Mr. Tyson Was Hit by a Star

“They say the impact of the thing made a crater this wide!” Mr. Morton declared as he threw his arms out as if waiting for some kind of hug. The courtroom went silent, and he sort of retreated his arms and voice in response. “And they say,” he continued quietly, ”there was nothin’ left of old Mr. Tyson after that mighty dust cloud cleared, no cadaver, no nothin’ just the star that did it and the crater it left behind.” A breath of silence washed over the room, a long drawn-out breath only invaded by the soft clicking of the court reporter’s keyboard. My keyboard.

“Thank you for that testimony, Mr. Morton,” The lawyer on the prosecuting side of The State of Alabama V. Meteorite 3-1-19-19-9-5 said, and with that, the court adjourned for the day. The morning it had happened, old Mr. Tyson had been milling about in his pasture, enjoying the cold breath of fall winding through his hair, and the first touch of sunlight fighting back against the chill. He was probably leaning on his worn wooden fence, tracing the dips and cuts in the wood. He would move until he found a knot, he would learn the shape of the knot, and then move back and up or down and go again.

We know he was doing this because he did it every morning. He would only wave to passersby with the hand that wasn’t making pleasant introductions with the wood. It was likely, the town thought, that he knew every knot’s father’s father's father and it was likely that he could tell which part of the fence came from which tree. We also knew that that was what he was doing that particular morning because a good chunk of the fence was blown to splinters in the impact that killed him. Mr. Tyson, at a wood fence family reunion, was struck by a star hurdling down from space and now we were pressing charges.

What charge? That’s a reasonable question to have, well, we said we’d figure that out when we got the bastard into court. The first step was getting a lawyer, a black suit with gel-globbed hair from the big city nearby. He drove down our roads on a set of tires so luxurious our asphalt felt insufficiently mediocre. Sleek black, cat-like, and purring, his foreign car (with a name I didn’t dare pronounce) gave us faith in the breadth of his skills but a wariness in the depth of his pockets.

But he was kind and well spoken and he had brought with him the letter we had written tucked in its original envelope, somehow in better shape than when we had mailed it off to him. He didn't mind if the courtroom floorboards creaked under his polished shoes and if his jacket and suit pants got dusted by tooth-yellow powder from our old gravel walkways. Our money was good, our beer was cold, our passion was electric, and our alien defendant wasn’t able to speak. He was only teasing with that last comment, but it still made a fair few of us red-hot with embarrassment. This was ridiculous after all, but we were sure it was what we wanted.

The trial was set for the 28th of October and the star graciously resolved to represent itself. It was helped into its seat by the bailiff and strangely didn't bring any notes. The chair creaked under its weight and its grooved inky skin glinted subtly in the dim swaying bulb softly illuminating the courtroom. The judge who opened the case hadn't worn his robes in quite a while and had marched excitedly down to the dry cleaners earlier that morning. He was having his own little musical moment, though instead of Gene Kelley kicking up rainwater it was Judge Lawrence D. Thompson kicking up gravel and humming a tune whispered from the old radio he had set up on his windowsill.

It was fashioned of mechanisms nearly fifty years old and the speakers could hardly squeak out a sound and that always frustrated him. But on this day, it might as well have been a big brass band booming live. In fact, the whole town felt alive. I had only found out about exactly what was happening when a boisterous silhouette came rapping on my door and shouting all muffled-like through the thick sandy glass of my office door. “You’re gonna be in court soon! You’re gonna be in court soon!” it was almost singsongy, like a taunt one might hear from a snot-nosed little fourth grader who just tagged you it.

I figured I might as well be at my best and so I did some typing exercises hosted by our fancy new computer system. After some time, I felt like my fingers were moving like that Tin Man from Oz when he finally got his oil can. I was awake, we were awake. I showed up early for work on the day of the trial. The jail was adjoined to the courthouse by a thin wall with peeling paper, so I decided to take a stroll through and get a glimpse at the rock. Steps would be a better word than stroll, however, as there was only one holding cell in the jail and the star was its only occupant.

“So, they’ve got you in here till the trial starts huh?” I asked, ridiculously, out loud. The star, of course, didn’t respond, but I swore I saw a glint run across its skin. “Ahh, I wouldn’t be quite so talkative either, no food no water in a week, that’s rough business buddy.’ The rock, again, remained silent. “Well best of luck to you I guess, and thanks, I haven’t been to trial in quite a long time, it’s quiet out here,” I stopped myself at the doorway back into the courtroom, and I placed my hand flat on the wall, I picked at some of the paper, and took a chunk off and rubbed it between my fingers. “I know it’s a weird thing, thanking a murderer for murder, but of course, you’re not a murderer… well you’re a rock, but you’ve got this whole town moving,” I dropped the wallpaper, and it floated gently to the ground. “See ya in court, I’m not rooting for you but it’s brave of you to represent yourself. I bent down and picked up the small bit of wallpaper and tucked it in my pocket. “Real brave,” I said and then I walked out of the jail.

I walked back to my office, unlocked the door, and sat down, my chair spun (a favorite feature of mine) and rolled (again, a favorite) which allowed me to glide around my office as I needed. But today I rolled myself over to the big glass window overlooking the road outside the courthouse. I pulled on the frayed string that controlled the blinds and took them up. The glass was unwashed, but if I pressed my nose against it I could see out fairly well. I looked to my right, down the way to Mr. Tyson’s farm, and thus the impact site, then I looked left. Normally around this time, there was a crowd gathered outside the sole diner in the town, people lined up for a greasy platter of eggs, bacon, sausage, and a hot steaming cup of good southern coffee, but today it was dead quiet.

In fact, it seemed as though the line that usually found itself there had instead migrated over, like a herd of cattle, to the courthouse and assumed a similar formation outside its great big doors. I stared out the window until my breath fogged the glass up, and I had to pull my head backward and smudge it with the cloth I usually reserved for my glasses. It still served to help me see, but I made a mental note to wash it later. As I was diligently smudging the already smudge-laden window, a voice suddenly calling out behind me made me jump. It was the bailiff, he was leaning against the frame of my door, his eyes fixed on my name and title.

“Hey now, how long have you been workin’ here again?” His accent was thick like maple syrup and southern like whiskey.

“‘Bout two or so years now sir, fresh out of college,” as I replied I tried to suppress my embarrassment, I couldn’t believe he had caught me staring so intently out the glass.

“Two years is quite some time, how many cases have you worked in those two years then?”

“Two, sir, just two.”

“What were they, gee, I should remember this, it was that cow thief, the one who ran that herd right through Mrs. MacArthur’s flower patch, and” he paused, he palmed his forehead and shut his eyes tightly.

“I believe it was the lawsuit over the four-leaf clover, but that one got thrown out, along with the clover,” I chuckled as I said it but he didn’t look very amused. This was the longest conversation I’d ever had with the bailiff, the longest conversation I think anyone had had with him.

“Yeah that’s right,” he said, “the great clover dispute of ‘84, what a time.”

The doors must’ve opened while we were conversing, as I heard the crowd below murmuring in excitement. I rolled my chair back under my desk, opened my file cabinet (flicked through my three files, one for each case), and then grabbed the file for today. I stood up, and the bailiff had moved rather silently in front of me.

“There’s gonna be a lot of chatter out there today, make sure you get it all down, can you handle that?”

The truth was, I wasn’t sure, the trial with the cow thief happened while I was in training, so I only observed, and the “great clover dispute of ‘84” was thrown out before it even went to trial, I think just a motion was filed, maybe not even. Nevertheless, despite my performance being well in my program I had never done it with stakes. Judging by the vocal vibration I felt through my shoes those stakes were sky-high.

“I’ll manage, sir, I usually find a way to manage.” He put a hand on my shoulder and said “alrighty then” he reached down to his belt, plucked his handcuffs off a hook, and started swinging them around.

“I’m gonna go grab the object of the hour then, why don’t you find your way to your seat, Lawren-” he stopped himself and took a deep breath in “The honorable Judge Thompson will be expecting you.” I made my way out of the room, down the hall, and into the courtroom, then I sat down and stared off into the crowd.

They were all dressed in their Sunday best, not a single person was poorly groomed, dressed, or mannered, and it seemed like the whole town was in attendance. I shuddered, the whole damn town is here. The bailiff entered to my left, he pushed the door open with his butt and wheeled around with the rock in his hand. He gave me a look that said look at what they’ve got me doing! And at my age too! He helped the star into its seat, stood there for a minute, pushed a glass of water someone had poured for it a little closer to it, patted it on the head(?), and moved back into his spot. He looked at the judge with that same look, and before losing himself to thought.

The judge stood up and started making his way through proceedings, eventually he got tired of saying Meteorite 3-1-19-19-9-5, so he asked if the defendant was ok with being referred to as Starman just like David Bowie. The rock did not respond, but its scientist handler, albeit with some disdain, agreed as even he was getting tired of hearing Meteorite 3-1-19-19-9-5 and this was a murder trial, we were going to be here for a while.

Eventually the court had to break for lunch, and I sat out under the shade of a great oak tree and bit down into my sandwich. I had my legs outstretched and that day's paper folded open on my lap, and hey look, someone had snapped a photo of the rock. I moved through the pages until I got to the story, and I read most of it, it was pretty boring to me for the most part. All it was was a watered down version of the report I had read in preparation for trial, but then I got to the interview section which made me giggle to myself. I wrapped up my sandwich and closed it inside my lunchbox. I flicked out the paper and started whisper-reading to myself. The questions were pretty standard asking for motive (no comment) asking for a description of what had happened (no comment) asking about where exactly in space this space rock was from (no comment) and so on and so forth.

I kept reading, and occasionally that same scientist from earlier would pipe in. Like in response to the question of cosmographic origin, wherein he had replied that the rock was likely from the something sector of the whatever galaxy. At the end of the interview a small little paragraph tacked on in italics complemented the rock on its ability to keep its mouth shut. I guess it understood its rights, I guess better than most. I noticed the people around me begin to meander back inside the courtroom, and with a quick glance at my watch I noticed it was indeed time to head to my post. So I carefully tore the photo of the rock out from the paper and tucked it inside my pocket, quickly introducing it to the piece of wallpaper that made for a good roommate.

I tossed the rest of the newspaper out, scooped up my lunch and walked back inside. As the court had resumed, it was time for the first witness. Mr. Morton, who did finance for a dairy company and often bought milk from Mr. Tyson (he who had been struck by star). He was loud, and people dreaded the noise of whatever room he was in, and today was no different. I noticed a few people subtly squeeze earplugs into their ears, some popped some preemptive painkillers, and a few others took sips from flasks they surely weren’t supposed to have. I looked over to the bailiff to see how he was reacting to all this, and I noticed him tucking something silver back into his jacket pocket as well. He shot me a smile and another look that said don’t be jealous cause you didn’t bring your own. And truth be told I wasn’t jealous yet, but as soon as Mr. Morton opened his mouth. I undoubtedly was.

“Well now, I’d known Mr. Tyson since his third wife Angelica had left him for some fancy suit lawyer in the city,” he stopped mid sentence and stared at the prosecutor, “well not someone like you obviously, some real bad lawyer.”

The room softly chuckled, the prosecutor smiled, waved his hand and replied “no offense taken Mr. Morton, now please tell the court about what Mr. Tyson was doing when he was struck by this here Starman.”

It seemed as though after spending some time in our midst, the lawyer had lost his city way of talking and had taken on a twinge of our southern voices. In response to his question, Mr. Morton began to recall fences, knots’ fathers, and old morning traditions until he finally arrived at the impact. He reminded us all about how big the crater was, leaving the court in that uncomfortable silence. Mr. Morton continued the rest of his testimony in a more reserved manner, choosing to only speak in direct answers to the questions proposed to him. Though he did give into some temptation and try to slip in a joke here or a witty one liner there, but generally he stayed straight.

It was strange, we didn’t fail to recognize the severity of what had happened, true Mr. Tyson had no family, and true he kept mainly to himself. He only dealt with Mr. Morton on the business of milk selling and billiard shooting (both of which being affairs wherein Mr. Tyson mainly listened). All the same, a man was dead, dead in an instant, dead to something so absurd we didn’t know how to act. I felt guilty thinking about the absurdity, but I felt absurd in feeling guilty. It was like I was tied at both ends, and I couldn’t move or else I’d be fully suspended by my toes or fully suspended by the neck. All I would do was record notes, and keep it to myself.

After what felt like a needlessly long retelling of the story we all knew, the prosecutor finally moved in for the killshot question “and would you say that this meteorite, the only thing capable of making such an impact and killing in such a way, was responsible for the death of one Mr. Tyson?” And there it was, that proper way of talking was back in full swing.

Well I suppose, but then again I wasn’t there and I didn’t see it and wouldn’t that be Specked-cue-lation Mr. Lawyer?”

The Lawyer looked to the meteorite and with a cocked eyebrow asked “would you like to object to the question Mr. Starman like David Bowie?”

The meteorite did not respond and the courtroom gasped, this Lawyer was bold, was he baiting or was he banking on the fact that this rock was a rock and could not object. Maybe we can put some money on the more likely option sometime later. After Mr. Morton gave his reply (that being “I dunno prolly”) the Lawyer decided he had no further questions. Given that the meteorite had declined to request any subsequent cross examination, the trial had moved forward to its first expert witness.

The prosecutor called the scientist, the very same one who spoke in the interview, to the stand and began to grill him about the origins and trajectory and some other scientific gibberish. As he did, the scientist (whose name was Dr. Jorgensen) began to panic, almost as if he didn’t want the rock to be thrown in some kind of cell. After all, what were we going to do with it when the trial was completed? I was sure that the fine Dr. Jorgensen was wanting to take it off to some lab for studying, and I personally wouldn’t be opposed to that. But unfortunately it was not the Honorable Judge Court Reporter’s court it was the Honorable Judge Lawrence D. Thompson’s. And that very judge presiding over this very court was, right at that moment, staring daggers into the meteorite.

It was strange, I didn’t know someone could engage in a stare down with something that not only didn’t have eyes, but didn’t have anything. But there it was, right in front of me. I had recalled something in that moment, something I had forgotten up until then. I remembered a day, right before the great clover dispute of ‘84 when the air was heavy and hot and all the windows in the court house were open and I was sorting through papers because there wasn’t someone lower on the rung than me to do it yet.

I remembered being called into Judge Thompson’s office and I remembered him sitting in his large red leather chair (that had to be thrown out later that summer) sipping a glass of Ice Tea. I remember wishing I could pluck the droplets of condensation gathered on the glasses’ edge as if they were icy diamonds and I remember thinking that on my break I would go and grab some Iced Tea for myself. But more particular to this very instance, I remembered that I had seen a framed portrait on Judge Thompson’s wall.

It was him and Mr. Tyson dressed in military uniforms and posing right in front of a rather large helicopter. They looked young and happy and both wore wide grins on their faces. They were friends, and when I left that memory I looked at Judge Thompson and I saw that he was wearing whatever the exact opposite of a wide grin was. I realized, in that moment, that he was angry, and a great portion of the town was angry too. I started to feel sad, sad for the meteorite and sad that it had to have landed there where it did and not just a few yards away.

In his testimony Dr. Jorgensen had said that the chances of this happening were so astronomically low, that had Mr. Tyson survived, he should've played the lottery a hundred times. And while the rest of the courtroom was deciding how really unlucky they thought that Mr. Tyson was on some arbitrary 1-10 scale I began to think about how unlucky that poor Mr. Starman was, and how he has to endure all this rigamarole for something he never intended to do. I wasn’t planning on leaping up and volunteering myself as a defense attorney, I was a court reporter, and thus I would keep my peace. Several other witnesses came up, gave the same testimony and then left.

This went on for a few days, Judge Thompson would grit his teeth and hold his breath and look like he was just about to pop as the witnesses recalled the exact same story over and over again. To me, and to the rest of the town it was pretty obvious what had happened. I mean unless Mr. Tyson had dug a large crater around him, destroyed his beloved fence and all his knots and then found a way to vaporize himself, there was little debate in the story being told. As I thought about this and as the crowd became rowdier and rowdier, slowly starting to act more like a circus audience than a proper courtroom, I began to let my eyes wander down the cuts and dips in the surface of the meteorite.

I let my eyes wander until I found a knot, then I learned the shape of the knot, and then I moved back and up or down and went again. I started to notice faces in his skin, I saw eyes misty and sad, I saw a mouth curved into a frown and I saw a brow, wrinkled with guilt. The courthouse windows had been opened, the sheer number of people inside the building had driven the temperature to an uncomfortable heat and we could only sweat so many buckets before someone had to do something.

The breeze caused the hanging lights to sway and the swaying lights caused the rock to change and in its shifting it spoke to me. It told me it was sorry, but it told me to look around, to appreciate the passion swirling around me. I told it that I didn’t agree, that it belonged up there among the stars, but it responded to me in earnest that it didn’t mind. That from the moment it was ejected from whatever quadrant of whatever galaxy it came from it was always destined to be here, right here and right now, it was on a crash course with that chair and that pasture and this conversation. I traced the grooves again and again, I could tell where it had broken from its mother comet and I knew what parts of it were smoothed in its descent through our atmosphere.

I stared until I felt a sensation on my left shoulder. I turned suddenly, my eyes wide and a little rim of tears gathering at the base. It was the bailiff, he looked concerned, I looked around and the whole room had their eyes on me. I choked out some meek little noise, and I looked down at my notes. There were no words, only several small patches of wet paper where droplets of something had plopped down. Then I looked at Judge Thompson, his expression softened, the vein in his forehead receded back to its fellows and his jaw slackened just a bit.

The bailiff asked if I was ok and I said of course but he knew I was lying. The prosecutor jokingly asked me whether I could repeat what the witness had just said, or whether I was too busy staring at the meteorite, but I couldn’t care less about his proddings. I ignored his words and I stared back down at my paper. Judge Thompson called recess and I stepped outside into the midday chill, feeling the touch of the sun on my skin. I pulled from my pocket the clipping of the rock I had ripped from the newspaper and the bit of wallpaper that I peeled from the jail. I gripped them tightly and brought them to my lips and whispered something akin to a thank you. The bailiff was there, leaning on the tree, staring at the lines in the bark.

“Are you ok to continue? You looked pretty rough in there, kid.” He said, his voice had some kind of levity in it, something I’d never heard from him before.

“Of course, it’s my job, I just can’t help but feel a little bad, ya know?”

“I understand, it’s getting kinda heated in there, this really is ridiculous, huh?”

“No. I don’t think it is.” I said that to him leaving a long silence afterwards, I walked towards the courtroom and took my seat again.

I looked again at Mr. Starman, and again it was just a rock. The prosecutor came up to me and apologized, I returned his sentiment and promised him and Judge Thompson I wouldn’t let a single note fall through the cracks again. The rest of the trial continued on like it had since the beginning, but at least to me Mr. Starman never spoke again. I saw a few other people get teary eyed, but mostly the town was on the side of the prosecution. The trial lasted three more days, and at the end the verdict was guilty, no surprise there. The news stories about our small town swept the nation and sooner or later everyone was talking about the Starman and Mr. Tyson and his fence and even me and my shocking display of emotion for something like a fancy rock.

When it was time to decide on the punishment that Mr. Starman would be subjected to, the town decided to put it to a vote. That’s not really how criminal trials are supposed to go in our great country, but then again this wasn’t really a criminal trial. Some wanted to hang the rock, but others mentioned that was stupid cause the rope would snap and the meteorite couldn’t breathe anyways.

Some, mainly Dr. Jorgensen, wanted to donate the rock to a laboratory, but the large majority agreed that it landed here and it belonged to us. Then someone suggested we plop the rock in the center of town, as a reminder to us and a warning to the rest of deep space.

So that’s what we did. We enshrined the star in the center of town, we included a plaque memorializing Mr. Tyson and featuring the names of everyone who had shown up to court that day. Which, like all the other days of this trial, was the whole damn town.

My name was on there too, and I liked walking past and glancing down at it. It was the only instance of my name not followed by “court reporter”, just my name, one of many. The star was placed on a pedestal, engraved with a map of the solar system and laden with a few splinters from the fence. There was a nice patch of flowers around it, and it became a destination for tourists passing through the state. Our town was mocked, sure, as the first and only town to sue an alien but that was fine. We had gotten our justice, and now we rested easy.