Orion's Belt

He sat motionless in his seat, unable to move not only from the restraint across his chest, but from a strange feeling in his gut.  It was as if an unknown force grabbed hold of him, silencing his speech and leaving his mind frozen in thought.  He could only look straight ahead, down the long, dark tunnel that had surrounded him.  The tunnel was narrow and its walls sloped endlessly on into the darkness, converging on a bead of light he couldn’t turn his gaze away from.  His mind screamed words that his lips could not, yet all he could hear in return was a hollow echo as the sounds bounced off the cold walls around him.  He truly felt alone in a way he had never in his lifetime experienced, and it scared him. 

It hadn’t always been this difficult for him.  Always before he could keep his feelings below the surface.  This time it was all starting to catch up, though.  He knew it the second his heart seemed to skip a beat and a bead of sweat rolled slowly down his cheek.  Lionel McArthur was about to give the speech of his lifetime. 

“…Hello?  Earth to L-Mac?  You there, buddy?” a thunderous voice called into the tunnel, pulling him out of his trance.  Turning his head, Lionel saw his friend standing in front of him with a quizzical look spread across his big, square face. 

“Uh, yeah, yeah—what’s up Henry?” Lionel answered.

“Well, I was going to ask for some help up here, but you look like you could use some rest.”

“No, I’m fine.  What do you need?”  His voice immediately returned with its usual strength.

“Nevermind Henry, leave the guy alone,” a woman’s strong voice called out, “we figured it out!”

“Alright then.  Sorry to bother you, kid.  No, no don’t get up.  Rest.  You’ve got a big day ahead of you tomorrow,” the big man’s smile stretched from ear to ear in such a way that Lionel found it hard not to smile back.  And then he was gone.  Lionel let his head lean back against his headrest and sighed, allowing his thoughts to roam to whichever land his mind desired. 

 It was late August of 1995, on a hot summer evening in the near north suburbs of Chicago.  A 12 year-old boy stood crouched forward, knees bent, with a basketball held in both hands just off his right hip.  He looked at the man crouched just ahead of him straight in the eye and smiled.  Breathing heavily, the man returned the boy’s challenging smile with one of his own.

“I’m going to dunk this over you, pop,” the boy said confidently.

“Oh you are, are ya?  Well don’t be t—” but his sentence was cut short as young Lionel was off in a flash toward the basket.  The man chased behind but was a step slow.  After a successful pump fake had sent his father careening off the pavement, Lionel sank a shot that left the chain link net ringing. 

“You know son, one of these days I’m going to stop letting you win so easily,” Mr. McArthur told his son.

“Oh dad, I don’t buy your act.  You stopped letting me win two years ago!” Lionel countered.

His dad tousled Lionel’s curly black hair and gave him a friendly shove off in the direction the ball had been rolling away.  He grinned, calling after his son, “Gee, that sure sounds like a challenge to me!”

On into the night the two played until the eager dusk had sent the reluctant sun below the horizon like a bartender kicking out the last few straggling drunks from the local bar.  When it became nearly impossible to see the ball, much less the backboard, the two sprawled out on the grass beside the court and looked up at a sky full of stars, utterly exhausted. 

         “Hey, dad?”

         “What, son?”

“You think I could be great someday?”

The question didn’t catch his father off guard at all.  “I think you already are great, Lionel, and maybe you just don’t know it.”

“I’ve decided that I want to be great.  Not great in the way my teacher writes ‘great’ on the top of English papers—I want people to see me walking down the street and say, ‘hey look—there he goes!  Boy, that guy sure is great.’ You know, something like that.”

Mr. McArthur chuckled and turned his head to face his son.  “Just remember: greatness isn’t measured by what other people think of you.  Greatness is about how you feel about yourself inside.”

         With his imagination running free and eyes searching the heavens, Lionel only half heard his father’s response.  The two were silent for a long time.  In his wandering gaze, Lionel’s eyes became fixated on three of the brightest stars in the sky.  Curious, he pointed skyward and asked, “dad, what constellation are those three in?”

         “That, son, is the constellation Orion, and you are looking at the three stars that make up his belt,” his father started, “According to Roman mythology, Orion was the son of Neptune. He was a handsome giant and a mighty hunter. His father gave him the power of wading through the depths of the sea, or as others say, of walking on its surface…”

         Lionel shook his head at the memory.  It’s thinking about things like this that’s getting to me, he thought to himself.  No time for this now.  Especially now.  Too much to do.  I can’t let anything get in the way.  Need to focus.  Yes, focus…

         But he could not seem to focus.  Getting out of his seat, Lionel went around the corner and found Henry busy working.  He watched for a few seconds, and then sat down next to him. 

         Lionel didn’t have to say a word and Henry knew.  He knew the pain, he knew the guilt, he knew the longing.  No words were necessary.  Putting his hand on Lionel’s shoulder, he just nodded his understanding and knew that nothing more was needed.

         College didn’t start out very well for Lionel McArthur.  He was away at school on a basketball scholarship, hundreds of miles away, when his dorm room phone rang.  It was a Sunday afternoon in the snowy hills of upstate New York and he had been listening to the radio talk on about the blizzard that had more or less swallowed the entire town.  Turning down the volume, Lionel picked up the phone.

         “Hello?”

         “Hello, is this Lionel?” came a voice much like his father’s on the other end of the line.

         “Yes, this is he.”

         “Lionel, this is your uncle Joseph.  Do you remember me?”

         “…Yes?” Lionel answered slowly.

         “Lionel, I’m calling… because, well… I’m sorry, son.  I don’t know how to say this… I…I have some bad news,” the voice on the other end waited and hoped for an interruption that never came. “Lionel… your father is dead.  His plane crashed this afternoon in Pennsylvania.  I’m so sorry, boy.  I’m so sorry.”

         He would never forget those words.  He heard them in his mind everyday since, echoing and echoing, amplified by the growing hollow feeling that he wouldn’t admit was there.  That day in late January, 2003, Lionel McArthur left upstate New York with nothing but the clothes on his back, his jacket, and hat, and headed out toward home against the blizzard, against life, and against this concept people referred to as “fairness.”  He made it 18 miles through 3 ½ foot high snowdrifts before he collapsed face-first into the cold, harsh snow.

Luckily enough, a truck driver came across a red blob in the snow and drove Lionel the eleven hours to Chicago. He made it back just in time for the funeral.  As if the weather gods had followed Lionel halfway across the country, freezing rain and sleet bore down on the procession.  He could only listen to the priest’s words and stare down at the casket that held his hero.

         Lionel did not cry that day.  Wanting to be left alone, he was the last one to leave the funeral home.  A janitor turned on a television set, thinking everyone had gone.  On his way out, Lionel’s ear caught something from the next room that made him stop in his tracks.  Slowly making his way over, the words became clearer and clearer.  “The Space Shuttle Columbia is lost,” he heard President Bush announce into the screen. “There are no survivors.” 

Lionel stood and stared at the screen for a long time.  He listened as President Bush talked about the heroic astronauts that had given their lives in service to all humanity, the grieving families left with only memories of their loved ones, and how an already beleaguered America was to cope with this dreadful tragedy.

“These astronauts knew the dangers, and they faced them willingly, knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life," Bush went on.  “The cause in which they died will continue.  “Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey will go on.”

At that, Lionel took a step back and looked at his watch, his brow set in a permanent crease that would forever give people the impression of calculated thinking.  The janitor, who had been standing next to him the whole time, shook his head in disbelief.  As most people do upon hearing a tragically abnormal event, he turned to discuss just how tragically abnormal such a thing was, only to find that Lionel had already gone.

“Alright, I got one,” Henry’s excited voice called over the laughter that had filled the small room.  “Ok, ok,” He paused until it was completely silent.  “So a guy walks into a bar, sits down and orders a—”

“Oh no, here we go again.  Not the superman joke again, man, I think if I hear that one more time I’m seriously going to jump out the window,” a short dark-haired man across the dinner table groaned.

“Go easy on him, Charley, that’s the only joke he knows!” Sally teased. 

“No, no this one’s different, I swear!” Henry countered.

Lionel tried to share the high spirits with the other six people seated at the table, but could not.  The gut-wrenching feeling would not leave him.  No one seemed to notice.  No one had felt this kind of excitement since the very beginning.  And now it was all coming together.  All except Lionel were laughing and telling stories, restless with anticipation.

Out of habit, he instinctively rubbed a ring wrapped around his left ring finger.  By the time he realized what he was doing he almost lost it.  Without a word, Lionel got up and left the room.  He sat alone with his head in his hands and for the first time he questioned whether or not he could go through with this.

Lionel’s own son, little Calvin McArthur was but seven years old when his father took him out into the backyard and let him look through the big telescope for the first time.  It was a crystal clear night and a full moon illuminated the entire valley.  His father hoisted Cal up on a platform while his mother, Sarah, watched them through the kitchen window.

“Oh woooooow!  That’s the moon???” cried Cal.

“Sure is.  Bigger than you thought, huh?” Lionel smiled.

“There’re so many craters!  Is that where you’re going, daddy?” Cal’s bulging eyes could barely contain his excitement.

Lionel laughed.  “Not quite, son.  Here, let me show you something else.”  Cal backed away as his father moved the telescope a few times and then adjusted the lens.  “Ok, have a look.”

“Hmm, what am I looking at?  All I see is just three stars.”

“Exactly,” Lionel said proudly.  “Those stars are—”

“—The ones that make up Orion’s Belt,” chimed a grinning Sarah, walking up from behind.  “Orion was the son of the Roman God, Neptune.  He was a handsome giant and a mighty hunter and his father gave him the power to walk on water.” 

The two looked deep into each other’s eyes and Lionel gave her a crooked smile.  Sarah slid her arm around his waist and they watched as their son stared intently into the heavens.  Eventually, Cal turned away from the telescope and looked up at his parents.  He understood immediately after seeing the look in his parents’ eyes. 

“Do you have to go away, daddy?” He whined.

“Yes, son.  I’m sorry.  Daddy has to go away for a while.  But everything will be ok, Calvin.  Your mother is here for you and I promise I’ll come back to you.”

“But I don’t want you to leave!!!” the boy cried, throwing his arms tightly around his father’s waist. 

“I know, son, I know.  I know…” Lionel’s voice trailed off and he held his family close, not wanting to let go, yet knowing in his heart that he must.

 Commander Lionel T. McArthur stood on the edge of all humanity with his chin raised and eyes cold as steel.  Standing at the brink of discovery, he was a warrior for mankind, a lasting image frozen in time.  It was all coming together now.  This is it, he thought to himself.  This is why I came here.  This is what I’ve been waiting for. 

And yet, it did not feel at all as he had pictured it would.  The knot around his stomach only grew tighter.  It doesn’t make sense.  Why now?  WHY NOW??  Why can’t things feel RIGHT for once?  Why can’t I have this moment?  WHY??? 

His heart was pounding away on his chest and sweat poured freely down his face.  Trying to gain composure, Lionel went through the speech they had given him for the ten thousandth time.  But even the speech deceived him, sounding much too small, too insignificant, too shallow.  The people in charge thought the speech should be directed towards eliminating racial boundaries and someone far away thought it would be a good idea to have this addressed here, by a black man.  Yet all that didn’t seem to matter right now.

The door opened slowly, revealing a desolate plain of red and brown as far as the eye could see.  Never in the universe had a more complete silence echoed so loudly in one man’s ears.  Lionel paused at the bottom of the steps and thought about the world as he knew it for the last time.  And as his big boot stepped down and made history’s first Martian footprint, a tiny light went on somewhere in the depths of his mind.

In a split second, Lionel McArthur understood his father’s words for the first time.  He looked upon the Earth—but a blue speck in the jet, black sky though it was—for the first time.  He looked upon the three bright stars of Orion’s belt—those magical dots in the sky that had long ago inspired a boy’s imagination—for the first time.  In seeing all this, he looked upon himself and for the first time, he knew he had achieved his greatness.

He took a deep breath and began his speech…