Mr. Spaceman Read online

  I pull back the covers and I wish that my wife Edna Bradshaw were lying down beside me, but she has prepared a way for me, even as I pull the covers up to my chinny-chin-chin. Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep if I should die before I wake … Rockaby baby on the treetop when the wind blows the cradle will rock when the bough breaks the cradle will fall … It is no wonder that the children of Earth learn to dream. They sing of death, over and over, before they sleep. They die. They fall. I hear the solar wind outside the window. I hear the soft pad of Eddie’s feet across the floor. And Dick Clark stands before me. I have never interviewed Dick Clark, but for many years I have watched him, we have all watched him, when there were others of my species on the spaceship, and we all admired Dick Clark as he emceed the latest in popular music and moved his hand over a large room and people danced and danced before him and we would, too, we spacemen, we would do the twist and the stroll and later the frug and the mashed potato, though we knew that we were pitifully inadequate, floating instead of strolling, gliding instead of mashed potatoing, but Dick Clark and all his Earth Angels, all his Teenagers in Love, who danced for him taught us many things about this world while we hovered far above, imitating the steps, knowing, however, that we were Only the Lonely, and now he is dressed in his stylish blue parka jacket and his hair is carefully coiffed around his headset and he holds a microphone and it is night and beyond him is Times Square in New York City and there is a steady roar behind his characteristically sweet and reassuring and happy words, a roar like the noise from deep space, and it is the crowd, a million strong, two million, on this special New Year’s Eve, and he draws our attention to the lighted ball on the tower at One Times Square and he explains it will descend and he turns to look over his shoulder and suddenly Dick Clark says, “Holy shit.”

  And I recognize my spaceship. It is hovering over the tower.

  At first glance the ball has begun to descend, but no, Dick Clark’s deep-rooted reportorial skills have been activated and he is announcing to the world this most extraordinary story.

  “Ladies and gentlemen and young people everywhere,” he says into his microphone, “this is not the traditional ball descending the tower at One Times Square. Instead, a circular craft, clearly of extraterrestrial origin, has appeared and is hovering over the tower. What we see, illuminated by some unearthly unknown source, is what appears to be a spaceman. He is descending slowly from the spaceship. The whole of Times Square has seen him now. A great hush has come over the massive crowd. Listen.”

  And Dick Clark points his microphone out in the direction of the crowd and he is right, the roar has ceased, there is only silence coming from the millions as they watch this figure descend from the machine.

  Only I recognize the figure. I am. I am the figure ablaze there in light, moving before the tower—in precise time with the countdown to the millennium, as a matter of fact, which does not escape the notice of Dick Clark, who is announcing like he has never announced before, he is in the zone, in the flow, this is the zenith of his career—well, perhaps his first introduction of Chuck Berry, whose voice even now is flying out to the stars, representing the planet Earth to all the rest of us, perhaps that was a comparable moment for him—but this is a big scoop, off the entertainment pages, top of the news, and Dick knows it. He says, “This spaceman is actually counting in the new millennium for us—five, four …”

  And the crowd picks up the count, and at “three” there are a million voices and by “two” there are a million more, and it is as if they have all accepted me, I am the lighted ball, I am the next thousand years.

  “One,” Dick and the millions cry, and then there is a deafening cheer and an explosion of color overhead and it seems as if everyone in this vast crowd is waving at me, and I continue to descend, past the tower, past the upper floors of One Times Square, past the running electronic headlines, which already are picking up on Dick Clark’s scoop: HAPPY NEW YEAR. SPACEMAN LANDS IN TIMES SQUARE.

  And I have been seeing all this from someplace near Dick but now I am in my descending body and the crowd is rising up toward me and the bodies surge and hands clutch upward and I want to stop my transport beam I want to throw it in reverse and climb away from these hands and these upturned faces and these are not smiley faces these faces are full of shock and clutch and greed and grab and the hands, the thousands of hands that have surged together right beneath me, are ready to do the bidding of these faces which I realize is to pull what they believe to be useful bits off of my body as if I were some ancient saint whose bones are cracked into tiny pieces and enshrined in churches all over the world and these hands are ready to do this reverent work this holy dismemberment and I descend and I am almost reachable now and I wish to cry out some greeting but no words will come I have run out of words and then there are hands on me ten thousand heartless hands and I am plunged into darkness and there is only Dick Clark’s voice saying, “Now that the spaceman has been torn to bits, it’s time for our spotlight dance.” But the music does not begin. There is silence, now, as well as the darkness. And then not even those things.

  And my wife Edna Bradshaw is before me. “Honey, I’ve kept things warm for a few hours now because I didn’t want to disturb you, you’ve been so tired and you were sleeping so sweetly. But I think it’s time for supper and I was just fixing to set the table.”

  I sit up and I realize I have slept a long while. “What is the hour, by Earthtime?” I ask.

  “It’s getting on toward seven in the evening, Bovary Standard Time, as we used to call it,” Edna says.

  “I am glad you woke me,” I say and I rise and I am struck by how far behind I am in my planning. I have not even decided where to appear, though I am prepared to take this most recent dream as prophetic, as well. In spite of Times Square having a certain intrinsic logic as my point of descent, I realize that I have already ruled it out. In the absence of more specific orders from my home planet about how and where I am to show myself, I am ready to allow my revelation to this world to begin more modestly.

  “Thank you, my honeybun Edna Bradshaw,” I say. “You go on. I will wake our guests.”

  “I’ve set us up in the Reception Hall,” she says and she scurries out of the room, leaving a scent of sweet potato pie in her wake.

  I have eaten my wife Edna Bradshaw’s sweet potato pie before, prepared by her own hands for just the two of us on our honeymoon, which we spent hovering over Niagara Falls. Edna had always wanted to honeymoon at Niagara Falls. And with the smell of sweet potatoes, this Earth thing is happening to me again, this necessary engagement with all the stuff of the senses in the space between one mind and another, and I find myself hovering there once again and putting on my trench-coat-and-Chuck-Taylor disguise and scooting down to the planet’s surface with my bride and going with her to view the falls, which we did in the middle of the night, the water rushing past and diving into the dark, both of us excited, I think, at the risk of the moment, though at that time of night I could have controlled the consciousness of anyone who came near enough to find me actionably strange. We held each other and leaned over the rail and the spray battered us and we were, I realize, a tight little binary star system, the two of us, out on the far edge of some wispy galaxy, and I think for a moment I felt a sufficiency there, and I wonder if Edna Bradshaw felt the same way, if she was freed from further yearning in the spray from Niagara Falls.

  But it is too late to ask. And I do not think the answer would reflect its light upon the questions that now hurtle themselves against me. And if there were a moment of complete contentment, it carried with itself the impossibility of its lasting, for in the next moment I surely looked back—my wife and I both surely looked back—and yearned for another moment as good as that one, and all things dissolved into change and striving.

  And it is time for my last supper. And I must go and gather my guests. And I look back and I yearn for any moment but the moment that awaits me a few hours from now. And
I go into the corridor and I glide along to these twelve where they mimic death and I will wave my hands and they will rise again and they will follow me.

  I stop before them, twelve dreamers dreaming. And there are five places I have not yet entered, five visitors I will not have a chance to interview. I regret this, even as a familiar feeling comes over me, familiar and very strange at the same time. The five are clustered together at this near end of the sleeping corridor, three to my left, side by side, and two across from the three, also side by side. I look toward the first door to my left and I fall from the sky toward a bull’s-eye, the helicopter deck on a jack-up offshore drill rig, but there is no helicopter I am falling all on my own and I look at the next door and the flashbulbs are popping and I am crying already I am so happy and my glide on the Miss Texas runway is perfect with an invisible string attached to the top of my head and stretched taut all the way up to the sky holding me up straight and tall and beautiful like God’s prettiest toy his wonderful Misty the marionette and I look to the next door and I am feeling very uneasy suddenly and I’m running as fast as I can through the thick trees through the vine-tangled trees and I dare to make a quick glance over my shoulder and I see the great scaled head of a dragon slung low in its pursuit and he’s wearing a tuxedo and the coat sleeves are too short and his tie is crooked and he says, Okay let’s take a chance let’s fall in love and I find I want to stop but I turn to my right, to the first door and I step toward the teacher’s desk and there is a vast shining light sitting there, an apple in front of him on the desktop, and I know the light is God and I have no answers for his questions and I look around for Citrus, she’s had some experience with this dude, but she’s nowhere in sight and I look at him, I look at God, and he’s this big glob of yellow light, like if phlegm was a Christmas decoration, and I say, “The only way to love you is to hate religion,” and he smiles—don’t ask me how and I know I am inside their heads, even now, as if they were of my own species, I have read Digger and Misty and Mary and Jared but I am not happy about this, I find, and yet I turn to the only one left, to Trey, to Trey the most devoted gambler from this bus of gamblers, and I am before the slot machine I’ve searched for all my life and it’s big and it’s bright with lights and it smells of lavender and cookie dough and it’s the Mama Slot and there’s no scale of winnings printed on it and there’s no place for cash, it’s credit only, but that’s okay I’ve got my Player’s Preferred card and it’s attached to me, clipped to my pocket on a springy cord, like my mittens on the cuffs of my winter coat, and the card’s coded with all the money I have, every penny, and everything else I have, too, my clothes and my furniture and my pots and pans and my potholders sewed by hand by my mama and the card’s got all my jokes, too, on its magnetic strip, and all the tricks I know to try to beat the odds and it’s got my memories, every job every girl every drunken night, everything, and I slip the card into the slot in the face of the machine and I pull the handle and the windows whirl and whirl and whirl and I can see my mama there in the whirling like this is one of those old peep-show machines and she smiles at her little boy and the front door is open and the snow is swirling in all around her and she’s clipped my mittens to my sleeves and she says, Go on now, Sweetie, and the light at the door is blinding white with the snow and with the morning and I’m trying to figure my bet, which normally should be easy, this game’s a child’s game and it’s a thousand to one, ten thousand to one, that if I go out the door and down the street and into the school, she’ll be here at the end of the day waiting for me, but this morning the snow is sparking in and I’ve got a gambler’s hunch that it’s time to stand pat, the odds are clear that you’ve got to draw the card but something’s in your head saying not to do it, but I’m just a kid and I don’t understand and she says, Go on now, you’ll be late, and I’m feeling if I go out the door, she’ll be gone when I get back home, but I don’t trust my hunch and I go on out and one by one the windows in the Mama Slot stop whirling—click, she’s at the kitchen sink—click, she’s falling with her hands clutching her heart—click, she lies dead on the kitchen floor and she’s alone and so am I, me and a lifetime left of hunches and I struggle to find my way back, it is time to find my way back to my own self, whatever that is now after all the years of voices and dreams, for I feel I am somehow changed. For one thing, I am ashamed at my powers, I am ashamed to be eavesdropping on these dark and private and vulnerable minds. So I stride up and down before the twelve doors and I wave my hands and I cry, “Come forth,” and there is a stirring inside these places, inside the dark gape of these doorways, and I grow suddenly afraid, afraid even of these twelve, and then they appear, each doorway fills with a familiar self, and I say, “Hi, my name is Desi.”

  15

  And the next thing I know, Edna has appeared beside me and she is making our guests feel right at home and telling them all about the Chicken Wiggle and her green salad with homemade Thousand Island dressing—no secret really, she confides, ketchup and mayo and sweet pickle relish—and they all seem entranced with these details and my wife Edna Bradshaw herds the twelve into a tight little gaggle—she is very skillful at this—and she moves them off down the corridor toward the Reception Hall. She looks over her shoulder at me and says, “You come on along whenever you feel ready.”

  She is a thoughtful wife. She is a prescient wife. Perhaps she knows more about what is inside me than I give her credit for. Perhaps they all do. Perhaps I know nothing about these creatures. I trail along. I am sad that I am outside the gaggle. But it is my fate.

  We go in to the Reception Hall and the bus still sits in the middle but now, near the door, there is a great round table covered in a white cloth and set with thirteen places.

  “Please,” Edna says and motions to the table. “There are place cards.”

  And the twelve degaggle, pouring around both sides of the table looking at the cards. I step to the side of my wife Edna Bradshaw.

  “There are only thirteen places,” I say.

  “Well I will certainly have my hands full serving all of you,” she says. “I’ll just catch a bite in the kitchen.”

  “I am sorry,” I say.

  “This is all you’ll need to know about Earth. No need to go bothering everybody down there.” Edna is making the statement that asks a question, for she is looking at me, waiting. She has asked, Are you still planning to go show yourself at midnight? I am afraid the answer I have for her is not the one she wants to hear. So I say nothing.

  And there is a ruckus near the table.

  “You can’t be doing that,” a voice says. I look up. It is Viola Stackhouse. Her arm is extended, her forefinger pointing across the table at Citrus, who stands by a chair with a place card in her hand. Arthur Stackhouse is already seated. Viola’s other hand rests on his shoulder. She adds, “I know whose place that is. It’s mine.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather sit by your husband?” Citrus says.

  “I’m happy to be next to our host,” Viola says. “I want to be there.”

  “I know who he is,” Citrus says.

  “We all do,” Viola says.

  “Do you? Not like I know.”

  “He held my hands,” Viola says. Then she bends to Arthur and clarifies, “Like a father.”

  “He’s the father of everyone,” Citrus says. “And he held my hands too. He held them and then he put me in my bed and he patted my hands. Patted them like a real father. Like the father most high.”

  “I could feel his heartbeat,” Viola says.

  I sense the snap of a head nearby. I look and Edna is thin-mouthed and brow-wrinkled, a look clearly intended for me.

  “I could feel his heart too,” Citrus says.

  Edna’s eyebrows plunge deeper and clinch toward one another.

  “So could I, when he touched my hands.” This is another voice.

  Edna turns to look.

  It is Claudia speaking. She goes on, “This is the spaceman’s way with people.”

&
nbsp; “I am a friendly guy,” I add.

  And the faces turn toward me as if they are surprised to find me present in the room. They all seem more comfortable speaking about me than looking at me.

  I take Edna’s hand and I say to everyone, “This is my wife Edna Bradshaw. We are a happy couple. My species can give a heartbeat to anyone, but I have given my heart to Edna.”

  She looks up at me and her brow has loosened, she is smiling and her eyes, once more, are filling with tears. She lifts up—I presume on her tippy-toes—and she gives me a kiss on the cheek.

  There are some sympathetic exhalations of air, wordless sounds that I value from this species, from the direction of the table: “Ah!” they say.

  “Can I sit at your right hand, Father?” Citrus says.

  “I’ve worked for NASA …” Claudia says.

  “It was my place card …” Viola says.

  “I can settle this easily,” Hudson says. “He needs counsel at his right hand.”

  “You people are nuts, if you ask me,” says Misty. “He’s a spaceman.”

  “He is Jesus come again,” Citrus cries.

  Misty quickly amends her statement: “No offense intended, Mr. Desi. I just mean we should accept where you put us.”

  “You mean no harm. Am I right?” Digger says to me, drawing near Misty and slipping his arm around her.

  “No harm at all,” I cry. “Of course not. Please. Sit down. I want you to break bread with a friendly spaceman and I will pick your brains.”

  No fewer than half a dozen of my guests go wide-eyed and recoil at this. Fortunately I understand right away. “Please. I am using a phrase I have learned from you. My species does not literally ‘pick at brains.’ Heavens no. I merely seek your advice.”

  Viola leaves her husband and moves around toward Citrus. “Then who shall it be?”