Clear Skies

by Jessica Scott Kerrin

  Arno didn’t think Buddy would make the grade. After all, astronauts were the crème de la crème of fighter pilots. They were top dogs. Only test pilots could apply for the Project Mercury mission, and just seven of the five hundred who did were selected. From what Arno could tell, they didn’t clomp around in ridiculous cowboy boots that rubbed their bare calves red.

  Arno plucked his mom’s handwritten recipe card for lemonade from the fridge door where she had taped it next to Aunt Faye’s phone number written in gigantic orange crayon.

  “I’m making lemonade. Want some or not?”

  Buddy sighed, as if this was the worst news since the Soviets successfully launched the first astronaut into outer space months ago, ahead of the Americans.

  “So you don’t have any Tang?”

  “Correct.”

  Buddy sighed again.

  “Just lemonade?”

  “Roger that.”

  Buddy rocked on his heels, contemplating his choices.

  “Aren’t your feet sweaty?” Arno asked.

  “Nope,” Buddy said, looking down to admire his gaudy boots. Then he smiled, which reminded Arno of a toad. Toads always smiled no matter what they were thinking.

  Arno pulled the lemons from the fruit bowl and read the recipe out loud to ward off further conversation about astronauts, which he knew was the only thing that Buddy liked to talk about.

  10 lemons.

  1 cup superfine sugar.

  2 cups cold water.

  Ice.

  Strain the lemon juice through a fine sieve into a pitcher to get rid of the pulp and seeds.

  Add sugar, stirring until it dissolves.

  Stir in the water, then the ice.

  Top with sprigs of fresh mint from the garden.

  “I guess I’ll have some,” Buddy said grudgingly, sitting down at the kitchen table. “If that’s all you’re making.”

  Arno said nothing. He had learned to let Buddy’s comments bounce off him like meteoroids ricocheting off Earth’s outer atmosphere.

  He grabbed the first lemon. When he sliced it cleanly in two, the lemon exhaled its tart warning into the dry summer air. He placed one half on the reamer of his juice press. He took a deep, steadying breath and cautiously cranked the press.

  “Blast it!” Arno hollered, blinking furiously after he was squirted right in the eye.

  He blindly grasped for the faucet and turned on the water to splash his face. Nothing burned like the sting from an angry ripe lemon.

  Comet, who had settled on his bed in the corner, drooped his ears and whimpered in sympathy.

  “Guess what doesn’t sting when you make it?” Buddy said as he leaned back in his chair, his cowboy boots making scuff marks beneath the table.

  Arno ignored him.

  When the stinging subsided, Arno turned off the faucet and reached for a tea towel to pat himself dry. The towel smelled of laundry soap and sunshine.

  Undaunted, he placed the other half onto the reamer to wring out the juice. He turned the crank so slowly, it was like watching the Moon rise in the night sky.

  At first the lemon squeezed perfectly. A miracle!

  But then Arno got cocky. He cranked a little faster and took another squirt to the eye.

  The other eye.

  “Blast it!” he bellowed, rubbing furiously, blinking back tears.

  Comet sadly tilted his head, his golden eyes softly trained on Arno.

  “With Tang, all you do is pour the crystals into ice-cold water, stir, and presto. You’re done,” Buddy declared. He picked at a scab forming at the back of his leg where the top of his cowboy boot rubbed and flicked it onto the floor near the scuff marks.

  Arno ran more water at the kitchen sink to splash his face.

  “Enough with the Tang,” Arno growled. “One more word and you’ll get nothing.”

  Buddy didn’t flinch. He seemed to like pushing Arno’s buttons.

  After the lemonade was made with several more squirts to the eyes, Arno poured two tall glasses. The boys carried them and the pitcher out to the shaded front porch where it was a few degrees cooler. They sat in the two wooden chairs that were planted side by side. A small table stacked with magazines was wedged between them. Comet stretched out under Arno’s legs.

  Even though it was still morning, the Sun blazed.

  Grasshoppers buzzed loudly in waves.

  There was no breeze, not even a puff.

  The street was empty. Everyone was staying inside, hiding from the punishing heat.

  “Bet I can hold off taking a sip before you do,” Buddy said, turning to Arno. Buddy was always up for a competition that required some kind of physical endurance. He’d go on and on about how astronauts faced hardships all the time.

  Arno gave Buddy a level glare, then took a long, delicious sip. He smacked his lips and said, “Ahhhhh.” He took another long sip.

  Besides, he knew that Buddy would win any physical competition hands down. Buddy had proved this to everyone when he entered the school’s Spring Fling fundraiser several months ago.

  A local bicycle shop had donated a Raleigh Deluxe Space Rider to the school. The three-speed came with white sidewall roadster tires, a multi-spring saddle, a kit bag for tools and a pump, a lamp bracket with a generator light and a kickstand.

  “It’s even painted a metallic color called Neptune Blue,” Arno told his parents over dinner after he saw it on display.

  Everyone agreed it was the bike to have.

  The school then sold tickets for an endurance contest in which the bike stood in the gymnasium, and participants had to continuously touch a part of the bike for as long as possible. If a participant let go of the bike even for a split second, that contestant was out of the competition.

  The rules were clear. Contestants were only allowed ten-minute washroom breaks once every hour. The person who held on the longest would win the bike.

  At the start of the competition, there must have been thirty kids jammed together and jockeying for space while touching a part of the coveted bike. The rest of the school sat on bleachers in the gym and cheered them on. The school band played to keep everyone entertained, and the parents’ association sold popcorn.

  About half of the contestants quit within the first fifteen minutes, including Arno. The crowd of kids pressing in made his stomach start to twist. As much as he wanted that bike, he did not want to risk being embarrassed by having a panic attack in front of the entire school.

  Another quarter of the contestants quit within an hour. More trickled away as time passed.

  Then it was down to six kids.

  Mindy Venetia.

  Anton Spagnolli.

  Heimlich Fester.

  Sam Preeble.

  Abe Wooster.

  And Buddy Clark.

  All six grabbed hold as if they were astronauts in a space capsule seizing the controls during the final countdown. Except this went on for hours, well into the afternoon. The crowd began to thin and the popcorn ran out. It was getting close to dinnertime.

  Something had to be done.

  “New rules,” the principal announced into the microphone. “Contestants must now keep both hands on the bike.”

  The thinning crowd murmured their approval.

  All six contestants clamped both hands on the prize, determined as ever.

  Minutes later, Mindy sneezed. She politely covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Bless you,” Buddy said, and he chuckled.

  Mindy was out.

  “No fair!” she complained.

  The loud round of applause put a quick end to her protests.

  Anton Spagnolli got a charley horse from sitting cross-legged so long. He, too, was out when he rubbed his calf for relief.

  “What a shame,” Buddy sai
d, then grinned from ear to ear.

  The audience applauded. Anton was out.

  Heimlich Fester fell asleep and rolled over.

  “Sweet dreams,” Buddy teased, poking Heimlich with his foot.

  More applause. Heimlich was out.

  Then Sam Preeble and Abe Wooster failed to return with Buddy after their ten-minute washroom break. The audience assumed the two had quit.

  Buddy won the bike.

  Only later did everyone learn that Sam and Abe had somehow been locked inside the boys’ washroom. The janitor came to their rescue after he happened to find his mislaid keys by the water fountain near the washroom and heard them pounding on the door.

  Arno still couldn’t shake his suspicions about who had locked those two boys inside.

  That Raleigh Deluxe Space Rider was now leaning against Arno’s front porch. Buddy never went anywhere without it, constantly popping wheelies for anyone who was willing to watch.

  “Astronauts have phenomenal lung capacity,” Buddy said after taking his own sip of lemonade. “You know how —”

  “Your dad once met John Glenn,” Arno answered quickly, because he knew Buddy was dying to tell him all about it.

  Again.

  Arno did not relish hearing in great detail about the time Buddy’s dad sat in on a meeting with NASA officials at the Manned Spacecraft Center about the Tang account, and later spotted John Glenn in the elevator.

  Given the chance, Buddy would report that John Glenn had even spoken to Buddy’s dad after Buddy’s dad introduced himself. The astronaut replied, “Nice to meet you,” and shook his dad’s hand.

  “It was out of this world!” Buddy would say.

  Arno leaned over to turn up his radio.

  “I have great lung capacity, too,” Buddy said, unphased by the blaring music. He yelled above it. “Want to see me perform the astronaut balloon test?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He dug out several rubber balloons from his pocket. They were orange with Tang’s brand printed on each one. He began to blow them up, one by one. His face got redder and redder.

  “Look,” Buddy said between balloons, his chest heaving. “I’m not even winded.”

  He was blowing up the fifth balloon when Arno realized that the music on the radio had ended, and that the announcer was asking another astronomy question.

  “Shhhhh!” Arno insisted, reaching over with both hands to pop the balloon from Buddy’s mouth.

  The balloon zoomed off the porch and landed beside the Raleigh Deluxe Space Rider.

  “You can think of the Moon as Earth’s only natural satellite,” the announcer said. “It is relatively big, being the fifth-largest satellite in our solar system. But, dear listener, why can we see only one side?”

  “Because the other side is dark!” Buddy exclaimed.

  “Wrong!” Arno shouted as he rushed into the kitchen to call the radio station. “It’s because the time the Moon takes to rotate on its axis is around the same length of time it takes to orbit Earth!”

  His hands were shaking as he dialed.

  Busy signal.

  Too late.

  “Blast it!” he shouted. If he hadn’t been distracted by Buddy, he might have reached the telephone sooner.

  “So, there isn’t really a dark side?” Buddy asked, following Arno into the kitchen.

  “No,” Arno grumbled, both hands planted on the counter, his head hanging. “It’s just the far side we can’t see from here.”

  “Oh, good,” Buddy said. “When I become an astronaut, that’s the side I’m going to visit.”

  Buddy smiled like a toad as he rocked back on his scuff marks.

  THREE

  The day was getting hotter by the minute. Even on Arno’s shady front porch, the heat was strong enough to blast both boys back in their chairs, as if they’d been hit by a solar flare.

  A trickle of sweat ran down between Arno’s shoulder blades. Comet lay sprawled beneath his legs, flattening himself against the wood deck, his pink tongue lolling out. A fierce sunbeam inched steadily toward the little dog’s water bowl while neighborhood cats sought shade beneath parked cars on the street.

  Arno concentrated on listening to the radio, which was now playing one Motown band after another. Buddy reached for the top copy from Arno’s well-worn collection of Life magazines stacked on the table between them. Arno saved all the copies that featured something about outer space on the cover.

  Buddy flipped to an article about the Mercury Seven. He read how the American astronauts were being tested in a heat chamber as part of getting ready to fly into outer space. He studied the photos of men who had been zipped into spacesuits and were being strapped inside the chamber.

  “What a tight squeeze,” Buddy said, holding out the magazine to Arno for a look. “My dad told me that astronauts have to be 5 feet 11 inches or shorter so that they can fit into the spacecraft. Lucky for me, my dad is only 5 feet 9.”

  “Yeah. I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Arno said.

  Buddy was, by far, the shortest boy in their class.

  Although the astronauts were smiling and giving the photographer the A-OK sign, it only took one look for Arno to feel the beginnings of panic flutter in his stomach. He would be terrified, strapped into a chair that was bolted to the floor, then locked inside that cramped chamber. The mere thought made him want to throw up. It was a powerful reminder about why becoming an astronomer was so much better. Arno would still be able to see everything in the universe, only he would do so from wide-open fields on Earth.

  Arno pushed the magazine back toward Buddy.

  “Read on your own,” he said gruffly. He closed his eyes to better concentrate on the radio.

  Buddy settled into his chair and flipped to an article Arno had already read about Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut who had been launched in a rocket ship that spring and made over seventeen orbits around Earth before ejecting himself and parachuting to the ground separately from his capsule. Then Buddy read out loud the part about American navy commander Alan B. Shepard Jr., who followed the Soviets by rocketing away from Earth’s surface a few weeks later on top of a Mercury-Redstone rocket. Shepard’s fifteen-minute spaceflight reached a high altitude, yet his spacecraft, Freedom 7, wasn’t fast enough to achieve orbit.

  Buddy was about to continue, but he was interrupted by the sounds of a heavy diesel engine. A moving van came rumbling down their street. It backed into a driveway five houses from where Arno lived — a house that looked much like his but with a Sold sign planted in its browned-out front lawn.

  Arno put down his glass of lemonade, and Buddy closed his magazine to watch.

  The movers unloaded a kitchen table set with tubular steel legs and molded plastic seats, a starburst wall clock, baked enamel cabinets with sliding plate-glass doors, pole lamps with fern-green shades, plaid swivel chairs, matching avocado-colored appliances and a long sleek couch in gold fabric.

  Then a glossy white station wagon with skylight windows pulled up in front of the house. When a family of four tumbled out — a dad, a mom, a boy and his older sister who was wearing a tall beehive held back with a hairband, Arno could see that the interior of the car was racy red.

  “Do be careful, lads!” the dad warned, dogging the movers as they carried a television in through the propped-open front door.

  Arno wasn’t all that impressed. Almost every house on his street owned a television by now. What was more unusual was that the dad had an accent that sounded like the Queen of England.

  As soon as a bicycle was unloaded from the moving van, the boy grabbed it and climbed on. He pedaled lazy figure-eights in the empty street, heat waves wafting up from the softening black pavement, until he spotted Arno and Buddy. He charged straight toward them.

  “Hello!” he called out, coming to a full stop on the sidew
alk in front of Arno’s house.

  “Hi,” Arno said, tugging at his sweaty T-shirt.

  Comet lifted his head but was too hot to move from beneath Arno’s legs. Buddy just stared with his mouth open.

  Arno knew that they should be a titch more friendly.

  “Welcome to the neighborhood,” he added.

  “Thanks.” The boy got off his bike and pulled out the kickstand. He walked up to the porch, stood on the top step and thrust out his hand. “I’m Robert Fines. That’s my house,” he said, nodding in the direction of the movers.

  Robert had an accent, too, but not as strong as his dad’s. “House” sounded like “howse,” not “hoos,” which was how Arno and his friends said it.

  “I’m Arno Creelman,” Arno said, reluctantly standing up to shake hands because his own was so sweaty.

  “Buddy Clark,” Buddy said, doing the same after wiping his brow with a corner of his shirt.

  Robert ran his fingers through a huge cowlick. His ears stuck out, glowing pink in the sun, and when he smiled, Arno saw there was a small gap between his two front teeth.

  “Is that your dog?” Robert asked, crouching down to peer at Comet. He said “dahg,” not “dowg.”

  Comet gave two thumps of his tail but otherwise stayed put.

  “Yeah,” Arno said.

  “What’s his name?” Robert pressed.

  “Comet.”

  “Sorry. Did you say Comet?”

  “Yeah. He was born the year two really bright comets were spotted in 1957. They came close and could even be seen by the naked eye. And they were the first ones since Halley’s Comet back in 1910.”

  “Here we go,” Buddy muttered.

  “What?” Arno asked, wheeling around to catch Buddy rolling his eyes.

  “Hey, Robert,” Buddy said, settling back into his chair. “Check this out.” He held his hands palms up and tilted his head. “Say, Arno? What are comets?”