Tell the Little Sparrow

235

Starsky mourns.

 

Inspired by two poems of Sara Teasdale: The Gift and I Love You.

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Between one of Starsky’s breaths and the next, Hutch was gone. He heard the shot, came around the corner, and Hutch was crumpled on his side, bright red staining the shining gold of his hair.

Starsky remembered falling to his knees, afraid to touch, but yet straining to capture the blood in his hands, to somehow put it back where it belonged. Hutch’s eyes were open—he remembered that too but even as Starsky looked into them, he knew the inevitable outcome. He knew when Hutch’s eyes were looking beyond him, already on a path Starsky was not yet meant to follow. Blood bubbled from Hutch’s lips and his lips moved as if he was trying to talk. Starsky never knew if he really was trying to tell him something or if Hutch was already gone and his body just hadn’t quite caught up.

In his dreams, Hutch said, “I love you. I’m sorry I have to go. I’m sorry I have to leave.” But dreams weren’t reality because if they were, Starsky would wake up every day with Hutch by his side, in his bed, sitting by him in the new car he’d bought because the Torino held Hutch’s ghost, chiding him for eating junk, loving him with every ounce of his being.

He remembered Simmons and Babcock pulling him away, the paramedics doing CPR even though Starsky could have told them it was too late. Dobey was already at the hospital—waiting and calling him Dave and he could see the grin Hutch would have given at that.

Starsky was the one who called Hutch’s parents—his last duty to their son, he told Dobey. He still could hear his mother’s scream, his father’s rough voice telling him ‘thank you for letting us know.’

They let him into the room when everything that could possibly be done was done. How did you say goodbye, Starsky wondered, when you’d never needed words before? The blood was gone, but then again so was Hutch. He remembered folding his fingers around Hutch’s still ones and watching Hutch’s chest just waiting for it to rise and fall. Except of course it wouldn’t. He would have given anything to see Hutch’s blue eyes again—to see the sparkle in them, to see the way they reflected blue sky and robins’ eggs and grew brighter when Hutch was angry and darker when he was sad and became the color of the ocean on a sunny day when they made love.

He went through the motions of helping Hutch’s parents prepare for their only son’s funeral, of sitting by them in a church Hutch had never attended once in his years of being in Bay City, of trying to write a eulogy and being unable to summon up the courage to even speak, of watching a coffin being lowered into the ground and listening to Taps and being strong for Hutch’s mother and father because if he wasn’t they’d break down even more. He helped them pack up Hutch’s apartment alongside the Dobey’s and Simmons and Babcock and Huggy Bear who had gone into the apartment a few days prior to make sure nothing would ever let the world know Hutch and Starsky had been lovers.

It took him three weeks before he could cry. He found Hutch’s star and moon necklace—Hutch had misplaced it a few days before the alley—and Starsky had said they’d look for it on the weekend when they cleaned but that weekend never happened. He held it in his hand, ran a finger over the small charms, and then took off his own coins and put the necklaces together in a small box. He hid it in a drawer, unable to look at either.

He went to Huggy’s and listened to the evening crowd and watched a man propose to his girl and felt the first hot tears splash on his hand.

Huggy sat down beside him in the booth, pushed away the beer, and said nothing. He covered Starsky’s hands with his and cried along with him.

He slept on his couch, got rid of the bed, and was in no hurry to replace it. The bedroom, hell, the whole apartment held too many memories and not enough. He’d find a shirt of Hutch’s or some weird book Hutch had been reading or even a note in Hutch’s handwriting and go to say something to Hutch but of course he wasn’t there.

He worked because he had to. Not because of the money—he thought of just quitting and going to work in a warehouse somewhere, but because he didn’t know what else to do. He was a cop—he had been a damn good cop except on the day he’d let his partner die. He didn’t know if he could be anyone else.

Somehow the world kept turning, the sun kept rising and setting, and Starsky kept breathing and living. He moved out of the apartment where so much of his life was interwoven with Hutch’s and moved into a small house near the Dobey’s where he had neighbors who waved at him every morning and evening and children who rode their bikes up and down the sidewalk. Rosey Dobey made him a bird feeder in her shop class and he bought a book to learn who visited each day and night and which birds liked the sunflower seeds and which ones liked the millet.

On his days off, he’d sit on the little patio when he finished his work around the house and watch the birds come and go and splash in the bird bath he’d bought. The hummingbirds would flit around the feeders he’d set up for them, little jewels flashing against the blue sky that reminded him of Hutch’s eyes.

He requested a transfer to the child services division. Captain, formerly Sergeant, Peterson told Dobey she needed him more than Dobey did and he started to find meaning in his work again. At least here, he told himself, he made a difference even though the work they had to do was never-ending and largely thankless. But what they did mattered to the victims and maybe that was the most important thing of all—that the voiceless had a voice, that someone cared.

Peterson encouraged him to apply to Bay City University and to take night classes. His life consisted of studying and work and taking care of the house and feeding the birds. Some days he wondered if all he was doing was running away from the reminders that Hutch was no longer with him, that the person he’d loved more than anyone was dead.

Time passed as he learned to live without Hutch, as he learned, more importantly, that he could live without Hutch even if it wasn’t the way he’d dreamed or even wanted to live. He learned he could laugh again and make friends and have days where he didn’t feel as if part of his soul was missing. There were days that looking at the clear blue sky as the birds flew higher didn’t bring an ache to his heart and only made him smile with memories that he held close.

Huggy set him up with a date and refused to let him back out of it. Rich was a lawyer in a small family practice and he’d lost his lover to cancer. He wasn’t really ready to date either so they went out a few times and decided they could be friends and nothing more and that was okay. Starsky dreamed of Hutch and in his dream, Hutch was laughing and told him he was being a dummy for mourning forever and that it was okay to move on and fall in love again. He woke up with an erection and jacked off in the shower while he wept.

He found himself with a degree in psychology and his advisor telling him he needed to apply to graduate school—him, the kid who had loved learning but never quite loved school. He sat on the patio and watched the birds at the feeders. He’d taken some classes on botany and had let the grass die and transformed the back yard into a native habitat. Birds chirped and sang and flitted about, vibrant joy and life when he thought life couldn’t go on.

Huggy set him up with more dates but this time he had an excuse—too busy with school, too busy with work. There were nights he fell into bed and woke up the next morning with the imprint of his notebook on his cheek. He told himself if life wasn’t great, it was at least good and enough. He swore he heard Hutch whisper in his ear that enough wasn’t what he needed, that he needed so much more than enough.

He met Martin at a fundraiser dinner for a child abuse charity two weeks after he’d received his masters in social work. Martin had black hair and brown skin and wore wire-rimmed glasses that did nothing to hide his dark brown eyes. Martin spilled his glass of champagne on Starsky’s new suit. They left the crowded dinner where people were dancing and sat outside and listened to the splash of fountains and the muted orchestra. Martin was, of all things, a research librarian at the university and he attended the fundraiser each year because he and his sisters had been abused children rescued by his grandmother’s minister and his wife. His parents were dead, his sisters scattered across the country and the minister and his wife cut times with him when they found out he was gay.

Starsky told Martin about Hutch, about the day Hutch died—he’d never shared that with any previous dates but he thought Martin would understand. Martin listened and when Starsky was done, he took Starsky’s hand, looked into his eyes and said that Starsky had been blessed to have Hutch in his life. And when Starsky took a deep breath after Martin said that, he found the ache wasn’t quite as deep and that joy had always been curled there, sleeping until the time was right for it to awaken. When Martin asked to see him again, he found himself saying yes and hoping, wanting for it to develop into something more than just a friendship.

Hutch had died on a sunny April day although in Starsky’s memory it had been raining because it seemed as if the sun shouldn’t be shining on a day when the person you loved died. But he knew the sun was shining because the sky had been the bright blue of Hutch’s eyes even as Hutch’s eyes had turned a colorless gray.

He’d never visited Hutch’s grave in April and never on a day when the sun had been shining quite so brightly or the world had seemed so alive. It hadn’t seemed right to be in a place of death when the birds were chattering in the trees and the bees were humming and people were out and living. But it was April this time—it had been ten Aprils since Hutch had died between one of Starsky’s breaths and the next.

Starsky sat down on the grass in front of the tombstone, white marble—fitting for a white knight, Starsky often thought, and placed the bouquet of irises and lilacs from his garden in the small vase there. He reached out and placed his hand on the stone, slick and cool beneath his palm. He traced the carving as he did each time, let his body absorb the letters, engrave Hutch’s name into his heart.

He didn’t speak, never could find words to express what he needed to say. The first time he’d come nearly ten years before, he lay spread-eagled and sobbing for forgiveness until Huggy pulled him up and told him to stop acting like a fool because why would Hutch have anything to forgive and if Hutch was there, he’d yell at him. There were times he’d come on Hutch’s birthday and Christmas even though he never really celebrated it any more and just sit and think about what life would be like if Hutch had lived. He’d come the day he’d gotten his bachelors and he’d visited the night before he had graduated with his masters. He came when his mom had died back in New York City and when Hutch’s sister had her third child and named him Kenneth James. He came with Cal Dobey when the younger man got accepted into law school and when Rosey graduated from high school. But he never came in April because it had become a cruel month.

But here it was April and the day Hutch had died ten years ago, and Starsky was sitting there with birds singing and the sky the blue of Hutch’s eyes and he was happy. He wanted it to be okay that he was happy with Martin. He wiped his eyes of the tears that formed there. Of course it is, he could hear Hutch say. Why wouldn’t it be? Why would I want you to be sad forever? Why would I want you to stop living because I did? What kind of love would it be for me to hold onto you when you need to be set free? Love that chains one person to another isn’t love. Love truly is letting go when needed.

“I do love you,” Starsky finally said into the spring air. “You gave me the best of you.” He placed his palm flat over the word beloved. “I am who I am because of you.”

He got to his feet, even though the movement wasn’t as graceful as it had been years before. He turned away, looked up at the sky that was the blue of Hutch’s eyes and smiled as he watched a sparrow fly higher until it was only a speck in the distance.