September 1976
They sat on the living room floor in the dark—no candles, no fire, no grass or music. No talking. Just a ring of shadows turned
away from the thing that was oozing blood over the kitchen floor.
It was Denver who broke the silence.
“What did she tell you about her brother, Blue?” she asked. “About meeting him?”
By this point, Blue had reached a semi-sobriety, a teetering awareness that she had to be very careful of whatever came out
of her mouth. Something flew in the window. A moth. A green moth. It flapped around a bit. It was Star, coming to whisper
something in Blue’s ear to save her. Remember? Remember you had an answer for this. Say it!
“She just said she wanted to talk to her brother on the phone. I told her she shouldn’t play old games, but she did it anyway.”
“What did you hear her say?”
“I was inside the co-op. I came out at the end, and she just said he should come. I thought she meant someday, eventually. If I thought he was coming today I wouldn’t have left her. . . .”
“You did all right, Blue,” Dean cut in. “Blue is true.”
“Blue is true,” Denver repeated softly. Then, louder, “Blue is true.”
It took a moment, but other voices joined in: Blue is true Blue is true Blue is true.
“So what do we do now?” Dean asked softly. “What do we do now?”
Usually, Dean’s questions were rhetorical. This didn’t seem to be. His voice even shook a bit. There was a moment’s pause,
then Sally said, “We get rid of the body. We have to.”
This stirred the group. Yes, they would get rid of the body. Yes.
“She was heading back to town when we found her,” Denver said. “With that cut foot. Must have cut it while walking to the
meeting place and was walking back to town for a bandage.”
“Or maybe the brother thing was a cover,” Cat said. “What if she was just leaving with some guy in town? Someone at the co-op.
She’s been down to the store with us a few times. Maybe she got something going. Maybe she found the money and told someone
in town.”
“I think we know someone helped her,” Dean said, sounding a bit more certain. “When she doesn’t show up, they come looking
for her. We need to be ready for that. Let’s clean this place up. Come on.”
Sally and Denver put the body into the plastic tablecloth, the one normally used to count the money and whatever else came in during the runs to the city.
It was the body. It was not Star. Star had gone. Blue, under the guidance of the mushrooms, had seen her spirit fly out the
window. Like a bird. It had turned and looked at her before going.
Hadn’t it?
The body was thumping down the concrete steps. Dean, Denver, Sally, and Cat were outside with it. Blue, Lacey, and Sweet Jane
had been told to start cleaning the kitchen.
There was blood everywhere. Thick stream of it on the floor. Little eyes of blood on the ceiling and cabinets and every other
surface.
They propped the screen door open. Sweet Jane made coffee on the stove and boiled water in their biggest pot and talked to
herself in a quiet, urgent voice, whispering reassurances to no one in particular.
Blue’s Hermès scarf was in the sink. It still smelled of Star. There was a blond hair sticking to it. Blue shoved it into
a cabinet when no one was looking. She needed something to keep, something to mark that Star was real, that this had happened.
When the water was boiling, they took the pot off the stove and tipped in some detergent.
Lacey stepped outside with the cast-iron pan and scraped it against the edge of one of the cement steps, then came back inside and plunged it into the pot, dunking it up and down.
When it had been punished enough, she dried it with the hem of her shirt.
As she did this, Blue and Sweet Jane set to work on the floor. There weren’t enough rags, so they raided the pile of T-shirts
and scarves and scrubbed it by hand, getting into every crack and peel. They worked up along the cabinets, the counters, the
table and refrigerator. Something about being side by side with her friends, doing this together, as if this was another day,
another task—was disturbingly normal.
Blue separated herself from the substance they were cleaning up. This was not from Star. This was a spill, and it was going
away as they refreshed the water, dumping it onto the kitchen steps to wash them clean, and filling the pot again. They got
on chairs and cleaned the ceiling. They got into every crevice by using a toothbrush from the communal cup.
Blue could smell the fire going in the bread oven. Her oven. Then she smelled something that wasn’t bread. Dean was swearing.
Saying it wasn’t working.
He was trying to burn Star’s body in Blue’s oven.
She and Jane and Lacey watched Dean from the window, the dust-stained curtain flapping and teasing them. Dean was shirtless,
smashing the bread oven with a sledgehammer in rage. He glistened with sweat.
“How are we going to make bread now?” Lacey said quietly.
How are we going to make bread now? Not the murder of a friend. Not burning a human body. The loss of the bread oven.
“Maybe we’ll build another one,” Blue heard herself reply.