Phases of Gravity (28 page)

pointed to a cluster of weeds and bushes twenty yards across the low meadow. "That's where we had our old raft tied. Sort of a float. The water was only about seven or eight feet deep there, but I wasn't allowed to swim on the south side of it because it was filled with reeds and water plants so your feet'd get all tangled up. Pop'd rip 'em out every year and they'd be back every summer. He lost one of his old hunting dogs out there before I was born. Then one summer—it must've been during my third summer out here, I was about nine, I think—my dog Blackie got all tangled up in the stuff when he was swimming out to join me on the raft."

Dave paused and chewed on his stalk of grass. The sun was almost setting, and the shadows from the cottonwoods stretched far out over the dead pond. "Blackie was mostly a Lab," he said. "Pop gave him to me when I was born, and for some reason that was very important to me. Maybe that's why he stayed my dog even though I only saw him summers after I was six and Ma and I moved away. We didn't have room for him in Tulsa. Still, it's like he waited all year for those ten weeks each summer. I don't know why it was so important that he and I were the same age, that he'd been born almost the same time I was, but it was.

"So this one day I'd finished my morning chores and was lying on the raft on my stomach, almost asleep, when I hear Blackie swimming out to the raft, then suddenly the noise is gone and I look up and there's no sign of him, just ripples. I knew right away what must've happened, the reeds, and I dove off after him without even thinking. I heard Pop shout at me from near the barn when I came up, but I dove down again, three, maybe four times, pushing through the weeds, getting stuck down there, kicking loose and trying again. You couldn't see anything, and the mud alone would grab you up to ankle and try to keep you down there. The last time I came up I had the stinking water up my nose and I was covered with mud and I could see Pop yelling at me from the shore over there, but I went down again and just when I was out of air and the weeds were all wrapped around me and I was sure there wasn't any use of trying more, I felt Blackie, right on the bottom, not even struggling any more, and I didn't even go back up for air, I just kept pulling at weeds and kicking at the mud, still holding on to him because I knew I wouldn't find him again if I let go for a second. I ran out of air. I remember swallowing some of that stinking water, but goddamn it, I wasn't going back up without my dog. And then somehow I got both of us free and was pulling him into the shallow end there and Pop was dragging us both on shore and fussing over me and yelling at me at the same time, and I was coughing water and crying and trying to get Blackie to breathe. I was sure he was drowned, he was so limp and heavy he felt full of water. He felt dead. But I kept pushing at his ribs while I was throwing up water myself and I'll be damned if that dog didn't all of a sudden cough up about a gallon or so of pond water and start whimpering and breathing again."

Dave took the stalk of his grass out of his mouth and tossed it away. "I guess that's about as happy as I've ever been," said Dave. "Pop said he was mad at me for jumping in—he threatened to wallop me if I ever went swimming there again—but I knew that he was proud. Once when we went into Condon I was sitting in the truck and I heard him telling a couple of his friends about it, and I knew he was proud of me. But I don't think that was why I felt so happy about it. You know, Richard, I used to think about it when I was flying medevac in 'Nam and knew it was something more than just pleasing Pop. I hated being there in Vietnam. I was scared shitless almost all of the time and I knew it was going to kick the hell out of my career when they found out what I was doing. I hated the weather, the war, the bugs, everything. And I was happy. I thought about it then and I realized that it just made me damn happy to be saving things, saving people. It's like everything in the universe was conspiring to drag those poor sons of bitches

down, drag them under, and I'd come along in that fucking chopper and grab on and we'd just refuse to let them go under."

They walked back past the house, set up the grill next to the jeep, and cooked their dinner. The evening chill struck the instant the direct sunlight was gone. Baedecker could see two volcanic peaks catching the last light far to the north and east. They waited until the charcoal glowed white, singed the outside of their hamburger patties, added thick slices of onion, and ate ravenously, each opening a fresh beer with dinner.

"Did you ever consider buying the ranch and rebuilding it?" asked Baedecker.

Dave shook his head. "Too many ghosts."

"Still, you came back to live nearby."

"Yeah."

"I have a friend," said Baedecker, "who said that there might be places of power. She thinks we could do worse than to spend our lives searching for them. What do you think?"

"Places of power," said Dave. "Like Miz Callahan's magnetic lines of force, huh?"

Baedecker nodded. The idea did sound absurd.

"I think your friend is right," said Dave. He pulled another beer from the cooler and shook the ice off it. "But I bet it's more complicated than that. There're places of power—yeah—no doubt about that. But it's like we were talking about last night. You have to help make them. You have to be in the right place at the right time and know it."

"How do you know it?" asked Baedecker.

"By dreaming about it but not thinking about it," Dave said.

Baedecker pulled the tab on another beer and put his feet up on the dash. The house was only a silhouette against a fading sky now. He zipped up his coat. "By dreaming about it but not thinking about it," he said.

"Right. Have you ever practiced any Zen meditation?"

"No," said Baedecker.

"I did for a few years," said Dave. "The idea is to get rid of all the thinking so there's nothing between you and the thing. By not looking you're supposed to see clearly."

"Did it work?"

"Nope," said Dave, "not for me. I'd sit there chanting my mantra or whatever and think about every damned thing in the universe. Half the time I'd have a hard-on from erotic daydreams. But I did find something that worked."

"What's that?"

"Our training for the mission," said Dave. "The endless simulations worked pretty much the way meditation was supposed to and didn't."

Baedecker shook his head. "I don't agree. That was just the opposite. The whole goddamn thing, when it finally happened, was just like the simulations. I didn't experience any of it because of all the preprogramming the simulations had stuck in me."

"Yeah," Dave said and took the last bite of his hamburger, "that's the way I used to feel. Then I realized that that wasn't the case at all. What we did was turn those two days on the moon into a sacrament."

"A sacrament?" Baedecker tugged his cap down low and frowned. "A sacrament?"

"Joan was Catholic, wasn't she?" asked Dave. "I remember you used to go to Mass with her occasionally in Houston."

"Yes."

"Well, you know what I mean then, although it's not as well done these days as when I was a kid and used to go with Ma. The Latin helped."

"Helped what?"

"Helped the ritual," said Dave. "Just like the mission, the simulations helped. The more ritualized it is, the less thought gets in the way. You remember the first thing Buzz Aldrin did when they had a few minutes of personal time after Apollo 11 landed?"

"Celebrated communion," said Baedecker. "He brought the wine and stuff in his personal preference kit. He was . . . what . . .? Presbyterian?"

"It doesn't matter," said Dave. "But what Buzz didn't realize is that the mission itself was already the ritual, the sacrament was already in place, just waiting for someone to celebrate it."

"How so?" said Baedecker but already the truth of what Dave was saying had struck him on some internal level.

"I saw the photograph you left there," Dave said. "The picture of you and Joan and Scott. By the seismic experiment package."

Baedecker said nothing. He remembered kneeling there in the lunar dusk before the snapshot, the layers of pressurized moonsuit stiff and clumsy around him, the stark sunlight a benediction.

"I left an old belt buckle of my father's," said Dave. "I set it right next to the laser reflecting mirrors."

"You did?" said Baedecker, truly surprised. "When?"

"When you were getting the Rover ready for the trip to Rill 2 on the first EVA," said Dave. "Hell, I'd be amazed if every one of the twelve of us who walked up there didn't do something like that."

"I never thought of that," said Baedecker.

"The rest of it was all preparation, just clearing away inconsequentials. Even places of power are useless unless you're prepared to bring something to them. And I don't mean just the things we brought—they're to the real sacrament what the lump of bread is to the Eucharist. Then, if you come away the same person you were, you know it wasn't really a place of power."

"That's it then, that's the problem," said Baedecker. "Nothing changed."

Dave laughed and grasped Baedecker's upper arm through the thick jacket. "Are you serious, Richard?" he said softly. "Do you remember who you were and have any idea who you are now?"

Baedecker shook his head.

Dave said nothing. He jumped out to dump the last of the embers, bury them carefully in the sand, and stow the gear in the back of the jeep. He came around to Baedecker's side. "Move over," he said. "You're driving. I'm too drunk."

Baedecker, who had matched Dave beer for beer through the afternoon and evening, nodded and shifted to the driver's side.

The jeep's headlights picked out sagebrush and scrub pines as they drove slowly back. Clouds obscured the stars and the full moon would not rise for hours yet.

"Tom Gavin will never understand," said Dave. "The poor son of a bitch is so desperate for the sacramental element that he'll never find it. I've seen him on TV talking about being born again in lunar orbit. Shee-it. He talks about it and talks about it and doesn't have the least fucking idea of what being born again means. You were the one, Richard. I saw it."

Baedecker shook his head slowly. "No," he said. "I didn't feel it. I don't know what any of it meant."

"You think a newborn knows what it all means?" asked Dave. "It just happens and then you go about the mean business of being alive. Awareness comes later, if it comes at all."

They emerged from the canyon and headed across the last ridge before the switchbacks. Baedecker shifted into first gear and crept along the narrow jeep trail as slowly as the vehicle would allow. He felt sober, but he kept seeing rattlesnakes wiggling at the edge of the headlight beams.

"Being born again doesn't mean that you've arrived somewhere," said Dave. "It means you're ready to start the trip. The pilgrimage to more places of power, the doomed quest to keep the people and things you love from being caught by the weeds and dragged under. Stop here, please."

Baedecker stopped and watched while Dave leaned over, was quietly sick over the side of the jeep, and sat up to clean his mouth with water from an old canteen under the seat. Dave slumped back down, burped once, and pulled his cap low over his eyes. "Thus endeth the gospel according to Saint David. Drive on."

Baedecker slowed the jeep on the ridge before the switchbacks leading to the last canyon. Lonerock was visible two miles below, a few lights glowing between dark trees.

"Flick your headlights a few times," Dave said.

Baedecker did.

"Okay, drive on."

"Does Miz Callahan think the aliens drive UFOs with headlights?" said Baedecker.

Dave shrugged without lifting his cap. "Maybe they take EVAs."

Baedecker shifted down, missed his shift, ground gears, shifted again.

"Mmm, smooth," said Dave. "What did you think of my book idea?"

"Frontiers?" said Baedecker. "I liked it."

"You think it's a worthwhile project?"

"Definitely."

"Good," said Dave. "I want you to help me write it."

"Why, for chrissakes? You're doing fine."

"No, I'm not," said Dave. "I can't write the parts about the people for shit. Even if my work on the Hill gave me time to travel and do the research—which it won't—I couldn't write that part."

"The part about the Russian, Belyayev, was great," said Baedecker.

"I picked up all that crap when I was over there for the ASTP," said Dave. "The most recent parts are ten years old. The important part of the book will be what the four American guys are up to. And I don't want any of that Reader's Digest pap either—'Lieutenant Colonel Brick Masterson has since left the Agency to pursue a successful career combining his Austin beer distributorship and his part ownership in a string of lesbian mud-wrestlers.' Uh-uh, Richard, I want to know what these suckers are feeling. I want to know what they don't tell their wives in the middle of the night when they can't sleep. I want to know what moves them right down to the seat of their meat. I don't care how inarticulate we poor ex—jet jockeys are, I expect you to get in there with your little epistemological proctoscope . . . damn, that's good . . . I can't be too drunk if I can say that, huh? I want you to get in there and find out what we need to know about ourselves, okay, Richard?"

"I don't think so . . ." began Baedecker.

"Shut up, please," said Dave. "Think about it. Let me know by, say, right after the baby's born. We're coming back out to Salem and Lonerock a few weeks after that. Think about it until then. That's an order, Baedecker."

"Yassuh."

"Jesus," said Dave. "You ran over that poor snake back there and it wasn't even a rattler."

Lying on the sleeper sofa in Dave's study, Baedecker watches rectangles of light from passing cars move across the bookshelves and he thinks about things. He remembers Dave's comment, "I guess that's about as happy as I've ever been," and he tries to remember a comparable point in time for himself. Dozens of memories come to mind—from childhood, with Joan in the early years, the night Scott was born—but, as important and satisfying as each one is, it is ultimately rejected. Then he recalls a single, simple event that he has carried with him over the years like a well-worn snapshot, bringing it out in times of loneliness and displacement.