These days of darkness
Which we've known
Will blow away with this new sun
~ I Will Wait, Mumford and Sons
Shooting down the suns
Once we sat on the deck and Ivo pointed out the constellations to me, naming them one by one: Perseus, Cepheus, and Auriga. He knew when and why the stars dimmed and grew brighter, which could not be seen from the southern hemisphere, and which would change in our lifetime. He knew the myths of their origins and the cultures that worshipped them – the arrogant Cassiopeia hung upside down on her throne, the slain serpent Draco, the horsemen Castor and Polydeuces honored by their father Zeus.
It struck me as incongruous that the man who take great pleasure in mocking Archbishop Ussher (I hadn't heard of him either, he apparently said that something called God had put fossils in rocks in 4004 BC) found these early myths enthralling. He could actually see the hare Largos being eternally hunted by Orion and his dog Canis. I felt that we were back in that period of time when he spoke.
I might have said something to provoke him, force him to defend this knowledge since it was even more backward in thinking than Christianity, shooting down the suns. I might have repeated his scathing remarks about living in darkness – astrology, divination and other "mumbo jumbo" as he liked to say. I might have pointed out that not a single scientist had managed to produce irrefutable evidence that "something called God" did not actually exist.
I might have.
Had I not watched him venture into the woods late that February night and sob so that it rattled my very bones.
"Danny!" he'd cried into the darkness, willing the spirit to come to him.