Reptile House Page 15

  Very late, in the trees, Roger Cotton found Stan Penrod in the woods on a gurney. He was alone and miserable. He was on his back strapped down to a gurney with only his head free to move. Roger Cotton shined the flashlight and Stan called out for help in that highly trained voice. Then the voice changed to a scream and Stan Penrod thrashed and the gurney bucked in the flashlight beam.

  “Get that light out of my eyes,” Stan snarled.

  He was in his pajamas with the top unbuttoned. His chest was open to the air. In a hole in Stan’s belly a medical fixture was drilled into the skin and fitted with a steel ring. The hole was smoking like a tiny dormant volcano. The whole assembly was an inch left of the belly button, rising and falling as Stan breathed. The steel ring would fit a cigarette or cigar perfectly.

  Roger held the flashlight to his face. “It’s me Roger. What are you doing here?”

  “What’s it look like?” said Stan, thrashing and thumping with his head. The gurney rattled.

  “I don’t know,” said Roger. “It’s confusing to see you.”

  Stan growled and gnashed. “Give me a cigar,” Stan said. “I need one or I’ll die. Be a pal.”

  “I don’t have one, I don’t smoke,” said Roger Cotton. “It’s late.”

  “Give me one or I’ll kill you.” Stan thrashed. His head pounded the gurney. The rake fell.

  “I won’t,” said Roger. “Settle down. Be quiet.”

  “I’ll settle down if you give me a cigar. I’ll be content forever. I don’t have all day.”

  Roger found a cigar in the leaves, then lit the match. The cigar fit snuggly in the steel fitting. The rain began on the trees around the clearing. Stan Penrod relaxed. His belly rose and fell as the smoke swirled down the shaft and in. The ashes drifted off. It was a beautifully quiet time for the two friends.

  “Are you happy?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Stan Penrod.

  When Stan started up again, Roger ran home. He went back in the morning for the flashlight and rake.

  Dear Kelsey,

  Thanks for your concern. It’s true, installations have become impossible. There was talk of permanent disability and workman’s compensation investigations given my exposure to various on-the-job chemicals. I’m skeptical. I’m sure I’ll be fine. I have friends and support.

  At home Roger Cotton watched reruns of Beyond Peacocks, formerly Martha’s favorite show. He didn’t know what she liked now. “Animals are so comforting,” she used to say when feeling low, and Roger Cotton felt this keenly now. Once, before the launch, a pair of young brother giraffes came for dinner. They sat with their legs tucked in the living room and lay their necks along the carpet to the dining room table.

  “This is a nice house,” said the first in the voice of a girl giraffe. His brother’s voice was much lower and stronger.

  “Very nice,” said the second, who asked Roger about his wife’s whereabouts. “Will we meet her this evening too?”

  “Shush,” said the first.

  “No, no, it’s fine really,” said Roger. “My wife is in Omaha. She works there.”

  After dinner the brothers went to the yard to stretch and the evening wound down. They ate the trees and then went home.

  “I think I’m going mad,” Roger Cotton told Albert Bunting soon after. They were in the grocery store line. “I think I’m dying, actually.”

  “They say if you think you are going mad, it’s a sign you can’t be,” said Albert Bunting. “And you don’t look sick. You have good color.”

  “That’s wonderful to hear,” said Roger Cotton. “I was getting extremely worried.”

  National Space Agency Employee Manual

  1. Chain of Command

  2. Duty and Responsibility

  Flowerpots lined the Frankincense driveway at intervals to the bottom steps of the back door. The flowers were exotic and not native to the region. Roger Cotton knocked. The doctor came to the door in his bathrobe. The man’s small thin wife hid behind the bathrobe with a steak knife.

  “The throbbing is preventing sleep,” Roger Cotton said to the doctor in porch light. “I need some more taken off.”

  “No,” said Dr. Frankincense. “You need to leave or I’m calling the police.”

  The doctor would have closed the door.

  “I’m prepared to inform the medical licensing authorities,” said Roger Cotton. He waved a paper.

  “What is he talking about?” said Mrs. Frankincense. Her husband held the wrist with the knife and whispered in her ear. She whispered back. She rounded her husband. She pulled Roger Cotton into the kitchen. She closed the kitchen door and pulled the blinds. She wiped the table before and after with bleach solution.

  Roger,

  Thanks for the pecans! I love pecans and most nuts! I shared them with the crew. Sounds like life is sort of difficult for you right now. I’m sorry. I hate to hear of people’s pain, but I know how that is. HANG IN THERE! They say the pinkie finger will be obsolete in less than fifty thousand years. Chin Up. I hope she comes back home to you soon. My dad knows the mayor of Omaha if you want me to share any of this issue with my trusted family, maybe they can help. They love whoever I love. They are wonderful! That hand sounds terrible. Don’t beat yourself up, Roger.

  Best,

  Kesley

  PS: I do accept good luck charms, since you asked. Just nothing over 226 grams, nothing flammable or hazardous. I’d be happy to bring it up there.

  Before the space program came to Omaha, the zoo was not much to speak about. But with the space program came a white rhino, a pair of pandas, and funding to build the beloved African savanna at the highest acres of the grounds. There, the lions and zebra roamed free but separated. Zoo designers and biologists were especially proud of the Savanna. It was on the front and center of all brochures, constructed with a tasteful concrete gorge dividing the enclosure in half. The gorge curved like a river. It ran between the lion’s hill and the zebra’s hill that had once been the very same hill when the land was prairie. After the space program came, one species could not possibly devour the other.

  “Hello, Roger. Roy here. Martha called about the car this week. She’s pissed. Maybe you should check with your wife on it. Roy, over and out.”

  The doctor sent his family to a hotel in Omaha. The doctor stayed to tie up loose ends in Lennox. The house went on the market on August 1. The family moved to Guam in August where his wife had family. Children were born and married in Guam with no trouble. The doctor’s practice thrived in Guam. They lived happily there. Lennox grew in the years to come. The population increased such that Lennox was nearly designated an “A2” city for purposes of federal grant funding, which could do such wonders for a community. It was like a dangling carrot. Private exercise clubs were built and the Y diversified. A small civic center was built then expanded to house an orchestra; an amateur opera banded and disbanded. The town forged an affiliation with an outlying prairie park with authentic prairie grass and reproducing herds of buffalo, which failed, and the buffalo were shipped to an up-and-coming park in Wyoming. Some Lennoxonians visited the family in Guam. It is a garden place. The wife did charity work with maimed people, the victims of war in war-torn countries. They changed to her maiden name after six months on the island nation.

  Kelsey,

  I so much want to go to space with you. How can I express it? I’ve written this essay on Time (enclosed). I’m sending too this amulet and chain. It’s near and dear to me and if you don’t mind, don’t open it. It’s Navaho. I’m just so pleased one small part of me can go to space, float there. This world is not for me.

  In college, Kelsey Starr wrote a short essay entitled “The Missing Color on the Universal Spectrum,” which she used for her application to Cal Poly, though her father had his doubts when he heard the subject matter. Belinda rubbed his back and said, “Don’t worry, we raised her right.”

  “It sounds too philosophical,” Jason Starr said. “They don’t go for that way-out stuff
at Cal Poly.”

  “Times change,” said Belinda.

  As the deadline loomed, Jason Starr tapped on Kelsey’s bedroom door daily to check her progress. As an alum, he had a stake in it.

  “Dad, trust me,” said Kelsey. “Go back to bed. I’m thinking this out.”

  She was still making revisions minutes before the January 1 deadline. Belinda often told friends about this tense time in their lives.

  “We just didn’t know,” said Belinda.

  The essay impressed the readers. Some thought it genius, some did not understand, but thought it impressive in its “attempting,” they said. “This brashness is very rare.”

  Kelsey Starr was never sick a day in her short life. Once, Kelsey got a black eye pitching softball, a terrible shiner, but Kelsey’s natural color had returned twenty-nine hours later after application of a Starr family salve made of arnica, Epsom salts, and rosemary. It was later written up by a much younger cousin as a science fair project.

  Once, when Kelsey Starr was in college, she went with her girlfriends to a fortune teller in Topeka. It was a schoolgirl lark. The practitioner wore a black beret and had a crystal ball that she looked into. She said Kelsey Starr would not live to her thirty-seventh birthday. When Kelsey Starr got famous, the fortune teller sold her story. Entire chapters and dissertations have been devoted to the significance of this seemingly small factor. What if, what if? Once upon a time.

  National Space Agency Flight Operations Manual

  1. Preflight

  2. Inflight

  3. Postflight

  4. CODE Procedures

  5. Fraternization Guidelines

  The blastoff was routine. Dozens of flower arrangements arrived at Mission Control, cards and letters from kids from her European tour, and packages with trinkets that people hoped might blast off with her and the other crew members. Kelsey took only one: a 224 gram silver amulet, Navajo-styled, sterilized, on a chain zipped up next to her skin under her jumpsuit. The protesters were on hand, of course, with posters and placards. They wore black and the males and females were indistinguishable. Their skin was painted ghoulishly like bullet-ridden victims.

  “Leave their moons alone,” they chanted.

  Security had been heightened due to the new CODE installation. The Catastrophic Order for Duplication and Epitomization hardware and software on the Gypsy VIII had never been tested on premortem humans. Up until Gypsy VIII, live mammals had been successfully duplicated under the CODE regime with great success from captive populations for repopulation projects all over the redeveloping world. Human cadavers had been used within ten minutes of death but the results were disappointing. It was designed to engage in the last sixty to ninety seconds of life of the subject astronaut in three stages. It had been controversial and expensive, and the naysayers were clamoring to shut the CODE Program down in its infancy. The CODE procedure included: Step 1 was verbal confirmation by the subject astronaut to base ship giving permission to enable the CODE body scan and thereby activate the duplication sequencing switch. Step 2 required the subject astronaut to manually engage the activated sequencing switch under the sliding slot on the left breastplate on her autonomous flight suit to initiate the actual CODE body scan. After the 3.4 second scan was completed, Step 3 required a second verbal confirmation by the subject astronaut of her personal password which, if correct, enabled transmission of two complete sets of blueprints, one to the Duplications Lab in Omaha where the subject astronaut’s body would be reconstructed, the other set to the base ship, and a copy sent on by the ship to the Records Room of the Library of Congress in Denver for perpetual open public access and scholarly pursuits.

  Gypsy VIII spiraled off in the spectacular blast with no incident and the crew went to work at once after passing our moon. They prepared experiments and checked and rechecked systems. It was a long trip out. They slept in shifts in bunks. They ate in shifts. They did daily physical exercises. They transmitted interviews with kids back home.

  “Do you like space, Kelsey?” the first kid asked into the transmitter face.

  “Yes, it’s wonderful, you guys!” said Kelsey into the transmitter face. “Where are you from?”

  “We’re in Kentucky,” said the first kid.

  “Is it better than you thought?” said the next kid. “What does space feel like?”

  “Yes, it’s strange. It’s light into my bones and head,” said Kelsey Starr.

  The kids laughed. “Like dizzy?”

  “Not really dizzy,” said Kelsey. “It’s dark out here,” she said. “Sort of like skating and swimming at the same time.”

  The kids laughed.

  “What’s your horse’s name?”

  “Buck and Candy. I have two.”

  “Are the meteors big?”

  “Some are a quarter the size of our moon. They get smaller from there. Some are the size of Omaha if Omaha was a ball.”

  “Will you bring a flag?”

  “No flags. It causes problems.”

  “What did you bring to space with you?”

  “Books to read, my parents’ picture, a pet rock.”

  “What color?”

  “Brown.” They laughed and laughed.

  “Do you ever wear dresses?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “Just enough to make us careful!” Kelsey Starr said. “Space is perfectly safe. We’ll be perfectly fine.”

  Later, the kids all jumped on their gym mats. The teacher could not settle them down until an hour after lunch.

  The crew physician said Kelsey should drink a protein shake, so she did in the galley. In the library she sent a message to her mom at 9 AM Lennox time and read a horse-racing report from Kentucky. She scheduled an interview with the Lennox High Science Club. She went to her bunk. She tried to imagine what Roger Cotton would look like if they ever met.

  Hey Roger,

  Thanks for the essay on Time. Nice work! How the heck did you learn about my Poly Cal essay? You sure are a clever one! I’m writing this message on the Gypsy VIII transmitter, of course, the one under a crew bunk. My space walk is tomorrow. I’m excited. The mission is going very well. Remember, Roger, that things are always better than you think. People can switch and change. When I feel down, I just count up all the people who love me. Chin up and happy raking. I hope your finger is better! Guam sounds nice. Send me a post card when you go and thanks for the spice kit.

  Best always,

  Comm. Kelsey Starr

  Gyspy VIII Deep Space Explorer

  1,335,357,880 km from Lennox, NB.

  PS: I finally met your wife. She’s lovely. We had tea on campus. I told her about the amulet. I hope you don’t mind.

  “Who were you writing to?” asked Commander Sean Griffin, who glided in for sleep shift.

  “A friend,” said Kelsey Starr and punched off the transmitter under the crew bunk.

  “What a smile, should I be jealous?” said Sean Griffin.

  She held out a hand to him. He gave her a back rub.

  They slept soundly in cocoons like baby mice.

  Roger Cotton made two trips to Guam later in life. He always brought his bike. The handlebars has been retrofitted to serve his special needs, an issue of balance and steering.

  The doctor’s wife wouldn’t allow surgical procedures in the house. The first time, the doctor rented a boat for the visit through PX connections for privacy. He brought his black bag with tools and suctions, ointments and gauzes in different sizes. The work on Roger Cotton was done in the galley unless the atmosphere was extremely hot. Roger drank vitamin water on the deck before being rowed ashore. The palm trees were taller in Guam than at the Omaha Zoo. Small night animals moved in black shrubs around the cove where the boat was moored, small but as hungry as bulls or cougars.

  “I’m glad to be free of it finally, you know?” Roger Cotton would often say.

  “Yes,” the doctor would say.

  “Every
one is a coward sometimes, I think,” Roger would say.

  “Yes.”

  There were spices galore in Gaum. It was a scented island, people said. Roger Cotton bicycled all over it.

  Lennox High School Mascot Manual

  1. Safety First

  2. School Moral and Sportsmanship

  3. The Beaver as Example

  Her space walk to M.Flg45x-27:23 began at 7:23 AM in the tricky meteor cluster. The ship maneuvered over as close as possible. Kesley Starr was still required by unforeseen positioning issues to fly for 12 minutes and 39 seconds. She secured her harness to the subject meteor with three anchor clips that she drilled in with a toe-crank and got to work.

  Her autonomous flight unit recorded the oxygen malfunction at 8:29 AM.

  “Kelsey, something’s up with your oxygen. Over.”

  “Roger that. My gooseneck scrubber is blown. Over.”

  “Kelsey can you secure the line? You are too far out for retrieval. Over.”

  “Negative. I can’t reach it. Over.”

  “Kesley, this is the commander now. Can you secure your line? Over.”

  “Negative. I have a jam. The gooseneck valve is blown to bits. Over.”

  Kelsey Starr kicked her legs. She groped behind her.

  She hopped on the meteor. She unclipped the first anchor.

  “A retrieval crew is deploying, Kelsey. Did you get that? Over.”

  She bounced to the second anchor and unclipped. The meteor was a bouncing beach ball. She bounced and it bounced.

  “Roger, that. It’s so beautiful here. Over.”

  She threw the beach ball in the air, a slow ballet. Sean Griffin came on.

  “Kelsey. Stay with us. We’re coming. Over.”

  “It’s a long way. Can’t wait to see you. How did this happen? Damn it. Over.”

  Her breath was noisy. The commander came back on.

  “I have to ask, Kelsey, do you want to initiate CODE? Negative or affirmative, Kelsey, on CODE? Please confirm Step 1. Over.”