Track Mangoes

Stellar and the Search for God is a periodical short story. Please check back for future installments.

Stellar and the Search for God

Part 1_1: a death in Portland happened.

Johnathan Newman Finster stood on the city corner starring up at the clock tower of the Union Station. The little white man appeared on the crosswalk signal and people began to push their way past him. He was fixed to the pavement like a piece of gum that had been spat out and stepped on multiple times. He kept his gaze glued to the massive clock examining its two gaunt hands, both facing upward. His jaw hung slack and his lips suddenly began to part like an opening pod. A small woman with a rolling backpack shuffled past him, swearing loudly. It was unclear whether or not Newman heard her. The sun was out that day. It hung in a cloudless sky, directly above Newman's head, like a single lightbulb in a dark room. The minute hand on the clock tower jerked to the right and positioned itself directly in line with the stubbier one. The bells rang in the air and Newman knew it was noontime.

It may have been at that moment that Newman saw a small figure standing under an awning, directly below the clock tower. It was a young man of average height. He was deathly skinny and had his head tilted toward a glowing sign that read “GO BY TRAIN.” The figure wore brown leather loafers and incredibly dusty, yet pressed pair of brown pants and a bright yellow polo with small breast pocket and a strong red stripe across the chest. The figure's eyes were hidden behind a pair of black sunglasses that slanted downward in the middle, giving him what looked like angry eyebrows. The figure's hair, which was floppy, straight, and greasy, was so dark that it appeared to have little to no texture.

The figure stepped out from underneath the awning into a small patch of sunlight. Newman must have been at least a hundred feet away, but even from where he stood, with the width of a street and the decorative garden of the Union Station between them, Newman couldn't help but notice the placid expression of the figure's lips, mangled into a sneer. The figure set his small brown suitcase on the pavement and sat on it, crossing his legs. He lit a cigarette and took off his sunglasses, exhaling a plume of blueish smoke in front of him. And as the figure slipped his sunglasses into the small pocket on the breast of his shirt he glanced, for a moment, toward Newman, who subsequently felt a pang run through his spine, as if the liquid encasing his neurons began to boil. He shuddered and wanted to turn away, but thought that if he did the figure might notice and coming running after him. He was to stay perfectly still.

But this did not seem to work. The figure stood up, the cigarette dangling from his lips, and starred, intently, at Newman. It raised a hand, to shield his eyes from the sun, to his eyebrows in what looked like a militant salute. It was then that the figure picked up his suitcase and started to walk in Newman's general direction at an alarming pace. Newman stood still and watched the figure get closer.

Newman had not seen or heard from David Goldstein for two years. They knew each other in high school and had been close friends at a time, until David started a sordid affair with a girl named Bridgette Slaughter. Bridgette was the daughter of a single catholic mother. She was fourteen when she met Newman, who sat across from her in Biology. She spoke with a dryness that could only come from someone who had been wronged, many times, by someone they loved. Her voice was loud and shrill, yet tonally pleasing, like a humming turbine slicing the air.

The day that David disappeared Newman ran into Bridgette in a park near their school. She was tripping on Mushrooms with two other girls Newman didn't recognize. Newman, unaware of this fact at the time, approached her and told her that it had been a long time with no see. Newman was confused to find that the acidic and bubbly girl he knew now looked quite glazed over. Bridgette sat, slumped over, starring at a trashcan across the sidewalk, saying “uh, trash, trash, Trash,” while her girlfriends were examining contours of a dandelion underneath the bench. Newman had to say her name twice before she looked up and smiled at him.

“Do you know where David is?” he asked her. “He hasn't been answering my phone calls.”

“David,” she said lovingly. “David. He's gone? Where did he go?”

“I thought you would know. You are, you know, his girlfriend.”

“Am I?” she asked, her smile fading. “I suppose I am that.”

“So?”

“How are you John?”

“I'm fine.”

“Fine. Fine. Trash.”

“Well, sometimes I feel like trash. Yes. But it's a nice day today and the sun is out. So I'm fine. How are you?”

“Trash,” she said sternly.

“Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but, look...”

“Trash,” she said again, groaning. “Trash.” Bridgette paused momentarily slumping down further on the bench. Her hair fell in front of her face and then she shot up, straight and tall like a fence post and starred at Newman intently. He noticed that her eyes looked darker than usual. “I miss David,” she said finally. She pushed her hair back behind her ears. She wore a ratty tee shirt and a pair of denim cut-offs. She had skinny legs that jutted from the bottoms of the shorts like noodles hanging from a sock. “He left so long ago. He was never really here to begin with. He started getting into drugs, John. But he left yesterday with his family. They just moved. He didn't tell anyone. He just left.”

“What do you mean: he just left?” Newman replied, his tone growing impatient.

“Don't yell at me, John. Uhg. TRASH. Why don't you go home I can't talk to you right now.”

“What are you talking about.”

“I have to leave,” she said. Bridgette starred off into the more forested parts of the park. She stood still for a moment, seemingly lost. The anger faded from her face and she looked as though she was trying to smell something that was being drawn away into the park. “What?” she uttered, shaking her head. “Oh. Around. I've been around.”

“What?” Newman said.

“I've been trashy. Just trash. I have to go, John. I have to go now.”

Bridgette disappeared into the park and the two girls followed after her. Dazed, Newman sat down on the bench and set his backpack aside. He rubbed his head and felt as though he might begin to cry, but this feeling was stymied; for when he looked down at his feat he saw a small pile of dandelions that had been ripped from the ground. Some of them still had their roots.

The next time Newman saw Bridgette was at a concert in the basement of an old, run down bungalow on the Eastside. She had been jumping and thrashing her thick hair up and down in the air. From his spot in a dark corner, Newman watched her. She wore a tight tie dye tee shirt with nothing underneath it. Her legs were skinny, about the size of a saucer in diameter, and the color of peach flesh. A ratty, pink silk shawl was draped haphazardly over her shoulders.

Newman's head turned sharply around. Something had hissed behind him. It was then he realized that he had been leaning against a water heater, three inches taller than him. It was warm. It was white and fat, like a giant, pearlescent coffee can. His head fell, limp to one side where his cheek smooshed into the metal. The metal burned his face, but only after a moment.

Newman peeled his greasy cheek off the water heater and turned back to Bridgette who had taken the microphone from the lead singer and was screaming at it. It wasn't a blood curling scream or anything like it. It was a cry, so loud Newman thought her vocal chords might split in her throat. She'll choke on her own blood, he thought, rubbing his cheek. Bridgette dropped the microphone and returned to the crowd where she tried to start a mosh pit. She was pushing on the shoulders of the people next to her, who batted her back towards the keyboardist.

Newman worried that she might hit her head on one of the rafters. They all hung down quite low, near the crown of everyone's skull. When the music stopped playing and the lights turned on Newman followed Bridgette outside where he found her puffing away on a clove and laughing. The clove was poised in her fingers, her wrist limp, her head tilted back like a dead child's as she exhaled a thick plume of smoke.

Bridgette Slaughter only had one arm, though, from the way she acted, one might never know that this was the case. She had been born with a withered limb that cut off at the elbow. Despite this handicap she made good use of her stub. She could even strike a lighter with it, if necessary. She often preferred to have men light things for her. Between that and her collection of old silk shawls, That was how she kept her deformity a secret. She chose not to draw attention to it, always having it down by her side while all her raging gestures seemed to funnel into her right arm, which was usually floating in the space above her head, her fingers balled into a sturdy fist.