Inktober Eighth. “Star.”

The thing hung swinging in that night sky with such a grace that it reminded Arthur of the tail in his mother’s grandfather clock, which he used to play with as a boy so that occasionally they’d have to open its face and wind the cogs right-ways again. But tonight the thing was amid the tangle of stars out in the dark above the pines that he could see in the view from his bed, a strange sort of light shining. I’ll be damned, he thought. All of him was rubber and sore from the mill fire but what with that thing swinging there, fired his curiosity. Arthur stayed watching it, thinking of the big ticks and tocks of that old clock until he couldn’t stay still anymore. The sound of it in his mind pushed him up and out of bed.

Riles was a big man with Sioux blood in him and thick dark hair. He was the oldest but a smooth face like a baby’s. In the room of snoring men, he got up when Arthur did and started getting on his shirt and scrambling for his things in his bedside so that Arthur had to hush him. “It’s okay,” Arthur said. “It’s only some foolishness of my own.” Riles sat nodding. His eyes were still closed but he came with Arthur just the same, out into the dark outside the station.

The frigid air filled Arthur up. The station house was barely lit by spotlights in the shoulder of the mountain road. An island of light in the tall shadows of trees, only a flagpole and Arthur standing here. Riles came out from behind the screen door in shorts and his boots while Arthur breathed into his hands. They began to search the sky and then, there it was. “Look at that how it’s sliding up and down.” Arthur indicated with the full extension of his arm.

“Helicopter, probably.” Riles said.

“Nah.” Arthur said. “They don’t sway like that. You ever seen any helicopter or airplane sway all side-wise like that.”

Riles was quiet long enough for Arthur to feel foolish. When Riles lit himself a cigarette he seemed to take another look at the thing. “It’s changing colors now.” said Riles.

“Hell, I can see that.” Arthur said.

“Well, maybe we should get the chief on the line. Could be terrorists.”

But Arthur thought on that. It had been a long day, what with the mill that came down and Pete stuck at the ground floor. And the way Pete’s father crumpled up at the news and cried while he held onto Arthur – so they were both shaking. And neither man felt as if they could look at each other after that. Riles interrupted his thoughts.

“Why do you never share what you are thinking?” Riles asked.

Arthur shrugged. “I don’t ever know what you’re thinking either,” he pointed out. “Come on then. Tell me, Mister Sensitive.”

A Datsun came up and back down the mountain pass until it was only red tail lights in the dark twist of the single-lane highway, never stopping to see the shape in the sky. Arthur wasn’t sure he was tired of looking at it yet, but he felt more and more foolish. There was no logical outcome for spectating shapes in the sky. There would be no grand reveal or jack-pot payout. He would go home and sleep for a day, eat badly for the next couple days after. Then he would come back to Whistle Wood House, full of men he did not know, and who didn’t know him.

Behind the glowing cherry of his cigarette, Riles began: “It makes me think of the first time I saw something like this, my first year away from home in Reno where I grew up. I was with my girl and falling asleep on the couch, too tired from drills at the Airbase on the other side of the mountain . . .”

She gets to touching me. Trying to keep me awake. Just then her father came into the living room and asked us if we wanted to look at the thing he had been looking at from his bedroom window. Her father always had a way of making me stand straighter or lean forward when he was in the room. He had known my family and I always felt like he was waiting for me to prove bad ideas he had about me right. Well, when we went outside together he showed me lights just like that one there. But it was three of them. And a low humming. I remember it looked like they were hovering for a while out there. And we three watched them all night. And I felt this place was welcoming me.

After a while Riles went in and put on coffee while Arthur stood until the sun rose. And the light was still a pin-point in the egg-shell blue morning.