Gemini Summer

by Iain Lawrence

  The Old Man came more slowly, his keys jingling. Rocket met him ten yards from the airplane and leapt circles around him all the way back. Then Old Man River tugged his cap and smiled at Gus, and swept Danny right off the ground in his arms.

  Danny was still in his helmet and flight suit. The blue arms and blue legs came free from their bundling, and they flapped around Danny as the Old Man swished him back and forth.

  “We went into space,” said Danny. “Right to the edge of space.”

  “Well, don’t you ever dare do it again,” said Mrs. River. “Don’t leave us, Danny.”

  “It’s been terribly lonely without you,” said the Old Man.

  “We did a loop! We did rolls!” cried Danny. “We went up ten miles, and I flew it myself. I flew the plane, Dad.”

  “That’s great,” said his father.

  Gus Grissom was standing beside the T-38, holding his red helmet with his gloves pushed inside it. He looked shy, just a happy, shy little man. He was much smaller than Old Man River but seemed pleased that he fairly towered over Flo.

  “This is Gus,” said Danny.

  Both his parents shook Gus Grissom’s hand. Mrs. River even hugged him, and that made the astronaut’s ears turn red. “It’s an honor,” said Old Man River. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “My pleasure. Really,” said Gus. “That’s a fine boy you have there.”

  “I know,” said the Old Man. “I’ve been blessed with wonderful sons.” He pulled his cap and added, “The older one had an accident. You probably know all about it.”

  Gus mumbled that he did.

  “You were his hero, Mr. Grissom.”

  “Oh, not really. Not me,” said Gus. “It’s just the man in the spacesuit that kids come to admire. Heck, there wouldn’t even have to be a man inside it. It’s just the suit and the helmet. It’s the job.”

  “No, it was more than that.”

  The two men looked so uncomfortable that Danny cringed to see it. The Old Man looked away and said, “Beau worshipped you.”

  Then Gus looked the other way and said, “Yes, I know. He told me.”

  Danny’s heart did a somersault. He thought Gus had come to believe the whole story and now would convince the Old Man, who was already frowning at Gus. Then the astronaut laughed again and said, “I mean it was Danny who told me. The dog didn’t say a word.”

  The Old Man chuckled. “Oh,” he said. “I thought he had you believing it. Such a crazy thing.”

  “Not really,” said Gus with a little shrug. “It’s maybe not so crazy.” He helped Danny take off the parachute. “You wouldn’t believe the sort of ideas I’ve had up in space. From a hundred miles up, this world’s like a big blue marble. You look down on it, and you start thinking how amazing and incredible it all is, and…I don’t know.” He set the parachute in a heap. “Up there, you believe in things you wouldn’t believe on the ground, Mr. River.”

  They both looked at Rocket, who was sitting now—pleased and proud—in the shade of the T-38. His tongue hanging out, his tail wagging, he looked like any dog.

  Gus pulled the helmet from Danny’s head. “You see the whole world as a miracle. That’s what I’m saying. You see there’s more to it all than any one person can ever understand.”

  fifty-four

  The Rivers and Rocket stayed on the runway until Gus flew away. They watched the T-38 lift into the air, and saw it turn and come back. It passed low above them, dipping its wings, and Danny saw the red helmet of Gus Grissom behind the canopy glass.

  They all waved—or all except for Rocket, who was wagging his tail furiously—and they were still waving and wagging when the airplane was a speck climbing into the sky. Then they walked together to the Pontiac and started off for home.

  Danny kept listening and watching for hints of what would happen next. But his parents sat silently, in that way that made time feel like glue. So he talked about Rocket.

  He told them how Rocket had kept quiet in the transport truck, how he’d acted with the sheriff and Alice and all the reporters, how he’d bounced around Gus Grissom, and how he’d sat so patiently with the oxygen mask. It sounded to Danny as though his words were falling into a hole. He could feel that his parents didn’t want to hear it but didn’t want to stop him.

  They drove into Hog’s Hollow, down the winding road. They didn’t have to cross the big bridge, not coming from the airport. They followed the twisting road, and Mrs. Elliot was looking out her window.

  The Old Man waited until the very last bend, until he was turning the wheel. Then he said, “You can’t keep him, Danny.”

  The road straightened. There was a police car parked outside the old gray house. There was a policeman leaning against the door.

  It was the same short policeman from before, but now he was alone. He was waiting by the road when Old Man River parked the Pontiac.

  “No!” cried Danny. “Go away!” But the policeman only moved nearer to the car, until he stood so close to the window that Danny could see no higher than his fourth button.

  “Dad!” shouted Danny. “Mom!” No one answered. “Oh, Rocket.” He grabbed his dog and held him.

  Old Man River gripped the steering wheel as though the car was still moving. “Danny, give him the dog,” he said.

  “No!” shouted Danny.

  His mother turned around. She’d been crying—maybe all the way home; Danny didn’t know. She said, “If you don’t give him the dog, he’ll arrest your father. He’s got no choice.”

  The only one to say sorry was the policeman. He spoke with his head hidden by the roof. “Danny, I’m sorry. I really am,” he said. “I read your story in the paper this morning. If it was up to me, I’d let you keep the dog.”

  That made the Old Man furious. He shoved his door open. He leapt out. “And if it was up to me, what do you think I would do? Do you think I’d break my son’s heart, you piece of—”

  “No, sir, of course not,” said the policeman. “I’m only doing my job, sir.”

  “Then do it,” snarled Old Man River in the most terrible voice that Danny had ever heard. “Do it and be damned!”

  “Charlie!” cried Mrs. River. “Oh, great balls of fire, this is horrible. Danny, please. Please just get this over with.”

  “I can’t. I can’t,” said Danny, weeping.

  The Old Man pulled the back door open. He came halfway through it, his head and shoulders, and Danny slid away across the seat, pulling Rocket with him.

  “Listen, son,” said Charlie River. “If there was a single thing I could do, I’d do it. I swear to God, Danny.”

  “Call him by his name,” said Danny. “Look in his eyes and call him Beau.”

  “Oh, Danny, please.”

  “You’ll see,” said Danny. His throat felt fiery. His lips tasted tears. “Call him Beau and you’ll see.”

  The Old Man reached out his hands to take the dog. Danny held him back, but Rocket squirmed away. Rocket left Danny for the Old Man’s arms.

  Charlie River lifted the dog from the car. He held it up and looked in its eyes but didn’t say a word. Rocket was whining very quietly. Then the Old Man turned and handed the dog to the policeman. Rocket struggled a bit, but not very much. His whines become more of a wailing, and his round eyes gazed at Old Man River.

  Danny struggled from the car. “Let me hold him,” he said. “At least let me say goodbye.”

  The policeman hesitated. But he looked wretched—they all looked absolutely wretched. He held out his arms and let Danny take Rocket. “A minute,” he said. “Only a minute.”

  “Leave me alone with him,” said Danny.

  “I can’t do that,” said the policeman.

  Danny sat on the ground; he slumped to the earth. He let Rocket stand up beside him, and the dog seemed to be hugging him. He could see the feet and the legs of the people waiting around him—the policeman’s and his father’s, and his mother’s, too, as she came from the car.

  Danny whispered in
to Rocket’s ear. “Run away,” he said. “Run far away, and don’t come back.”

  He turned the dog around and shoved its hips. “Run!” he shouted.

  “Don’t do that!” said the policeman.

  “Go!” shouted Danny.

  Rocket ran, but only twenty feet. He turned and wagged his tail. The policeman stepped toward him, and when he was very close—only then—Rocket turned and ran again. He went another twenty feet, and there he waited a second time, his tail swishing slowly, like the plastic cat’s on the kitchen wall.

  Danny remembered that Rocket had done this before. Now, with the same dashes and darts, the dog led the policeman, Danny, Charlie, and Flo up through Hog’s Hollow. The words of Sheriff Eugene Brown came into Danny’s mind: If he’s what you say he is, and he’s so darned smart, why doesn’t he do something to save himself?

  Rocket led them up the winding road nearly to its end. He led them to the house of Creepy Colvig.

  fifty-five

  When Rocket reached the Colvigs’ lawn he made one more dash—down the side of the house and round its back.

  The policeman and the Rivers went in a tight little group and found him there. He was digging in the grass. He was flinging dirt and grass in a spray of brown and green. He turned and dug again in the same place, and his claws began to scrape on something hard.

  Creepy Colvig came out of the house in his undershirt, down the steps, yelling at them all. Danny could hear Dopey inside, calling in his howls and grunts.

  “What are you doing?” said Creepy, barreling over the grass. “Why is that damned dog still here?”

  Rocket bared the top of Creepy Colvig’s septic tank. He scraped with his claws at the ragged edge of the concrete lid.

  “He wants to open it up,” said Danny. He hurried to help, but Creepy Colvig pushed him aside.

  “Keep your hands off my son!” shouted Old Man River.

  “Then get him out of my goddamned garden,” said Creepy. “All of you get out.”

  The policeman held up his hands. “Just calm down. Everyone calm down.”

  “Look in the tank,” said Danny. “He’s trying to show us something.”

  Old Man River found a shovel leaning against the house. It was the same shovel that Creepy had given to Danny so long ago, to scrape broken glass from the street. The Old Man spat on his hands and pried with that shovel to lift the lid of the septic tank. The block of cement fell back, and he dropped the shovel and peered inside. He put his hands on his thighs and bent forward.

  “This is nuts. This is goddamned nuts!” shouted Creepy Colvig. He yelled at the policeman. “Why are you letting this happen?”

  “Be quiet!” said the policeman.

  Charlie River was trying to divine something from the contents of the septic tank. He tilted his head to the left, then to the right. Rocket barked beside him.

  Old Man River picked up the shovel again. He worked the blade through the hole, then swished it round in the tank. He stopped and looked again. He swished once more and raised his head.

  “Danny, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, son.”

  “Charlie, what are you talking about?” said Mrs. River.

  Nobody knew what the Old Man meant, or why he was suddenly apologizing. They watched as he twisted the shovel. Then, carefully and slowly, he drew it out through the hole. Sitting on the metal blade, balanced at the very edge, was a little plastic missile.

  “That was Beau’s!” cried Danny. “It’s from the Rocket Base.”

  The Old Man nodded. “Now, how did it get there? That’s the question.” He tipped the shovel, and the missile fell off onto the grass.

  Danny told again how Beau had been killed. He remembered running over the mountains of dirt, chasing the missiles from Beau’s favorite toy, the Rocket Base USA. “We were playing a game. Just playing,” he said. “Then Dopey came and—”

  But the proof was there on the grass. The missile was lying there, and Rocket was sitting beside it, mewling in his talking voice.

  Old Man River, who had never believed Danny’s story, now saw that he’d been wrong. The policeman understood, and even Creepy couldn’t deny it. “He said he wasn’t there. He swore he wasn’t there,” he said, looking around from person to person. “When I seen him with that thing, I didn’t know what the hell it was. I thought he’d found it somewhere; that was all. I never let him keep them things. I flush them away; I flush them all away.”

  Old Man River was fishing again with the shovel. He plunged it through the sludge and scraped the blade on the bottom, down the side of the tank, into the corner. When he raised it again there was a twisted bit of chrome on the blade, and half of a pair of little scissors rusted through at the hinge.

  “He likes shiny things,” said Creepy Colvig. “He sees something, he takes it. But he’s harmless, really. He’s harmless.”

  Danny felt sorry for the man. He didn’t want to, but couldn’t help it. Creepy was pulling at his shaggy hair, standing there with his potbelly swaying. “He didn’t mean nothing that day. He wouldn’t have known what he was doing,” said Creepy, turning from the Old Man to the policeman to little Flo in her long dress. “Look, I’ll forget about the dog, okay? You keep the dog. Just don’t take my boy away. He’s all I got. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  Danny went over to Rocket. He reached down and petted his dog. The day of Beau’s accident came into his mind as clear as a movie. He saw Dopey appear at the edge of the pit, and all that happened afterward. “It was an accident,” he said. “Dopey came and stole the missile, and we were teasing him with it, like monkey in the middle. Then Dopey rushed at Beau, and…What happened, it was just an accident.”

  Creepy stood alone in his filthy undershirt in the middle of the garden. “I didn’t know he was there,” he said. “I swear I didn’t know.”

  Old Man River came and got Danny and Rocket. He led them toward the street, guiding Danny with a hand on the boy’s shoulder. He said, “Let’s go home.”

  “What about Rocket?” said Danny.

  “That’s over now,” said Old Man River. “Don’t worry, Danny. It’s all over now.”

  fifty-six

  For the rest of that summer, and the summers that followed, it was again a happy family that lived in the old gray house in Hog’s Hollow. It was a family of four to Danny, but to everyone else it was a family of three and a dog. He once caught the Old Man staring into Rocket’s eyes, just staring down into those big brown eyes as he held the dog’s head in his hands. But Danny never saw that again.

  The Colvigs moved away, as they’d moved so many times before. Once again, Danny could wander wherever he wanted, up and down the trails, over the little bridge, always with Rocket behind him.

  Not two years later—in January of 1967—he came home from school to find his mother in tears. “Oh, Danny,” she said, as she hugged him. “I just heard on the news; Gus Grissom, he’s…” She sniffed and started again. “There was a fire on the launchpad, Danny. Gus; he…he burned to death.” Rocket had come bounding in with Danny, wagging and leaping, his eyes full of sparkles. But now his tail drooped, and with a whimper he settled to the floor. Mrs. River looked at the dog, and then at her son, and it was a moment that Danny would remember forever. She believed in him then; he could see that she did. If only for that one instant, she believed that Beau was back. And in that speck of time, in the saddest hour of a sad day, Danny had never been happier.

  But the years passed. As Danny River grew older, as he watched Rocket grow older, he began to wonder about the things that had happened during that Gemini summer. He began to wonder if what he had come to believe was really true.

  There were times when he thought Rocket was only a dog, and no more than a dog, and those times came more and more often as the summers went by. He thought once in a while that maybe Beau had left again, that he’d come back only for those few magical months. But at other times, even when Rocket was getting rather old, Danny cou
ld still look into the eyes of the dog and see his brother behind them. And at those times he remembered looking up from the edge of space, and the dog’s black eyes were like the endless darkness he’d seen from the very top of the world’s blue sky.

  He came to believe that maybe there were things in the world that only children could understand, and that as long as he thought that a boy could die and live again as a dog, it would be a swell old world after all.

  Acknowledgments

  As a child in Toronto I often rode a bus through Hog’s Hollow, where the main street of the city dipped through a big valley. To the west, the land rose and dipped again, into another valley “one holler over,” as my friend from the Ozarks would say. This second hollow didn’t have a name. We called it the ravine. There was a road that curved down from the busy street, under a bridge, and into the valley. At one end lay the golf course and the toboggan run of Killer Hill. At the other end was a tangle of trails, leading up to a summer camp where boys played at being Indians.

  This is where Danny lives, in a neighborhood pieced together from places and people I used to know, including a man like Creepy, who made me crawl around on the street to pick up the bits of a broken bottle, and a kid like Dopey, who attacked me with a realtor’s sign. So the small details of Danny’s life are true, but all the rest is made up.

  For that huge part of the story I would like to thank those who helped with the research and writing:

  Kathleen Larkin of the Prince Rupert Library answered questions about the Mercury and Gemini space programs and put me in touch with various experts. Her sister Patricia Larkin-Lieffers located film footage of the space flights, while her niece Caroline Liefers watched hours of video and recommended the best of the NASA clips.

  Margaret Persinger, of public affairs/multimedia at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, provided videotapes of NASA films. Kandy Warren, contact center manager at Kennedy Space Center, sent videos and set up interviews.

  Roger Zweig, a test pilot for NASA, described wonderfully and patiently what it’s like to fly in a T-38. He and Larry Glenn, a NASA flight engineer, took photographs that let me put little Danny right into the cockpit of one of the jets.