The Night Before the Comet

The assignment, several years ago, was to write a story using all of the five sences. This is what I came up with.


The Night Before the Comet


The experts on CNN were about evenly divided. Half said the comet would smash into the Northeastern United States tomorrow at 11:42 PM and end civilization as we know it within three days. The other half said it would skip off the stratosphere like a rock on a pond and the worst result would be really crummy radio reception for a day or two.

I thought I’d see for myself what the world was up to on what was maybe going to be it’s last day. I had heard there were lines at the gas stations and most freeways were pretty congested, so I topped off the tank of my Harley from the lawn mower gas can and took off on back roads heading generally East. For a minute I considered riding up to Wannatuck and spending the night with my ex-wife, but she was always a frantic kind of woman even when things were calm so I passed on that idea. I figured I’d just ride around until I’d burned about half a tank of gas and then head home to watch the world end from my lawn chair in the front yard.

It was June twentieth. The National Weekly Globe had made a big deal about the fact that the comet was arriving at the Summer Solstice. Something about the wrath of God or some ancient Druid prophecy or something and they seemed to be betting on total annihilation. Probably. I noticed they still offered five-year subscriptions.

Cramer Road was empty of traffic. A hundred years ago it was a main route between Lincoln and Huron Bay. Now it’s just a busted, hard packed, dirt covered two-lane country trail. A steady crosswind bent the weeds and kicked a hot, fine clean dust under my visor. Every once in a while I’d get a whiff of fresh cut hay or grass with a cow manure chaser. The bike eased through the bumps and potholes, fifteen pounds of recent fat recoiling over my belt.

Panic was hard to find. I think if you don’t have a bunch of people gathered together, panic just doesn’t know how to show itself. It’s like laughter. A guy can be funny as hell on TV but if your watching alone you might not even chuckle. If somebody’s with you, you’ll laugh. At a comedy club you’ll slap the table and choke on your drink because he’s so damn funny. It’s the crowd. Like we need permission to laugh. Or to panic. I passed a woman hanging sheet of tan canvass over a tree limb beside her house. Was she desperate? Was she torn with inner turmoil? Was she at peace with God? Was she maybe just not paying attention?

I should have packed some food in my saddlebags. I never considered that it might be tough to get a Quarter Pounder on the eve of Armageddon. I took the Bingham Road up toward Huron Bluffs. There is a little road just before the Bluffs that dead-ended at a great overview of Port Commerce and the freeway that might be worth seeing on a day like this. I must have gotten turned around a bit, because I wound up on Norton Mills Road with nothing on either side of me but soybean fields. I pulled over at a wide spot in the road to check a map. I killed the engine.
The only thing near as sweet as the rumble of a Harley motor is the silence when you turn it off. I checked my pack and found I hadn’t brought a map. It was well past noon but the sun was still high and white. I looked east but it was way too early to spot the fuzzy pulsing sky-streak of Yamota-Bernstein. It would rise just after dark and then I guessed it would fall shortly thereafter. Or not. Up the road I heard the high pitched ying, ying, ying of a circular saw. I clipped my helmet to the back of the seat and rode slowly toward the sound, the hot wind feeling good on my scalp.
I rolled into the driveway of the next farmhouse I came to and followed it around to a back shed and the sound of the saw. I shut down the bike and he put down the saw. The sweet, sappy smell of his fresh cut wood mixed with the odor of my hot engine oil. The man with the saw was older than me. He could have been anything from a real tired fifty-five to a well-preserved seventy. His face was the color of an old catcher’s mitt, but it wasn’t nearly that smooth…maybe more the texture of hard leather work gloves left out on the John Deere all winter. He nodded. I nodded.
“I’m kinda lost,” I said, running my hand through my hair. “Huron Bluffs?”
He pointed back the way I’d come, “Back that way five miles, then jog left, then right…another three miles and there’s a service station. That’s at MacMartin’s Speedy-Co. Left there takes you to the Bluffs. Got it? Left, right, left.”
I looked at the lumber he was working on, “Cherry?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“Furniture?”
“It’s gonna be a crib. I got a grand baby gonna get born next week.” He ran his hand over a three-foot length of one by six.
I decided to stretch for a minute and lowered the kickstand. I swung my right leg over the handlebars and leaned against the seat. “You’re not worried about the comet much are you?” I said.
“I don’t think on it. What you don’t think on you don’t worry about. It don’t matter any way. If it comes I’ll be dead whether I do this or not. And if it don’t come and I don’t work on it, then I’ll be a whole day behind getting it built. Either way. Don’t look like you worry too much either, just out for a ride?”
“Yeah. Like you. If it’s going to end, I want one last look. If not, it’s a nice day for a ride. How are you going to finish it?”

He rubbed the wood again. “Haven’t decided. Probably clear polyethylene. I could use cherry colored stain, but that would be kind of stupid. If I was going to do that I could’ve just made it out of pine and used cherry stain. The baby wouldn’t know. Or I might paint it. My daughter in law wants it painted blue.”

“Be a shame to cover that grain with paint, don’t you think?” I walked over and picked up one of the perfectly turned dowels. “You turn these yourself?” I asked.

“I got a lathe and nothing much better to do. Could have bought ‘em pre-made and a whole lot cheaper.”

“But not in cherry?”

“Right.” He rested his hand on the top of a blue plastic cooler, “You want a baloney sandwich?”

I patted my saddlebag, “You want a beer?” I might have forgotten food and a map, but I did have my priorities.

His porch was screened in and overlooked the backyard. We let the screen door slam and settled into a pair of creaking wicker chairs.

“What do you think it’s going to look like?” he asked.

I took a sip of beer and let the bubbles break on the roof of my mouth. “Haven’t you been watching it?”

“I saw it two nights ago. It was pretty big then. Missed it last night. Actually I fell asleep in front of the television.”

I judged which way was west and pointed up, “The tail looked to be about so long,” and I spread my thumb and forefinger as far as I could. “And like there’s two jets coming out of it now so there’s really two tails. One of the TV guys had some explanation for it. Trapped gas or something.”

Last night, just before I went to bed I took a walk in my backyard. Fatboy was barking and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything more than a squirrel. I called him and as we turned to go back to the house I saw the comet hanging there about halfway up the sky. It was the first time I’d ever paid it any real, personal attention. I stopped walking and stood for a second. Then I just sat down on the ground. Fatboy sat next to me and I rubbed his head while I stared up. It seemed that it should have been making some kind of sound. In all the Star Wars movies the space ships and missiles and asteroids all made a bunch of noise. Yamota-Bernstien just hung there.

“Can I give you a hand?” I asked.

“If you want.”

We sanded and fitted and glued the crib until it was too dark to work. “I got one beer left. You want to split it?” While he went in the house to get a glass, I waited on the porch. He came out with some glasses and a big square quart bottle of bourbon.

We talked about his wife dying and the price of soybeans and his Ford truck. Then we talked about my wife leaving, drywall versus plaster and my Harley. Then that same steady wind that had been in my face all day puffed a couple of hard gusts and rattled the aspens. Through the quaking leaves we saw a white-silver glint of light. Ten minutes later the comet was above the tree line. It was square overhead in half an hour, covered an arc wider than my two hands spread out and had started pulsing pink around the edges.

“It’ll either be down or gone in about ten minutes, I’d guess.”

“I’ve got it figured out,” the farmer said.

“Better late than never,” I said. “What?”

“The crib. I’m going to seal it with a clear finish. The hell with stain. But on the headboard I’m going to paint it with a picture of the comet.”

As the head of Yamato-Bernstein passed over the far horizon I thought I finally heard it make a sound. But it might have just been the aspens.