Satellite

by Nick Lake

  “no,” i say. “i get it.” i always thought that too, without thinking it. a premise. an assumption of togetherness, like something axiomatic, like the moon orbiting the earth.

  but now, it seems it was never a rule. just…a circumstance. i feel a prickling in the corner of my eyes & i tell it to go away.

  “what are u going to do?” says Orion.

  “do?”

  “at the ranch.”

  “i don’t know,” i say. “what are u going to do? in Miami?”

  “go listen to a symphony, dude,” he says.

  “oh come on,” i say. “u’re not going to check out McDonald’s first?”

  he smiles. “well, yeah, maybe.”

  “Mom says i can have a corner of the backyard for a garden,” says Libra.

  i smile. i can c her in it. i can c Orion listening to his symphony, closing his eyes, the music washing over him.

  “i’ll go c Grandpa’s cattle,” i say. “the puppies. he says there are puppies. & he has a horse for me, i think. & learn to fly & study physics &…i don’t know. everything.” suddenly i feel nervous. everything is a lot of things. that’s a stupid thing to say. but hopefully they know what i mean.

  Orion raises his hand to pause me, then goes & picks up 3 water bottles from the table. he hands them out & we clink them together.

  “to everything,” he says.

  “to everything.”

  “to everything.”

  then we step forward, awkwardly, & hug. Libra first—she pulls me close & i smell the shampoo in her hair, & it’s a new scent, an earth scent, a scent u’d never get on the station.

  then Orion. all my nerve endings are dancing. i feel the muscles under his skin, less developed than Soto’s but still strong, still Orion who i have known since i knew what it was to be alive, & i try not to hold on too long, not too short either, & now i’m self-conscious but then—he winces, & i step back.

  “what’s wrong?”

  he grimaces, twisting his shoulder, like he’s working out a kink. “just…stiff,” he says. he breathes in deep.

  i frown. “since when?”

  “since…it’s not a big deal. adjusting, that’s all.”

  “does Dr. Stearns know?”

  “Christ!” says Orion. “Dr. Stearns has x-ray, MRI, & CAT scans of my whole body. he knows things i don’t know.”

  Libra & i exchange a concerned look but Orion is already crutching off down the hallway—the orderlies have gone ahead with my trunk of medical stuff. “come on,” she says. “don’t u want to meet ur grandpa?”

  & i do.

  of course i do.

  it’s something i have looked forward to all my life, so i follow Orion, not using crutches myself: i can manage the walk to the elevator, i think. Boutros said it was just up to the 8th floor & the helicopter would be on the roof.

  we press the button & the elevator rises, a light flicking from 1 number to the next, chiming each time: 2 ching 3 ching 4 ching 5 ching 6 ching 7 ching…

  8.

  the elevator doors open & i curse as the sun fills the oblong space; i hold the door with my shoulder & take my glasses from my jeans pocket & put them on. the light dials down a notch. the helicopter is still on the roof, maybe 20 yards away, its blades spinning slowly.

  &

  & there is a man standing in front of me, with a worn leather hat on his head, a checked shirt, jeans. boots. he tips his hat at me.

  i would like to say i run forward but i can’t run, so i walk gingerly forward instead, needing to concentrate less now on every component of walking, but still not quite a native.

  he walks forward too, & i c the crinkles around his eyes, because he’s smiling, & i c that his eyes are wet too.

  we stop, & just stand there, for a long moment.

  then he puts his arms around me & hugs me tight. i hear Dr. Stearns, who is over to the left, give a little cough, & Grandpa eases his hold, instantly, like he hadn’t even thought of my physical fragility, & of course he probably hadn’t, in that moment, he just wanted to hug me.

  “hi, Grandpa,” i say. “nice to meet u.”

  he laughs. a choking sort of laugh. “nice to meet u too, Leo,” he says.

  he holds me at arm’s length, hands on my shoulders, examining me. his eyes are a paler hazel than i realized. not gene-modded, just washed by the Californian sun, which has also constellated his face with freckles. then he nods. “landing didn’t take too much out of u then,” he says.

  “oh u should have seen me on Moon 2,” i say. “i was like a bodybuilder.”

  he smiles. “well, they do say the camera adds 10 lbs.”

  “yeah.” i smile back.

  people are moving around us & i c Boutros, as well as my mother, among them. i glance over & c Libra & Orion too—they lift their hands & wave, coordinated.

  “take good care of him, sir,” says Boutros, stepping forward. he shakes Grandpa’s hand.

  “of course i will,” says Grandpa. a complicated look passes between them.

  Grandpa nods to my mother. i assume they’ve spoken since he landed. caught up. tho i don’t know what catching up with my mother looks like. i can’t imagine the 2 of them hugging.

  Dr. Stearns runs Grandpa thru the medical stuff again. it’s not very interesting.

  eventually, we make our way to the helicopter & Grandpa helps me up into it. we take our seats & he hands me a set of headphones—he has 1 too—& we can talk to each other using the attached microphone, over the din of the rotors.

  slowly, the helicopter lifts into the air. then it banks forward, & we move away from the building, over the compound. we speed up—a fence goes past below, then the outer 1, topped with wire, & then after brown grass has crossed below us for a minute we pass another fence, lower this time but with some kind of guard tower standing over a gray road.

  on the road, i c a group of people holding signs of some kind. there are tents—they must live there. but then they’re gone, behind us.

  “who were they?” i ask Grandpa.

  “who were who?”

  “those people. with the signs.”

  he shrugs. “i don’t know. anywhere the Company has a site, there are protesters. Area 51 crazies. alien conspiracists.”

  “isn’t that all finished? since the Company took over the base?”

  he shrugs again. “not for them.”

  soon i am not thinking about those people anymore because for a while we pass thru banks of cloud, or fog, i’m not sure. i’ve only ever seen this stuff from above before. it surrounds us like the beginning of a dream, on a vid, when the scene dissolves, & i watch it swirling, shades of gray & white.

  the helicopter thrums with a rhythmical hum, vibrates. i close my eyes. i think i must fall asleep, i don’t know how long for, but i know it’s sleep because for a moment i’m a salmon, swimming thru roiling white water, bubbles so dense it’s like foam, like cloud, pushing upstream, over smooth stones in every shade of gray, leaping over rocks where the water sheets down in milky ribbons u’d think were ice, always struggling, always straining my body to rise, to rise up into the mountains &—

  “oh, hey.”

  it’s Grandpa. i look up at him. i’m in the helicopter, leaning against him, my headphones are in an uncomfortable position, pressing my ear flat. i am drooling a little. i sit up.

  & watching the earth going by, far below us, the fields & roads & poles & little towns. the cars, driving who knows where. the rivers, their water low & brown. the lakes, some of them little more than dried-up beds, but some of them sparkling in the sun still, even now.

  “it’s so beautiful,” i say.

  “yes,” says Grandpa.

  i look out, at the sky, towering with clouds, whole superstructures of white, tumbling into the distance.

  i think: how people used to call the sky the heavens.

  i think: how if the heavens were the counterpoint to the earth, the thing that people looked up at, which made them t
hink of infinity, of promise, then if i was born in the sky, then the earth is my heaven.

  & people are not meant to live in heaven.

  but then we tilt down, toward the earth.

  “here it comes,” says Grandpa. “Sonoma.”

  we have been crossing a wide plateau, an expanse of grassland, & now in front of us is a wall of mountains, & before the mountains a sudden rise in the earth, & then—

  then i c it, a storybook valley, wide & low & green, or mostly green, framed to the east by mountains, a few thin rivers ribboning thru it, sectioned into different farms. clusters of buildings. barns. big metal things—pylons? or something else. they seem to be on wheels.

  it’s beautiful.

  we get closer. the valley grows: it fills the windows.

  we fly down lower & lower toward it.

  we flee toward it.

  we land on a square of concrete, surrounded by low prefabricated buildings.

  “the local school,” says Grandpa. “but it had to close a few years ago.”

  “why?”

  “not enough kids. too hard to make a living up here, so most families have moved north.”

  i look at the basketball hoop, its tattered net swinging lightly in the breeze. the white lines painted on the asphalt. i feel almost sad. like…now i won’t get to play here, to have a locker, do all those normal school things.

  i don’t know what the plan is for school actually: will Grandpa teach me at home? will i still have vidlink tutors? i make a note to ask Grandpa later. i should have asked Boutros, i guess, but everything is so new, so different, it’s hard to know what to concentrate on first.

  i blink, & focus—right now—on right now. i follow Grandpa, who has paused to wait for me, & we cross the yard, buffeted by the wind from the helicopter.

  guys from the Company carry my crate to a pickup, which is parked on the street outside. Grandpa puts a hand under my arm, helps me walk.

  they hoist the crate up onto the back, & Grandpa climbs into the truck bed—i notice that he winces when he raises his knee—& ratchets straps to hold the crate in place.

  then we say goodbye to the Company men. Grandpa opens the pickup door for me & takes some of my weight as i lever myself into the passenger seat. i am breathing heavily at this point, conscious of my diaphragm expanding & contracting. my spine feels compressed, from sitting in the helicopter & now sitting again—it’s as if i’m in a vise, squeezing me from above & below.

  Grandpa starts the engine & pulls out onto an empty road. we pass a few houses & then halt at a stop sign. i c more buildings ahead, rising 3, maybe 4 stories.

  “this is what passes for the town round here,” says Grandpa.

  he puts the truck in drive & we roll forward, past a row of what look like Victorian houses, like something from a western movie, followed by a few stores. there are a handful of people on the street, all wearing hats & leather boots. it’s a kind of time travel.

  i crack open my window. cool air winnows into the car.

  “fall’s coming,” says Grandpa. “u can smell it on the air.”

  i draw it in. something rich—grass? & something clean & cold—something that is perhaps the scent of rocks & white streams running down mountains, if those things had a scent.

  then we pass a tall store of some kind where people are in a line outside; no one young, i notice. “what’s that?” i say.

  “bank,” says Grandpa.

  a block later we pass another store with a line; this time maybe 10 people all waiting patiently.

  “bank?”

  “gun store,” says Grandpa.

  more stores flick past, flipbook style. all empty, no lines outside.

  “why those stores?” i ask.

  “why what?”

  “why the lines?”

  Grandpa shrugs. he has 1 hand on the wheel. the other is resting on the side of his door. “hard to make a living these days. so people want to keep their money liquid. & they want guns to protect it.”

  i frown. “huh.”

  Grandpa doesn’t say anything more tho, so i fall silent too, as the buildings peter out, & then are gone. we are on a wide road that runs thru the center of the valley. even if i wanted to say anything, i don’t think i would now because my attention is all on the landscape around me.

  i know this valley, from satellite imagery. it’s 17 miles long, a few miles wide. below it lies an aquifer, an underground lake, that at its height in the 19th century was 300 ft. from top to bottom in places. at its depth, i should say, i guess. but then every farmer in the valley sank wells into it & the rain stopped coming, & there was only 1 way that equation was going.

  i know all this, i know the geography & the history, but to c it is another thing. the sun is midway between vertical & the horizon; the whole land is white with it, bleached with the brightness of it—if i wasn’t wearing my special-issue sunglasses it would blind me, i’m sure. around us is grassland, sectioned by fences. some of it is green but most is brown.

  soft hills rise in what i know is the west. in the east, a ridge of mountains, snowcapped, deep-shadowed. there are few trees. the sky hangs above, seeming bigger than space, bigger than the endless blackness that used to surround me, pale blue & dusted with white clouds.

  & it’s all so beautiful.

  it’s all so beautiful it cinches my heart in my chest, belts it around & squeezes, tho that might be the atmosphere too, we’re 2,000 ft. up & there is less oxygen than i’m used to.

  we pass rows of huge metal structures on wheels, tho they are still, not moving. i think they’re the pylon-like things i saw from the helicopter. they are triangular, rising up to a point, made of a kind of steel scaffolding, set on black rubber wheels. they stretch across the fields in chains, like the backbone of some enormous dinosaur.

  “what are those?” i say.

  “center pivot irrigators,” says Grandpa. “they roll along, spray water as they go. means u can evenly distribute.”

  “they’re not moving.”

  “no.”

  but as we drive along, the grass becomes greener, & i c more of them, moving this time. at the top of the triangle is a bar that rocks back & forth, & water mists from it, sparkling in the flat, absolute sunshine. the moving structures cast short, sharp shadows & they seem a little like birds, pecking.

  “these ones are moving,” i say.

  “Harrison’s land,” says Grandpa. “good farmer. when the summer pumping ban came in 20 years ago, to preserve the aquifer, he’d already started collecting rainwater.”

  “u did that too,” i say.

  he nods.

  “so does that make u a good farmer?”

  a ghost of a smile. “i try my best.”

  the fields scroll past, the grass, the light. after maybe a half hour Grandpa points ahead & to the right. “our land,” he says. i like that. how he calls it ours.

  we have been driving slowly toward the mountain range, on a road that bisects the valley. ahead, there’s a track that branches off, & a heavy metal gate a little farther on, as tall as the tall fence that borders the road. no way u could climb it.

  “here we are,” says Grandpa.

  there are tatters of colored fabric or rubber or something tied to a fence post by the turning where we come off the road, fluttering in the breeze.

  Grandpa sees me looking.

  “balloons,” he says. “ur grandmother tied them for ur mother’s 16th. to show everyone where to come. i don’t know why. there’s no one in this valley doesn’t know us & where we live. but i’ve never been able to take them down.”

  i don’t say anything. my grandmother died when i was young. i don’t remember her very well, & Grandpa never really talks about her. i don’t ask either. i get that he doesn’t want me to, & it’s ok. he’ll talk when he’s ready, maybe.

  Grandpa slows even more as we approach the big gate; presses a button on the dash. the gate begins to swing open, & Grandpa crawls until it’s full
y open, then drives thru. he presses the button & it swings shut behind us with a solid clunk.

  serious security, i think.

  we bump along for a mile or 2. there are no irrigators here, at least not now, but the grass is greener than most i have seen, & there are Black Angus cattle grazing on it, not that i recognize them as such, i mean, i’m not an expert on cows, but Grandpa has told me enough times on vid what they’re called. i also know that Grandpa has 210 head of cattle—that’s what he calls them, heads, like they just go around without bodies, floating above the ground.

  actually, in the haze of light, some of them do seem to be floating. they’re much bigger than i expected—1 or 2, close to the road, fully as tall as the pickup truck, which scares me a little, tho there’s a fence running beside the track with red balls threaded on its wires, making me think it’s electric.

  we turn a corner & the ranch comes into view. my heart lifts. i have imagined this moment so many times, so many nights when going to sleep, i have pictured myself pulling up here. i lower the window further, & something animal enters the car on the wind, something earthy & full, with notes of grass under it, at least i think it must be grass; it makes my head spin.

  the ranch house is entirely constructed of wood. my grandpa built it with his own hands, in between space missions. it’s not only my mother who is driven, who is dedicated. it’s a trait she inherited from him.

  “welcome to Big Sky Ranch,” says Grandpa.

  “thanks,” i say. & i mean it. i am so grateful, in that moment.

  we turn a slow corner & stop in front of the house. Grandpa turns off the engine & there is silence, & i realize that i went from the helicopter to the truck & the helicopter’s rotors were still turning at that point, & this is 1 of the first times—apart from the cornfield or the roof with Soto—that i have heard the world without air conditioners pumping or pistons rising & falling, drowning it with white noise.

  i listen.

  in the distance, i hear a sharp cry. a hawk? i remember Grandpa mentioning them. & around us, the rustling of grass. somewhere i hear a chirp & i wonder if i’m right to guess that it’s a cricket calling—they will be gone, the crickets, when the weather gets colder. this is something else i have learned from vids.