The Continuing Adventures of Rocket Boy

  The Continuing Adventures of Rocket Boy

  Daryl Gregory

  This is not so much a science fiction story as a story about science fiction, and the magical thinking that is so attractive when you're a bored kid in Bumblefuck, Iowa.

  The Continuing Adventures of Rocket Boy by Daryl Gregory

  Writing "Rocket Boy"

  This is the first story I wrote after a long break from short fiction. I'd had very little time for writing for several years. Our kids were being born, my wife was getting tenure, and we had a mortgage for the first time, which meant I really needed to work full time. What writing time I had I put into a novel that failed to sell.

  Meanwhile, this story was brewing. Several of the ideas and scenes were in my head for years. But I didn't sit down to write it until I realized what the ending had to be.

  When I was sixteen, my best friend, Stevie, built his own spaceship. In a certain light, at a certain angle, it was beautiful: A rough cylinder over twenty feet tall, balanced on four thrusters, braced by stubby delta wings. The body and wings were warped plywood. The thrusters were four 50-gallon steel drums, painted black, rimmed in aluminum foil. Later, police determined that Stevie had packed one of the drums with plastic milk jugs full of hydrogen peroxide distilled down to hydrogen monoxide—homemade rocket fuel. People heard the explosion as far away as Boone, five miles west.

  I was a lot closer. At the edge of the field, maybe fifty yards away, both arms resting on the rail of a chain link fence. The fence stopped some of the bigger shrapnel, and that’s probably the only reason I’m alive. I carry my piss around in a bag now, and I stump around on crutches. But otherwise I’m fine. It’s just a body, after all. It’s not me.

  That’s what Stevie was always saying, anyway. I try to keep that in mind.

  The block where Stevie and I grew up looked the same as it always did: parallel trains of ranch homes parked under old pines and mountainous weeping willows. Some houses had gotten new paint, and a few back porches had become glassed-in family rooms, but nothing essential had changed. They were still just Masonite boxcars with small windows and big shutters.

  The real estate agent didn’t want to sell me a house here. She kept trying to show me the new “developments,” two-story houses on tiny, treeless lots on the north side of town where there used to be only cornfields. But I wanted to live here, on my block, preferably in the same house I grew up in. Stevie and I had grown up side by side, in houses so similar that our families could have swapped without having to buy new furniture.

  My old home, however, wasn’t for sale. My parents left it years ago, while I was at college, and moved to Arizona. The current owners had torn out the hedges and fenced the yard, but hadn’t changed much else. They parked a tow truck in front of the house at night. Months ago I’d had the agent make inquiries, but they didn’t want to move, even at 25% over market value.

  My second choice opened up all on its own. It was on the other side of Stevie’s house, well within the hundred-yard range I required for my project. The owners had been the Klingerman’s, people I’d barely known. They didn’t have children, but they did keep little yippy dogs, terriers or something.

  Stevie’s parents, the Spero’s, still lived in the same house. My new bedroom window faced the window to Stevie’s old room. The drapes were light blue now instead of Spider-Man red. My first night in the house, sleeping on the floor because the furniture hadn’t arrived, I could hear their new baby squalling.

  On summer nights, Stevie would shimmy out of his bedroom window, cut across the back yards, and hiss through my window screen to come sneak out with him. We were twelve, thirteen when he started doing this. If my parents were both asleep, and if I could work up the courage, I’d go with him.

  He was the same age as me, but ten pounds lighter, a skinny kid with pale, lank hair, thin lips, and translucent skin. Even by moonlight you could make out the blue vein that ran from his temple to his jaw.

  The park was five blocks away, the quarry less than a mile. We’d dodge headlights the whole way, pretending every car was a cop out to bring us in. We’d dive into a ditch, and then he’d look at me and say, Oh man oh man that was so close. We were scared of getting caught, especially by Stevie’s dad. Mr. Spero scared me more than anyone else I knew.

  But we went anyway. We built a fort in the trees beside the quarry. We talked about aliens and spaceships, but we didn’t know anything about real rockets, or real stars and planets. It was all Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica.

  The summer after seventh grade, we started making movies; really, one long movie with dozens of unconnected scenes. My dad had gotten a video camera for Christmas. It was a big, bulky thing, though we didn’t think so at the time. Since it was my dad’s camera, I was the Cameraman and Director. Stevie was in charge of Story and Special Effects.

  Most of the effects required fishing tackle. We strung ten-pound test line between the trees and glued hooks to the tops of the models. Stevie would pull the ships from twenty feet away, reeling them in with a fishing rod. I would lie on my back, a cassette deck held up close to the mike to provide background music, and videotape the ships as they jerked overhead. We wanted to get the stars behind them, like the opening scene in Star Wars. The stars never came out on the tape.

  We staged improbable space battles: a two-foot wide Millennium Falcon versus an eight-inch U.S.S. Enterprise, a couple of T.I.E. fighters vs. a Japanese Zero and an Apollo 11 rocket. We stuffed firecrackers into exhaust ports and turrets and blew them apart. We doused the models with gasoline, lit them (ignorant of the impossibility of fire in space), then yanked off the escape pods with fishing line.

  After Stevie died, the papers made a lot of this obsession with spaceships and explosives and fire. The Signs Were There, if someone had Only Paid Attention. Bullshit. Of course we were obsessed with spaceships and things that go bang. We were American boys in Bumblefuck, Iowa.

  “Timmy?”

  “Hi, Mrs. Spero. It’s just Tim, now.” She stood on her front porch, holding something that looked like a toy walkie-talkie—a baby monitor. The baby was somewhere inside; I didn’t hear it crying.

  “You’re moving in?” She sounded surprised and happy. I’d seen her look out her front window a half dozen times since the Atlas truck pulled up an hour ago. Time enough to prepare that happily-surprised voice. To remind herself not to look at the aluminum crutches.

  I nodded toward the two guys carrying a dresser into the house and managed a smile. “Sort of. Most of the furniture’s going into the back bedroom until I can get the carpets taken out and the floors refinished.”

  She stepped off the porch and walked toward the driveway, moving slowly, as if unspooling a safety line behind her. The baby monitor’s red LED pulsed every few seconds.

  Mrs. Spero had been one of the young moms, the hot moms, a fit-looking woman who pulled her hair into a ponytail when she worked and wore sleeveless shirts in the summer. Even before I hit thirteen I started watching whenever she reached to a high shelf, waiting for a glimpse of white bra and curve of skin.

  She was in her late forties now, and though still attractive she looked worn out. Her face was puffy, and she’d gained weight in her hips. Her eyes seemed to have sunk a fraction further into her skull. Had the new baby done this, or had the transformation started earlier?

  I told her my folks had gotten the Christmas card with the birth announcement inside. “William Ray. That’s nice. He’s what, eight months old?”

  She smiled, surprised. “Next Tuesday. We call him Will. You have a good memory.”

  She asked about my family. I told her my parents were looking f
orward to retiring in a few years. My older brother was still in grad school. My sister was in Maine, with a kid of her own.

  The monitor’s read-out rose and fell. I couldn’t help looking at it.

  She told me about my house and the neighborhood. Mr. Klingerman had died of a stroke, and Mrs. Klingerman moved into a home. She didn’t know what happened to their dogs. We talked about the new people on the street, and the few changes in town.

  “So, where are you working?” she asked.

  “Right here. In the house. I’ll be telecommuting.”

  “Oh. Right at home. Working on a computer, I guess?”

  “I analyze quality control data for a parts manufacturer.” Nine times out of ten, this is as far as I have to go to explain my job.

  “Well, that sounds…” She searched for a word. “You were always a smart one, Tim.” She glanced at the monitor, then back at her house. “I better get back.”

  “Can I listen?”

  She looked blank for a moment, then smiled. “Sure.”

  I held the monitor to my ear. The baby seemed to be sound asleep, each deep breath loud and fuzzed by static.

  “I can hear the ocean,” I said, and she laughed. I looked at the back of the device and noted the brand name. “This thing’s amazing. You can hear everything.”

  “Almost too much. Every little breath.”

  “I bet. Well, tell Mr. Spero that I’ll be here all the time,” I said. “If he ever needs anything.”

  * * *

  Stevie made bigger and bigger models out of painted plywood and pieces from other models. He blew them apart with M-80s that could rip open a mailbox. I wouldn’t give him my dad’s video camera anymore, but he stole a Super-8 camera and a projector from the school A-V room and switched to film. He couldn’t do sound anymore, but he didn’t mind. Video is a cold medium, he told me.

  One night the summer after freshman year, we were coming back through the yards at 3 AM. Stevie had the camera, and I was pulling a wagon full of props and models. We came around the corner of the house and saw Mr. Spero. He was sitting in a lawn chair under Stevie’s window, a plastic tumbler in his hand. I dropped the wagon handle, but before I could take off he told me to stand there, and I was too afraid to move. He made Stevie drop his pants, right there in front of me. Told him to put his hands against the side of the house. Stevie was already crying. Mr. Spero stood up, unlooped his belt, and folded it in half. He held it by the buckle, and slapped it against Stevie’s thighs. The boy yelped, and started bawling.

  I’ll give you something to cry about, Mr. Spero said.

  Sometime during the beating I ran to the back door of my house, not even bothering to sneak, and ran into my bedroom. My mom tried to get me to tell her what was going on, and I blubbered something about Stevie and his dad.

  A few minutes later, Mr. Spero was at our front door. My dad went to the door barefoot in his robe, and then he called me in to the living room.

  Did you sneak out? he asked me.

  I nodded.

  Don’t do it again, he said.

  And that was it.

  I stood there for a moment, stunned, and then ran out of the room. But I didn’t go far. I ducked into the bathroom and put my ear to the wall above the sink. Mr. Spero kept talking, in a low, spiteful voice. My dad didn’t say much.

  When Mr. Spero finally left I heard Dad say to Mom, That man’s the southbound end of a northbound horse. I was fourteen, and thought that was the wittiest thing my father had ever said.

  And then I started wondering. How long had Mr. Spero been sitting there in the dark, waiting for us?

  The baby monitor Mrs. Spero used broadcast at 43 kilohertz. I bought a scanner in Des Moines and tuned in to Radio William. I listened to him whenever he was on. The format was pretty regular: he cried, he breathed, he jabbered in his private language. I learned to differentiate the various cries, from hunger to anger. He had a special kind of yelp when he wanted to be picked up after his nap. Mrs. Spero would come to retrieve him, speaking to him in her calm way, and when she leaned into his crib it was like she was speaking into my ear. At night I would lie in bed and try to time my breaths to his, but he was too fast, like a rabbit.

  Mr. Spero was a background noise, a distant rumbling that occasionally resolved into words. I listened for any change of tone, waiting for the flat contempt he’d used with Stevie. That first week I watched him leave for work in the morning, and come home in the afternoon. He looked the same: pale skin and thin lips, hair combed back on his forehead in a mini-pompadour. Only the hair color had changed, from sandy brown to white.

  I unpacked, and shopped on the Internet. Most of the sites encouraged homeowners to be paranoid: about their babysitters, their housecleaners, or anyone coming within twenty feet of their front door. I was amazed at the range of equipment available. I put together a complete package for less than two thousand dollars: cameras, digital switcher, software, antennas, cables, everything.

  UPS delivered it in pieces over the next couple of weeks. I played with my new toys, and I listened to Radio William.

  All Stevie’s movies—our movies—were part of a long saga called The NovaWeapon Chronicles. The plot was impossible to explain, even to ourselves, and changed depending on whatever special effects were available. We shot parts of the story over and over when we changed our minds or got better models. There were large gaps in the story that we never filled in.

  Most of the “chapters” had to do with Rocket Boy, played by Stevie in black snow pants and a mesh shirt. Rocket Boy was the only kid our age (twelve, fourteen, sixteen) who could pilot his own starfighter in the Counter-Revolutionary StarForce, which we’d called the “Rebel Alliance” until some kids said we just copied from Star Wars. In the later chapters Rocket Boy became the strong silent type; once we’d switched to film we couldn’t record dialogue anymore. Stevie would act out Rocket Boy working on his warp engines, or at the controls reacting to unseen laser shots, or gazing meaningfully into the distance. I appeared in various roles, from Flight Commander to Alien Overlord. My younger brother was drafted into playing ensigns, lackey aliens, and especially corpses. Stevie said Hitchcock used Bosco for the shower scene in Psycho, but we found out that Karo Syrup was cheaper, and looked just as good. On black and white film, Karo looked more realistic than real blood.

  For the action shots, Stevie’s stunt double was a G.I. Joe with life-like hair and Kung Fu grip. We dressed up the action figure (never a doll), inserted him into scale models, and then punished him in various ways. One day during summer vacation—this was the year before Stevie died, in 1991—we threw the Joe off the side of the quarry about fifty times. It was ninety-degrees and ninety-percent humidity, and I was losing interest in the Chronicles. But there was nothing else to do, and Stevie swore it was a critical scene that he needed me to film. Rocket Boy’s starfighter had been hit, and his escape pod had burned up in reentry (or something), and Rocket Boy was supposed to parachute the rest of the way down. So Stevie stood at the top of the cliff with a handkerchief bunched around Joe, and I was at the bottom of the pit with the Super-8 shooting up into the sun. There was no wind down there and no shade and sweat was pouring off me.

  And the fucking handkerchief would not come open. Joe just crashed into the rocks, over and over. And every time he hit, Stevie yelled down, Did you get it? Did you get it? Like there was anything to get.

  After two hours Joe’s face was looking like he’d been in a knife fight. I climbed out of the hole with the camera hanging from a strap around my neck, yelling that it was his turn to sit in the pit and broil.

  Stevie was pulling on his shirt. His pale skin had turned bright pink, but before he tugged down the shirt I saw a dark stripe on his chest.

  What the hell is that? I said.

  This? He lifted his shirt. A long, thin welt, like a snake wending its way from his collarbone to his navel. That’s nothing.

  What did he use on you?

  Stevie shru
gged. One of my cables.

  Holy shit, I said. That had to kill.

  He shrugged. Not really. Pain’s just a signal from the equipment. Like a telephone ring. It only has to hurt if you decide it should hurt.

  He’d been talking like this all summer. The body is a machine, the mind is a pilot.

  Yeah, I said, you’re a regular man of steel.

  I’ll prove it to you, he said. Punch me.

  Oh you don’t want me to punch you, I said.

  This is an ugly thing that Stevie brought out in me. I was bigger than him, stronger than him. I could put him in unbreakable headlocks, manhandle him into closets, make him cry if I wanted. I didn’t do it often, but I liked knowing I could.

  So he tried to slap me and I knocked his hand away. Come on, come on, he said, and kept slapping. I fended him off, and flicked a few shots at his chin. He started swinging wildly, and I pushed his arms away, and then his fist connected with my lip. That pissed me off. So I socked him in the side of the head.

  He spun away from me, a hand over his ear. See? he said. His eyes were welling with tears, but he made himself laugh. Okay, good, he said.

  He charged at me again, throwing crazy punches, a tantrum, going for velocity and damage and not even trying to protect himself. You could only fight like this with your brother, or your best friend.

  We went on like that for a while, until I was straddled on top of him, my fist raised. But I couldn’t hit him while he was flat on the ground, bleeding, and smiling at me.

  He dabbed at his nose, and held up his red hand. Sprung a leak, he said.

  Sure, I said, and it doesn’t hurt a bit.

  Nope.

  Why’d you start crying then?

  He shoved me off him. Nobody has total control, he said condescendingly. Too many systems are on automatic. But I’m working on it.