The Universe is a Very Big Place Read Online Free

can’t."
     
     

 
     
    Two
     
     
    1987
     
    “Wake up, Johnny boy.” Steve was tugging on his brother’s shoulder, jostling him from his dreams. They were good ones, too. Knights and castles and a fire-breathing dragon. John pulled himself upright, feeling the sting of a bladder that had not been emptied in twelve long hours.
    “Where are we?” John asked, rubbing his eyes. He climbed from his bunk in the back seat through a small set of double windows and joined his brother in the front of the cab. He swiped his hand across the passenger seat window, erasing the mist that had collected during their hours on the road. Morning was beginning to crack, but even without the full assistance of the sun, John could appreciate the beauty of the view.
    “Colorado. I told you you’d like it,” Steve said, grinning.
    John could make out shapes in the distance and rolled his window down to make sure. Yes. They were real. “Mountains."
    Steve laughed and hit the steering wheel good-naturedly with the palm of his hand. “I take you hundreds of miles away from home on your first real adventure and that’s all you can say?"
    John looked at his brother, his jaw hanging down and he popped it shut before he started to drool. He knew Steve expected more from him, but it had been the only word he could produce. Suddenly John felt like one of the simple kids Pete made fun of. But there were no other words for the wondrous rocks that surrounded him––big, beautiful stones that shot up from the ground and into the clouds, kissing the heavens. Blue-grey stairways to the Gods. This was the land of storybooks and dreams. Giants might live here. Or goblins. Or trolls.
    “Not a cornfield in sight,” Steve continued.   “Now aren’t you glad you came with me instead of spending another year at Camp Carson? You’re getting too old for that shit."
    John stuck his head out of the car, breathing in the fresh morning air. The feel of it upon his skin as they sped down the highway was like having his soul scrubbed clean. “I never want to leave,” he said, wishing he had brought his sketchbook along. He would have to commit the view to memory, as Steve didn’t stop long enough for even one Polaroid snapshot. They were on a tight schedule, Steve said, and had to get the truck back by morning. But it was long enough for John to see that there was a big world out there that he knew nothing about. A world beyond Samson, Indiana, cornfields, and Little League baseball. Beyond monster truck rallies and tractor pulls. A world full of magic and adventure.
    When he returned home, John decided to build his very own mountain, and after four weeks of moving dirt around with his dad’s old shovel, John had built a hill half as tall as himself and four times as wide.  
    "The only mountain in Samson,” his mother bragged to the neighbors over coffee. It wasn’t a real mountain, John knew, but it was all he had. And he took to sitting on it with his books and GI Joes until a big rain came that October and turned it all to mud.
    "When I grow up," he said to the raven that had settled on an ear of corn in the field before him. “...I’m moving far away from here. I’m moving someplace where I can get out and explore and meet interesting people. I’m moving to a place where no rain can ever wash away my mountain."
    “Caw!” the raven answered, gazing across the cornfields.  
    The raven could fly. It had seen things John had never seen. For a moment he wished they could change places. But the raven flew away and John was left with just his dreams.
     

     
    2005
     
    “What do you mean you’re moving?” Pete was chucking rocks at an old tombstone, trying to dislodge ghosts. Fortunately for the sleeping dead, most of them missed.
    “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” John said. “It’s disrespectful."
    “What are they gonna do? Haunt me?” Pete laughed but let the rocks tumble from his hand and onto the ground.
    John shrugged. A