Robert Butler - Mr. Spaceman

And the crowd picks up the count, and at “three” there are a million voices and by “two” there are a million more, and it is as if they have all accepted me, I am the lighted ball, I am the next thousand years.

“One,” Dick and the millions cry, and then there is a deafening cheer and an explosion of color overhead and it seems as if everyone in this vast crowd is waving at me, and I continue to descend, past the tower, past the upper floors of One Times Square, past the running electronic headlines, which already are picking up on Dick Clark’s scoop: HAPPY NEW YEAR. SPACEMAN LANDS IN TIMES SQUARE.

And I have been seeing all this from someplace near Dick but now I am in my descending body and the crowd is rising up toward me and the bodies surge and hands clutch upward and I want to stop my transport beam I want to throw it in reverse and climb away from these hands and these upturned faces and these are not smiley faces these faces are full of shock and clutch and greed and grab and the hands, the thousands of hands that have surged together right beneath me, are ready to do the bidding of these faces which I realize is to pull what they believe to be useful bits off of my body as if I were some ancient saint whose bones are cracked into tiny pieces and enshrined in churches all over the world and these hands are ready to do this reverent work this holy dismemberment and I descend and I am almost reachable now and I wish to cry out some greeting but no words will come I have run out of words and then there are hands on me ten thousand heartless hands and I am plunged into darkness and there is only Dick Clark’s voice saying, “Now that the spaceman has been torn to bits, it’s time for our spotlight dance.” But the music does not begin. There is silence, now, as well as the darkness. And then not even those things.

And my wife Edna Bradshaw is before me. “Honey, I’ve kept things warm for a few hours now because I didn’t want to disturb you, you’ve been so tired and you were sleeping so sweetly. But I think it’s time for supper and I was just fixing to set the table.”

I sit up and I realize I have slept a long while. “What is the hour, by Earthtime?” I ask.

“It’s getting on toward seven in the evening, Bovary Standard Time, as we used to call it,” Edna says.

“I am glad you woke me,” I say and I rise and I am struck by how far behind I am in my planning. I have not even decided where to appear, though I am prepared to take this most recent dream as prophetic, as well. In spite of Times Square having a certain intrinsic logic as my point of descent, I realize that I have already ruled it out. In the absence of more specific orders from my home planet about how and where I am to show myself, I am ready to allow my revelation to this world to begin more modestly.

“Thank you, my honeybun Edna Bradshaw,” I say. “You go on. I will wake our guests.”

“I’ve set us up in the Reception Hall,” she says and she scurries out of the room, leaving a scent of sweet potato pie in her wake.

I have eaten my wife Edna Bradshaw’s sweet potato pie before, prepared by her own hands for just the two of us on our honeymoon, which we spent hovering over Niagara Falls. Edna had always wanted to honeymoon at Niagara Falls. And with the smell of sweet potatoes, this Earth thing is happening to me again, this necessary engagement with all the stuff of the senses in the space between one mind and another, and I find myself hovering there once again and putting on my trench-coat-and-Chuck-Taylor disguise and scooting down to the planet’s surface with my bride and going with her to view the falls, which we did in the middle of the night, the water rushing past and diving into the dark, both of us excited, I think, at the risk of the moment, though at that time of night I could have controlled the consciousness of anyone who came near enough to find me actionably strange. We held each other and leaned over the rail and the spray battered us and we were, I realize, a tight little binary star system, the two of us, out on the far edge of some wispy galaxy, and I think for a moment I felt a sufficiency there, and I wonder if Edna Bradshaw felt the same way, if she was freed from further yearning in the spray from Niagara Falls.

But it is too late to ask. And I do not think the answer would reflect its light upon the questions that now hurtle themselves against me. And if there were a moment of complete contentment, it carried with itself the impossibility of its lasting, for in the next moment I surely looked back — my wife and I both surely looked back — and yearned for another moment as good as that one, and all things dissolved into change and striving.

And it is time for my last supper. And I must go and gather my guests. And I look back and I yearn for any moment but the moment that awaits me a few hours from now. And I go into the corridor and I glide along to these twelve where they mimic death and I will wave my hands and they will rise again and they will follow me.

I stop before them, twelve dreamers dreaming. And there are five places I have not yet entered, five visitors I will not have a chance to interview. I regret this, even as a familiar feeling comes over me, familiar and very strange at the same time. The five are clustered together at this near end of the sleeping corridor, three to my left, side by side, and two across from the three, also side by side. I look toward the first door to my left and I fall from the sky toward a bull’s-eye, the helicopter deck on a jack-up offshore drill rig, but there is no helicopter I am falling all on my own and I look at the next door and the flashbulbs are popping and I am crying already I am so happy and my glide on the Miss Texas runway is perfect with an invisible string attached to the top of my head and stretched taut all the way up to the sky holding me up straight and tall and beautiful like God’s prettiest toy his wonderful Misty the marionette and I look to the next door and I am feeling very uneasy suddenly and I’m running as fast as I can through the thick trees through the vine-tangled trees and I dare to make a quick glance over my shoulder and I see the great scaled head of a dragon slung low in its pursuit and he’s wearing a tuxedo and the coat sleeves are too short and his tie is crooked and he says, Okay let’s take a chance let’s fall in love and I find I want to stop but I turn to my right, to the first door and I step toward the teacher’s desk and there is a vast shining light sitting there, an apple in front of him on the desktop, and I know the light is God and I have no answers for his questions and I look around for Citrus, she’s had some experience with this dude, but she’s nowhere in sight and I look at him, I look at God, and he’s this big glob of yellow light, like if phlegm was a Christmas decoration, and I say, “The only way to love you is to hate religion,” and he smiles — don’t ask me how and I know I am inside their heads, even now, as if they were of my own species, I have read Digger and Misty and Mary and Jared but I am not happy about this, I find, and yet I turn to the only one left, to Trey, to Trey the most devoted gambler from this bus of gamblers, and I am before the slot machine I’ve searched for all my life and it’s big and it’s bright with lights and it smells of lavender and cookie dough and it’s the Mama Slot and there’s no scale of winnings printed on it and there’s no place for cash, it’s credit only, but that’s okay I’ve got my Player’s Preferred card and it’s attached to me, clipped to my pocket on a springy cord, like my mittens on the cuffs of my winter coat, and the card’s coded with all the money I have, every penny, and everything else I have, too, my clothes and my furniture and my pots and pans and my potholders sewed by hand by my mama and the card’s got all my jokes, too, on its magnetic strip, and all the tricks I know to try to beat the odds and it’s got my memories, every job every girl every drunken night, everything, and I slip the card into the slot in the face of the machine and I pull the handle and the windows whirl and whirl and whirl and I can see my mama there in the whirling like this is one of those old peep-show machines and she smiles at her little boy and the front door is open and the snow is swirling in all around her and she’s clipped my mittens to my sleeves and she says, Go on now, Sweetie, and the light at the door is blinding white with the snow and with the morning and I’m trying to figure my bet, which normally should be easy, this game’s a child’s game and it’s a thousand to one, ten thousand to one, that if I go out the door and down the street and into the school, she’ll be here at the end of the day waiting for me, but this morning the snow is sparking in and I’ve got a gambler’s hunch that it’s time to stand pat, the odds are clear that you’ve got to draw the card but something’s in your head saying not to do it, but I’m just a kid and I don’t understand and she says, Go on now, you’ll be late, and I’m feeling if I go out the door, she’ll be gone when I get back home, but I don’t trust my hunch and I go on out and one by one the windows in the Mama Slot stop whirling — click, she’s at the kitchen sink — click, she’s falling with her hands clutching her heart — click, she lies dead on the kitchen floor and she’s alone and so am I, me and a lifetime left of hunches and I struggle to find my way back, it is time to find my way back to my own self, whatever that is now after all the years of voices and dreams, for I feel I am somehow changed. For one thing, I am ashamed at my powers, I am ashamed to be eavesdropping on these dark and private and vulnerable minds. So I stride up and down before the twelve doors and I wave my hands and I cry, “Come forth,” and there is a stirring inside these places, inside the dark gape of these doorways, and I grow suddenly afraid, afraid even of these twelve, and then they appear, each doorway fills with a familiar self, and I say, “Hi, my name is Desi.”