The Boys Who Looked at the Stars

Eastern Kentucky
Summer, 1976

The mountain seemed endless when Jacob Hale was twelve years old. It rose behind their house in folds of dark green hardwoods and gray stone, stretching toward distant ridges that dissolved into blue haze. In the evenings, when the heat finally loosened its grip on the hollows, the sounds of the day gave way to the songs of whip-poor-wills and tree frogs. Jacob loved that hour. It felt like the world was exhaling.

He lay on an old quilt spread across the hillside above the family home and stared into the deepening sky. Beside him, his older brother Ethan was reading, again. Jacob rolled his eyes. “You know most people don’t bring a physics book to a meteor shower.”

Without looking up, Ethan turned a page. “Most people don’t know a meteor shower is actually debris from a comet.”

“There you go again.”

“What?”

“Ruining perfectly good mysteries.” That finally earned a laugh.

Ethan closed the book and folded his hands behind his head. Above them, the first stars appeared. Jacob always felt something when he looked at them. It wasn’t excitement or curiosity, but something deeper. He felt a strange homesickness for a place he had never been, but  never knew how to explain it.

Their father often said God had scattered wonders across creation so people would never stop looking upward. Jacob thought maybe he was right. The stars feel really did like a question that no one nobody had answered yet.

A streak of white crossed the darkness, then another. The meteor shower had begun. For several moments neither brother spoke because the sky did the talking.

Finally Jacob broke the silence. “Do you think somebody’s looking back at us?”

Ethan smiled. “Statistically? Almost certainly.”

Jacob groaned. “There you go with statistics.”

“It’s a valid answer.”

“It’s a boring answer.”

Ethan laughed. “What answer would you like?”

Jacob watched another meteor burn across the sky. “I don’t know.” He thought about it for a moment, and then, “Maybe I like not knowing.”

The smile faded from Ethan’s face. For a moment he seemed older than sixteen. “Wisdom starts there.”

Jacob turned his head. “What does?”

“Knowing how much you don’t know.” His words stayed with him long after the meteors faded.

Years later, Jacob would remember that conversation almost perfectly. He’d never forget the cool grass or the smell of coal smoke drifting from the valley. The distant barking of dogs down the holler. The brilliant radiant stars, especially the stars. Because neither of them understood that night would become the dividing line between two lives.

Ethan would spend the rest of his life trying to understand the universe and Jacob would spend his life trying to understand people. And somewhere far beyond the reach of both pursuits, something had already noticed them.

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