A Fictional History of the United States with Huge Chunks Missing

by T Cooper

  I was ten and I feared greatly for the lives of the Apollo astronauts, never mind that they’d landed on the moon two decades before. In my dreams I saw Michael Collins, the astronaut left behind in the orbiting command module Columbia, as he turned his slow, lonely, vigilant revolutions around the moon, descending again and again, in and out of complete darkness, shooting, skimming, sixty-nine miles above its opaque and glittering gray pockmocked surface, spinning without end through the black vacuum, the integrity of his silvery Mylar and Kapton suit compromised and he an eviscerated corpse within it; yet still he waited. The sad astronaut who could only watch from his small window and imagine what Aldrin and Armstrong were doing in those minutes, those hours after the landing, even as the command module passed into the shadow on the far side of the moon and into radio silence: wondering if he perhaps would ever get the chance to touch the lunar surface himself.

  Day after day after week after month after year, waiting for the return of the lunar module Eagle while the bodies of Aldrin and Armstrong lay prostrate upon the moon’s surface, the American flag held at eternal mast, the powerful sodium bulbs encircling the lunar module slowly extinguishing one by one and blackening into charred oblivion in the black starless night.

  Shhhhh, Mother said, shhhhhhh. Be quiet, Duncan, and listen to the music.

  On weekends, after Mother’s shift at St. Luke’s Hospital, we’d go to the Dew Drop Inn on Columbus where she sang every Thursday night. She’d buy me a Coke and order me the two-dollar cheeseburger with fries and I’d sit at the bar as Clay grilled the meat, and Mother danced with men—mostly friends of hers who I recognized—on the sun-bleached dance floor.

  Mother drank her whiskey, Old Mainline 54, straight. And when she danced she held the glass tenderly, as if it were something incredibly fragile. If she relinquished her hold upon it and put it down on the bar, Clay always refilled it. But here my mother rarely seemed to get drunk, and though I saw her sip I could never be quite sure if she had ever finished a single drink.

  Charlie Pride was playing on the jukebox, and “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” filled the bar. Mother was dancing by herself on the worn, amber-colored parquet. One of Mother’s friends waved from a table and came to join her. Various flags and banners of regiments, divisions, and battalions hung like bunting over the back of the bar. Most prominent were the AAs of Army Airborne and the globe and anchor of the Marines.

  The first time I met Joshua McGreevey he was singing, so softly and bent so low over the bar that at first I could not make out the words—there was only the melody, a haunting soothing music, and at once I’d felt at peace. Joshua had stared into the glass at the back of the bar and only paused in his singing to drink and wipe beer froth from his mouth. O au o. The lights in Saigon are green and red, the lamps in My Tho are bright and dim. It may have been the only song he knew but still I thought he had one of the sweetest voices I’d ever heard.

  Now he stood next to me, and together we watched Mother. He wore an old olive-colored field jacket frayed at the upturned collar and cuffs, but there were no markings on it. The jacket did not even seem as if it belonged to him, and I was tempted to ask what outfit he’d fought with, what branch of the services he’d fought for. A dark blue bandana was pulled tight across his scalp and the long black hair at the back, wound into a ponytail, shone with brilliantine.

  He stared down at me, glanced at the NASA/Apollo patches on my denim jacket sleeves.

  You don’t really believe that, do you?

  Believe what?

  That they landed someone on the moon. That was all done in Hollywood sound studios. It was all a stunt. I believed once, kid. I believed in JFK. I believed in doing for my country, never mind what my country did for me. I joined the Green Berets. Ever see John Wayne in The Green Berets, kid? What a load of shit.

  Here are some facts, kid, and maybe you can tell me what you make of it all. Maybe you can explain it to me. During the moon landing they managed to beam a live-TV picture back to earth, from over 240,000 miles away. That doesn’t strike you as odd? You know what television was like in the ’60s? And get this, there were no delays in NASA’s TV broadcast to the American public—we’re talking 240,000 miles here, kiddo, and there’s no delays in the transmission? C’mon. Look, we just didn’t have the technology. NASA said it in ’68 when they gave the odds of completing the moon landings a 0.0012% chance of success. They were speaking the truth.

  Joshua tipped back his beer and banged the empty on the bar. He stared at me, and I stared back. He sighed. How do you figure top Hollywood execs being on NASA’s payroll, including Stanley Kubrick? How do you figure that many of the shots so closely resemble shots from Kubrick’s 2001?

  And tell me, kid, if landing on the moon was so easy for us twenty-odd years ago, how come we haven’t done it since? You know why? Because we can’t.

  He touched one of my patches with a finger.

  C’mon, kid, don’t be like your daddy.

  You knew my daddy?

  Of course I knew your daddy.

  I glanced up the bar to see if my mother was within earshot. She was looking back as if she’d already caught me in a wrongdoing, a skill of hers which I’d always marveled at, and which always left me frustrated and yet somehow glad. But in that moment I wanted her to be elsewhere; I wanted to know what Joshua knew about my father.

  Joshua, my mother said, and her jaws were clenched. Do you want me to call Clay and get you kicked out of here? Leave my son alone, he knows nothing about any of your conspiracies.

  A smile played on his lips. He shook his head. Buy me a beer, Maggie, and let’s forget about it. I slipped, that’s all, my mistake. I confused your boy—what’s your name son? Duncan, yeah, Duncan—I confused Duncan with someone else. It happens when I haven’t had a drink in a while. Things come out of the walls at me. You know how it is.

  Yeah, I know how it is. My mother gestured toward Clay, and as she did, she asked Joshua: Do you have your bike with you?

  Sure.

  If I start buying you drinks, you have to promise me you won’t ride.

  Joshua held two fingers to his breast. Scout’s honor.

  Why don’t I believe you? I’m going to put some money in the jukebox, I’ll just be gone a minute. Can I trust you with my son?

  Sure, Maggie. You got it.

  My mother strode toward the jukebox, and I was aware of men’s eyes following her. I glanced at the sway of her hips, the straightness of her back. Joshua seemed to be the only man not watching. He was staring at me. Suddenly he tugged hard at the patches on my sleeve, leaned his mouth close to my ear and whispered: Kid, don’t be like your daddy.

  His beer came and he lifted it to his lips. To America! he shouted, and threw the beer back. The top was frothy and it spilled white foam down his chin and darkened his shirt. From over the rim of the large glass he winked. His Adam’s apple worked up and down.

  When he looked up his eyes were red and swollen; his breath came in deep gulps. Another beer, he said, and the bartender looked at him warily. C’mon, Clay, I’m fine, give us a damn beer, would you? This time, when the beer came, Joshua drank it slow, leaned forward on the bar.

  My mother had put in her money and the jukebox began to play. The sound of Billie Holiday swelled around the room. When Mother returned she touched him gently on the shoulder and squeezed. Joshua nodded, sipped his beer, and stared into the bar mirror. We left before Mother’s songs were done playing. When I reminded her that we hadn’t heard all her songs and that she’d lost her money in the jukebox, she looked sad. Finally she said, They weren’t for me, Duncan. They were for Joshua.

  Every Wednesday during Lent Mother and I attended Vespers at the Church of the Holy Eucharist and listened to the choir singing “De profundis,” the psalm of the holy souls in purgatory: Apud Dominum misericordia et copiosa apud eum redemptio. And I saw astronauts, not just Michael Collins but hundreds and thousands of men adrift throughout the cosmos—faceless men with
the sun reflected in their golden, mirrored visors— all dead, all desanguinated and floating through the heavens, flashing through the crystalline, neo-chrome tails of fiery comets a hundred miles long, and always, the star-spangled banner across their left shoulder blinking in the crimson and blue haze of stellar ash a hundred million years old.

  I thought of astronauts who had been sent on space missions we’d never heard of or been told about because of their failures—and of all the astronauts thrust into space upon the pinhead of the great Saturn V rockets that were still out there somewhere, lost just like my father and unable to come home.

  I watched Mother mouth the words, the wet clicking of her lips like a metronome. She smiled and reached for my hand, and when I took it, and closed my eyes, I heard the longing of all those exiled from heaven, all that pain and suffering for which our prayers, in the absence of God’s embrace, offered the only succor. Later, during the mass, when the priest shook the aspergillum and sprinkled us with holy water, I turned to the back of the church and saw Joshua there, his head lowered on his forearms as if he were at the Dew Drop, and dusk had just fallen outside.

  When Mother and I rose, Joshua was still sitting in his pew: head bowed, eyes closed; and looking so peaceful he might have been sleeping. But I knew it was the Librium and Valium that he took, that in the evenings he often lined up the pills on the bar and put them back with his beer. In the transept I placed coins in the prayer box and they clattered loudly in its bottom. I began lighting as many candles as I could, for suddenly I felt an emptiness so vast I could put no name to it. I thought of all the souls in purgatory lost to God and I knew that if we were to die in that very moment we would need such a powerful intercession of grace to be with Him in His Kingdom that I feared we might be lost as well. Purgatory resounded in my head as if my skull were the inner chamber of a bell.

  Honey, who are you lighting all those candles for? Leave some for other people, would you?

  I ignored her and set my knees on the padded rest, placed my forehead against my entwined knuckles, stared at the flickering flame muted through the blue glass, and began praying rapidly. I could sense her there, still at my side. Closing my eyes, I smelled wax and lead wick melting. The lingering odor of incense. Cool air rushing up the nave. I heard an altar boy practicing his swing of the censer for the blessing of the Eucharist. The chain taut through its pendulous stroke, and the slight rattle of the thurible at the height of that arc. Mother knelt beside me and began praying as well.

  On the way out of church she took my hand in hers and swung her arm. That was nice of you, lighting a candle for Joshua.

  I looked at her, and she smiled.

  You always light five. I assumed the extra one was for him.

  I nodded.

  It’s important that we pray for people, most especially for people who can’t help themselves.

  Why can’t Joshua help himself?

  Mother didn’t respond, and when I asked again she sighed. It was the war. He’s not the same as the Joshua I used to know. Sometimes he does things … It’s not his fault … You would have liked the old Joshua.

  I like this Joshua.

  I know, honey, I know. She nodded and looked toward the rooftops but there was only the dark blue sky with night sinking down through it like ink. The last of the sun had sunk into the bay.

  What happened to Joshua in the war? I asked.

  I don’t really know, honey, he doesn’t talk about it. Sometimes, though, I wish he would, just so I could understand him better.

  She swung my arm and our footsteps sounded on the tile as we skipped, but I knew that she was thinking of the Joshua she once knew and the man he was now, and in the space of those years, everything that had been lost between them.

  At the bar I sat on the stool beside Joshua, waiting for Mother to finish her shift at St. Luke’s. He’d bought me a second Coke with the promise that I’d make it last, and Clay had told me to go easy on the bowls of nuts—They’re for paying customers, kid, I can’t keep replacing them. Don’t your mother feed you?

  Joshua was humming to himself and tying a red cocktail straw into knots. In the backroom, a brawl erupted and a body thumped the floor. He paused in his knot tying.

  My man, you ever rode a motorcycle?

  I shook my head.

  Come on, then. Charlies everywhere.

  I nodded.

  We climbed off our stools and I eyed Clay at the rear of the room with his Louisville. A man lay on the floor by the pool tables clutching his arms to his body, and sobbing. A dark stain spread across his crotch and then a rivulet of urine trickled from his pant leg along the wood. Joshua moved me toward the door, his hands pressed gently on the backs of my shoulders.

  Joshua’s bike was a hulking black Indian Chief from the early ’50s that looked as if it had been left out in all manner of weather: The leather was torn and the chrome pipes oxidized, the metal of the gas tank stamped as if by a ball-peen hammer. I sat on the saddle behind him and held on tight to his field jacket as we sped through the streets, with Joshua leaning the bike at right angles as we took the curves. Relax, kid, he said, you want to take us both off the bike? Just enjoy the ride.

  We crossed an old rusted trellis bridge, our tires thumping the dividers in trainlike cadence, and I peered down: wind in my face, and a slow moving gray channel streaked with iridescent oil smears passing into the bay.

  Joshua parked the bike down by an empty lot that abutted the water. A rusted metal guardrail lined the wall. Behind us: industrial buildings and tenements waiting for the wrecking ball. Two large stacks blowing white smoke into the sky. A twenty-four-hour diner across the narrow cobbled street, and a bar. Paint-peeling façades. Adverts in the window from another generation. A faded poster for Chesterfield cigarettes. Kohl’s beer. A handwritten sign: Prescriptions Filled.

  Before us the water heaved out to the bay and there was the bridge with traffic moving like small matchbox cars across it. Joshua sat next to me. He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit up. It was pungent and smoky and better-smelling than Mother’s Claymores. He pursed his lips and glared at the horizon. When he looked at me his brow remained furrowed, gnarled like a knot of scar tissue. His skin shone like resin.

  Y’know. I forget things sometimes. I forget that a lot of things have changed and that a lot of things haven’t changed at all. I get all mixed up—the things I think everyone should remember, they don’t. The things people talk about—it’s all so much crap.

  I nodded. It’s the war.

  Is that what your mother says?

  I nodded.

  What else does she say?

  I shrugged. That you’re not the same person you used to be. That you’re a son of a bitch, just like my daddy.

  Joshua caught and held his smoke, then exhaled slowly, nodding. He laughed, then slapped my shoulder. He kept his hand there, and the weight of it felt good and reassuring.

  What’s your mother cooking tonight?

  Meatloaf.

  Goddamn, I love your mother to death but her meatloaf is enough to make a man wish he’d never come home.

  I know. I tried to tell her. She thinks it’s her best dish.

  Joshua tossed his cigarette onto the walkway, and, for a moment, as we rose, I hesitated, wondering if I should pick it up. The light had gone down and the street was lit by wide swaths of rectangular light cast between the buildings. Joshua was staring across the water, but his face was lost in shadow. I was suddenly seized by the expectation that he might tell me something real. Joshua, I said, what was the war like? Is that where you knew my daddy from?

  War? Joshua bared his teeth and they flashed in the gloom. He seemed to be staring at something beyond the bridge, and out past the bay. But it was already dark and there was nothing to see but Venus shining in the east.

  I was eighteen and I used to motor down to Big Sur on this bike. When I first got to ’Nam that’s all I could think about: high twisting hills, the air d
usty with wisteria, and the bristlecone pine hanging from the edge of those cliffs, with the Pacific crashing like thunder down below. That and maybe a girl or two.

  He stared above the rooftops as night came down and pointed to a meteor that flared briefly across the horizon. He said: When I came back I didn’t want to take no ride to Big Sur anymore. I’d left that boy riding his bike along Route 1 back in the jungles.

  I waited but Joshua was silent. And my daddy?

  Your daddy? He never did no tour. Joshua shook his head. No, that’s not where I met him.

  The streetlights were broken along the road and slowly the stars came into view as the clouds cleared. You could make out the Big Dipper and Six Sisters and most of the autumn constellations, all glittering in slow winking cadence.

  Damn, Joshua said. Will you look at the size of that bastard sky?

  When we pulled up on the bike my mother was standing at the curb with her arms folded stiffly across her chest. Her face was set and stern, yet with the flicker of shadow and light as dusk approached she was disarming in her beauty. Even as a ten-year-old I recognized this. Joshua’s back stiffened and he gave a low whistle of admiration. There were tears in my eyes from the wind on the bike, and I blinked to take in the sight of her. For added effect, Joshua gunned the engine as we coasted toward her.

  Joshua, I don’t want my son riding motorcycles.

  Joshua pushed out the kickstand and then turned to look at me. He grinned, and then shrugged.

  You, she pointed to me. Get off that bike now. I don’t want to see you on it again.

  Maggie, Joshua called.

  Get in the house.

  Maggie.

  What?

  It won’t kill him, you know.

  Since when did you become his parent?

  I’m just saying, let him be a kid.

  I stood in the alcove watching and listening to them. Joshua blew my mother a kiss and began to back the bike away from the curb. Above him Orion and Ursa Major blinked into life.