The Dream Life of Astronauts Page 8

  His wife.

  His two boys.

  Just a couple of blasts from his whistle used to bring Mitch and Howie home for dinner; now Leo had to stand at the foot of his driveway and blow his lungs out: three blasts, then three more, then three more after that. The boys weren’t afraid of him anymore; they tuned out the whistle just as they tuned out his voice. And they looked at him differently. If they weren’t focused on his eye or his drooping mouth, they were looking at his hair, which had turned half-white over the past eight weeks. They were obstinate, but they weren’t idiots: they worked it to their advantage. They pissed and moaned now about having to do their chores. They complained about having to go to church, having to wear Toughskins instead of Levi’s, having crew cuts. They’d begged for puppies last year—one for each of them—and Leo had brought home a pair of six-week-old springer spaniels on the condition that they take care of them, walk them, train them. But the dogs went largely ignored and slabbered around the backyard like wolves.

  For godsake, he wanted to tell his boys, life is short. Shut the hell up and appreciate what you have. But they were too busy griping. They were too busy punching stop signs and running over snakes with their bicycles. A week ago, they’d taken one of the younger boys from the neighborhood—a fellow Scout in Leo’s troop, no less, and a boy who they knew full well was the son of one of Leo’s underlings at Technicolor—and tied him to a palm tree, then pulled down his pants and stuffed a dead myna bird into his underwear. It had been irksome for Leo to have to hear about it from Marie, who’d heard about it from Skip Ferris’s wife. It had been embarrassing to have to apologize to Skip Ferris at work the next day. And it hadn’t been nearly as satisfying as it should have been to take Mitch and Howie, one at a time, over his knee and smack their backsides. In fact, Leo had felt a little silly doing it, wondering if their cries were genuine or fake, all the while feeling his eye flutter like a telegraph key.

  —

  Julian Ferris heard the first, faint blows of the whistle and felt something close to relief. The Burke brothers had dragged him into the side yard of an empty house at the end of their street, where they’d dug a hole to bury him in, and he was kneeling in it now while they fought over who got to use the shovel.

  “Keep reaching for it,” Mitch, the older of the two, told Howie as he held the shovel away from him, “and I’ll flatten your head into a birdbath.”

  Howie snorted, said, “Fat chance,” and reached for it again.

  “Keep reaching for it,” Mitch said, “and I’ll shove it so far up your ass, the handle will come out your mouth.”

  “Hug a nut,” Howie said.

  It went on like this for a while. Julian’s knees started to ache, and he counted to ten over and over again, waiting for the next set of whistle blasts. Climbing out of the hole and making a run for it wasn’t an option, since the blond, crew-cutted Burke brothers were faster and stronger than him; the last time he’d tried to escape, they had nabbed him easily and had taken turns slapping the back of his head.

  Whole days could go by wherein they seemed to forget he existed. Then they’d descend upon him, drag him off somewhere, and explain what they had in store for him. One day they’d tell him they were going to make him eat a lizard, and if he threw up, eat the throw-up, and if he pooped, eat the poop. Another day, they were going to stuff him into a garbage can and throw in a live hornet’s nest. They were going to make him eat an ant pile with a spoon. They were going to cover his dick with peanut butter and tie a squirrel to his ankle. Poor planning usually saved him—they weren’t able to find a lizard, had no way to handle a hornet’s nest, couldn’t locate an ant pile or catch a squirrel. But the day they’d threatened to tie him to a tree and stuff a dead bird into his pants, they’d surprised him by actually having a dead bird on hand, and today they’d already dug the hole before capturing him on his way back from 7-Eleven. Fortunately, they were lazy and had dug down only about a foot and a half.

  The second set of whistle blasts rose up through the warm air.

  “If you were any stupider,” Mitch told Howie, “you’d forget to breathe.”

  “If you were any uglier,” Howie told Mitch, “you’d make the whole island drown in its own puke.”

  The only thing they disliked more than each other, it seemed, was Julian. And there was no avoiding them because their lives were so miserably wound up with his. They lived in his neighborhood. They went to his school and were in his Boy Scout troop. Their father, Mr. Burke, was not only his dad’s boss and the scoutmaster, but he also drove the three boys to the weekly Scout meeting.

  Mitch and Howie couldn’t stand Julian’s name, which they only ever pronounced “Julie-Ann.” They couldn’t stand his face, either, which they said looked like a steaming plate of balls. And they hated his hair. It was girl’s hair, they’d said. Long and brown and stringy, like Mackenzie Phillips’s, if Mackenzie Phillips never took a bath. Julian’s hair wasn’t that long; it barely reached his shoulders, but they’d grab it when they caught him, and twist it, and once they had him pinned to the ground, wipe their hands on his shirt and say he could end the oil crisis if he’d only turn himself in to the government.

  The third set of whistle blasts finally arrived—clipped and mean sounding, louder than it was before. The Burke brothers both turned in the direction of their house.

  “You’re lucky,” Mitch said after a moment, looking down at Julian. “You were almost dead.”

  “So almost dead,” Howie said.

  As they started out of the yard, the shovel resting on Mitch’s shoulder and Howie, for some reason, still reaching for it, Mitch called back, “Till next time, Julie-Ann.”

  Julian was eleven years old and was convinced he’d suffer for the rest of his life at the hands of the Burke brothers. He’d certainly never grow big enough to fend off Mitch and Howie, who were not only older than him, but just a little bit fat in the middle. Still, he thought as he stepped out of the hole and brushed the dirt off his legs, wouldn’t it be wonderful to get exposed to radiation and wake up so enormous that he couldn’t be caught by anyone? Wouldn’t it be the best thing in the world for his new mega-self to walk over to the Burke house and tap a finger on their roof, and when the Burkes came running out and looked up in terror at the giant looming over them, say hi to Mrs. Burke (who seemed nice), and hi to Mr. Burke (who had a scary-looking twitch in one eye but had never been mean to him), and then raise his foot into the air and say “Ha-yaa!” as he brought it down on Mitch and Howie? He’d take one step to the east and wash his foot off in the river. And then Mr. and Mrs. Burke, all the residents of Merritt Island, and even President Ford would say, Thank you, Julian Ferris. Now and forever, thank you.

  —

  Scout nights were the only times Leo ever laid eyes on Julian. The boy was small, only a year behind Leo’s youngest, but about half the size. He was quiet and skittish, looked rattled much of the time. It wasn’t any great surprise that Mitch and Howie picked on him, even though they’d been told not to and had been punished for doing so. How could they resist? They were boys, after all, and Leo had once been a boy—and a small one, at that. He’d never told his sons, but he’d taken his own share of knocks back in Mississippi until he’d gotten wise and learned how to throw a punch, learned how to make sure there was at least one kid in his neighborhood who crossed the street when he saw Leo coming. It was a natural part of childhood to either wallop or get walloped now and then. But, for the love of God, let there be no more dead animals shoved into people’s underwear.

  Leo blamed himself a little. He’d tried to teach the boys boxing once, but he’d lost his patience too soon. He’d bought them gloves and headgear and a stand-up punching bag and had tried to teach them the rules he’d learned in basic training at Camp Shelby. But he made the mistake of calling them “queens rules” instead of just “rules,” and the little idiots couldn’t get past the phrase, thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. They lisped and
pranced around with their gloved hands dangling from their wrists until finally Leo said forget it, snatched back the gloves and everything else, and donated the whole kit and caboodle to Goodwill.

  In theory, Scouting should have instilled the kind of confidence that brought focus, and the kind of focus that undermined dumb behavior. Having a uniform to wear, a troop number to be proud of, badges to work for—what could be better for both men and boys alike? But, as with anything lately, there were hassles to deal with. For one thing, enrollment was down. There were only five other Scouts besides Mitch and Howie, and two of them were Jewish. Leo had nothing against the Jewish, but every time you turned around they were having some sort of holiday that kept them from attending meetings. And of the three boys who weren’t Jewish, one of them had a doctor-certified heart condition, poor kid, and couldn’t do much more than sit on a folding chair and highlight his Scouting manual. That left the Stelzel boy, who was promising, and Julian Ferris, who wasn’t.

  Julian had poor initiative, didn’t even seem interested in earning his Tenderfoot. He also had a nervous habit Leo found irritating: he scrunched his shoulders up and rolled his head around like he was rubbing the back of his skull against his neck. It wasn’t exactly a shrug, but it looked like one, and he did it whenever he was tongue-tied or restless. Mention the Tenderfoot badge, and there went Julian, scrunch and rub.

  Another hassle for Leo was dealing with Dan Messer. Dan—shaky and spindly—was the only person Leo had been able to find on Merritt Island who was interested in being assistant scoutmaster, and he was nice enough, but he was a bit of a wet-brain. As in, he came to the weekly meetings drunk. He hiccupped during the Pledge of Allegiance. “Bring your own personality and excitement to instructing the sessions,” the training manual said, but Dan didn’t bring any of those things. At the close of the meeting one night, right in the middle of the Stelzel boy’s clunky but earnest rendition of “Taps,” a flask bottle of Old Crow had fallen out of Dan’s windbreaker. When he’d dropped by to see how Leo was doing in the days following the stroke, and had been trying to buck up Leo’s spirits by saying they were robust for men their age, both of them just fifty, Leo had been astonished. He would have put Dan at sixty-five.

  Mitch and Howie, as far as Leo knew, were still committed to the idea of Scouting and of one day becoming Eagle Scouts. But they took the pageantry of it all far less seriously than they had before his stroke. They used to sit like ironing boards in the backseat of the station wagon on Scout night. All the way to the meetings, they would barely say a word, but would check, over and over again, the hang of their sashes, the stitching of their badges. Now they rode like monkeys. They yanked on each other’s neckerchiefs. They tried to throw each other’s hats out the window. They tormented the Ferris boy, who did nothing to defend himself, just covered his face with his arms. When all this became intolerable, Leo would slam his foot down on the brake and throw gravel as he steered the station wagon to the side of the road. He would turn around in his seat and holler that they, Mitch and Howie, were going to get it; they were already going to get it, but if they didn’t settle down and leave Julian alone, they were going to really get it. But next week, it would be the same thing all over again.

  They were suspiciously quiet at the moment. Leo turned off their street and into the newer section of the neighborhood and peered at them in the rearview mirror. Both of them in uniform, hats on, neckerchiefs tied. Both of them tight-lipped and red-faced and wearing false mustaches. Where the mustaches came from, Leo had no idea. And, really, for obnoxious behavior, this was small-time. One on a scale of ten. But in another way this tiny infraction—false mustaches on the way to Scout night—was worse than if they were smart-mouthing and was exactly the kind of thing he felt certain he wouldn’t have had to deal with if he hadn’t had the stroke. There was no rationality to it, but since his brush with death, the smallest of annoyances had become intolerable. Already this evening he’d had to deal with Marie’s berating him for having skipped both his last neurologist appointment and his physical therapy. Then had come the excusatory phone call from Dan Messer, saying he had some sort of flu and didn’t feel well enough to make it to the meeting (Leo had recognized the familiar booze-scrape in his voice, like someone had shoved a shoehorn down his throat).

  The windows were down. The air smelled of gardenias and cut grass. Another person might have felt glad to be alive, given the circumstances, but those false mustaches were eating at Leo. The boys wouldn’t speak until he told them to knock it off, clean up their act, get those goddamn things off their upper lips, and it felt like his whole life was in their sticky little hands, his entire existence funneled into the moment when he finally gave in and started yelling.

  And now here came the Ferris boy: out of uniform, bounding down his driveway as Leo made the turn.

  Julian ran right up to the driver’s door as Leo was coming to a stop and announced that he wasn’t going to the meeting tonight.

  What forces, Leo wondered, had aligned to take such a colossal crap on his day? But he had no one to pose such a question to—no one wanted to hear it. “Are you Jewish?”

  “No,” Julian said, “I’m Catholic. But it’s my birthday.”

  One of the mustached devils snorted from the backseat.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Leo asked.

  “I guess there might be a cake and presents,” Julian said, scrunching the back of his skull against his neck. “My aunt and uncle are coming over. My parents want me to stay home.”

  “We’re voting tonight,” Leo said. “Halloween’s in two weeks, and it’s on Scout night. We’re voting on whether or not we’ll meet.”

  Julian glanced into the backseat at Mitch and Howie. He didn’t wave at them, didn’t say hi, didn’t even seem to notice their mustaches. “I guess I’d vote not to meet, if it’s going to be Halloween.”

  “No proxies,” Leo said and put the station wagon into reverse.

  —

  Julian’s birthday haul included a new pair of roller skates (from his parents), a Daredevil T-shirt and a baseball cap with the Apollo-Soyuz logo (from his aunt and uncle), and a nickel-clad bicentennial dollar (from the old man who lived next door and who’d spent so much time talking about the coin as he showed it to Julian that Julian had wondered if he was ever going to give it up).

  For several days following his birthday, it rained in the late afternoon—flat and heavy, knocking against the driveway and the sidewalk. On the third day, when he got home from school, he asked his mother if she would move her car out of the carport. She did and then dashed back into the house under the cover of an umbrella. For an hour or so, Julian skated in a circle around the empty carport, avoiding the oil stain in the middle and the curtain of water that fell on all three sides, listening to the rain batter the roof. But it wasn’t much fun. There was barely enough room, and he wasn’t that good of a skater yet.

  Finally, almost a week after his birthday, the rain let up. He got home from school and changed out of his Divine Mercy uniform, pulling on a pair of shorts and his new T-shirt. He put the bicentennial coin into one of his pockets, adjusted the strap of his new baseball cap, and tugged it down onto his head. Then he carried his skates outside and laced them around his feet.

  He stuck to the sidewalk. He watched for cracks and avoided palm kernels. It was sort of like swimming, in that he got a little braver each time, ventured further away from his house before turning around and wobbling back to the driveway. He fell twice, but his only damage was a bruised elbow and a bloodied knee. He imagined himself as an explorer on the banks of a river no one had ever traveled. Around the bend, where Letty Drive met Compton Street, were winged beasts with fangs secreting poison. He’d capture one, he decided, wrap it in a titanium net and keep it hidden from society until he’d trained it to recite the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. At which point he’d call together all the scientists of the world and make their jaws drop.

  The
n, suddenly, there were beasts coming toward him. He should have expected as much, though he’d never seen them on Compton Street before; their house was on the other side of the neighborhood. Like him, they had wheels—skateboards, in their case. They also had propulsion: the springer spaniels on leashes, galloping like a pair of Shetland ponies. The Burke brothers didn’t even have their feet on the ground; they stood on their boards, arms stretched out in front of them, serpentining like water-skiers—until one of the dogs crossed in front of the other, Mitch yelled, “Go left! Go left!” and in a glorious moment of impact so slam-bang you could actually hear their bodies collide, the boys went down.

  Let there be peace on Earth, Julian thought, feeling giddy, and let it begin with Howie’s shattered limbs, and let it end with Mitch’s head bursting open like a melon someone took a knife to and carved out just enough space for a stick of dynamite.

  But the brothers were intact. Their boards had sailed off in different directions and yet they’d both managed to hang on to their leashes, and the dogs were already jumping around them spastically as the boys got to their feet and started fighting.

  “That was the most boneheaded thing I’ve ever seen someone do!” Mitch said, shoving Howie away from him.

  Howie fell back to the ground. “Snot-faced ball-licker,” he said, jumping up again and lurching toward Mitch.

  “You don’t know your left from your right,” Mitch said, shoving him back.

  “Tits,” Howie said, stumbling but managing not to fall this time. “Tits.”

  “Well, look who it is.”

  Being on roller skates in the presence of the Burke brothers and not being a very good skater was poor planning, Julian realized. When he got himself turned around and started down the sidewalk, he felt like he was trudging through quicksand. He made it across three, four, five squares of cement before a hand grabbed the back of his shirt and the iron-on Daredevil logo pulled tight across his chest.