"I've got to keep busy!"
Originally published in Maclean's Magazine as "Next Stop: The Stars."
She came down the steps and across the lawn. "Don't worry about Robert; he'll be all right."
"But it's all so new," he heard himself say. "It's never been done before. Think of it—a manned rocket going up tonight to build the first space station. Good lord, it can't be done, it doesn't exist, there's no rocket, no proving ground, no take-off time, no technicians. For that matter, I don't even have a son named Bob. The whole thing's too much for me!"
"Then what are you doing out here, staring?"
He shook his head. "Well, late this morning, walking to the office, I heard someone laugh out loud. It shocked me, so I froze in the middle of the street. It was me, laughing! Why? Because finally I really knew what Bob was going to do tonight; at last I believed it. Holy is a word I never use, but that's how I felt stranded in all that traffic. Then, middle of the afternoon I caught myself humming. You know the song. 'A wheel in a wheel. Way in the middle of the air.' I laughed again. The space station, of course, I thought. The big wheel with hollow spokes where Bob'll live six or eight months, then get along to the moon. Walking home, I remembered more of the song. 'Little wheel run by faith. Big wheel run by the grace of God.' I wanted to jump, yell, and flame-out myself!"
His wife touched his arm. "If we stay out here, let's at least be comfortable."
They placed two wicker rockers in the center of the lawn and sat quietly as the stars dissolved out of darkness in pale crush-ings of rock salt strewn from horizon to horizon.
"Why," said his wife, at last, "it's like waiting for the fireworks at Sisley Field every year."
"Bigger crowd tonight . . ."
"I keep thinking—a billion people watching the sky right now, their mouths all open at the same time."
They waited, feeling the earth move under their chairs.
"What time is it now?"
"Eleven minutes to eight."
"You're always right; there must be a clock in your head."
“I can't be wrong, tonight. I'll be able to tell you one second before they blast off. Look! The ten-minute warning!"
On the western sky they saw four crimson flares open out, float shimmering down the wind above the desert, then sink silently to the extinguishing earth.
In the new darkness the husband and wife did not rock in their chairs.
After a while he said, "Eight minutes." A pause. "Seven minutes." What seemed a much longer pause. "Six . . ."
His wife, her head back, studied the stars immediately above her and murmured, "Why?" She closed her eyes. "Why the rockets, why tonight? Why all this? I'd like to know."
He examined her face, pale in the vast powdering light of the Milky Way. He felt the stirring of an answer, but let his wife continue.
'1 mean it's not that old thing again, is it, when people asked why men climbed Mt. Everest and they said, 'Because it's there'? I never understood. That was no answer to me."
Five minutes, he thought. Time ticking ... his wrist watch ... a wheel in a wheel . . . little wheel run by . . . big wheel run by . . . way in the middle of . . . four minutes! . . . The men snug in the rocket by now, the hive, the control board flickering with light. . . .
His lips moved.
"All I know is it's really the end of the beginning. The Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age; from now on we'll lump all those together under one big name for when we walked on Earth and heard the birds at morning and cried with envy. Maybe we'll call it the Earth Age, or maybe the Age of Gravity. Millions of years we fought gravity. When we were amoebas and fish we struggled to get out of the sea without gravity crushing us. Once safe on the shore we fought to stand upright without gravity breaking our new invention, the spine, tried to walk without stumbling, run without falling. A billion years Gravity kept us home, mocked us with wind and clouds, cabbage moths and locusts. That's what's so god-awful big about tonight . , . it's the end of old man Gravity and the age we'll remember him by, for once and all. I don't know where they'll divide the ages, at the Persians, who dreamt of flying carpets, or the Chinese, who all unknowing celebrated birthdays and New Years with strung ladyfingers and high skyrockets, or some minute, some incredible second in the next hour. But we're in at the end of a billion years trying, the end of something long and to us humans, anyway, honorable."
Three minutes . . . two minutes fifty-nine seconds . . . two minutes fifty-eight seconds . . .
"But," said his wife, "I still don't know why."
Two minutes, he thought. Ready? Ready? Ready? The far radio voice calling. Ready! Ready! Ready! The quick, faint replies from the humming rocket. Check! Check! Check!
Tonight, he thought, even if we fail with this first, we'll send a second and a third ship and move on out to all the planets and later, all the stars. We'll just keep going until the big words like immortal and forever take on meaning. Big words, yes, that's what we want. Continuity. Since our tongues first moved in our mouths we've asked, What does it all mean? No other question made sense, with death breathing down our necks. But just let us settle in on ten thousand worlds spinning around ten thousand alien suns and the question will fade away. Man will be endless and infinite, even as space is endless and infinite. Man will go on, as space goes on, forever. Individuals will die as always, but our history will reach as far as we'll ever need to see into the future, and with the knowledge of our survival for all time to come, we'll know security and thus the answer we've always searched for. Gifted with fife, the least we can do is preserve and pass on the gift to infinity. That's a goal worth shooting for.
The wicker chairs whispered ever so softly on the grass.
One minute.
"One minute," he said aloud.
"Oh!" His wife moved suddenly to seize his hands. "I hope that Bob . . ."
“He'll be all right!"
"Oh, God, take care ..."
Thirty seconds.
"Watch now."
Fifteen, ten, five . . .
"Watch!"
Four, three, two, one.
"There! There! Oh, there, there!"
They both cried out. They both stood. The chairs toppled back, fell flat on the lawn. The man and his wife swayed, their hands struggled to find each other, grip, hold. They saw the brightening color in the sky and, ten seconds later, the great uprising comet bum the air, put out the stars, and rush away in fire flight to become another star in the returning profusion of the Milky Way. The man and wife held each other as if they had stumbled on the rim of an incredible cliff that faced an abyss so deep and dark there seemed no end to it. Staring up, they heard themselves sobbing and crying. Only after a long time were they able to speak.
"It got away, it did, didn't it?"
"Yes . . ."
"It's all right, isn't it?"
"Yes ... yes . . ."
'It didn't fall back . . . ?"
"No, no, it's all right, Bob's all right, it's all right."
They stood away from each other at last.
He touched his face with his hand and looked at his wet fingers. "I'll be damned," he said, "I'll be damned."
They waited another five and then ten minutes until the darkness in their heads, the retina, ached with a million specks of fiery salt. Then they had to close their eyes.
"Well," she said, "now let's go m."
He could not move. Only his hand reached a long way out by itself to find the lawn-mower handle. He saw what his hand had done and said, "There's just a little more to do, . . ."
"But you can't see."
"Well enough," he said. "I must finish this. Then we'll sit on the porch awhile before we turn in."
He helped her put the chairs on the porch and sat her down and then walked back out to put his hands on the guide bar of the lawn mower. The lawn mower. A wheel in a wheel. A simple machine which you held in your hands, which you sent on ahead with a rush and a clatter while you walked behind with your quiet
philosophy. Racket, followed by warm silence. Whirling wheel, then soft footfall of thought.
I'm a billion years old, he told himself; I'm one minute old. I'm one inch, no, ten thousand miles, tall. I look down and can't see my feet they're so far off and gone away below.
He moved the lawn mower. The grass showering up fell softly around him; he relished and savored it and felt that he was all mankind bathing at last in the fresh waters of the fountain of youth.
Thus bathed, he remembered the song again about the wheels and the faith and the grace of God being way up there in the middle of the sky where that single star, among a million motionless stars, dared to move and keep on moving.
Then he finished cutting the grass.
5 THE WONDERFUL ICE CREAM SUIT
It was summer twilight in the city, and out front of the quiet-clicking pool hall three young Mexican-American men breathed the warm air and looked around at the world. Sometimes they talked and sometimes they said nothing at all but watched the cars glide by like black panthers on the hot asphalt or saw trolleys loom up like thunderstorms, scatter lightning, and rumble away into silence.
"Hey," sighed Martinez at last. He was the youngest, the most sweetly sad of the three. "It's a swell night, huh? Swell."
As he observed the world it moved very close and then drifted away and then came close again. People, brushing by, were suddenly across the street. Buildings five miles away suddenly leaned over him. But most of the time everything—people, cars, and buildings—stayed way out on the edge of the world and could not be touched. On this quiet warm summer evening Martinez's face was cold.
"Nights like this you wish . . . lots of things."
"Wishing," said the second man, Villanazul, a man who shouted books out loud in his room but spoke only in whispers
Originally published in The Saturday Evening Post as "The Magic White Suit" on the street. "Wishing is the useless pastime of the unemployed."
"Unemployed?" cried Vamenos, the unshaven. "Listen to him! We got no jobs, no money!"
"So," said Martinez, "we got no friends."
"True." Villanazul gazed off toward the green plaza where the palm trees swayed in the soft night wind. "Do you know what I wish? I wish to go into that plaza and speak among the businessmen who gather there nights to talk big talk. But dressed as I am, poor as I am, who would listen? So, Martinez, we have each other. The friendship of the poor is real friendship. We—"
But now a handsome young Mexican with a fine thin mustache strolled by. And on each of his careless arms hung a laughing woman.
"Madre mia!" Martinez slapped his own brow. "How does that one rate two friends?"
"It's his nice new white summer suit." Vamenos chewed a black thumbnail. "He looks sharp."
Martinez leaned out to watch the three people moving away, and then at the tenement across the street, in one fourth-floor window of which, far above, a beautiful girl leaned out, her dark hair faintly stirred by the wind. She had been there forever, which was to say for six weeks. He had nodded, he had raised a hand, he had smiled, he had blinked rapidly, he had even bowed to her, on the street, in the hall when visiting friends, in the park, downtown. Even now, he put his hand up from his waist and moved his fingers. But all the lovely girl did was let the summer wind stir her dark hair. He did not exist. He was nothing.
"Madre mia!" He looked away and down the street where the man walked his two friends around a corner. "Oh, if just I had one suit, one! I wouldn't need money if I looked okay."
"I hesitate to suggest," said Villanazul, "that you see Gomez. But he's been talking some crazy talk for a month now about clothes. I keep on saying I'll be in on it to make him go away. That Gomez."
"Friend," said a quiet voice.
"Gomez!" Everyone turned to stare.
Smiling strangely, Gomez pulled forth an endless thin yellow ribbon which fluttered and swirled on the summer air.
"Gomez," said Martinez, "what you doing with that tape measure?"
Gomez beamed. "Measuring people's skeletons."
"Skeletons!"
"Hold on." Gomez squinted at Martinez. "Caramba! Where you been all my life! Let's try you!"
Martinez saw his arm seized and taped, his leg measured, his chest encircled.
“Hold still!" cried Gomez. "Arm—perfect. Leg—chest—perfecto! Now quick, the height! There! Yes! Five foot five! You're in! Shake!" Pumping Martinez's hand, he stopped suddenly. "Wait. You got . . . ten bucks?"
"I have!" Vamenos waved some grimy bills. "Gomez, measure me!"
"All I got left in the world is nine dollars and ninety-two cents." Martinez searched his pockets. "That's enough for a new suit? Why?"
"Why? Because you got the right skeleton, that's why!"
"Senor Gomez, I don't hardly know you—"
"Know me? You're going to live with me! Come on!"
Gomez vanished into the poolroom. Martinez, escorted by the polite Villanazul, pushed by an eager Vamenos, found himself inside.
"Dominguez!" said Gomez.
Dominguez, at a wall telephone, winked at them. A woman's voice squeaked on the receiver.
"Manulo!" said Gomez.
Manulo, a wine bottle tilted bubbling to his mouth, turned.
Gomez pointed at Martinez.
"At last we found our fifth volunteer!"
Dominguez said, "I got a date, don't bother me—" and stopped. The receiver slipped from his fingers. His little black telephone book full of fine names and numbers went quickly back into his pocket. "Gomez, you—?"
"Yes, yes! Your money, now! Andaler
The woman's voice sizzled on the dangling phone.
Dominguez glanced at it uneasily.
Manulo considered the empty wine bottle in his hand and the liquor-store sign across the street.
Then very reluctantly both men laid ten dollars each on the green velvet pool table.
Villanazul, amazed, did likewise, as did Gomez, nudging Martinez. Martinez counted out his wrinkled bills and change. Gomez flourished the money like a royal flush.
"Fifty bucks! The suit costs sixty! All we need is ten bucks!"
"Wait," said Martinez. "Gomez, are we talking about one suit? Senor?”
Senor Gomez raised a finger. "One wonderful white ice cream summer suit! White, white as the August moon!"
"But who will own this one suit?"
"Me!" said Manulo.
"Me!" said Dominguez.
"Me!" said Villanazul.
"Me!" cried Gomez. "And you, Martinez. Men, let's show him. Line up!"
Villanazul, Manulo, Dominguez, and Gomez rushed to plant their backs against the poolroom wall.
"Martinez, you too, the other end, line up! Now, Vamenos, lay that billiard cue across our heads!"
"Sure, Gomez, sure!"
Martinez, in line, felt the cue tap his head and leaned out to see what was happening. "Ah!" he gasped.
The cue lay flat on all their heads, with no rise or fall, as Vamenos slid it along, grinning.
"We're all the same height!" said Martinez.
"The same!" Everyone laughed.
Gomez ran down the line, rustling the yellow tape measure here and there on the men so they laughed even more wildly.
"Sure!" he said. "It took a month, four weeks, mind you, to find four guys the same size and shape as me, a month of running around measuring. Sometimes I found guys with five-foot-five skeletons, sure, but all the meat on their bones was too much or not enough. Sometimes their bones were too long in the legs or too short in the arms. Boy, all the bones! I tell you! But now, five of us, same shoulders, chests, waists, arms, and as for weight? Men!"
Manulo, Dominguez, Villanazul, Gomez, and at last Martinez stepped onto the scales which flipped ink-stamped cards at them as Vamenos, still smiling wildly, fed pennies. Heart pounding, Martinez read the cards.
"One hundred thirty-five pounds . . . one thirty-six . . . one thirty-three . . . one thirty-four . . . one thirty-seven ... a miracle!"
"No," said Villanazul simply, "Gomez."
They all smiled upon that genius who now circled them with his arms.
"Are we not fine?" he wondered. "All the same size, all the same dream—the suit. So each of us will look beautiful at least one night each week, eh?"
"I haven't looked beautiful in years," said Martinez. "The girls run away."
"They will run no more, they will freeze," said Gomez, "when they see you in the cool white summer ice cream suit."
"Gomez," said Villanazul, "just let me ask one thing."
"Of course, compadre"
"When we get this nice new white ice cream summer suit, some night you're not going to put it on and walk down to the Greyhound bus in it and go five in El Paso for a year in it, are you?"
"Villanazul, Villanazul, how can you say that?"
"My eye sees and my tongue moves," said Villanazul. "How about the Everybody Wins! Punchboard Lotteries you ran and you kept running when nobody won? How about the United Chili Con Came and Frijole Company you were going to organize and all that ever happened was the rent ran out on a two-by-four office?"
"The errors of a child now grown," said Gomez. "Enough! In this hot weather someone may buy the special suit that is made just for us that stands waiting in the window of SHUMWAY'S SUNSHINE SUITS! We have fifty dollars. Now we need just one more skeleton!"
Martinez saw the men peer around the pool hall. He looked where they looked. He felt his eyes hurry past Vamenos, then come reluctantly back to examine his dirty shirt, his huge nicotined fingers.
"Me!" Vamenos burst out at last. "My skeleton, measure it, it's great! Sure, my hands are big, and my arms, from digging ditches! But—"
Just then Martinez heard passing on the sidewalk outside that same terrible man with his two girls, all laughing together.
He saw anguish move like the shadow of a summer cloud on the faces of the other men in this poolroom.
Slowly Vamenos stepped onto the scales and dropped his penny. Eyes closed, he breathed a prayer.
"Madre mia, please . . ."
The machinery whirred; the card fell out. Vamenos opened his eyes.
"Look! One thirty-five pounds! Another miracle!"
Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 Page 22
