A valley in far northern Montana, on the Canadian line – a valley of perhaps forty or fifty residents, set so far back in the woods that it might be fifty years back in time, behind the rest of the world. The residents – hermits, hunters, trappers, gardeners, and recluses – had been watching the comet every evening for a month and had just begun to get used to seeing it up there among the stars. Now it was leaving. They decided to tell it good-bye on the last night of its existence, or rather, its appearance, before it disappeared for several thousand years. On the last night before it went earth-blind, they would watch it. The last significant comet of the century.
That evening, when the temperature was falling like a stone dropped from a great height-fifteen below at sunset, with not a cloud or wisp of fog anywhere-the valley residents-men, women, and children-gathered at midnight. It was thirty below by that point, and before daylight it would fall to forty. Children were awakened by their parents (or stayed up late, so that they would better remember the evening) and they all rode in horse-drawn sleighs across the frozen crust up one of the old narrow trails to the top of Hensley Mountain. Brush and saplings crowded in from either side, and they traveled up the mountain in single file. Despite their labors, the horses did not sweat. There were three sleighs, a dozen adults, and as many children. They carried stove-wanned rocks wrapped in elk hides on their laps and on the floorboard of the carriage. From time to time they could see the comet through the trees, but it was not until they reached the top of the mountain that the comet was in clearest evidence, lying not far over the horizon, due north.
When their sleighs had reached the top of the mountain, the villagers climbed out from beneath their hides and stood among the horses and watched the beauty of the comet. At that temperature, the snow was more like the color of mercury. It was so cold that the snow up top had not crusted but was as loose as sand; they stood knee-deep in it, picked it up with their gloved hands and tossed it into the sky toward the comet, and watched its glittering columns fall back to earth. The comet's tail was clearly visible. It looked out of place amongst the star multitude, blurry and restless not much larger than a star, like a flashlight shining through a patch of fog – and it seemed that the villagers could even see the slow fizz and sputter of sparks from the tail. The villagers moved in closer against the horses, pressing against them, shivering. There were no lights down in the valley, and the cold possessed such a weight that it seemed it might crack them all, as if they were each crystalline things of no substance or strength. It was frightening, being up high like that-up close to the comet.
After less than half an hour, it was time to leave; they could bear the cold no longer. "Look once more," the parents told their children. "Are you sure you see it?" They all did; the children had seen it immediately, had easily picked it out from amidst all the other seeming star-sameness. Some of them even imagined they could see a grinning face and eyes on the head of the comet.
The adults marveled at how clearly the children could see the comet, and at how excited they were. They had worried the children might consider the comet to be small and insignificant-a little blurrier than a true star, and not much larger-tiny against the whole sky-but the children were carrying on as if it were one of the most exciting things they'd ever seen – like junior astronomers, every one of them. Some of the adults felt deeply the suspicion that they were becoming jaded to life-that even out here, in the blood-and-guts middle of life, a thing inside them was hardening. The adults felt wonder, and peace, even awe – but they could not summon the utter, reckless joy of the children.
The next night the comet would be gone, and the next day, even beneath blue sky, the villagers would be lonesome for the thing, and going about their chores it would seem inconceivable to them that the next time the comet made its pass they would not still be there, unchanged and in their same old daily rhythms. It was as if they had become comfortable, during the month that the comet circled their valley, with the notion that miracles were commonplace.
Forty below; black night, and a sea of gold stars. The villagers bundled back into their sleighs and settled in amongst one another for warmth. Though the rocks still retained some of their heat, the villagers could not feel any of it, and there never could be as many hides as they needed to stay warm. There was hay in the bottom of the sleighs for them to shove their feet into, and inside the sleighs they lit lanterns and took turns passing the hissing lanterns around, holding them up to their bare faces to warm frozen cheeks – each face illuminated orange gold for a moment, with shrouds of frost-breath puffing from colorless lips – and then the chattering of someone else's teeth would bear request for the lantern to be passed on. The horses made good time, heading down the mountain, plowing through their previous trail, so that there was only the sound of the sleigh skimming across the snow, and the jingle of the horses' harness bells, and the freezing trees exploding around them like cannons, while above, the silent comet moved fast, sinking so far and so deep into the future that it might as well have been burying itself in the past.