Mr. Spaceman Read online

  The light finds me. I can wave it away, but I do not. I am all right now. I am determined to reassert some measure of power over these words. I have so adamantly established the premise of my masculinity in order to emphasize that in spite of that masculinity, as a member of the primary species on my planet I am free to give the beats of my heart through my fingertips—which is the most intimate of our physical sensations—to anyone, without cultural stigma. I could do so with a male as readily as a female. There are other, gender-defining parts of our bodies, and certainly they are effective in reproduction only in certain prescribed ways, but the pleasure of their use in interpersonal communication is not seen as a matter subject to cultural restraints—unless, of course, made exclusive by a formalized commitment. They are surface parts, after all. And even with the deepest part, the truly hidden part, the most intimate part, we acknowledge no limitation in its sharing. We can choose to share our hearts with anyone.

  I realize that a meditation like this is a dangerous distraction. It is not my own kind that I must come to understand. When I descend from this machine, a solitary spaceman, to bring, in the vision of my body, the central message of the universe to this place that has lived too long in cosmic loneliness, I must know who it is that will look upon me. They do not have hands like mine. They cannot freely give the beating of their hearts.

  And now my wife Edna Bradshaw rushes into the room, the tracking lights flaring upon her, her face tight from concern. “I heard you scream,” she says. She is before me now, her hands fluttering as if they feel their own genetic inadequacy.

  “I sang.” I do not wish to raise these complex issues with my quick-to-worry Edna and so I offer not a lie but an incomplete truth.

  “Does that pass for singing where you come from?” Edna asks, and I do not hear even a trace of suspicion in her. She is simply filled with fascination and wonder. Her Enquiring Mind Wants to Know. I put my hands upon her bare arms. I give her my heart, pulse beat by pulse beat, taking pleasure in who she is.

  “Oh you spaceman,” she says and she draws nearer and puts her arms around me.

  Though my species is free to give love to anyone, I feel very happy, holding my wife Edna Bradshaw, that I am who I am.

  She turns her face and lays her head on my chest and says, “Desi, you know I’m not the kind of woman who is always prying into her hubby’s work.”

  She pauses as if for me to affirm that I do in fact know this assertion to be true. I try to understand her. She has used a word that is unfamiliar to me. I say, “Am I the hubby?”

  “Yes, my sweet spaceman, you are the hubby in the picture. Of course, this was true of me with my previous husband as well. I would not pry. I am not a prier. As you may recall my saying, he was a telephone installer, and I always declined to inquire about his wires and his receivers and his clicky hold buttons and so forth.”

  “And you have continued this policy with your spaceman hubby. Yes, I can affirm this to be true of you.”

  Edna burrows closer to me. She says, “But now that I’m seeing firsthand how you talk to my fellow Earth people, and since I’m kind of helping out, welcoming them and cooking for them and so forth, it’s sort of like I’m working with you, wouldn’t you say?”

  Before I am able even to comprehend her question—my mind is always lagging her words by a few moments—Edna goes on, “Even if you wouldn’t say it like that exactly, we are coming to the close of the century, if you don’t mind my saying so, and though my daddy taught me to act certain ways and though there were similar certain ways that folks in Bovary always thought were the right ways for a wife to act, I’ve been taking some mighty big leaps with you, Desi darling, more or less strictly on faith, and I just need to ask you this one thing about your work. Do you have some kind of master plan here for the human race? That is, for the folks on Earth, ’cause you certainly seem real human to me. Of course you do. I’m talking a little stupid now. I don’t mean to suggest you’re not part of, well, the human race. But you are a spaceman. And you’re doing all this interviewing and studying and you do have all these wonderful and pretty scary machines. I’m running on at the mouth now. I know that. But it’s because I’m just a little bit nervous about all this. You know?”

  And now she stops speaking and pulls back from me far enough so that she can look into my face and finally await an answer. My mind has fallen far behind. But she is keeping silent, letting me catch up. I say, “We spacemen wish to understand.” I want that to be sufficient, but Edna continues to wait. I say, “We go here and there, as a species. We listen, we watch.” Again, I wish to reveal no more.

  But Edna, for all her self-deprecation, is smart. And I am her husband. Even with her species’ characteristic lack of telepathy, she often senses true things about me, things I sometimes am only barely aware of myself. She knows I am being evasive. I try to think how to phrase a further revelation to her. But before I can speak, she begins again.

  “I guess I did actually pry a couple of times, with my ex-husband,” she says. “Well, not pry, exactly, because I had fit reason to ask a few questions. He came home from work one lunchtime, and I had made him a Baloney Surprise, which I don’t have to go into, but it is a surprise, I can tell you, and a very pleasant one. But he wasn’t saying much and I happen to look out in the driveway and it seems he’s not driving his telephone-company truck any more. He’s driving a cable-TV truck. I did ask some questions that day and got some answers I probably could’ve done without, except I had to know sometime that he was going to leave me so he could fulfill his lifelong dream of participating in the fast-growing and exciting business of cable TV, leaving behind his job that involved the same old telephones day in and day out. Is it something like that?”

  She hesitates again. “Something like what?” I say, and I ask this from a genuine state of confusion.

  Edna replies, “Like I really need to know and I’m probably going to find out anyway sooner or later but I’m going to get mighty uncomfortable with the answer and wish it was later?”

  I say, “I am devoted to you, my wife Edna Bradshaw.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Edna says. “That’s the most important thing. Course, the destiny of the whole planet Earth is pretty important, too. But I love you, Desi, and I know you wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  I wish to put my wife’s mind even further at ease but suddenly, beyond her, in the doorway, a silhouette appears, an unexpected visitor, the lights rush to the spot and once again it is the young woman called Citrus, and she lifts her arms above her head and she makes a sound that I presume passes for singing where she comes from and Edna starts and screams and Citrus undulates into the room, her arms waving above her as if they are growing on the ocean floor.

  7

  I think, as the young woman who calls herself Citrus falls on her knees before me, that my appearance on the eve of this planet’s millennium will come with the effect of a Baloney Surprise. No, perhaps I am wrong about that, for though my wife Edna Bradshaw said the dish was a great surprise—as I imagine it surely must be, knowing both the substance and the cook in question—and in this, my analogy is apt enough—she also said the surprise was a pleasant one. Of that, concerning my mission, I am quite doubtful, even for those like Citrus, who is now clutching at my legs and crying “Hosanna in the highest.” She is not afraid. She is not hostile. But somehow this does not seem Baloney Surprise–like for Citrus. She is in a state of extremity that surely is not pleasant for her. I am anxious to hear her true voice.

  Edna bends to her. “Honey, now get on up. You’ve got your hands on my husband’s cute little boney legs and I’m going to get jealous in a minute here.”

  Citrus suddenly looks Edna square in the face, making my wife shrink back from her. “He has come,” Citrus says.

  “Honey, we’ve got to get rid of that black lipstick and that spiky hair. I’ll be happy to give you a Mary-Lou’s-Southern-Belle-Beauty-Nook special for free if you just get up now.”
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br />   I say to my wife, “I believe there is a significant residue of recreational drugs still in her system. This is why she cannot sleep. It may also account for her mistaken impression of your spaceman husband.”

  Edna whispers to me, loudly, “I’d say there’s a significant residue of church in this girl, as well, Desi honey.”

  “Holy holy holy holy,” Citrus says.

  “I’ve always been a churchgoing woman, more or less,” Edna says.

  “Hallelujah,” Citrus says.

  “But I’ve got to tell you, the folks in Bovary who’d be most dead-set against my marrying you would be the churchgoing folks, if they knew the true facts of my disappearance.”

  Citrus, who has prostrated herself before me, rises suddenly up high on her knees, the light flashing on the metal studs and rings which pierce her face and ears, and she lifts her arms, her hands blooming in reverent supplication before my face. She cries, “Praise God. Thank you for your Son who you have allowed me to gaze upon.”

  “This girl needs to lie down,” Edna says.

  I say, “Perhaps it is time for her delicious country breakfast.”

  At this idea, Edna lifts her hands high before her, palms up. For a moment she and Citrus share what appears to be the same gesture, though they are surely in quite different states of mind. Edna says, “I am such a fool. And a bad hostess to boot. Keep an eye on this poor girl while I go get her what she needs to fix her up.”

  Edna rushes away and I am left with a renewed outpouring of reverence from this mouth that I must admit scares me. I am not used to lips in general, but this blackened slash of a mouth—this deep-space rift that is compulsively shaping words—is particularly frightening for me, its apparent conviction of my beneficent importance notwithstanding. Perhaps Citrus does indeed need a makeover from the cosmetological wisdom of Bovary, Alabama. Though her boyfriend seemed quite devoted to her in our Welcome-to-the-Spaceship Party. But I share my wife Edna Bradshaw’s concern with Citrus’s chosen appearance.

  She falls forward again on her face, crying. “Lord, I will wash your feet with my hair.”

  “Please,” I say, bending now and taking her by the arms. Though I do not give her my heartbeat through my fingertips. I merely pull at her, and she goes quite heavy in my hands, straining downward.

  “Oh my,” she says. “All these toes. So many toes.”

  Like the fingers on my hands, there are eight toes on each of my feet, exposed now, from my casual interviewing attire, in the very largest-sized flip flops.

  “Of course,” she cries. “Of course, Lord, you are blessed with toes, your toes are multiplied according to your righteousness.” And she strains harder, saying, “I will wash your feet with my hair like the sinner woman at the house of the Pharisee.”

  And my hands lose their grip and she dips her head and sharp pains begin to bite and bite at me. I look. Her hair is as black as her lips and done into lacquered spikes. These poke and poke at my feet.

  “Please,” I say, trying again to pull her up. I am very strong for my species, which, pound for pound, is notably stronger than the primary species of this planet, but I am struggling with this woman’s ardor. I say, “Please. Your hair is not suited for the task you have given it,” and at last I am succeeding in pulling her away, though she continues to strive to thrash her head against my feet.

  She says, “I’m not worthy, Lord. It’s true.” And she abruptly yields completely. As if our gravitation devices have suddenly failed, she rises up quickly at my efforts, and now she is standing before me. Her eyes search my face. “I didn’t know God had so many toes.”

  I say, “That is an issue for which I can offer no insight. I am certain, however, that you have insufficient evidence of God’s toes by numbering mine.”

  I have confused her with my words. She is staring hard into my face. I wave my hand between us. I wave it again over her head. She sighs and closes her eyes and opens them and her eyes widen and she says, “What the fuck?”

  I believe that I have revived her.

  “Miss Citrus,” I say, for that is her chosen name at this level of consciousness.

  “Oh my God,” she says.

  For a moment, with her renewed invocation of a deity, I think she has slipped back once again to her twilight state. But, as this world’s words so often do, hers slip away from their apparent meaning, for she adds, “You look like a fucking spaceman.”

  “More precisely, a standing spaceman.”

  She jerks backward, begins to look frantically around her. I wave my hand once more between us and she grows calm. She is ready to speak now.

  I call her by her official name, which I have learned in full from her Texas driver’s license. “Judith Marie Nash,” I say.

  And she acknowledges this name. “Yes?” she says.

  “Please sit here.” I motion to the visitor’s chair in the center of the room. It is already bathed in a soft white light. She moves to it without further urging and she turns and sits. I go to my place before her and sit in the shadows.

  “Please now,” I say. “Speak to me.”

  And I am Judith Marie Nash. I used to dream about the nails in Jesus’ hands and feet. Not the way my daddy would have me dream, I’m sure. My daddy is a man of God. My daddy would take his Bible and it was bound in beautiful calf-skin leather and the paper was so thin and crinkly and yet so strong that not a page of it was torn no matter how many times somebody had rushed through looking for the Word, the Holy Word, but he would take his Bible and hold it up when my brother and me and my mama was sitting around the living room with him and we were all doing our prayers and our studying, he’d hold it up high. And that Bible, full of God’s Holy Word, would droop in his hand, it would just go limp over his fingers, the thick shaft of pages, the two page-marker ribbons dangling down. It was so supple. So supple and skin-smooth. And I would have these thoughts. And they would seem to come straight from the mouth of God, straight from His Word. This Bible being held up like that felt like a real private thing. I mean a private thing about a man’s body. You know the thing I mean. I don’t know why, when I’m talking about how I grew up and all, that I start feeling the taboos again about these words—I mean, of course, a man’s cock. I knew—part of me knew—that it was a terrible thing I was thinking. But another part of me thought it was all right. And it wasn’t like the part that felt it was all right was the future me, the me that my father would be expecting to go straight to hell. It was the me still believing in the Holy Word. Because every word was true in that book. Every one. True like cosmic true. True in your soul and in the marrow of your bones and true by every hair on your head, which are all numbered by God—you can read that in Matthew chapter ten verse thirty. And, of course, every other hair is numbered, too. How could anything escape the notice of God? He put hair on your head and he also put it around your cock, if you’re a guy, or your pussy, of course, if you’re a girl, and they’ve got to all be numbered, too, those hairs. So the fact that the Bible in my daddy’s hand made me think of a guy’s cock, it seemed right to me, by the Book.

  Just consider King David. How beloved he was by God. How great he was in God’s eyes. How God loved him to go out and deal with the bodies of Israel’s enemies. Because in the Word, which is true for all eternity—my own father taught that as the cornerstone of everything else—in the first book of Samuel in the Bible David fell in love with the daughter of Saul, who was beloved, as well, being made the first King of Israel by God as prophesied by Samuel, and David loved Saul’s daughter and what did he bring as a dowry for her? He brought the foreskins off the cocks of two hundred Philistines. He did. You can look it up in First Samuel chapter eighteen. I dreamed about that for a long while, too, even while I was awake. When I daydreamed of my own wedding, blessed by its true Bible-based holiness, and my daddy giving me away to a godly Christian boy, I dreamed of a dowry like this marriage that God had brought to his beloved David. I saw a great black case of fine, supple, calf-
skin leather, and it would be opened, and there they would be, laid out on blue velvet inside, those wonderful intimate pieces of flesh off the cocks of two hundred boys. Mostly the boys at Sam Houston High School in Waco, Texas, where I was a sophomore when I first started having this dream.

  Of course, my daddy couldn’t deal with the literal truth of that God-approved dowry of foreskins. He believed the things it was convenient for him to believe. Like the earth is six thousand years old. That was real important to him for some reason. But ask him why if a man is wounded in his testicles he’s cast out of the church, which is true forever and ever amen from the book of Deuteronomy chapter twenty-three, and you won’t get real clear answers from him, even though, as the father in the family, he’s God’s direct representative with divine inspiration—that’s in the Bible, too, somewhere, and he wouldn’t let us forget it, but a guy who gets in an accident and his balls get hurt, why he has to be cast out of God’s house is something my daddy refuses to address. He even took my Bible away from me for asking. But my daddy put his own balls in a wringer over that. He wanted me to study the Bible so that I’d be a worthy daughter of a Godly man like him, which everybody in Waco knew about him. But how could I do that if he had my Bible? So he had to give it back to me and then he put me under threat of hell not to read certain parts of the One and Only Holy Book of the Creator of the Universe, literally true in every word. But then there was the guy that God got real pissed at and smote dead just because he touched the ark of the covenant when he was only trying to keep it from falling on the ground when the oxen that was pulling the cart it was on stumbled. Course my daddy would say that God could get killingly angry at anybody He chose to and nobody could question that, because He’s God. And the same goes for God’s direct representative in every family on Earth. Him, for example, my daddy.

  And then I read in the Bible that if a son—and you can imagine they wouldn’t go any easier on a daughter, harder if anything—if a son doesn’t obey his parents, even just to eat too much and drink too much, then the parents are supposed to take him to the elders and have the son stoned to death. This is what God wants, according to his Holy Word. I sure wasn’t going to ask my daddy about that one. I’m sure he’d checked that out already and was irritated at Big Government for making that kind of holy justice pretty hard to get away with these days. These days being the corrupt End Times, of course. A disobedient child would be even worse than those kids who went up in smoke, and Daddy didn’t shed any tears for them, knowing how True and Beautiful was the judgment of God.