HENNESSEY BY STARLIGHT

Hennessey stared and stared. The skull stared back. He raised a hand to his face. A boney hand appeared resting its fingers against the skull's cheek.

"Oh," said Hennessey, "it's me."

He was in the restroom of the filling station. He couldn't remember why he had stopped. He had been making good time, the little Toyota purring away like the family cat. Then suddenly he was here staring into the mirror.

"There's a gap," Hennessey muttered.

He stared once more into the mirror. Now he realized it wasn't a skull at all. The shadows from the tiny overhead light pocketed the eye sockets and left dark stains along the cheeks but it was definitely a face and not a skull.

Hennessey probed his mind as one probes the hollow where a tooth was, trying to find out why he had stopped, what was in the gap.

Once more he stared into the mirror.

"You don't look so good," he said.

There was something so haunted in the face that now he almost wished it were a skull again.

What was in the gap?

He had been making good time. He was somewhere in Arizona, northern Arizona because there were evergreens. Yes, he had stopped outside Flagstaff and eaten. That was earlier in the day. He had eaten in a hurry because he was making good time and didn't want to stop. So he had eaten swiftly, climbed back into the car and hurried on.

And now he was standing before a mirror in a restroom somewhere on the other side of Flagstaff.

So why had he stopped?

Hennessey sighed, turned to the basin and washed his face in cold water. He reached for a towel, There was none, neither paper nor roller.

"Some service."

He looked in the mirror again. Now he looked like a skull that had been left out in the rain.

Enough was enough. He turned and walked out.

Against the wall was a payphone. The receiver dangled from the cord. Hennessey froze.

Now he remembered. He had stopped to call someone. On the way out of Flagstaff, he remembered that he had lit a joint and popped the last of the little red pills someone had given him in a truck stop. Then everything had gone cosmic.

He had seen his mother, long dead. She was young and beautiful. She told him she loved him. She asked what he was doing.

"Going west," he muttered in that tone he had always used with his parents, a tone at once defiant and apologetic.

"Why?" she'd asked.

"To start over," Hennessey had muttered.

"Oh," she murmured gently.

"Is that all right?" Hennessey demanded. "Can't I start over out west?"

She thought for a little while.

"Of course," she said finally. "You can start over anywhere."

"Well, I want to do it out west," Hennessey muttered.

"Of course," she said and for a moment Hennessey felt small, gentle fingers on his heart. And then she was gone. And he was driving once more through the gathering dark.

And he didn't feel finished. There were more things he had wanted to say to her. And that was when he had pulled off the road into the lot beside the filling station, found the phone and told the operator he wanted to speak to his mother. From there, it got complicated, particularly after he told her his mother was dead.

"I'm afraid I can't help you, sir."

"This is a phone company, isn't it?"

That was when he heard a muttered exchange over the line and realized that the operator was talking to someone else and dropped the phone and walked into the restroom. He'd better clean up a little and get out of here. They would probably send someone after him.

His paranoia blossomed standing before the mirror with the skull staring back at him and then his mind had blanked out and then...

The gap filled, Hennessey headed for the car. It wasn't the first gap he'd ever encountered.

He climbed into the little Toyota and started the engine. As he pulled onto the highway, he saw that the sky had darkened and the first stars had appeared.

"Pick a star," he heard his mother's voice saying the words she had often spoken to him as a child. "Pick a star and make a wish."

Hennessey, heading west through the darkness, picked a star and made a wish.

Albert Huffstickler