broom. The boy looks down and quietly pushes the broom as Tom turns away, jolted and confused again.
Louis opens a cabinet and removes a cardboard box. He sets the box on the granite inspection table and lifts out a heavy, complicated mechanism, machine tooled and hand assembled. Tom, disoriented, pushes the inspection room door open and Louis looks up, but restrains any reaction as he hands him the part. Tom inspects it superficially, placing it back on the table.
“Any problems?” Tom asks.
“We milled the channels twelve-thousandths, like the Doctor said, but we had to install a new valve-axle bushing. I haven’t even run the cycles on it. What’s the rush?”
Tom shifts with the question. “We’ve got a... situation. We’re running out of time.”
Louis digests the lack of information. “Somebody called here yesterday asking questions. They wouldn’t say who they were, but they wanted to know what kind of business I was doing with you.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“I told them you gave me a print and I built a part. What else could I say? When are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
Tom puts his arm around Louis’ neck. “You’ll find out soon enough. Besides, if I told you—”
“I know, I know. You’re not doing anything crazy are you? Do I need a lawyer?” Louis asks, half joking.
Tom puts the part back in the box and wedges it under his arm. “You don’t know enough to be in trouble. Sam’s got everything covered, trust me. Now, come on. I’ve got someone out there who wants to see you.”
Louis lights up. “Did you bring that boy with you?”
Tom and Louis walk to the cab of a twenty-six foot U-Rent truck. Tom opens the driver door and trades the box for a shorthaired cat, striped at crossing angles with brown, black, and red strata, all clashing against a preposterous splat of orange that covers one eye and slants across half his nose, as if he’d been shot in the face with a paintball. Louis grabs Zion, pursing his lips in anticipation. “Let me squeeze this boy.”
Tom pulls them to the back of the truck and rolls the payload bay door up a few feet as Louis squeezes the unwilling cat. Louis squints in, astonished once his eyes adjust.
“Oh, my gosh. Did you build that?”
“With a little help from my friends,” Tom says with a guarded glint of pride.
Tom closes the bay door and latches it as a weighted silence descends. Louis struggles for words. “Sonora is upset. She misses you.” Tom glances up to the nonexistent sky, it’s gray reflecting his lack of response. “She doesn’t understand why you have to shut us out. Francine never calls either. Does it have to end like this?”
Tom’s evasive gaze crystallizes toward him. “End? Is there an end to it, Louis? By all means, somebody please end it so I can make it to the next minute.”
Louis transfers Zion back to Tom, trying to temper the welling anger. “What happened to the ‘Legacy of Dreams?’” Louis chokes out. Tom walks to the cab and puts Zion back in, then turns. Louis sees that look in his eyes, the one that was gone for a while.
“Don’t start with the pulpit poetry, Louis. It sounded inspiring when everyone was crying in their tissues and the Sun was pouring through the stained-glass. It’s so easy to rationalize it, tie perfect sentiments around everything. Dot all the pathetic little i’s and cross the horrible little t’s. That way everybody gets to walk out with a wrapped-up answer to it, like some twisted party favor after the wake. Just put it up on the mantle and look at it, and think you feel better every time the pain starts to throb from somewhere you didn’t even know existed.”
“Stop that right now,” Louis flares back.
“You see? That’s why I don’t come around. Apologize to your wife for me, but I don’t have any ‘Legacy of Dreams’ to rest my head on at night. It’s best this way.”
Louis walks up to him, s
topping a foot from his face, and Tom braces. “We love you, Tom, but listen to me. You dishonor him with this. You shame yourself with it.”
Louis’ breath strikes his face. “Well then, I suppose that’s the legacy I’m left with. Shame and dishonor. But I tell you what, that’s one legacy I’ll keep alive because the whole world, heaven and hell, were shamed and dishonored the day he was taken away. That’s my place in it all right now.”
Tom picks up a rock from the sidewalk, examining it as if its hardness made some point. “What came after ‘Legacy of Dreams’? Wasn’t it ‘Shining Light of Hope’?” Louis looks down, unable to respond. “No thanks. I’m done with the poetry. If it makes you feel better, I’m happy for you. Me, I’m down to the basics. The simple stuff. Grief. Anger. As long as I’m here, it makes me feel like I’m still fighting.”
Louis looks at him looking at the rock. “Fighting for what?”
Tom sidearms the rock across the street. They watch as it pings off a railroad tie and ricochets straight up, then wait for it to drop down the other side of the rail bed, but somehow it doesn’t, seeming to disappear into the overcast. Tom slaps his hands clean. “Does it matter?” Louis turns away. Tom looks in the same direction. Nowhere.
“His favorite color was silver,” Tom recalls from somewhere far away, some distant, shimmering vision. Louis dabs his eye as he looks back at Tom, who remains fixed. “I never asked him why.” Tom takes a breath, then sighs out, one of many such breaths that expel pain only to inhale it back in again. “Most kids, you know, they say red, or blue, something in the rainbow.”
Louis softens in the memory. “That was like him. Always special like that.”
“I never asked him why!” Tom looks away, fighting back another wave of anguish as Louis lays a hand on his arm.
SKYEYES