The Last Starfighter

  “Wasn’t going to do ‘anything,’ Louis. Now go and get your brother.”

  “A dumb messenger, that’s all I am.” He climbed to his feet and stared longingly at the unsuspecting cat. Then he sighed and exited the yard, heading for the store and taking time off to fire a few desultory darts in the direction of old Otis’s chickens. They squawked and fled for cover, making him feel better. When you’re real small it’s important to know something’s afraid of you, even if it’s only a bunch of dumb chickens.

  As he walked he looked for Mr. President, Otis’s old hound. Mr. President, however, knew Louis from long experience. Since it was forbidden to chew the boy’s arm off, the dog had learned to avoid his approach. From beneath the cool safety of the trailer’s bulk, he watched Louis pass.

  Having taken as much time as possible to go from the trailer to the store, Louis finally mounted the steps onto the wooden porch. Store and porch had been there long before the trailer park, but the old wood was solid as iron.

  Louis crossed the porch, keeping an eye out for scorpions. His big brother was eighteen. To Louis that put him right up there with their mother, though not with Granny Gordon or Otis. Alex seemed impossibly tall to Louis, who knew for a certainty that he would never, ever reach such impressive heights himself. He’d also heard that Alex was good-looking, which just goes to show how much grown-ups know. Because Louis knew it for a fact that his brother was just a malformed klutz whose sole task in life was to make things unbearable for the only important human being on the planet, Louis Rogan.

  At times he could be neat to have around, though, like when they went swimming together. Louis conceded that as big brothers went, Alex wasn’t all that bad. But today he was going swimming with his own friends, and to compound the bad judgment, he was going swimming with girls. That lapse of taste Louis could never forgive.

  Now he strained to see past his brother’s ribs, looking at the videoscreen that was alive with flashing, rapidly changing lights. The images fascinated Louis. They were so alive, so full of movement and trickery. Alex ignored his younger shadow, letting his fingers dance easily over the multiple controls. Louis watched and tried to learn, knowing that Alex was a master at video games. Once he’d watched during a trip to the big arcade in town while other older kids oohed and aahed as Alex ran up several million points on Stargate, a game too complex for his ten-year-old mind to think of trying.

  But this new game, this Starfighter, was even more complex, with half again as many controls to manipulate. Yet Alex seemed better at it than anything else. Something one of the other kids had called “rising to the challenge.” Some kids wouldn’t even try Starfighter because it ate their quarters too fast. On a good day, Alex could play the game for hours on just one.

  When he wasn’t being interrupted, Louis reminded himself. So readily did he lose himself in the game that he’d almost forgotten what had sent him to the store.

  “Mom’s lookin’ for you, Alex.”

  “Yeah, sure.” His brother replied without taking his gaze from videoscreen. His arms hung parallel to the ground, still, relaxed. Only his fingers moved, depressing fire controls, adjusting thrust, guiding the tiny microprocessed gunstar through the maze of enemy fighters. It was very much a virtuoso display. Alex played the game as smoothly as Horowitz did his Steinway.

  “Come on, Alex. Mom’ll be mad at me.”

  “What for?” Bright blue light momentarily filled the screen, fading to reveal a new series of targets attacking faster than ever, relentless and uncaring. “She told you to come tell me she wants to see me. Okay, you’ve told me. You’re in the clear.”

  “Yeah, right.” Louis brightened, tore his gaze away from the motion-filled screen just long enough to locate one of the chairs that sat on the porch. Dragging it over, he climbed up onto the rickety platform. For a breathless moment he was an adult, as big as Alex.

  “Look out!” Somehow his brother avoided the wave attack from the left quadrant. Louis couldn’t imagine how Alex had seen the attack coming in time to evade. He swayed on the chair, mesmerized by the lights and sounds, waving and bobbing wildly.

  After all, it wasn’t his quarter at stake.

  “Get ’em, Alex, get ’em!”

  Get ’em Alex did efficiently, professionally, avoiding every attack on his own vessel while methodically eliminating everything the game could throw at him, quietly reveling in the simulated destruction and fully confident of his skills.

  Louis edged closer and closer to the machine, drawn by the sights on the screen. His small face was aglow with delight. Alex was so good it was more fun to watch him than to play yourself. Well, almost. So much pleasure, and all for a quarter. Being good helped, though. Somehow the game wasn’t as much fun to play when it only lasted a minute or so.

  “Blam, blam, blam!”

  “Cool the sound effects, Louis. I can’t hear the machine. And move your head, will you?”

  Once more the screen showed him the command ship. It loomed huge on the battle screen. He tried a different evasion pattern this time, hoping to avoid the squadrons of enveloping fighters that had shot him down the last time. It didn’t work. He was dead again.

  Dying a lot this morning, he thought.

  “Nuts!” He gave the console a whack before jamming both hands into his pants pockets. “Not fast enough. I should’ve had it that time.”

  A new voice chimed in. Both boys turned to see Otis staring at the screen. “Heard you almost hit eight hundred thousand, Alex.”

  “That was yesterday. Would’ve too, if Louis hadn’t bumped my hand.”

  “Did not! Wow!” Louis pointed toward the screen. “Seven hunnert and . . . and . . .” His face wrinkled up in confusion. The number was beyond him.

  Alex eyed the screen with careful indifference. “Seven hundred eighty-two thousand. Almost as good as last night.”

  “Yeah, and I didn’t hit your hand this time, neither,” Louis shot back.

  “No, but you stuck your fat head in my way.”

  “Did not!”

  “I heard you were in the millions last week on Stargate in town,” Otis said.

  Alex shrugged, concealing the pride he took in his accomplishment. “Yeah, but lots of guys do that around the country. Stargate’s easy compared to Starfighter.” He added casually, “Though I haven’t heard of anybody else breaking half a million besides me.”

  “Maybe you’d win a national contest if they held one.”

  “I guess I might have a chance. But only the big game companies run contests like that. Atari, Sega, Nintendo, Williams. I never heard of the company that makes this Starfighter game. Must be some new outfit.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe they will have a contest if they get big enough.”

  “Yeah. You going to pay my way to it, Otis?”

  The older man chuckled. “Not on my social security I’m not, Alex. Tell you what, though. You keep practicing and if a Starfighter contest ever comes up, we’ll see about gettin’ you to it.”

  Alex grinned. “It’s a deal.”

  Otis nodded to his right. “Looks like somebody lookin’ for you, Alex.”

  He turned, saw Maggie exiting the side gate carrying a picnic basket, towels and a small ice chest. The chest was sweating, suggesting inviting contents. At the same time a new pickup pulled in off the highway, rolled into the parking lot in front of the store. It was filled with kids Alex’s own age, all laughing and joking while fighting not to spill over the tailgate.

  “Come on, Alex, they’re here!” Maggie broke into a trot, managing her awkward burden easily as she headed for the truck.

  For an instant Alex wondered what the hell she was talking about. Then memories from real life came flooding in.

  “Silver Lake! The picnic. I forgot.” He started to run after Maggie.

  “Hey, Alex.” Louis pointed at the game. “You won a free credit.”

  “What about it?”

  “You just gonna waste it?”

&nb
sp; Alex concealed a smile. The greed was as bright on his little brother’s face as a thousand-watt halogen lamp. He deepened his voice, trying to imitate the game.

  “Starfighter Alex Rogan requesting permission to turn over gunstar controls to my little brother Louis, sirs.” A brief pause, then he added, “Telepathic communication confirms okay. She’s all yours, Louis.”

  Unable to believe his luck, the ten-year-old hastily wrestled the chair he’d been standing on around until it fronted the console.

  “Oh boy!” He hit the start button, his small fingers waiting tensely above the fire controls. Alien warships appeared on the glass, firing out at him. Grinning, Alex turned to follow Maggie while Otis just shook his head and started back toward his trailer. Louis’s excited voice followed both of them.

  “Okay, alien dorks, you’re dead, cause it’s me, Louis Rogan flyin’ the gunstar now!” A bright red flare filled the screen and Louis’s expression immediately became one of inexpressible disgust. “Oh, crapola! Gimme a chance, willya?”

  Everyone in the pickup was already wearing swimming gear. Well, he could borrow some, Alex knew, in case Maggie had forgotten his. Or he’d shock them all by swimming in the buff. Sure he would.

  It was Jack Blake’s pickup. Not that he’d expected anything else, just as there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Besides owning the pickup, Blake had money for gas. Money for gas, money for beer, for movies, for concert tickets. Which was another way of saying that his parents had money.

  What was it they’d learned from the Constitution? “All men are created equal.”

  Bullshit. When did he get equality with Jack Blake? Somehow the writers of the Constitution had left that one out. He’d asked his mother about it.

  “There are no guarantees in life, Alex, and it isn’t always fair.” That’s what she’d told him. Jane Rogan versus Thomas Jefferson, et al. From what he’d observed of life so far he’d long since decided he’d be better off listening to his mom than any of the founding fathers. Most of them had been rich, too.

  The pickup was a big, fat, bright red Dodge Ramcharger, with a chrome towbar on the front and four big bright deer spotters mounted atop the cab. Even the damn rollbar was chromed. Conspicuous consumption.

  Blake sat lazily behind the wheel, cowboy hat slightly askew, looking like something out of a sarcastic Waylon Jennings song, the kind Jennings used to sing back before he and Nelson got big, in west Texas towns like Breckenridge. In the back a couple of kids sipped cokes (the beer would emerge from hiding later, at the lake), leaning back in lawn chairs and soaking up the rays.

  Just plain unfair, Alex mumbled to himself.

  As he passed the row of rusty mailboxes mounted near the store he paused to peer inside the one labeled ROGAN in reflective plastic letters. A daddy longlegs scurried for cover as Alex’s fingers probed.

  Jack Blake waited behind the wheel of the idling truck, racing the oversized engine. He was fully conscious of his status in the local adolescent hierarchy and gloried shamelessly in it, not yet old enough to realize that it would all vanish the moment he entered the adult world beyond, where they didn’t give a damn about ostrich-skin boots or red pickups. For now, though, he was a king, and there was nothing altruistic or benevolent about his despotism.

  His eyes traced the outlines of Maggie’s body as neatly as Mrs. Hawkins’s opaque projector traced scientific drawings for projection on the screen in their darkened science class. Foxy chick, Maggie Gordon, even if she did hang around too much with that nerd Alex Rogan. Rogan was harmless, though. Beneath Blake’s notice.

  Cindy Hammond sat next to him, staring impatiently out the window, anxious to get to the lake. He looked forward to finding out if she’d fall out of her bathing suit. Such thoughts didn’t keep him from coveting Maggie Gordon. More important than having either one of them was having what was denied to him. It was the taking that was important, the acquiring, though Blake formed the idea in much cruder language.

  “C’mon, Alex!” one of the boys in the back yelled.

  “Pile in . . . Jump in, Maggie!”

  She handed up the basket, ice chest and towels, then climbed agilely over the tailgate, making sure to leave room for Alex to follow. She saw him inspecting the mailbox.

  “Did it come yet?”

  “Not yet.” Reluctantly, as though it might still appear, Alex shut the front of the box. It didn’t close all the way. Mailboxes never did. All manufacturers designed them so they wouldn’t close completely, Alex knew, on explicit orders from the post office.

  Seeing this, two of the guys in the truck bed began razzing the slow-moving Alex.

  “What is it this time, Rogan?”

  “Yeah, you joining the foreign legion or signing up for Space Shuttle school?”

  “They don’t take vidiots for Space Shuttle pilots, Rogan!”

  Not one to be left out of the chorus, Blake leaned out the driver’s window. “Yessir, folks, step right up and meet the boy adventurer Alex Rogan, on the last leg of his worldwide trip to nowhere.”

  Alex continued toward the pickup, a sour smile creasing his face. “Very funny, Blake. If you guys think I’m gonna stick around here, watch you shine your pickups, get drunk and vomit every Saturday night and wind up at City College like everybody else, forget it. I’m gonna do something with my life!”

  “You sure are, turkey,” said Blake readily. “You’re gonna go to work for old man Fargi fixin’ TV sets. I’ll remember what you just said when you come over to fix my big-screen Sony.”

  “You haven’t got a big-screen Sony, Blake.”

  The driver of the pickup smiled smugly. “No, but I’m going to, which is more than you can say for you, dumbutt.”

  Alex had a brilliant riposte prepared, but the duel was interrupted by a voice not as easily dismissed.

  “Alex?”

  Wincing, he turned to look back toward his tin house. It was his mom, sure enough, leaning out one window to call to him.

  “Alex, Elvira’s electric is out again.” Innocent enough on the surface, commanding underneath.

  The occupants of the truck were unable to stifle their laughter. His face burned. At least Maggie wasn’t laughing, though at this point that was small comfort. He tried to make his reply sound manly and forceful, to no avail. No matter how hard he tried it still came out sounding like a whine.

  “Ah, Mom. That’ll take all day. I was going to Silver Lake.”

  She nodded, looked sympathetic as she gazed past him toward the truck full of his friends. Unfortunately, someone had to fix the electricity, and Alex was trailer park repairman number one.

  “I’m working lunch and dinner at the cafe, Alex. I’ll be gone all day.”

  That was a low blow, he thought angrily. Why did mothers always have to fight like that? Must be a talent passed down from mother to daughter, one of the many unfathomable maternal secrets boys could never share. She wouldn’t think of ordering him to do it, oh no.

  He sighed, knowing that he’d already lost the battle, just as he knew she wouldn’t have asked him to do the work if she could have managed it herself.

  “Okay, Mom, I’ll do it.”

  She smiled back at him and he felt better. But only for a moment.

  Turning back to the truck he sought Maggie’s eyes. Maggie, who somehow managed to look twice as pretty as any other girl in town despite the lack of makeup and the baggy old sweatshirt she wore on top. He forced his reply. It made him sound noble, which was not how he felt.

  “You better go ahead,” he said.

  “No, I’ll wait for you.” Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, all the great tales of heroic love he’d studied in school thrilled him no more than those few words from Maggie.

  “No, this could take a while.” More than a while, but he needed to use the lie now, to spare both of them later embarrassment. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

  She understood. He could tell by the look on her face. It was a small consolat
ion.

  “Okay. See you later.”

  “Sure,” he muttered. “Later.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be lookin’ for you to fly over,” said Blake, leading the others in laughter as he peeled the pickup out of the lot and toward the highway.

  Alex could still hear the laughter in his ears long after the big engine had faded into the distance.

  2

  People who spend their lives in big cities see blue sky only on television. Oh, on rare clear days they may think they’re seeing sky blue, but it’s not real, only a fake faded blue like the kind used in dyed turquoise. To see the real sky you have to leave the city, get far away from the megalopoli. Out in the country the universe crowds a little nearer the Earth and the hues of the spectrum have meaning.

  The one other place where colors are always rendered purely is in any advertisement for faraway regions. This extended to the starfield map which covered part of one wall of Alex and Louis’s room. It was surrounded by equally garish, less enlightened posters reflective of the more mundane aspects of reality. The walls of the boys’ room were more colorful than their clothing.

  Especially that particular evening, when Alex finally shuffled into the room. He was exhausted and filthy. Beneath his nails was the kind of sand and grit you can’t wash out, the kind you learn to live with for days until repeated baths have soaked it away—the kind of grime that has the look and consistency of black concrete. Alex’s spirits were lower than the surrounding desert’s water table.

  The small desk was filled with notes and scribblings for school. He slumped down in the used office chair and swiveled to face the center of the room as he wrestled with his muddy boots, carefully removing them and setting them aside so as to dirty the floor as little as possible.

  Then he leaned back, letting his eyes focus on the mobile dangling from the ceiling. It pivoted in the light of sundown, aimlessly reflective, its indecision about how to turn a mirror of his own feelings.

  From beyond the thin wall and window came the conversation of neighbors. Alex recognized each one and began to silently mimic the rarely changing words.