Scarce To Be Counted

They were always brighter out here. City lights would dim their brilliance, but out here in the vast expanse of desert that his favorite uncle had taken him to for a guy's weekend the stars were ablaze!

His name was Bentley, and twelve years ago his way too ambitious father had named him for the car that he would surely own one day, but it was a rusty Ford truck that would end that dream when Bentley had just turned two.

Bentley never knew his Dad, Franklin Costas, but he was very glad he had his father's brother Gabriel always at his side, in his life, at the ready to be the "male" in his life.

He thought back to all the times Uncle Gabe had been there for him. Like when he was eight and Uncle Gabe taught him how to box in response to Bentley's first real encounter with a hostile third grade bully. He told him it was an old school way of handling a bully, but it always worked, at least where the bully was concerned. And he was right, Kurt, the bully in question, never bothered him again. He warned him that all that guff they were going to try to feed him about his permanent record, and his reputation, and starting down a long violent road was just a load of crap.

“Nothing you do in the third grade is gonna dog you for rest of your life and that's a fact,” he remembered Uncle Gabe saying most passionately.

When Bentley asked about what would happen if Kurt hit back and beat him up. Maybe badly, maybe badly enough for his Mom to notice and get upset. Bentley hated to make his Mom upset, because though Uncle Gabe did a lot for him, his Mom did everything else.

“A third grader can try to kill you, but he won't be able to. Not strong or mean enough yet. And if this Kurt is the exception... Hey, did you wanna live forever? Immortality would be boring as hell,” he remembered his uncle replied.

Most kids had a mother and a father, but he had a mother and an Uncle Gabe, so he had no complaints. Although it would've been nice to see if his Dad would've ever gotten rich enough to own that Bentley he was named for. The odds were against it, and given that he stepped out into an intersection and all his dreams ended in an instant... It didn't seem that luck was exactly Franklin's co-pilot in life.

Uncle Gabe on the other hand enjoyed a rather Teflon Life. No matter what hair brained thing he tried, it always seemed to turn out just fine. Currently he was managing a science museum and planetarium on the outskirts of town and he truly loved it when he got to guide the school tours of kids his age and younger through the wonders of science and space.

In a way Uncle Gabe's head had always been in the stars he was now enjoying, that's why the thought of losing him was so painful. Losing him would be one thing. He had lost his father, but having never known him or life with him that loss was far from acute. But this loss... This loss would hurt.

He had found the doctor's report quite by accident. He wasn't snooping by any stretch, but Uncle Gabe had taught him how to read when he was three, how could he not read what it said: Colon Cancer - Third Stage.

But there was the problem with finding out about the cancer, beyond being worried. His Uncle Gabe was not treating it. After the unintentional snooping there was a plethora of intended snooping. No paperwork on any follow up visits, any appointments for chemo, any scheduled surgeries. It was like he was pretending the diagnosis didn't exist, that he was never informed of it, that it wasn't going to kill him.

He agreed to this desert jaunt partly because he wanted to be alone with Gabe without distractions. No cell phone service out here either. It was just him, and his uncle, and the stars. He thought of a play that his uncle once made him go see. The play, a musical, was set a long time ago and this relentless French cop--who had an English accent for some reason--was after this petty thief, chased him for years. And in the play he sings a song about the stars. He sang: “Stars... Scarce to be counted...” He had to ask his uncle what that meant after the show, and Gabe told him it meant that there were too many stars to ever hope to count.

Just like to him there were too many things his uncle had done for him and with him over the years, to ever count or repay. Maybe this would be his way of repaying him. Maybe this is what he could do for him. But when he explained it to him like that. that he thought it was his task in life to get him to treat his cancer and save Gabe's life... His Uncle Gabe had a curious response.

“Are you asking me to fight it for me or for you?” Gabe asked with a crooked smile that was always endearing to the boy.

“What do you mean?” Bentley responded, perplexed by the question.

“Well, I'm not young anymore. I'm in my late fifties. Remember I was fourteen years older than your father, so I'm pretty much old enough to be your grandfather.”

“So?”

“So, I've lived a long time. Long enough to have buried a lot of my friends. And the ones with cancer, always fought the good fight... And died the painful death.”

“But, Uncle Gabe, there's no guarantee you're going to lose!”

“But there is a guarantee of pain and suffering from the treatment, the chemo, the radiation, the surgery that's worse than the cancer. Sure it'll buy me some time, time you know I'd love to spend with you, but I wouldn't be the same man. I've seen it too many times. The suffering, the struggle, changes people... Makes them less than who they always were. I don't want you to remember me like that.”

“I don't want to have to remember you. I want you here with me,” Bentley said, as his eyes welled with tears.

“And I'd love to stay. Who else would ever get to go star gazing with me? But, Bentley, my boy... No matter how hard we try. We can't get out of life alive!”

The moment he said that the boy understood. His uncle had made his peace with how to live and now had resigned himself to how he would die. Gabe would go onto to talk more about suffering needlessly, the odds the doctor had given him of living even a year or two more even with aggressive treatment, the importance of not telling his mother or anyone else, but the boy didn't need to hear it. If love was infinite and the stars were infinite then why should life be so finite? The thought was like a dagger in his soul. It was a man sized realization, the kind of thought twelve year old boys seldom have, but maybe this whole thing was aging him faster than he wanted.

In the end he would keep his uncle's confidence and he realized he was thinking of himself, of his loss, of his needs, but his uncle had been there for him, always, for as long as he could remember, and had given him the tools to lean on himself for any dark times ahead. He was strong because of this man, and he would respect the choice he was making, and enjoy these last months with him, as they draped themselves across the hood of Gabe's old Buick... And tried to count the stars.