Robert Butler - Mr. Spaceman

“I thought yes, for a long while, yes, at least to some extent, but now I am not so sure. Still, I must try. I must listen. I must learn. I … yearn for these things, my wife Edna Bradshaw. That is the word for what I do. Like all of you. I yearn. To seek. To know.”

“Do you also yearn to go down there and tell all those folks who are so full of themselves and have so many ways to hurt one another that they ain’t such big fish in the universe after all? Ida Mae Pickett, my best friend in the world for many years, she yearned once, too, she even said that word one day in the beauty parlor and I didn’t trust it in her mouth, not for one second. She yearned to go off to Montgomery, she said, and make a name for herself doing the hair of capital hostesses and lady lawyers and people like that and maybe even the hair of the wife of the governor of the great state of Alabama someday. And Ida Mae was back in Bovary in no time and she wasn’t talking about Montgomery — rather not say a thing, thank you very much for not asking — and it was plain to see she’d been yearning for the wrong things and found nothing but grief for herself. Don’t talk to me about yearning. Better you should just want a few things. You might can get something you want. But nobody ever gets a yearning, I bet. That just goes on and on.”

“Do you have only wants, my wife Edna Bradshaw?”

“I try.”

“But then is it not true that you yearn not to yearn?”

My wife flutters her hands and she looks here and there about the room. Clunkheadedly, I have made her uncomfortable. “I am sorry,” I say. “It is just a word. I have always scorned these bits of sound on this planet and here I am, pursuing my wife to a state of discomfy with a word. A word I think far too much about. Perhaps I am not in the real world now. Though I have never heard the word in question in the heightened discourse that has so interested me in the un real world. Oh oh, I yearn for Spaghettios! I yearn for a Twinkie! I yearn for TwoAllBeefPattiesSpecial-SauceLettuceCheesePicklesOnionsOnA SesameSeedBun! I yearn for the Breakfast of Champions! No! These are ‘wants.’ And yes, you are right, my wife Edna Bradshaw. I can have any one of them. So can you. So can anyone. It is simple! It is economical! It is America! I want! I want! I am my wants. I can have my wants. I can be me! I gotta be me!”

I find myself standing on the bed, straight and proud, my wife Edna Bradshaw’s face turned up to me in wonder. We consider each other for a long moment.

Then my wife says, “Desi? Are you all right, honey? What do you want right now?”

“I want what I cannot have. More time. I want to listen to our guests.”

“I can fix that, honeybun. Please. Sit down.”

And I do. I sit before my wife, my mate, my spouse, my old lady, my better half, my helpmeet. Though my mind is careening on. I sit.

Edna Bradshaw says, “We should have a nice fancy sit-down supper for everybody. You can talk with them all and you can see how they are together.”

I grow floppy with appreciation at my wife. “This is a very good idea,” I say. “But there is so little time.”

“Have you forgotten who you’re married to, Mr. Spaceman? I’ll have things ready in plenty of time. It’s only right, anyway. You wouldn’t want our guests to sleep through this special New Year’s Eve.” And the wife I clearly remember marrying, Edna Louise Bradshaw, bounces off the bed. “If the dinner’s a big success maybe you won’t have to go down there after all.”

I do not have the heart to argue this point with her. Perhaps her want has turned into a yearning. Not that creatures on this planet — or any planet in the universe — can get even all their wants , either. But I want to obey the powers that sent me to this world, even if I do not want to do the thing they ask of me. And I must obey. But I do not speak these thoughts to my wife, and at this moment I am grateful for the barrier between our minds.

“My mind is on the job already,” she says. “Don’t ask. Don’t ask. It’ll be a surprise. You’re in the hands of an expert at this, if I do say so myself — and I just did — though I hope you won’t think I’m being too prideful. But you do have a choice to make. It must be chicken. Without knowing anything else about this mixed group we have here, you can go wrong with all other main dishes except chicken. Chicken is safe. That’s not the choice I refer to. I just want you to consider two things right now, however, Desi. Chicken Lickin’. Or Chicken Wiggle.”

She pauses as if the salient qualities of these two things are already apparent to me. Since her earlier observations about my physiology, I find myself inordinately conscious of my mouth. It has drawn tight, I think. Edna observes this.

“Silly me,” she says. “Chicken Wiggle. We’re talking boiled chicken cut into chunks. Onions, canned English peas, Worcestershire sauce, pimento, mushroom soup, chopped bell peppers, a dash of Tabasco. All mixed with egg noodles. And then with Chicken Lickin’ it’s baked whole chicken dipped in milk and creamy peanut butter with paprika and Accent and … wait a minute.” Edna slaps her own forehead. “Stop right there. We don’t know if anybody has a peanut allergy. That can kill you dead.”

She looks at me. I am still stuck on boiled and cut and baked chickens. Perfectly innocent birds, it seems to me. Perhaps with their own feelings and their own language rivaling Eddie the yellow cat’s in complexity. My wife would never consider boiling, cutting, and baking Eddie.

“So it’s Chicken Wiggle,” Edna says. “That settles it. I may have to get you to beam me up some Worcestershire sauce, but I think I’ve stocked up on everything else.”

And she disappears into the bathroom to dress. I can hear her whistling.

“That is a happy tune,” I say.

“It’s ‘Dixie,’” she calls from the bathroom. “Happy and sad, really.”

“Happy and sad,” I repeat, but low, only for myself. There is a sound of water running now. I wish there were a chicken before me, to apologize to. But that is not the true issue, I realize. The sad things are complex, too complex for me to deal with at this moment. And yet, I am happy at the wonderful plan that my wife Edna Bradshaw has presented to me. We will have a nice big supper before I descend to the planet Earth. If it is a success, I will know what to do, what to say when I go down there. I will ask all my guests to put their heads together to help me.

I feel bloated with weariness. I am so weary I cannot even hear the music of sleep beginning to shape in me. I am that weary. And it is all right now, to sleep. Edna will wake me for the supper and until then I can sleep. Still, something in me wants to hear another voice. It is not so easy to abandon the pattern of my professional life, no matter how weary I am. And I am weary. I should sleep. I should sleep but I rise up from the bed and I go to the door that leads into the corridor and before I move to open it I can feel that there is someone on the other side. I know this as surely as if a member of my own species were standing there, waiting, placing his presence in my head, placing his consciousness there. Her presence. I realize there is a female on the other side of the door. I imagine that it might indeed be a member of my own species. A supervisor come to give me last-minute instructions or to fortify my courage.

I move my hand.

The door opens.

And it is Claudia.

I look instantly to her hands, though I know I have her weapon in my Hall of Objects. But I also had her in her sleeping space, unconscious. Anything is possible. But she simply opens her empty hands before me.