Brian Plante - The Astronaut.pdf

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THE ASTRONAUT
by BRIAN PLANTE
* * * *
Inspiration doesn’t always take the form you might expect....
In May of 2030, right after school let out for the year, my family moved from
New Jersey to Seguin, Texas, home of the world’s largest pecan, relocating us to
follow the company they both worked for. By June, I was bored to death. My
friends (all two of them) were back in New Jersey and I didn’t know anybody in the
new place yet, and wouldn’t until school started up in a couple of months. Each
morning, my folks would commute to their jobs in San Antonio, an hour’s drive to
the west on Route 10, so I was alone most of the day, spending my time just staring
at the ceiling of my bedroom or watching the Mars Channel on the holovision. The
Romulus had been underway for three months, with another three to go before it
made its way to the red planet, and even that was starting to get a little boring.
Among the few chores my parents gave me to justify my miserable existence
during those long summer months was to keep the lawn mowed. That wasn’t such a
big deal in New Jersey, where the grass only grew half the year, and the summers
were semi-bearable, but in Texas the heat was intense. It wouldn’t have been so bad
if the house hadn’t come with an underground irrigation system, since the grass
would have withered and blown away as the land turned back to the desert it
naturally should have been, but unfortunately for me this grass was lush and green
and it was my job to keep it that way. This was no small task in that scorching heat.
I had the lawn maintenance down to a weekly schedule, and one blistering day
late in June it was time to mow again. I was fifteen years old, and like a lot of boys
that age, I wasn’t particularly industrious when it came to performing slave labor.
Instead of mowing the lawn in the cool of the early morning, like any sensible person
would have done, I went back to bed after my parents had gone to work. I slept a
little more, stared at the ceiling for a while, and watched the transmission from the
Romulus for a couple of hours. By 11:00, the sun was high and the heat was building
outside, and then I had the mowing to do. What a jerk I was, huh?
So there I was in the noonday sun, sweating bullets as I finished up the lawn,
pushing the loud, stinky mower back into the garage, when I first caught a glimpse
of her . It was my next-door neighbor, and she was a major distraction. She was
probably twice my age, but a real beauty, with a pretty face, strawberry blonde hair
and a body to die for, dressed in khaki shorts and a Vikings football jersey. A boy
my age with serious hormone problems couldn’t have hoped for a nicer neighbor,
and I had struck gold.
She was sitting on a fancy riding mower, trying in vain to get the thing started.
A damsel in distress. I put away our mower and walked over to introduce myself.
“Hi, I’m Davy Carson, your next-door neighbor,” I said. “Got problems with
 
your mower?”
She looked flustered and startled when I spoke, then looked me over and
apparently judged me harmless. “Hello, Davy Carson. Pleased to meet you. I’m
Rosemary Horton.” Even though she looked like your typical Texas beauty pageant
queen, her voice had a flat Midwestern accent, not the local drawl. It was a
wonderful, pleasant voice. “You folks just moved in a few weeks ago, didn’t you?”
“Six weeks already,” I said.
“Oh, that long? I really should have come over sooner and said hello. I mean,
we’re neighbors and all. Is your mom at home?”
“No,” I said. “Both my parents are at work. I, um, take care of the house
during the daytime. Hey, would you like me to look at your mower? I’m pretty good
with my hands.”
“Could you? I mean, if it’s nothing too serious. My husband Richard bought
me this stupid thing so I can do the lawn myself, but I don’t know anything about
engines.”
Her husband. She was married. I looked at her left hand and there was the
ring. I was briefly disappointed—as if I’d really ever have had a chance with an older
woman like that! What a jerk I was.
“Let me see what I can do,” I said anyway.
I popped the hood and found the problem almost immediately. It was
something simple: a sparkplug wire had come loose and I snapped it back on the
plug.
“Try it now,” I said.
Mrs. Horton turned the key and the engine roared to life. She gave it some gas
and the mower jerked in reverse, back into the garage, before she slammed on the
brakes and stalled it.
“Shoot,” she said. “Say, Davy Carson, you wouldn’t like to make some
money mowing my lawn, would you?”
Well, there I was, this horny, pimply teenager with nothing but spare time on
my hands, and the gorgeous next-door neighbor was offering me money to work for
her. Was I gonna say no?
“I have to call my dad and ask if it’s all right to use our mower on someone
else’s yard. He’s a bit picky about his tools.”
“No, that’s okay,” she said. “I meant for you to use my mower. You can
drive one of these things, can’t you?”
 
I hadn’t driven a riding mower before, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I said
yes, and figured out how to run the thing real quick. I was always good with
machines, so it was pretty simple.
While I mowed her lawn, she went back into the house, and I couldn’t blame
her. It was hot enough just standing around watching, but Mrs. Horton’s lawn
wasn’t that large and the riding mower made quick work of it. I was putting the
mower back into her garage when she came out with a pitcher and a couple of tall
glasses.
“You look pretty sweaty,” she said. “Would you care for some iced tea?”
She looked so pretty. Was I gonna say no? We both had a glass, and drank it
there in the garage, using the hood of the mower as our table. It was probably the
best iced tea I ever had.
“So what do your folks do for a living?” she asked between sips.
“They both work for an electronics company in San Antonio,” I answered. I
almost asked her what she did for a living, but stopped myself. Women that beautiful
probably didn’t have to work for a living, and here she was, home in the middle of
the day. “What does your husband do?” I asked.
“He’s an engineer. He’s away on a long-term project right now, though.”
“Hey, my dad’s an electrical engineer,” I said. “What kind of project is your
husband working on?”
Mrs. Horton’s mouth opened to speak, but then she caught herself. After a
pause, she said, “I’d rather not say. It’s sort of a secret.”
I thought for a second about what kind of engineering projects were secret. It
could be government work, some sort of espionage or weapons program, or it might
be some overseas thing. Maybe something in the Middle East or an offshore rig.
Whatever it was, if she wanted to keep it secret, that was all right by me. It wasn’t
her husband I cared about.
“I understand,” I said, nodding my head like I knew something.
“And what do you want to be when you grow up?” she asked.
Ooh, that hurt. When you grow up. To her I was only a kid. I was a kid, but
back then, fifteen felt pretty grown up to me. I’m sure I blushed, because she looked
a bit startled, probably realizing she had hurt my feelings. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I
meant when you get out of school.”
“Well,” I said, “I think I want to be a pilot, and fly a spaceship, like the
Romulus , only we’ll probably be going to Europa or Ganymede instead of Mars by
then.”
 
Mrs. Horton looked surprised. “Are you following the Mars mission? I didn’t
think too many people were interested in the space program these days, since the
first couple of landings.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “Being an astronaut has gotta be the best job in the
whole world.”
“Well, maybe not everyone thinks so,” she said. “Besides, the spaceships are
all automated these days. They don’t really have pilots anymore.”
She probably thought I was just some starry-eyed dreamer, but I was serious.
“Well, pilot or not, any kind of astronaut job would be just great for me,” I said. “I
think they’re heroes.”
Mrs. Horton looked like she wanted to say something, but she just dazzled me
with her sweet smile and poured me some more tea.
“Davy, would you like to mow the lawn for me every week, as a regular job?
My husband won’t be back from his assignment for a while, and I just can’t handle
this mower by myself. You seem to know what you’re doing and I’d rather have a
friend do the job than hire some stranger.”
She called me a friend. That beautiful woman called me a friend, the first one I
had made in Seguin. Was I gonna say no?
She paid me ten dollars for mowing her lawn that day. It was a bit low for a
job like that, especially in that heat, but I didn’t say anything. After all, the riding
mower practically did all the work, and it was kind of fun riding it. And her iced tea
really was the best. And then there was her.
I would have done the job for free.
* * * *
A couple of months went by, and I learned that the heat in Texas in June
barely hinted at how hot it would get by August. I mowed both our lawn and Mrs.
Horton’s all summer long, and drank a lot of iced tea in her garage. We chatted
about the weather, the neighborhood, and Texas. She was originally from
Minneapolis, and missed having a real winter. I hadn’t been in Seguin long enough to
see what a Texas winter was like yet, but we both shared our mutual homesickness.
I also spent some time painting the ceiling of my bedroom. It took some
arguing, but my parents relented and agreed to let me paint it flat black, and then
decorate it with glow-in-the-dark stars. I even painted in a faint Milky Way diagonally
across the room. The overhead lighting fixture in the center of the ceiling became the
Sun, and I painted the planets in their proper orbits around it. Halfway between the
Earth and Mars I taped a small picture of the Romulus that I had printed from my
computer, and repositioned it each week to show it approaching the planet. Yeah, it
was a geeky thing to do, but it kept me busy.
 
Mrs. Horton was right about spaceships not needing pilots, and when I
investigated the Space Agency’s public information database, I learned that the crew
of the Romulus , typical of the previous two Mars missions, included one geologist,
one biochemist, and two flight engineers. The engineers were basically mechanics, to
insure that the equipment worked for the duration of the two-year mission.
I wasn’t particularly good at biology or interested in rocks, so if I was going
to become an astronaut, it would probably have to be as a flight engineer. It didn’t
sound nearly as exciting as “pilot,” but I was good with my hands, so it looked like I
was going to be studying engineering, like my dad. And apparently, like my
next-door neighbor.
Since school hadn’t started, I still hadn’t made any friends in the
neighborhood yet. Hardly anybody went outdoors in the summer heat, so I just
didn’t have any opportunity to meet anyone. As a result, Mrs. Horton became the
sole relief from my monotonous life. I started mowing more often than once a week,
and doing maintenance on her mower—cleaning it, sharpening the blades, changing
the oil, plugs, and filters—just so I could see her again and share an iced tea more
often. I was smitten with her.
The rest of the week, when I wasn’t watching the Mars Channel, I spent a lot
of time peeking out of my window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her coming and
going. I rarely saw her outside the house except for mowing days, and I never saw
any visitors show up at her doorstep, so maybe she was lonely, too, what with her
husband away so long.
One morning, while I was sleeping in, I was awakened by a phone call from
Mrs. Horton.
“Davy, I need you to do a big favor for me,” she said. Her voice sounded a
bit shaky on the other end of the phone. “I got called away unexpectedly, and I need
someone to look after the house for a few days.”
“Sure, Mrs. Horton, anything you want.”
I would have painted the house if she’d asked me.
“I have a house key hidden on the patio in back,” she said. “There’s a big
geranium pot on the far end, and the key is underneath it.”
She was trusting me a lot. I felt proud of that. “What do you want me to do?”
I asked.
“Could you please take in the mail and make sure the water’s not running?
Maybe turn the air conditioning down a little—the thermostat is on the wall between
the kitchen and the stairs. Oh, and water the houseplants in the breakfast nook and
the foyer.”
“Okay,” I said. “Is there anything more I can do? Is everything all right?”
 

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