Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Stories

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  As Time Goes By

  The Eye of the Beholder

  Success

  Rushing Nowhere

  Just-Life Politics

  Oysters and Pearls

  Wait a Minute, World!

  The Party

  Catch a Falling Heart

  About the Author

  ALSO BY J. CALIFORNIA COOPER

  Copyright Page

  Dedicated with Love

  Joseph C. and Maxine R. Cooper, my parents

  Paris A. Williams, my chile

  IMPORTANT PEOPLE

  Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, People par Excellence, Ricardo and Elaine Hunter, Good Friends, Simba Sana and Lee Mc-Donald of Karibu Books, Kim Johnson, Tulsa, Okla., Esther and Charles Jordan, Portland, Shirley Woodland, Adrienne Carthon, Howard University, Venus and Serena Williams, Champions, Daru Smith, Activist, Angela Mederas, Author, Mary Carter Smith, Dear Author, Christine Amanpour, Media Specialist, Roy Holmes, Taxman, L.A.

  SPECIAL IMPORTANT PEOPLE

  Barry Scheck, Attorney, and Peter Neufeld, Attorney, both extraordinary. And their entire crew of assistants. For freeing those imprisoned falsely and giving life back to some of the hopeless.

  Stories

  Acknowledgments

  I am a very blessed person to have Janet Hill as my editor. She is brilliant as well as understanding and kind, with a diamond-bright intelligence.

  I am also grateful and blessed to have Russell Perreault as my PR person with his caring and astute observation, humor, and beneficial thinking.

  I thank everyone at Doubleday for everything they do for me. I truly do appreciate all of you. Tracy Jacobs, you are at the top of the list.

  I thank Sharon Elise because whatever you do, I am always improved with your input.

  I thank Stephen Rubin for his superlative, generous consideration for all those in his departments. He certainly contributes to the high standard Doubleday has maintained over many years.

  To my readers, I can only say, from the bottom of my heart (and it is deep), I love you, I love you, I appreciate you. I respect you; which is why I write as I do. May Jehovah bless you.

  Author’s Note

  Dear Reader,

  Since I was a small child, before I could write, I have been telling stories. I was able to talk with my characters, first in the form of pets and trees then in the form of paper dolls. When I put the paper dolls away my imagination and the characters did not stop coming, producing. I love them.

  I always loved to read about everything long enough to know if it really interests me. My mind absorbed the life around me; everything living. My imagination seemed to reflect things in the world around me; not just next door or a few blocks or miles away. I am blessed that my mind appreciated places far, far away. A gift from history and fairy tales, I guess.

  I love humor . . . and pathos, drama, everything that is life. But there is not much humor in the world today. There is so much pain, so many mistakes being made by so many people. Many of their choices affect us. As I have said before, you can stand stark raving still and life will still happen to you.

  Some of the stories in this book reflect the pain, confusion, ignorance, frustration, and emptiness crashing throughout the world today. I am reading a new book, The Sociopath Next Door, not because I like morbid and frightening things, but because a sociopath lives next door to a lot of people all over the world today. Apparently they are everywhere; in government, churches, schools, anywhere you can think of. If you think I am being too intense about it, just look at the condition the whole world is in.

  This book does not talk about the worst things in this world. They are too painful, because I live what I write as I write. These are just a few problems people have. They may not be your problems today, thank God, but even worse ones are out there, all around us.

  I would rather make you laugh and be happy. But I am always saying “Think!” Be careful with your life and your choices. So as the stories came, I wrote them. I have to blush for a few of them (and I don’t blush at life easily). Because the Bible told me what was out there. Just listen, four people mentioned in the Bible were in the Garden of Eden. Three were liars, one was a murderer, and the innocent one died. We are way more crowded than Eden now.

  I reach out to all of you, but especially to the young, the inexperienced who DO want to know a little about life without having to live some of the particulars in this book. A word to the wise can be critically important.

  Wild Stars do not have to be bad stars. Some of these stars were just unwise. But that is what I often write about; people’s problems, their choices. The quality of the life we make for ourselves.

  Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns. There are billions of stars; there is only one sun. How many wild stars do not find their sun?

  I know we all stand alone in this life. Ultimately alone. We have to depend on ourselves to protect ourselves, and knowledge is our armor. I love knowledge and wisdom (they are separate). I hold on to it fiercely. The Bible says the heart is treacherous; your own heart in your own life; whom you may love, whom you may hate, your friends, the people you vote for, it goes on and on.

  Freedom is expensive. Your choices can cost you your life. I don’t want you to go around frightened; I would like you to go around aware. So this book may not be for people who just want to laugh, but it is for those who really care about what is going on in this nation, in this sad and lonely, desperate world. I prefer to speak of beauty and love. I prefer laughter and will be glad to get back to more of it. But I try to speak the truth in every book. There are so many soothing lies in the world already.

  This book is not enough. A few stories can never tell it all. But I send this book out to you anyway, with my love. I mean that! God bless you.

  As Time Goes By

  This story happened in this small town to a friend of mine named Futila Ways. The people here are the same as any people in any small middlin town anywhere in America, or the world, for that matter. There’s a’many of them. Maybe a little poorer than some, with many things less accessible than in large cities.

  There are churches galore and a few schools, clothing stores of the cheaper variety. People who happened to have money could afford to go to better places to shop. Womens here have to look out of town for a husband, sometimes, cause you can get sick of the people you grow up with. But, after all, it was a nice, quiet, clean, boring little place.

  The town must’a had promising beginnings a long time ago. Large landowners had built large proud houses on their land. But, now, over a hundred years or so, their descendants had sold off most of the land to small developers in this part of the town. A few of the large houses remained and several rows of small houses had crept up to them.

  Futila’s family lived in one of the old, but neat little houses sitting in a row on Coulda Street with a younger sister, Willa, an older brother, Eddy Jr., a domestic-working mother, and a father who was a labor-mechanic at a gas station. He just kept the tools in order in the right places, didn’t do much mechanic work on cars. He did his work well and kept a job so they had the bare necessities of life.

  Mr. Ways (he doesn’t know where his grandfather got that name from) did not have a sensitive turn of mind so he cut down the big, grand black-oak tree, and another tall beautiful tree I don’t know the name of, in the front yard so he wouldn’t have to rake leaves, umph umph. Then he covered the ground with cement so he wouldn’t have to mow it. Just removed all the beauty and close bird songs. He wanted to do
the backyard also, but his wife stopped him; she said she wanted to have a patch of land to plant a kitchen garden.

  Mrs. Ways was tired and weary. Besides her regular working jobs she took care of her mother, Gramma, who suffered lifelong ills because she had struggled through the struggles. She was old and had even known people who had been slaves.

  In this house Futila tried to dream about a future, her future, on hot sweaty summer nights as she threw off the damp sheet, or cold wintry nights as she pulled the wash-worn, threadbare blanket high around her neck. She was trying to see in the dark, beyond her here and now, to when and if. Just like most any poor girl anywhere in the world.

  Her grandmother, sighting her grandchild staring off in some space, always talked about education. “Get that education, child, and be about thinkin your way out of here. Don’t, and you gonna end up like me and your mama. Stead’a taken what you want, you gonna have to take what you can get! Where your books?! Get them books and bring em in here and teach me what you learnin in that school. Maybe I can learn somethin and get outta all this misery my own self!”

  Futila loved her gramma, but didn’t think Gramma knew anything about life. She would answer, “Ain’t got no books! Just got some little notes I done made when the teacher was talkin.”

  Gramma, sitting in her rocker chair, would hit the floor hard with her knotty cane. “Bring them notes then, girl! Learn me somethin! Your sister, Willa, have books so why don’t you? Put somethin in your fool-head sides of them boys!” Gramma knew her grandchild.

  It was true; Futila dreamed of boys a lot. She was fourteen going on fifteen years old; her body was developing on time as it was supposed to. Had shoulder-length hair she was always fooling with, keeping it neat and near-styled. She had to wash her own clothes when the old washing machine didn’t work so her clothes were not dirty, but not clean either. “Oh,” she thought, “I just got such a hard time to make my future out of. I ain’t never gonna get to be nobody.” Then she would daydream in her classes about the man-boy. “I’m gonna marry and he gonna take me way from here. He gonna work and buy me whatever I need and want! I’ll help em. I’ll work too! But not like my mama works. No domestic for me! Please, God, let him come soon!”

  Younger sister Willa played on the junior basketball team (when they had a basketball) and volleyball team (when they had a volleyball). She was an active young lady. She didn’t study hard because she thought she didn’t like to read, but she made good grades anyway. She had to, because her friend Martha, a Jewish girl who lived in one of the grand decaying old houses up Coulda Street a ways, always made good grades.

  Mrs. Ways worked for Martha’s father taking care of the house and cooking for Martha. Martha’s mother was dead and her father was often gone on some surveying job somewhere. There was many interesting things to do there, drawing tables, telescopes, microscopes, and books, books, books. Oh, all kind’a things for little girls to do. Martha wanted to be a scientist but knew her father’s money was not so great all the time. She still studied hard anyway, even at such an early age, so she could get scholarships for college someday.

  Willa told Martha, “You gonna have to study the rest of your life to be a scientist! That’s too much for me. I don’t know what I want’a do, but I’m ready to try to do it. I sure ain’t gonna stay in this place and marry none of these knuckle-head boys round here!” Willa really liked her friend Martha and was often at her house whether her own mother was there or not. There were so many interesting things to do!

  Martha was not a wild child, but her interest was in wild things, insects, plants, trees, and the like. They spent much of their time outside on the land that stretched all around. Willa followed Martha around. Sometimes they even crept out in the nights to study stars with the little worn telescope Martha’s father had given her. Searching and collecting, studying, until Willa developed such an interest she began to find things to collect even when she wasn’t with Martha.

  Futila told Willa, “You all must be crazy! Walkin round in the dark with all them snakes out there! Lookin up at the sky like a fool!” Then she would smugly return to her thoughts of boys.

  Futila was as popular as most girls at school because she had sizable breasts. The man-boy she dreamed of didn’t show up to carry her away so, obviously, he wasn’t at her school or anywhere in town.

  A year or so passed as Martha worked hard on her scholarship, still planning to go to college. And now Willa had buckled down to study because she wanted to go to college; any college. Martha said to her, “No . . . You have to choose a college that excels at what you want to study, then you know you will learn what you need to know to be able to do what you want to do. Since we both want the same things you ought to try to come where I am going.” So they were both working hard on their scholarships. Martha’s dad provided them with extra reference books and catalogues from universities. Martha kept her specimens in drawers and long shelves; Willa kept hers in odd boxes she was able to find, under her bed.

  Futila scoffed at them, laughingly teased Willa. “You ain’t gonna be no scientist or nothing. You just copyin that ole white girl, Martha, and she gonna leave you in the dust cause you can’t go where she go!”

  That was when Willa hitched her dream to a moving star and started doing jobs to save money. She baby-sat, washed clothes, weeded gardens, cleaned some houses, and saved every dime. When there was time from working and her studies, she and Martha continued their searches for things to study in any pasture full of trees and “wild” things.

  Gramma always took a few dollars from her little government check to divide among her grandchildren. Now she gave Futila only a third as much money as before, and added the rest to Willa’s share. She didn’t take from Eddy Jr. “He a man,” she said without explanation.

  Mr. Ways wanted to help Willa, he liked what she was trying to do, but couldn’t spread his money any further than it was already spread. He began splitting firewood logs for people after his regular job. He added that money to Willa’s savings. He wanted to see his children “get somewhere” in their lives. After two months of this he pulled muscles in his back and could no longer do even his regular job at the filling station unless it was lying under the automobile with his back flat.

  Mrs. Ways tried to interest Futila in the excitement of Willa going to college. “What are you gonna do with yourself, sister? Don’t you want to make some kind’a plan for your life? You see what I’m doin and how Papa and me are struggling round here. You not even gettin good grades in school. When you get grown and graduate from that school, we not gonna take care of you. We tired. We need some rest. Your sister is tryin to help herself. You betta try to do somethin to help yourself, too!”

  Futila waved the words away, saying, “You ain’t got to worry bout me. I’m a have a plan. Willa ain’t so smart noway. She just follow whatever that white girl do!”

  As she walked away with an armload of folded clothes, Mrs. Ways said, “She usin her own brain and everything she learn is hers. She ain’t followin no fool, and she doin what SHE wants to do. If she get to that college and get a certificate and a job, her checks is gonna have HER name on em, not nobody else’s, Miss Smartbutt!”

  After graduation from high school Martha got her first scholarship and was sent away for higher learning to college. Willa hated to see her friend leave, and wished she had studied even harder than she had. But she kept saving even more of her money. She did without everything but pencils and paper. Letters came from Martha often, filled with references to their favorite subjects. Willa would take her letters into whatever room was empty and read them, over and over.

  One day a letter came saying Martha had found a job for Willa where she could make and save more money. “And you can stay at our place here and do light housework to help costs. You are not a charity case (smile) because you can take a few classes at college until you are ready to enter a full schedule. Scholarship information is more abundant here, too.”

  N
ow, before she left her home Willa told her gramma, “Keep your money for yourself or for Eddy Jr. in case he wants to do better.” She told her mother, “You gave me my brain, now I’m gonna see how good it works.” She kissed her father, saying, “You take care yourself because one day I may have a job that can help you like you helped me, Papa.” Willa packed her few clothes in a nice cardboard box she had painted pale green to hide the grocery advertisement on it, then she left almost immediately.

  Futila was supposed to graduate the following semester, but she was stumbling through. School was not important to her except for sports events she loved to attend because, then, so many new boys from other schools came to her town. At one of the basketball games she attended she saw Dante Perks for the first time. He was tall, lean, and handsome with a bright smile in his golden-brown face topped with a dark curly natural. The sun flew out of his smile and landed smack into Futila’s heart and lit up her little life!

  Now Futila was a good-looking sixteen-year-old with a well-rounded attractive body. After she caught sight of him, she stared at him, smiling, all evening. She liked the way he moved as he jumped, and shook his arms and hands, for or against a score made. He looked her over also, but he looked all the girls over. Before he left to return to his little town, they talked in passing. He didn’t ask her for her phone number, there were so many nice-looking girls smiling at him. But Futila made sure she had a schedule of all the games and when the next one was due. When the next game came up from his school, she was there! Her pretty dark eyes darted around looking for him.

  Futila found Dante at half-time and placed herself in his vicinity. Dante was watching her watch him. He was flattered and soon they talked, flirting. He couldn’t talk long because his regular girlfriend was there, watching him also. When Futila and Dante parted, he had the phone number she had grinned and slipped him. She insisted on having his. He told her, “I can’t write it down now.” She answered, “Just say it, I’ll remember.” So he did and she did. Her little heart just dreamed and dreamed and dreamed about that boy all her way home. “Dante . . . Dante . . . Dante.” Music to her whole young untried mind and body.