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Haint Blue Sky

by Stephen Granade

Laurel hadn’t had time lately to listen to the stars sing. Sophomore classes had kicked her butt up one side of the holler and back down the other. She’d been okay missing the stars until the school’s combo football coach and part-time counselor had called her in right before Christmas break to talk about what she’d do after graduation. His tests claimed she should be an astronomer. Like Laurel’s mom had money for her to skip off to college or anything.

Starting the break like that put Laurel in a mood, so soon as it got dark, she bundled up and headed out back of the house. At the train tracks she laid down flat on the rough, sloped gravel, feet pointed at the ground, head pointed at the sky.

At least she could listen to the stars for free.

Their songs flickered like their light. Tonight, Sirius sang melody. Castor and Pollux added harmonies. Aldebaran’s deep bass rumbled underneath. And over it all, the Milky Way trilled a faint blue shimmer of high notes, hard to catch.

Laurel had learned all the stars’ names soon as she could read, so she knew what to call them when they sang. Mom had asked why Laurel kept checking the same ratty star book out of the one-room public library. She’d laughed when Laurel talked about the stars singing, so after that, Laurel didn’t say anything more about it. But she kept listening to them and dreaming of being among them.

Their song filled Laurel’s head until she joined in.

Laurel’s notes always went all wobbly, but she didn’t mind. The notes carried away her stress, misting into the air like her warm breath. She relaxed and closed her eyes and let the song flow through her.

“Child.”

Laurel sat up like an ant had bit her. She squinted at the darkness to see who’d heard her.

The stars had let off singing.

“Uh, hi?” Laurel called.

“Child, why do you sing with us?” The voice was a chorus that tickled her ears.

Above, the stars still twinkled. Had they gotten closer?

“Hey, stars, that y’all?” Laurel winced. Mom would tell her to be polite, even if they called her “child”. “Mr. Stars?”

“Why do you sing with us?”

On the one hand, this was super weird. On the other, she already knew the stars sang. Why not talk?

Laurel lay back on the gravel to keep from getting a crick in her neck. She didn’t know how to explain how the stars’ song made her whole, so she settled for saying, “Dunno.” Then, bold, “Why do you sing?”

That shut the stars up. Laurel traced a plane’s path across the sky, red and green on deepest black, so high above her it might as well be a star itself.

“We are made to sing.”

“Well, maybe I was, too.” Laurel wiggled herself a more comfortable spot in the gravel.

“You haven’t sung with us in a while.”

They’d noticed her. “Been busy. School stuff, you know.” Good grief, course they didn’t. There wasn’t, like, a star school or anything. “Why you only talking to me now?”

“We grew accustomed to your singing. Then you stopped.”

Confusion wrinkled Laurel’s forehead. “Y’all…lonely?”

“We crave your singing.”

Laurel’s childhood dream rose from where she’d pushed it down ages ago. “You know,” she said, casual-like, it didn’t do to be too eager, “I could come up there with you to sing.”

“No.”

The flat rejection, dropped like a thick Bible on her head, knocked the words from her. She gathered them back up. “It’s just, I, uh, crave your singing, too. Sure would like to be up there with you.”

“You cannot pay for such a trip.”

Didn’t that figure. Even the stars wouldn’t pull her from this town.

The beep-beep-beep of her phone brought her back to herself. Her meatloaf was done cooking. “Shit,” she said, then clapped hands over the cuss word. “You and me’ll talk more later,” she warned. She dodged nettle stalks, still alive far deeper into winter than they should be, and slipped past her namesake bushes as she ran pell-mell for home.

---

Laurel set the TV tray in front of Mom, who’d collapsed asleep as soon as she came in, too tired to take off her apron. She filled one end of the sofa like laundry.

Mom woke up when Laurel clattered a plate down on the tray. She smacked lips, blinked, and sat up. “You’ll catch your death of cold out there.”

“Lemme fetch you ketchup.” Laurel grabbed the squeeze bottle from the kitchen along with a mason jar of tea, no ice, sweet enough to rot teeth with one sip, just the way Mom liked it.

“You not eating?” Mom asked between forkfuls of meatloaf. Red dripped from each bite.

“Had a sandwich when I got home.” Laurel folded herself into an overstuffed rocking chair. Its springs squeaked a protest. “Dinner shift again tomorrow?”

“Yep.” Mom sucked air between her teeth. “Speaking of–”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what–”

“I do, Mom.” They’d been having this argument since before school let out.

Looked like they were going to have it again. “Mike says you can shadow me. Get used to the work. You won’t get paid, but still.”

“I need a break!” Mom’s whole face told Laurel what she thought of that idea. Laurel changed her approach. “Look, I work with you, who’s gonna make supper? We’ll have to pick up leftovers at the diner. You know Mike’ll charge you for them.”

“He wouldn’t–”

“Mom.”

“He wouldn’t!” But they both knew he would.

The screech and rumble of a train interrupted them. The house shook like a nervous dog as it passed.

After the noise died away, Mom waved her fork at Laurel. “You gotta think about your future.”

“I am. I got it all worked out.” Laurel rocked forward, arms on knees, like she needed to be closer for Mom to hear her. “Ollie got hired on at that new trucking company. He says he’ll put in a word for me, maybe get me a job with dispatch.”

“Ollie.” She said it like she should put a nickel in the cuss jar. “Like he can help. Maybe you think you’re too good for diner work–”

“That’s not it!” Laurel crossed her arms. “You know it ain’t.”

Mom rubbed the bridge of her nose. Wrinkles bracketed her eyes, more than Laurel had noticed before. “I worry, that’s all.”

“Don’t. I got this.”

“Fine. Talk to Ollie.” Mom’s lips hinted at a smile, rare for her. “Always said you could argue ticks off a dog.”

Laurel should be happy she’d gotten Mom off her back. She could enjoy her Christmas break.

Mom had picked up extra shifts in the fall. She hadn’t said, but Laurel knew she’d done it so Laurel wouldn’t have to take a job during school.
She felt small and mean, making Mom carry that alone.

“Hey, the trucking job probably can’t start ’til summer. Might as well work with you, get some experience. Make me easier to hire.”

“Okay then.” This time Mom did smile. “Okay then.”

---

Once Mom’s snores shook the door to her bedroom, Laurel slipped out onto the porch. She lit one of the cigarettes Mom wasn’t supposed to have any more. Smoke rose to the haint blue ceiling.

The rest of the house’s outside flaked like an old man’s scalp, but Mom kept the porch ceiling and window shutters painted fresh. When Laurel had asked about it, she’d said, “Got the habit from your grandmom. She said it keeps ghosts out. I think it’s pretty.”

Laurel walked down sagging steps, then through the woods and to the tracks. She ground out the cigarette butt in the gravel and laid down. “You listening?” she called softly.

“Always.”

Laurel’s shoulders relaxed. She’d been afraid the stars wouldn’t answer. “I meant it. You should let me come sing up there with you.”

“You cannot pay.”

When the stars didn’t say anything more, Laurel said, “Hey. Hey!”

The stars didn’t answer. Instead, a note rose from the tracks near her head. A train was coming.

She stepped away from the tracks. A sleek engine, blue as the noon sky, pulled cars clack-clack-clack past.

Mom had shown her the trick of putting pennies on the tracks. When the train was gone, she’d pick up the flat copper pancake like a magician pulling out a dove. Laurel hadn’t done that in years, though.

The three-note train whistle blew. It got louder, turned into a song.

That was new. Did everything have a song? She really hoped her toilet wouldn’t sing.

The song rumbled like the train, and lasted long after the caboose had passed. It trailed off, replaced by a voice: “Heard you talk to the stars, child.” The deep voice had three notes like the whistle. “Heard them talk back.”

“You the train?”

“A traveling spirit, that’s all. Taking souls from one place to another.”

“That so?”

“I could take you. Up there. Where they are.”

The offer made Laurel’s breath hitch, but then she frowned. “Way I see it, trains don’t usually run into the sky.”

“Told you, girl, I’m not the train. Just follow it for now. Sometimes people need to go places. I carry them for a time.”

“You following the train, how d’you get me to the stars?”

“I go where there’s need.” The voice drew nearer. “And you need.”

Laurel took a step back from the tracks. “I’m good. ‘Sides, I can’t pay.”

“Oh, you only have to pay to cross over to the stars, out past where Earth’s light ends. I can take you close, then bring you back. Won’t cost a thing.”

“What about paying you?”

“I’m a traveling spirit. Carrying’s what I do. That’s payment enough.”

No one gave Laurel good things for free.

She tipped back her head, but the stars still weren’t talking.

Don’t ride with strangers, right? Especially not weird ghost train spirit strangers. “I’m all good for now, thanks.”

“You think better of it, you let me know.”

Laurel ran back to the house before she could change her mind.

---

At the diner, Laurel’s mom was a miracle. She’d cock her head, listen, then repeat everyone’s order. She never got it wrong. After, she wrote up the meal from memory and clipped the paper to the kitchen’s order wheel like a butterfly pinned for a teacher. She got back to the kitchen window right before the cook called order up. Laurel struggled to lug her part of the order while Mom carried hers effortlessly. She gave out food like the plates told her where they went. Laurel fought to remember who had the chicken fried chicken and who had the cheeseburger, hold the mayo, extra pickles.

As afternoon turned into night, Laurel’s energy flagged. Mom’s never did. She topped off coffees and listened to complaints and handed out smile after smile. Laurel counted every one, charged triple for the ones Mom gave to the rude customers, and totaled the bill. No wonder Mom had so few for her.

It wasn’t ’till break time, when Mom sagged in the stockroom on a box of canned tomatoes, shoes off and massaging her feet, that she showed what it cost her.

Laurel slipped away, saying she needed to pee, but her feet carried her back to Mom’s customers. “It’s my first time solo,” she told each table as she smiled her way through their orders. The words bought grace to pay for her mistakes.

She’d served three tables–halfway decently, even if she did give one guy tater tots instead of fries–when Mike the manager yanked her arm.

“You’re s’posed to be with your mom,” he whispered. Laurel couldn’t look away from his mustache. It was like he’d dipped his upper lip in a bowl of cat hair.

“I got this.”

“I hired your mom.”

“Yeah, well, you shadow me for a sec. See how I’m doing.”

She scooped out extra sugar for the next table. “Heyyyy, I’m Laurel, Arleen’s kid. I’m new at this, that’s why Mike’s my shadow.” She nodded at Mike. “Real glad to take care of y’all. What’ll y’have to drink?”

Everyone wanted to help Arleen’s kid. Mom’d worked at the diner for years. By the third table Mike shook his head and left, saying, “Guess you’re doing alright.”

She was doing more than alright. She was killing it. By the time Mom caught up with Laurel, she’d handled her whole section.

“My girl,” Mom said, paying out one of her smiles. “You’re a natural.”

The compliment punched Laurel in the gut. She saw herself Mom’s age, tromping through the diner, serving up hash browns and grits and coffee that tasted like settling.

After that, no matter how Mom tried to make Laurel take the orders, she trailed after, silent as a ghost.

---

After a meatloaf sandwich breakfast, Laurel stumbled outside, phone in hand. Mom didn’t need to hear her call.

Ollie answered on the tenth ring. “I’m working, Laurel.”

“Hey, no, yeah, I figured. Just wondering about me maybe getting a job there?” Any job? she thought real hard but didn’t say.

“Oh. That.” His voice slid sideways. “Only, my boss is already giving me side eye, I kinda told him I knew how to run a forklift but then I maybe dropped a pallet. Two pallets.”

The weasel. “Don’t have to be today.” She shooed a desperate whine out of her voice. “Maybe we talk after Christmas, I come down there and you introduce me?”

“Laurel, I–I gotta go.”

Dead line. Laurel shoved the phone in the back pocket of her jeans. She should’ve put a nickel in the cuss jar before the call.

“Hey, stars!” she shouted. “You up there? You really listening?”

They didn’t answer. She never heard them in the day.

She stumbled to the train tracks and near about threw herself onto the gravel slope. Cold seeped through her jacket. The weight of all her future days pressed down on her, rocks piled on her chest until her breath squeezed out.

The train whistle filled her lungs. She didn’t flinch as the train sped near her head.

As the train noise faded, the traveling spirit spoke right over her. “You came back.”

“I did.” Her fingertips tingled with what she was about to ask. “You can take me there? To the stars?”

“I can. For a time.”

Laurel couldn’t lie still. She jumped up and paced back and forth next to the train tracks, avoiding the late-winter nettles. Any time was better than none. “Okay, then.”

“Though not like you are. You’ve got to dress for the occasion.” The traveling spirit whistled its three-note call as it drifted to the nettles. “Grab one of these.”

Laurel eyed the plants. “They make me all-over itchy. How’s that get me to the stars?”

“We’ve got to open you up before I can take you.”

Laurel reached out her hand, pulled it back.

“Slowly,” the spirit said. “Rub your hand across a leaf.”

Like jumping into a cold stream. She had to throw herself forward.

She brushed the back of one hand across a too-green leaf.

The rash sprang up like students ready to say the Pledge of Allegiance. It itched, then stung, then hurt so bad Laurel cried out. She scratched, and blood welled and dripped red on the cold ground.

“You’ll be ready soon,” the spirit said.

---

Laurel came to on the porch. Mom stood over her, haloed by the haint blue ceiling. “Baby? You with me?” Fingertips like ice cubes brushed Laurel’s hot face. “Oh, baby, what happened?”

“Made a choice,” Laurel said, or tried to. She couldn’t get the words past swollen lips.

She did push out a thin scream when Mom hauled her up. Her insides squirmed in a way that made her about throw up.

Her feet didn’t work right, and her body was a too-full bag of slops. Still Laurel stumbled forward, leaning hard on Mom to make it to her room.

“Benadryl,” Mom said once she’d rolled Laurel onto her bed and out of her coat. “It’ll help.”

Hot and cold waves swept through Laurel. “I found her all swole up,” Mom was saying. She’d called 911. “I don’t know what she got into.” The words came fast like starlings, her fear turning to anger. “I’m already fixing to give her Benadryl, I’m not stupid.”

With each heartbeat Laurel’s body tightened. Tears leaked out near-shut eyes. She couldn’t bend her arms.

Laurel hadn’t known it’d hurt so much to go.

“Here. Here. Here.” Cherry taste on her lips, fake as Ollie’s promise to help. “Baby, you’ve got to swallow, it’s all over your pillow. Baby.”

Laurel did the best she could.

“You’re burning up.” Mom went and came, and then coolness on Laurel’s face, a wet washcloth to draw the heat. Water collected in the hollow of her ears.

“Dear Lord, I just pray that you help my girl.” Mom hadn’t prayed in forever. “I just ask that you bring down healing, Lord, just soothe her, Lord, please, speed that ambulance, Lord, just bring it fast to us–”

A convulsion arched Laurel’s spine. Her chest opened with the sound of a burst tire, making her mom cry out.

Motes of light streamed out between the buttons of her flannel shirt, more and then more and then even more, pain draining like water out the tub, until the motes were all she was and all she was was light.

Mom fisted her hands in Laurel’s discarded clothes.

“Mom.” Laurel’s voice shimmered like sun on water. “Mom.”

Mom looked up. Light freckled her face. “Baby–?”

“It’s okay. I’m okay.” Laurel drifted around the room, getting the hang of being a bunch of light.

Mom gaped at her.

“You’re gathering flies, Mom.”

“Don’t sass mouth me,” Mom said, and then hiccuped. “Well, shit.”

“Nickel in the jar.”

“Gotta be you,” Mom whispered. “No one else’d ride me this hard.”

Laurel discovered that when she laughed, she pulsed like fireflies.

“Baby, you’ve gotta tell me what’s happened. You–are you dead?”

“Don’t right know myself. I don’t think so?” In the distance, the train whistled. “But I know I’ve gotta go. Just for a while, promise.”

The noise grew. The house shook. “Laurel Jane Whitt!” Mom shouted. “You explain yourself right now, hear?”

Closed shutters pounded fit to rattle Laurel’s teeth, only Laurel guessed they were rattling her memory of having teeth, which was too weird to think about right now. “I’m going on a trip. This is how I got to be to get there.”

The train whistle screeched for her.

Laurel moved to the shutters. They held fast, and she couldn’t slip through the cracks.

They were haint blue. She couldn’t cross them.

“Mom, you gotta open the shutters.”

“You’re staying right here!”

“Mom! It’ll be okay. But you’ve got to let me go! Open the shutters!”

Mom shook her head, fierce. The shutters pounded.

Laurel’s light faded. She was losing hold. Thoughts came slow. “Please, Mom.” She had to get out or she’d be dead dead. Her voice was a whisper, her tears sparks that drifted down to Mom’s hair. “Please.”

Mom gasped, several of Laurel’s motes flying down her throat. She gasped again, then threw open the shutters.

Air left the room like a tornado passing over. Laurel shot out of the window.

---

Laurel swooped and turned as she flew upwards in the wake of the traveling spirit, who was all machine oil and rushing speed. The sky’s blue faded until only black and stars remained. Higher, higher; Earth shrank, a ball, a coin, a spot.

When they stopped, Laurel rushed forward, only to have the traveling spirit pull her back. “No farther,” he said. “Or you’ll have to pay.”

Up here, where Laurel saw without eyes, she could trace the arc where the stars’ light became brighter than the Earth’s reflected light. “What’s it cost?”

The traveling spirit wound around and around, its thick dark strands ropy like black licorice but shot through with light. “You’ve got to burn away what’s left of Earth in you to open that boundary. You wouldn’t be nothing, after.”

She could hear the stars, clearer than ever before. And their song! Notes rose and fell and darted, an ocean full of fish, flashes of color, dappling of light. Laurel would cup her hands, if she still had hands, scoop the song and bring it to her lips, if she still had lips, let it slide down into her belly, if she still had one, until she was taut-full.

But the song still wasn’t fully clear on this side of the border. She moved forward, but the traveling spirit pulled her back.

“Closer,” she whispered. “Please.”

“This is close as we get, you and me.”

After a moment of silence, the spirit said in its three-tone voice, “You come all this way not to sing?”

The song was too perfect. She’d wreck it. She drew into a tight ball of motes, her light dimming.

“Child.” The stars’ voice pierced her. “We see you. We crave your song.”

Hesitant at first, Laurel lifted her voice.

Oh! It was so much easier now. Her light rippled as she sang. She discovered harmonies, singing in multiple voices, until she revolved around herself in a complex dance of light and song.

Pain sparked through her. She’d gotten too close. The spirit pulled her back, careful itself to avoid the border. “None of that,” it said, voice sharp. It coiled around her. “Best we head back now.”

Laurel flashed indignation. “I just got here!”

“There and back. That’s our deal.”

Frustration stained her joy. She jumbled about until she calmed down, determined not to let her mood spoil like old milk. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Little constellation,” the stars said, “we thank you for your song.”

“You can sing with me on the way.” The spirit coiled tighter.

“Back to my mom.” The spirit didn’t respond. “Right?”

“I’ve heard you sing with the stars.” The coils squeezed. “Be right nice for you to sing with me.”

“But just ’til I get home.”

“When I let you off at home, yes.”

This close, she could pick out more tones in the three-note train whistle. Other voices screamed soft underneath.

The lights all through it. Its talk of ferrying souls.

“How many people you carrying?”

“As many as needs carrying.” The coils tugged her towards Earth.

“When’d you last let someone off?”

The spirit’s voice grew teeth. “Why, I can’t quite recall.”

Laurel pulled herself into a tight fist and jetted away.

The traveling spirit unraveled. Strands darted out at her and stuck when they hit. Their light tugged on her motes.

The spirit yanked down. A haze rose in Laurel’s thoughts. She was pulling too far apart. She bunched back together.

Down, down, down moved the spirit. Laurel scrabbled, a fox with a trapped leg. “Mr. Stars! Help! Bring me to you!”

“We are sorry, little constellation. You would burn in the crossing. It is why we did not ask you to come.”

Anger swept away Laurel’s fear. She wasn’t gonna let this two-timing silver-tongued spirit get the better of her. There had to be a way across.

It came to her in a rush. The spirit keeping her on this side of the border. How it skittered away from the stars. It was of Earth, too. “Hey! Mr. Stars! This traveling spirit get me across to you?”

At that, the spirit slithered away. Or tried to, because Laurel wrapped her motes around the spirit, stuck herself but good to it. She pulled up and out, unraveling the strands like spaghetti.

“We had not considered it,” the stars said.

“Well, consider it!” Laurel said.

She wrestled with the spirit, pulling at its strands, until the stars finally said, “It would.”

That was all Laurel needed to hear. The spirit thrashed, but she’d untangled it enough that it couldn’t resist. Bit by bit she forced it across the border.

Bright starlight set the traveling spirit aflame. Its light blotted out the border. Laurel eased one mote across the yellow-red bridge of light, and then another, and then flowed across in a rush. Starlight infused her, changed her.

“No!” the spirit called, echoed by all its strands in syncopation, and “no!”, fainter, and fainter again, until the strands frayed and drifted up and the spirit was gone.

Its captured lights flowed back towards Earth, freed.

The stars’ song rose again, clear as never before, and this time Laurel joined in without hesitation, without fear. The song filled her and she emptied herself for it, and it never gave out.

After a time, Laurel broke off. “Mr. Stars? Am I stuck here now?”

“No, little constellation. The border will not hurt you, now that you are re-made.”

“I can go home? Everything will go back like it was?”

The stars’ laugh was every good and honest laugh Laurel had ever heard all stuck together. “No one is the same after.”

Laurel churned thoughtfully, motes moving past motes.

“Do you wish to return? Even now you are not fully here.”

She’d left part of her on Earth, inside Mom. It tugged on her when she thought about it, an invisible rubber band that would yank her home if she let it.

Would she? What did you do after you died and were a constellation?

She’d figure it out, her and Mom. She was going back.

Just not yet.

In answer, Laurel poured out her song, and the stars met it with joy.