Rick Moody - The Four Fingers of Death

Palace intrigue was much more interesting, but there was no choice, having suited up for a solid hour, but to stand out there in space and repair the solar panels, which are essential to the circulation of oxygen, redundant computer systems, the operation of our thrusters, all of which made it possible for us to fly this soda can across the solar system. And even though we have layers upon layers of solar panels, the kind that you probably have running your hot water, there is the ever present possibility of asteroids or microscopic meteors. We couldn’t let the panels deteriorate. In the next half hour or so, Jim and I were doing just what we had trained to do. And, frankly, this was the moment when I started to see what a good guy Jim Rose was. We had the years of training, the months of vomiting in the zero-gravity training, all of that stuff, we had dinner together, our families, at one of those chains near Jim’s place in Florida, but I never quite thought I knew the guy. There was always his reserve. His wife, Jessica, had that look that wives get when they’re trying their hardest to appear like the women behind the men. Chafing at the burdens the whole way. And the four kids were mute, perfectly dressed, almost starchy, obscenely well behaved. Jim strode among and around them as if he had no idea they were there. At the salad bar, I saw him get the thousand-light-year stare, and he attacked this solar panel with the same kind of intensity. He didn’t just fix a solar panel, he applied himself to a solar panel as though it were a codex from a tomb in ancient Egypt that was going to tell of the secret prehistory of man. All I did was hand him the appropriate tools. That said, there’s nothing like standing out in space with someone.

When he had finished, Jim said, reopening the com channel, “ Excelsior , solar array is back online. Houston, repairs complete; we’re heading for the hatch door. Please confirm.”

After a long delay, one of the innumerable faceless voices from Houston came over the open frequency. “Roger, Captain Rose. We hear you. Fine work.”

He handed me the power drill and I holstered it.

“How sturdy you think these tethers are, Jed?”

I used to know the load rating, because it was in the manual somewhere, and I was good at memorizing this stuff. Supposedly, we could tow an entire extra ship on one of them if we had to, because in space nothing really weighs anything . But that didn’t mean I didn’t panic a little when Jim said, “Let’s live a little, Jed.” After which he jumped .

He was feeding out the tether, you see, and I watched as he drifted off the Excelsior , my bunkmate. I watched as he swam around, like a circus clown in limitless space. His breathing was in my ears, as if he were whispering innuendoes to me. And I didn’t realize how long it had been since he talked, how captivating his gymnastic demonstration was, until he said, “Come on and join me, my friend.”

May I digress for a moment? Because I have a tale to tell along these lines. A tale I cannot avoid telling. About how much trouble I had learning to swim . This is another of the things that I might not have entirely confided to the NASA people, back when I was filling out the psychological profiles. This story takes place back on the Jersey Shore, kids, which is where we used to go in the summer when I myself was a stripling (my father was a night watchman, and my mother was a math teacher in an elementary school). Well, kids, there’s no easy way to tell this story, so I will tell you what I remember, because this is what I thought of out in space, I thought about how I used to attempt to go swimming with my brother, Nick, and how Nick was always the stronger swimmer, and how one day in a riptide, I just looked up to watch my brother carried out to sea. At first, it was sort of a funny thing. At first he fought a little bit against the rip, laughing and waving, and I watched him bob there, and then his laughing gave way to yelps and cries, and I looked back behind me for the lifeguard, who was far enough down the beach that I would have to run for him. Or I could try to swim for my brother, and at first I did try to get into the water, and I shrieked to the people on the beach with me, My brother is being carried away, my brother, my brother , and there were large men bellowing and there were women in bikinis running down the shore to fetch the lifeguard, and I could see Nick’s hand waving, I could see his little digits just above the waves, the five fingers of his hand. As long as I could see his hand, his palm facing me, then he was there, and if the seconds passed as I waited, the spume of the waves gathering around me, at least he was still there. We shared a small room, Nick and I, and we knew a lot about each other, like I knew that Nick hated sports, and Nick felt that he was letting my father down, all the time. Although he wasn’t doing anything of the kind. He was a swimmer, he was a strong swimmer, except on that day, on the Jersey Shore, nobody was a good swimmer, and people were shouting at him to head parallel to the shore, Don’t try to swim in , these people called, Swim along the shore! Nick felt that he was letting our father, the night watchman, down, but no one was letting the old man down like I was letting him down, and I ran to the snack bar, and I called my parents, because I could hear someone else calling the paramedics on another phone, a pay phone, and the two conversations were rubbing up against each other and making it impossible for me to talk to my mother, who always thought we were safe on the beach because there were lifeguards on the beach, and we had grown up beside the beach, at least in summer. I couldn’t hear the questions my mother was asking, because the other conversation was happening, and some guy with a really big belly and shorts that sagged below his belly was yelling at the 911 people, and I kept telling my mother that Nick was out there and couldn’t get back in, and a man on a surfboard began trying to thread his way between the waves, and another lifeguard was running up the beach, and people were gathering, and the lifeguard nearest plunged into the water, and I thought if I could still see the five fingers of Nick’s hand, I thought if I could see his hand, then things were all right. I suppose I imagined that I could still hear him laughing, I thought I could hear the laugh that I had heard before, and all the conversations I had had with him that very morning, but in fact I couldn’t see him anymore, because you know what they say happens in those circumstances, what they say happens is that you get tired, you get tired from all the swimming, and then you just can’t keep your head above water, and it doesn’t matter how strong a swimmer you are. Eventually, there is that moment when you know what is going to happen but you are no longer able to forbid it from happening. I didn’t want to think about this, that day, and I didn’t want to think that I couldn’t see Nick’s hand waving to me, and I didn’t want to think that if I had been a stronger swimmer I could have gone out there after him, and I didn’t want to think about where he had gone, because he had gone someplace where they couldn’t find him, down the fathoms, and even the men in the speedboats, and the men on the Jet Skis, they couldn’t find him, until later, much later, when he washed up. I think it was Sandy Hook, where he washed up, or maybe it’s just the poetry of that name, because if you are going to have a place of shame and self-hatred and loss, and the sense that what was good about life is all gone, then that place should have some kind of lovely name, so that you are not prone to forget it, and that’s why when I think about having been a brother and being a brother no longer , kids, I think about Sandy Hook. (He had to be identified by his dental records.) And they named a football stadium after him at our high school. I often dreamed that I was running into my brother’s arms. Long after. In my dream, my brother, Nick, was standing waist-deep in the water, as I had been, and my brother was standing in the water and he was so happy, and I went running into his arms.