by Nick Lake
“u ok?” says Grandpa.
“yes. just listening.”
he nods. “i get it.”
of course he does. he is 1 of the only people who would, along with Libra & Orion. my mother would ask what we were doing & shouldn’t we be working on something productive.
Grandpa waits, while i soak in the sun thru the window, the sound of the grasses blowing in the breeze, the feel of air into my lungs. then he opens his door, comes round, & opens mine. “we’ll get ur stuff later,” he says.
he anchors me, places my hand on his shoulder, & walks me up to the porch. the air is cool on my skin. the ranch house is gently curved like a crescent moon. its windows are small & low to the ground, which makes it seem like its eyes are hooded, or half-shut, but not in an unfriendly way.
to the right is a covered area, a porch, with a rocking chair & a checked blanket folded on it. the door when we reach it is blue, but the paint is fading & peeling. i touch it with my hand as Grandpa opens it for me; feel the roughness with my fingers.
“it’s the light & the wind,” says Grandpa. “they take the color from everything, leach it out. got so i couldn’t c the point of repainting it anymore.”
“i like it,” i say.
i do. it is a color that has years in it, & weather, & the air itself.
we step inside & i’m about to take off my protective UV-blocking sunglasses but am then surprised by how light it is, because the windows are so small. daylight seems to hang everywhere, suspending motes of dust in it, as if thicker than air, as if glowing water.
“it’s light,” i say.
“low windows,” says Grandpa. “for light in the morning & afternoon, but not at midday when it’s hot. & so that the sun shines in during the winter, but not too much in summer.”
“huh,” i say. there is so much thought that has gone into this house, so much time & effort—i look around me at the doorframes, the windows, the floors worn smooth by the passage of feet. all of it made by Grandpa. it’s a humbling thought. i listen: the birds speak a different language here than the ones in Nevada, i notice.
Grandpa takes me thru a door & leads me to a living room. there are rugs hung on the wooden walls, brightly colored. a couple of sofas & armchairs, sinking to the ground with age. i recognize the 1 Grandpa would usually sit in when we would vidlink, & i smile to myself.
i’m here. i’m finally here.
next, Grandpa leads me to a cast-iron stove in the corner. it’s on: i feel the warmth from it as i approach even tho there’s no chill in the air yet, & there’s a blanket on the floor, folded over, & lying on it, curled up—
“ur puppy,” says Grandpa. “think of him as a welcome-home present.”
i stand & stare, just stare, at this little black-&-white shape, knotted on itself, only 1 ear visible, chest rising & falling as it breathes. it makes me think of the word compact & it makes me think of the word perfect & it makes me think of the word life.
i can’t say anything. my mouth is not working.
“do u…like him?” says Grandpa.
i dig my nails into my palms. i can only manage to nod. i don’t want to start crying again: i have done too much crying since i landed on earth.
pause.
“can i…can i touch him?” i say.
“ ’course u can touch him,” says Grandpa. “he’s urs. u should probably name him too, i guess.”
i take a step forward. i feel a little weak. Grandpa catches my arm. “help me down?” i say.
he pulls over a chair, then lowers me into it. it’s a little chair, maybe my mother’s from when she was small? i don’t know. but it works well for my purposes, & it strikes me that Grandpa has anticipated this, has had it waiting for me.
i lean down, Grandpa holding a hand on my chest, & i put my palm on the rolled-up ball of fur. the word that is in my head is quick, like the old meaning of quick, something i learned in a vid class—how quick used to mean alive; the quick & the dead, & so on. warm. rising & falling, on waves of breath. the softness of it.
then the ball lets out a little yip & rolls under my touch, & sits up, unwrapping itself into a perfect blinking puppy. it presses its head against my hand, pushing up against me, against gravity, to be stroked, & i stroke it & then it lifts its paws & brings its face up to mine—its bright eyes, shining in its head—& its nose all moist against mine, the feel of it a kind of crushed smoothness that has roughness in it too, a sensation i imagine people must mean when they talk about things being as soft as velvet, & it barks excitedly & licks me.
the word that is in my head is love.
the dog spins on the spot, still barking, & then comes & licks my nose again.
“he likes u,” says Grandpa.
i like him too. i look at his fur, the spots of dark & light. he looks like the surface of a meteor & there’s a streak of white on his face like the tail of a comet, so i decide that will be his name.
“i’ll call him Comet,” i say.
“Comet. a good name. for a good cattle dog. he’s a border collie—fast. i figure we’ll train him together. then 1 day it’ll be u & him, bringing the cows in.”
i grin. “i’d like that.”
the puppy, Comet, is kind of bouncing on the spot now.
“he needs a walk,” says Grandpa. “u want to take him out?”
“really?”
“of course really.”
“u coming?”
he shakes his head. “going to have a little sit-down. old men need their rest.” he sits on 1 of the armchairs.
it’s a challenge. i know it. it’s like 1 of the tests at the base, only it’s Grandpa doing it, so he’s smiling. can i walk on my own? can i take the dog outside?
“ok,” i say.
“it’s farmland all round,” says Grandpa. “no cars. he’ll be safe.”
u’ll be safe, is what he means.
i nod. i turn to the door & walk. “come on, Comet,” i say. i beckon to him. he bounds forward, nearly trips me up, & i hear my grandpa’s intake of breath, but i regain my balance & put a hand on the wall, to ease myself along to the front door.
step. step. step.
down the hallway.
step. step.
to the door—haloed with light.
there is a rail at the side of the steps. it doesn’t look worn. i wonder if Grandpa installed it for me. i didn’t notice it on the way in. now i put my hand on it gratefully & use it to go carefully down to the ground. eddies of dust swirl in the light wind. there is still that smell—the musky tones that i guess are cows, tho more distant now, & indeed the cows are small spots in the distance—& grass & trees & flowers & whatever else.
Comet barrels down the steps & out into the yard. there is a field right in front of us, no fence or anything, just a field stretching away to a small hill, & then farther to the mountains. fall flowers are dotted all over it; i would have to ask Grandpa the names. clouds move quickly overhead, ferried from the mountains, it seems, over the low lands, by the wind.
i walk toward the field. my balance is unsteady. i am fighting for breath, panting, but i don’t care. the dark ground is warm underfoot, from the sun.
“run, Comet,” i say, & Comet either understands or he doesn’t, but he does streak over the yard & out into the field, fluid on his little legs, flowing like water.
he runs, & he runs, & sometimes he loops back to me & pushes his muzzle into my hand, & shivers with delight as i pet him & say my Comet my Comet hello my Comet.
then he runs again, over the earth, over the grass, over the flowers, a missile flying low, unbelievable in his energy, in his perfection, the perfect rhyme of his movements with the land.
he catches my breath.
light wakes me.
Grandpa doesn’t believe in curtains. he thinks a farmer should rise with the sun, & it’s not yet October, so the sun is still rising early.
it shafts thru my window, the sunlight, gilds the floorboards where it lands. it b
rings with it the sound of birds singing, a weightless, liquid sound; i will have to ask Grandpa the names of the birds.
it’s bright enough, even in the house, that the first thing i do, after moving Comet off my feet, where he is lying like a hot pillow, is to put on my sunglasses.
i get up, pull a shirt on, & leave my room. only, in the night, someone as usual has dismantled the house, taken its constituent elements & rebuilt them in a slightly different configuration, so that i stumble on a small step, & bang my shoulder on a doorframe, & nearly fall on a rug. this isn’t like Moon 2, where every movement, every transition from 1 module to another, was smooth: this is all jump cuts; that was all dissolves, all fades.
eventually i make it to the kitchen, which along with the living room is the heart of the house. i look at my watch: it took me 6 minutes & i’ve been here a little less than a week. maybe after a month i’ll do it in under 5.
as soon as he hears my steps on the wood floor, Comet wakes up too & i hear him barrel out of the room, then he skitters & slides along the wooden floor in front of me.
i’m on the ground floor so i don’t have to contend with stairs. despite my clumsiness i’m getting stronger all the time, & my balance is better. i take out my blood-testing kit from the cupboard: a smooth, sleek metal tube that i press against my skin, which automatically fires & draws in a tiny amount of blood, unseen. i plug it into a screen & it begins testing the sample right away, uploading results straight to the Company servers.
in a couple of weeks, the nurse is coming with a portable CAT scan machine & lung-capacity measuring devices. surreal.
while i’m there, i look thru the cupboard. old tea sets. some bottles of whiskey & gin, etc., half-empty. i make a mental note to try some when Grandpa isn’t around. at the back, there’s a faded box that reads THE GAME OF LIFE on it, & next to it is another: PICTIONARY.
wow: real, old-school board games. i try to imagine Grandpa, Grandma, & Mother playing 1 together, & i just can’t. my mother, sitting at a table, rolling dice? no.
i slide out the Pictionary box. inside are cue cards, little pads of actual paper to draw on, pencils worn down to stubs. i remember playing this game with Orion & Libra & Lakshmi, who was babysitting at the time. on our screens, of course—but the same rules.
Orion draws beautifully but he & Lakshmi still lost: he spent too long trying to capture everything just so—dragon; out of this world (expression); vegetarian; jazz—& it slowed us down. Libra draws like shit, as do i, but she understood that it was more important to convey something clearly & quickly. she got the strategy.
i wonder what they’re doing now. maybe they’re playing Pictionary with their mom in Florida. i go over to Grandpa’s screen & unroll it & ping them.
nothing happens.
bong bong bong bong—still nothing. Grandpa doesn’t get good service out here.
i flick to the browser & search “news.”
—U ARE CURRENTLY DISCONNECTED—
i look at the wi-fi bars: full signal. but i haven’t been able to connect since i’ve been here. it sucks. maybe someone at the base didn’t unlock my screen before i left. i’d like to talk to Libra & Orion. i’d like to talk to my mother. find out when she’s coming. on the station there was a routine, there were protocols. even when we needed some alone time, we always knew we’d c each other again soon, for tests, for debriefs, for class. now there’s no structure: no rules.
good smells are coming from the kitchen tho, so i go in, not even catching myself on anything as i do.
Grandpa is cooking bacon. i sit down—this is a bit more of an involved process than it sounds; & Grandpa helps a little before returning to the pan. he fries the bacon first. i didn’t c any food being prepared at the base, & i can’t get used to it now: the sound of it, the smell, that incandescent aroma of bacon, which somehow contains sunlight in it; the spit of the grease.
Grandpa takes out eggs next, & i marvel as i have done before at the perfect ellipse of every 1, a shape that is engineered by nature to give maximum strength, to avoid rolling; something more perfect than any Company tech could create, speckled & hard. & then it cracks into the pan, & the white, which isn’t white at all—it’s translucent—slowly comes into its name, slowly turns opaque, crackles into being, the transformation like transubstantiation, like something holy.
i mean, it’s just bacon & eggs. but still.
Grandpa smiles at me watching. then he heaps my plate with 3 slices, before sliding a fried egg on top.
“screen’s down still,” i say.
“huh,” says Grandpa. “getting less & less reliable. i’ll call the company.”
i don’t know if he means the internet company. or means the Company. it may well be—it is probably—the same thing.
i inhale the steam rising from the food, draw it into me, its molecules into mine. when all ur food has been freeze-dried or grown in the garden module, bacon becomes 1 of the wonders of the world. Grandpa doesn’t raise pigs, but he trades some of his beef every year for bacon & ham from the Harrison guy he mentioned the day we arrived.
he keeps preserved meat in a storeroom at the back, because there’s too much for the fridge, & anyway all his electricity comes from the solar panels on the roof & the windmill in the rear field & he likes to conserve it. before he cooks the bacon, he cuts off the fuzzy mold that grows on it. he says it’s cured, that it can’t go bad. i don’t care anyway. when it smells & tastes like this i would happily eat the mold too.
“eat up,” he says. “busy day.”
Comet looks up at him imploringly with those enormous bright eyes of his; he is sitting down by my chair. Grandpa chuckles & drops a piece of bacon straight into his open mouth.
“yeah?” i say.
“yep. i’ve been fattening the 2-year-olds on the summer pastures,” he says. “but the cover crops are getting low. today we weigh the cows & send them to slaughter.”
i swallow. “really?”
“yes.”
his eyes are on mine. it’s another challenge.
“ok,” i say.
“some hired hands are coming. between us we’ll get u to the field. figure u need to get to know about the cattle season, the round-ups.” he keeps dropping hints like this, that the ranch will be mine 1 day. i haven’t had the heart yet to tell him what i want to do; how i want to train, like my mother, to go back to space.
not forever. just to learn. to EVA. to work.
anyway. i don’t say anything. i eat my bacon & eggs.
“now remember what we talked about,” says Grandpa. “u grew up in & out of the hospital. u were sick. that’s how come u’ve never been here before.”
i nod. “i remember.”
the Company doesn’t want attention, about us. Grandpa’s the same. he thinks people will get too curious. too involved. he wants to keep me safe, he says. “u don’t know what it’s like, being a celebrity,” he says.
i don’t, that’s true. i know what it looks like, from vids, & it looks fun. but i don’t say that; i mean, he loves me, & there’s all the time in the world to disagree about things later. i can tell people i grew up in a hospital if that’s what he thinks is best.
we sit & wait.
a half hour later the hired hands turn up. 3 of them, in a pickup truck. it’s even more faded & battered than Grandpa’s; i think it might have been red once. Grandpa said the light & wind take the color out of everything but that’s obviously excepting people’s faces, because even tho they’re not black like Grandpa—most of them are a mix like most people are—these guys are all deep brown from the sun, & their skin is lined as if scoured by the wind, tho the eyes set in those faces are younger than Grandpa’s.
“Kyle,” says 1 of them. the others stay quiet. they are chewing something—tobacco maybe.
Kyle’s eyes lock onto mine. he’s even younger than the others, not much older than me. his eyes are as blue as the sky, & his mascara is not black but dark purple. he lifts his hat in g
reeting. he smiles, & i smile back.
“Leo,” i say.
“pleasure to meet u, Leo,” he says. he holds out his hand to shake mine, but Grandpa steps forward, blocks it.
“Leo was very sick,” he says. “pretty much spent his whole life in a lab.” kind of true. “he’s very delicate. his bones…think of him like…like a deep-sea fish out of its depth.”
Kyle lowers his hand. “like an alien,” he says.
Grandpa frowns. “i guess.”
a complicated look crosses Kyle’s eyes. “i never met an alien before.” he smiles then, & the skin around his eyes crinkles.
Comet boings over, an animated spring, soft-furred. he stops at my feet, as if to guard me.
“& this is Comet,” i say.
“well,” says Kyle. “an alien & a Comet in 1 day.”
1 of the other men rolls his eyes. “come on, Kyle,” he says.
they pile into their pickup & i get into Grandpa’s & we drive maybe ten minutes up a succession of gradually rising dirt tracks until we reach a field that abuts the foothills of the mountain range. a thin, silvery stream zigzags down the nearest hill, white where it crests over hidden rocks.
i turn back & the ranch is far away & below us, a toy ranch. the valley stretches away beyond it, toward the ocean, which on clear days u can c, according to Grandpa, tho i haven’t yet. maybe it’s my glasses, maybe it’s my eyes. at the base they said we were a little nearsighted, from the confinement of the space station.
i turn away from the ranch & the downward sweep of the valley.
the field that lies before us is like the 1 in front of the ranch, tho the grass is shorter. there are also some kind of cabbage-like things, & bright yellow flowers.
Kyle steps up next to me. “ur grandpa was 1 of the first to rotate his fields & plant cover crops again,” he says. “it’s 1 of the reasons his ranch has kept going.”
Grandpa & the other men are standing a little distance away—they have a number of dogs with them, & they are pointing at the grazing cattle, making gestures, talking.
“rotate?” i say.
“c, water is a big problem here,” says Kyle. “but so’s erosion. the soil blows away in the wind.”
