The only similarity that Hal and Tony Etoile shared was their last name. The Etoiles were one of the three families that founded The Big Bend Trailer Park or the “big bender” as most of the local kids called it. It was situated just south of Route 10, barely above the Mexican border, and beneath the biggest sky on Earth. Hal was local celebrity in big bender, and if you weren’t his friend it as probably because he once dated your sister. He was a few inches short of six feet with a stocky build and wore a plain face that most people had difficulty remembering when he wasn’t in the room.
Although it was common knowledge around trailer park, as most things seemed to be, Hal contained an intense inner passion for stargazing that both consumed and confused him. He raced his pickup, drank brews, and shot squirrels with the rest of the kids, but felt a profound longing for the cosmic plane. Beyond the humbling glow of the endless universe of lights, Hal felt an intrinsic connection to the starlight that penetrated his spirit in a manner he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t really grasp the full scope of his celestial fascination and was even slightly embarrassed by it. He knew the other kids wouldn’t really understand, and talked little about his primal relationship to the stars.
About twenty miles west of the Big Bender, Hal had found a secluded clearing in the desert not far off from the banks of the Rio Grande. He would drive his truck out into the desert landscape, towards his sandstone observatory and sleep peacefully mystified by the warm luminescence of the starlit sky. On occasion, Hal would feel oddly compelled to bring his little brother Tony along to his stargazing sanctuary. Hal and Tony did not speak often, but shared the mutual respect and unconditional kinship known to soldiers and siblings. On the first day of last Spring, Hal coerced the usually apathetic Tony into spending the night camped out beneath the desert sky.
Nobody really knew Tony Etoile. Most people at the big bender kept their distance from him, and the resident crew of punks didn’t really razz him too bad, simple because he was an Etoile. Tony wore his lanky frame in an awkward manner that made him appear uncomfortable in his long and skinny body. He was marked as odd early in school and few people paid him much attention. Tony was fully aware of his uncanny ability to remain extraordinarily silent, yet not quiet or shy. Tony’s crescent shaped scar just beneath his left eye was overshadowed by the brilliance of his glow. His eyes were lit by candlelight and his gaze could fix directly into someone’s soul with a vague and revealing lucidity. This phenomenon made most uneasy in the shadow of his dimly lit glare. On one occasion he turned the powerful beam of his glow on Mrs. White, a particularly surly old woman who had taken an arbitrary dislike for Tony and was angry at the world for being ‘stuck in this God forsaken town.’ After a particularly ruthless scolding, he set the iridescence of his eerie shine upon her making her feel naked in his glow and shattering her favorite mug on the classroom tile to the laughter and applause of the children.
Before embarking on their camping trip Hal packed a couple of sleeping bags, a couple cans of chili, a can opener, spoons, a 12 pack of beer, assorted bags of chips, a few hours worth of wood and tossed it all in the back of his dusty truck. He traveled the dirt roads with an intimate familiarity, weaving rocks and deep potholes on the vision of pure instinct. They shared few words. Soon after rolling in to his usual spot, he carefully unraveled the sleeping bags and spread them around the fire circle that had grown thick with ash from his previous visits. Hal and Tony started a blaze with some dried brush for kindling and began to heat their chili on the rocks that circled the pit. They ate slowly from the cans and watched the sun reluctantly start its lazy descent over the Western horizon. As the scraping sound of metal spoons working the bottom of the cans began their pale echo, the stars lit up, and Hal began pointing the constellations that he’d created. He took great pride in his artistic skill that drew him to etch his own constellation patterns from the chaos above. Over the past few years Hal had nearly illuminated the entire sky with his imagination. A few beers into his half case, Hal showed his star pictures to Tony with the same degree of childhood excitement and exhilaration that accompanies the release and sharing of an confidential secret. Eventually Hal’s voice faded from Tony’s ears and he could only concentrate on the second constellation revealed to him. Hal had described the configuration as a face that consisted of six stars. He illustrated an inverted triangle of three stars that served as the eyes and the nose. Three linear stars fell below the triangle in a horizontal pattern and carved a stoic mouth that completed the face. Above the face lay a vibrant cluster of stairs that weaved and swirled into a grand and weeping helix, crowning the face with a flowing crown of hair. The pair of stars that were designated as the eyes glowed the brightest and most potent, inspiring Hal to name his masterpiece The Eyes.
Tony had fixated his penetrating gaze upon The Eyes and was oblivious to the sounds of impending footsteps. Hal caught a brief peripheral glimpse of the ominous figure, and his protective big brother-high school quarterback instincts urged him to react. He leaped from the comfort of his sleeping bag and grabbed the nearest branch of petrified wood he could find. The figure maintained its casual pace until it stopped a few feet from the fire and innocently asserted, ‘Hello boys, my name is Mescalito and I was hoping you could offer some extra food to a hungry old man.’ Only then did Tony break from his staring contest with The Eyes to acknowledge the arrival of the old man.
Mescalito was a white bearded old man who was significantly shorter then the brothers Etoile. He spoke in an undistinguishable tongue of broken English blended with long outdated dialect of Spanish spoken in the villages of Metizos, a mixed breed of local Incan and European ancestry. Despite his feeble and well-aged body, he carried an over-stuffed backpack loaded with heavy camping gear with a relative ease. Without hesitation, Tony rose from his bag and got him a bag of chips that sat in the back of the truck. Hal was uncharacteristically at ease with him and gradually retreated from his initial aggressive stance. Mescalito explained that he saw the fire from a nearby campsite was in dire need of ‘some good grub.’ A few beers later, Hal was enraptured by his stories and offered him the remains of the food they had brought along. Tony was instantly seduced by Mecalito’s stories of Hopi Prophecies, Mayan calendars, Anasazi transcendence, and Shaman drums. He broke eye contact only to blink. To Tony’ s astonishment, Mescalito didn’t recoil from his shine, but shined back in response with his own luminescence. After finishing his twelve pack with a little help from Mescalito and Tony, Hal retired to his sleeping falling asleep to the glow of the stars and the sound of Tony’s whispering voice. Tony felt liberated, unhinged by the reciprocal glow of The Eyes and Mescalito’s shimmering blue stare. They shared lucent dreams where they had meet, spoke of the Inner Light, and felt their energies reciprocate and grow from one another. The clouds dance on the sandy horizon- the river hummed a rushing hymn of endless time -all the eyes sparked and grew in force, luminating the red rocks with a collective shining vision of crystal light.
Hal awoke alone. There was physical proof that Mescalito ever existed, and more importantly his little brother was missing. His bag and gear hadn’t been touch or rustled, he hiked and bouldered the rocks all morning in search of Tony. His sleeping bag lay half-open, covered in dew, and appeared as if Tony had simply disintegrated leaving all else to flutter to the ground. Hal drove into town and asked around at the local market and stores about the whereabouts of Tony and Mescalito to fruitless, but kind replies of ‘sorry sugar,’ or "no young man, I haven’t seen much else but some dust and some sun.’ He loaded up on some more food, called the folks and told them they would be camping out another night. Tired and weary, he headed back to his campsite and hoped to see Tony smiling and glowing when he arrived. Arriving at his vacant campsite, Hal grew anxious as the sun began its sunset ritual with his little brother no where in sight. He paced the powdered earth and struggled to decipher how to find Tony. As midnight neared with all viable options exhausted, defeated and tired, Hal slid into his sack seeking comfort from the stars and his universal canvas. His eyelids grew heavy and he began to fade in and out of consciousness and dream. He caught glimpse of the most impressive and majestic meteor shower he had ever witnessed. The stars blazed the pristine night sky with shining star trails that danced and played a symphony of lights throughout the atmosphere. Captivated by the cosmic melodies of his celestial star paintings, a sense of relief and elation flooded every pore of Hal’s exhausted body. He had noticed the most beautiful and magical alteration to one his star patterns, and stared in awe at three tightly spaced stars that he had never before seen. They glimmered in and out of his sight and were shaped like an elegantly arched crescent that fell just beneath the left eye of the illuminated face of The Eyes. The warm and familiar glow of the fractal crescent comforted Hal, when he felt the once stoic and cold mouth now smiling down upon him. The Eyes glowed brighter than he had ever seen as they shined and smiled down upon him with a sense of peace that sedated him into the bottom of his sleeping bag. He knew everything was as it should have been. Hal smiled and shined back at new formation of The Eyes, and wondered how to explain to his parents his little brother’s divine transcendence into the starlight.