The sign was an affront to all who lived there. Otis Dooley hated that sign more than anyone. Otis was an amateur astronomer. His days were consumed by plumbing and carpentry but his nights were devoted to stars and Stony Mesa had more stars gleaming in the night sky than almost any place on the planet. Far from a city and sitting beneath black-shouldered mountains and rimmed by tall canyon walls, Stony Mesa had almost no ambient light. The desert air was dry and clean.
On most nights one could easily see an awesome lattice of pulsing light divided by the faint phosphorescent trail of the Milky Way against an obsidian black sky. Otis converted a small cabin behind his home into an observatory for a large telescope that was his pride and joy. He named his telescope Spock after the television character in Star Trek.
Otis might be on his knees with dirty hands during the work day but at night he could shed his coveralls, sit back and squint through Spock at the sublime heavens. Most nights he floated out of himself and into a universe of stars, galaxies, planets, comets, and nebulae. He marveled at the vast array of color. Yellow, red, and blue are most common but the deepest views Hubble allows reveal giant clouds of interstellar dust and gas that shimmer like the inside of a lustrous abalone shell. During the Perseid meteor shower, scores of shooting stars slid across the summer sky. Full moons were so bright he needed sunglasses to look at them.
There was always something new to see and yet the night sky had fixed points that had been emitting light for a billion years. In fact, he knew that the light he saw when he looked up at stars had been traveling toward Earth for so long that anything he might see through Spock today actually happened before he was born, maybe thousands of years ago. The scale of time and space was humbling.
When Otis mapped the heavens with his eye, he saw the same night sky that the ancient Pueblo Indians saw. To think that he was linked to the mysterious strangers who had littered Stony Mesa’s landscape with arrowheads, shattered pottery, and shards of stone tools was humbling. A black stump of petrified wood sat by his doorstep, creviced with crystals and marbled with orange, red, and yellow veins. To think that when that stone stump was a green and living tree the night sky was much the same as the sky he was looking at right now, well, that was more than humbling, that was mind-boggling. But knowing that he was here now to participate in this amazing universe was also inspiring. I may only be alive for a moment, he thought, but this is my moment.
As he stargazed he became a participant in the grand human quest to pierce the invisible and perceive the secrets of the universe. Squinting through a microscope at the hidden microbial world or squinting through a telescope at galaxies beyond the cave of the naked eye, one was opened to wondrous life and infinite possibility. It was this curiosity, this need to know the world beyond the physical limitations of our species, whether we mapped the stars, DNA, or the bottom of the ocean, that made us worthy of our unique place in the order of life, Otis thought. When he put his eye to Spock, he took part in the grand pageant of civilization. There was a kind of dignity to it. Compared to that, neon was just a gaudy trick at best, a reckless cataract of light made by fools to blind the enlightened.
Such reflections about time and space made Otis Dooley modest, grateful, and reverent. The balm of his nightly skywatching also helped him to be a good and generous neighbor, a dependable and honest worker, a patriot who was even willing to take on the tedious and thankless job of Stony Mesa mayor.
On the first night that the sign in front of the Wild West Museum and Mall was lit, Otis retreated from a day of low-back pain and aching fingers to his telescopic lair. He sighed, swung his barreled lens skyward, and pinched his face into the eyepiece only to discover that his beloved night sky had faded under the celestial bleach emanating from the museum’s pulsing sign.
He was immediately thrown from his nighttime zone of awe and reverence into the arms of a bottle of bourbon that he hid behind the observatory wall. They woke up together the following morning. After a restless afternoon of grieving and steaming, it was clear. He’d be damned if that rich faux-cowboy Bo Hineyman would wreck his view of the stars. And as the town’s duly elected mayor, it was his duty to confront the offender.
He marched in the Wild West Museum and Mall, a.k.a. the Bull and Stallion. Hineyman stood at the front desk reminding a cashier to greet customers with “howdy partner.” The night before, Kimmy Jo Roberts greeted a handsome and very buff male customer with a big smile and a salacious “Bang! Bang!” Bo overheard her. Now, he was telling her that the six-shooters were a part of a costume that might make some people, all the French people and the tourists from New York, for example, a little nervous. No need to draw attention to them. Kimmy Jo stole a glance at her cousin Starla Huggins and rolled her eyes while Bo’s head was turned. She started to make the sign for crazy but ended up fingering her hair when he turned her way.
“Oh, and be sure to tell them the gift shop has a special sale this week on hats and genuine lariats.” He tried to smile to soften the criticism and come across as a good guy after all. It was a heavy lift for Bo as it required pushing his cheeks up against the tide of a perpetually furrowed brow.
Otis couldn’t wait. “Bo, that electric bonfire you call a sign is ruining a precious resource.” Diplomacy was not Mayor Dooley’s strong suit.
“What resource?” Hineyman huffed.
“The night sky, you moron!”
“What?”
“People come from all over the world who have never seen the Milky Way, heck, never seen more than a few stars. They look up and they are awestruck. When they go home they tell all their friends who want to come here and see the same, maybe even buy a poster of John Wayne at your friggin’ gift shop. But when that sign of yours is on all they see is a rearing horse, a frothing bull, and the word ‘sale’ over and over with a big arrow pointing at the door.” His anger was peaking. “It’s an abomination! Damn thing needs a dimmer switch!”
“The only thing dim around here, Dooley, is you. That sign cost me fifty grand. It has state-of-the-art digital controls, the whole works. It’s about time someone stepped up the hand-lettered crap that passes for signage here. That arrow doesn’t point to my door, knucklehead, it points to the future!”
“Oh bullshit, Bo, it doesn’t fit here and neither do you. Do you think you can just push in here and take over the night sky—own it?”
“I don’t have to stand here and listen to some squat gnome who cleans grease out of pipes for a living. Get out of here before I call the police!”
“We don’t have any police. You ain’t in your office in Miami now, ya dickhead.”
“We have a Boon County sheriff and if ever you walk your sorry ass into this establishment again, I’ll call him. Now get out!”
The two men were mindful that they were arguing in a public place so they politely refrained from shouting. They delivered their insults through clenched teeth and red faces. A bystander may have mistaken them for contestants in a vein bursting contest.
Otis left as he was ordered but the following week he posted a comment on his Facebook page under a photo of the neon bull and stallion. It read, “Our pioneer ancestors who settled Stony Mesa were rugged individualists but they understood that nobody can stand alone in a wilderness like ours. Neighbors stepped up and built an irrigation system that still keeps our desert valley fertile. They built a school, a town hall, and a church together. They understood that as tough and self-sufficient as a person might be, he still needs a community to make life good. It is our turn to step up and keep Stony Mesa from being gobbled up by the highest bidder.”
Bo Hineyman was never named but everyone understood who Otis was talking about. Bo was livid. He called his lawyer in Miami, and asked if he could sue
