Lost in Thoughts

CHAPTER ONE

The skies of America were changing, he'd told me so. I had no frame of reference, so I believed him. He said that he'd lived long enough to detect the difference in the clouds. He showed me the way they stretched out long, like a cat after a nap, how they're layered and iridescent behind the white. They never used to do that. They held together, fluffy and bursting, he'd said. Something had changed. He was angry when he spoke of the sky, as if it were the last frontier of nature they'd taken from us.

"Who would have ever thought they could ruin the sky?" He asked aloud, teary-eyed and gazing up through the branches where we sat at the base of the pear tree. We gorged on golden pears while he reminisced about the skies of his youth, juice dribbling down his greyish stubbled chin. I studied the curve of his nose and the gentle lines that appeared at his squinting eyes while he spoke. As the afternoon wore on and his eyes closed for a rest, I nibbled at the papery skin of my pear, exposing little by little the naked fruit for the world to see.

The sky turned to a milky magenta as we made our way back through the winding dirt roads to the cottage for supper. Inside, Grandma was bent over a large pot with steam forming shadows where her eyebrows met in the middle. She motioned for me to pass her the salt, and her meaty fingers threw three strong pinches into the pot.

"Set the table," she barked.

I cleared recipe books and her sewing materials off the oak dining table, placing them in a new pile on the hutch. I had learned a long time ago to move quietly around Grandma, like a mouse when a snake has entered the room. Instead of asking what type of dish we would need, I tried to smell what it might be. The air was salty, robust, with notes of onion and sounds of boiling. Stew. I placed a wide-brimmed bowl at each setting, a fork and spoon just in case I was wrong, and a glass of water for myself, red wine in small round glasses for Grandma and Grandpa.

Spending my summers in the Appalachian mountains with my grandparents was like stepping through a curtain back in time. They lived simply, and hadn't done a single upgrade to their little cottage since Grandpa had built it decades ago. The furniture smelled of damp rocks after a hard rain. Nothing was ever thrown away. Cloth napkins, towels, sheets, and clothing were all used until they were stringy rags, and then those were used for cleaning. Any scraps leftover from our meals were either used to create a new meal the following day, or given to the animals.

After supper, I washed all the dishes while Grandma retired to her crossword puzzle in the screened-in porch. It was also my job to sweep and mop the kitchen floor each evening. Once my chores were done, I snuck out to the hammock to lay back and watch the stars as they emerged onto their wide open stage, one by one. Grandpa whispered in my ear as I stared in awe of them. "They're lookin' back at you kid, and thinking the same thing."

The next morning after a breakfast of porridge and fresh raspberries we'd picked along the side of the road, Grandpa and I left for our daily outing. It was an unspoken rule that we leave Grandma alone during the day, and so without a formal plan, we'd find one another somewhere on the vast property. We would meander towards town, or the river, or to sit under the pear tree. This morning I found him stacking wood for winter by the driveway.

"Grandpa can we go to town today?"

"Ah, my Rachel. What for?" He wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"I want to go to the library."

I'd been wanting to find a book on clouds, so that I could better understand what Grandpa had been talking about. I wanted to name them, to get to know them, so that I, too, could detect the changes that were happening to our world. Grandpa talked about a lot of changes he didn't like in the world. He was forever terrified that they'd take his guns away, and that the water wasn't to be trusted like it used to be. For anyone that refuted his claim, he'd quickly bring up the Flint river as the ace in his back pocket. The conversation went one of two ways after that; he'd either found a new friend, or the person withdrew rather quickly, typically shaking their head as if to say they don't have time for people like him.

After a short, mostly silent walk to town, Grandpa left me to my wandering through the library while he headed off to the barber shop. The air inside the library smelled of cheap spray cleaners mixed with whiffs of inky wood from a hundred years of paper. I stood at the computer desk and typed into the search engine for books about clouds. The first was a book about predicting the weather, and while interesting, it wasn't what I was hoping for. The second was a children's book about cloud-spotting, the next few were fiction and then finally there was one written in the late 1800's. The next was a recent book published about extraordinary changes in clouds over the millennia. I took both and signed them out at the desk. The librarian raised her eyebrows while scanning each one.

"Summer science project, Rachel?" She asked.

"Something like that." I shrugged while tossing both books into my cloth tote and gave a quick wave before exiting into the soupy August mid-morning sunshine.

Grandpa found me sitting in the shade of a red maple near the town square after his haircut. He was holding a long box under his left arm and had the hint of a smile he was trying to suppress.

"Your hair looks nice!" I said as he approached me.

"What's in the box?"

"What box?" He winked but didn't divulge any information.

We began the walk home each lost in our own thoughts; him preoccupied with the contents of his secret box, and I, with my new books and the possibilities of uncovering the myths of our skies.

Dusk was settling in around the mountain. After a supper of roasted chicken, boiled potatoes and green beans picked from the garden, I cleaned up the kitchen quickly then grabbed my cloth tote with my library books, sneaking away to a spot behind the barn. I used my flashlight as I skimmed over the images of clouds. I said each one aloud to try to remember their names. Cirrus. Stratus. Cumulous. Alto. Nimbus. I was so wrapped up in the names and images I didn't hear Grandpa approaching.

"Rach, you there?" He called out and I slammed the book shut on my thumb. He looked down at the cover and smiled.

"You ok?" He rustled the top of my head, pushing my bangs into my eyes. I nodded trying to forget about the throbbing in my thumb and at the same time hiding the cover of the book with my other hand. Grandpa held out the long box from earlier that day.

"Go ahead, open it."

He nudged the box towards me. I quickly put the cloud book back into my tote and slid the lid off the top. It was a telescope, white with a black base, and heavy enough to know it wasn't cheap. I looked up at him.

"Thank you!"

He smiled and brushed my bangs off my face to see my eyes more clearly.

"Now you can look closer at the stars."

He immediately began setting it up and I could tell that the gift was as much for him as it was for me. He brought it out to a clearing behind the barn and crouched down low to peer through the small lens. Then began adjusting until finally he clapped his hands together and shouted.

"Wow Rachel, come see this!"

It was beautiful, the way the yellow light of the star turned a cool blue under the telescope. Together we took turns pointing it at different ones until the mosquitos and blackflies drove us back inside the cottage.

Pale streaks of sunlight fell onto the quilt on my bed the next morning. I tiptoed quietly into the kitchen to find Grandma was already standing in her nightgown at the counter slicing the sourdough bread she'd made the night before. She slathered a slice with butter and jam and pushed the plate in my direction. I took my plate and quietly made my way towards the table, pushing aside the newspaper and Grandma's reading glasses. Grandpa was sipping coffee in the screened-in room, seemingly lost in his thoughts as he looked out over the far side of the mountain. When I finished eating, I cleaned my plate and asked if Grandma needed anything from me. When she shook her head, not looking up from her crossword, I decided it was safe to slip outside.

The telescope looked larger and more expensive in the light of the day, singled out in the middle of the field. I grabbed my tote with the library books and after a quick look around to ensure I was alone, headed towards it.

The sky was almost cloudless except a long stretch of white that came as if from under the mountain and to the top of the atmosphere. Another on the far horizon appeared as an x. Looking into the telescope, I adjusted the lens on the vertical cloud and saw what looked like fuzzy, waving lines. I turned to the strange x cloud and adjusted again. The white of those clouds had what appeared to be a rainbow hovering around them.

The index of the Extraordinary Changes in Clouds book revealed a chapter on airplane contrails and air pollution. I flipped to that section and was about to start reading when I heard a noise behind me.

"I don't think you can see stars in the daytime sweetheart."

Grandpa came wading through the long grass. I shut the book but he'd already seen it.

"Is that what you got at the library? A book on clouds?"

He exhaled and rolled his eyes. "I don't need a book to tell me the sky's changed." He walked past me and looked up towards the long line in the sky. "See!" He pointed. "Ruined."

I opened the book to the page on contrails and ran to catch up to him.

"But look Grandpa, it says that -"

He cut me off. "I don't care what it says. You think they're gonna tell us in a book? Pffft." He rolled his eyes and waved his hand as if swatting the idea as a real thing he could push away. I closed the book and put it back into my tote, running to catch up to him as he continued through the field. He was now lost in his own world, not wanting to discuss the book, that much I knew. We walked in silence for a long time until finally resting under the pear tree. Grandpa took a bite of a pear he'd pulled from a low branch, and stared at the x-shaped cloud on the horizon. A tear formed at his eye, and finally he spoke.

"Rachel, I know what that book is going to say. It's going to say it's from airplanes. And maybe it is..." he paused for a moment. "But maybe it's more than that, and when you've lived through all the things I've lived through, it's hard to pick up a book and trust what's in it." The tear rolled down his cheek and caught on his jawline before splashing to his olive coloured button up shirt, leaving a small dark circle on his chest. While I didn't understand it, I also felt I couldn't refute it either. We sat in silence for the remainder of the afternoon, each biting our pears and lost in thoughts of what we know and what we think we know.