Mrs. Harris puts a hand on Amy’s shoulder, smiles, and walks to the front of the classroom to resume hooking up the television. On loan from the A/V department in the library, the TV displays silent snow as Mrs. Harris struggles to attach the cable that runs in through the cinder-block wall beneath the chalkboard.
Normally you and Timothy Pitcairn are the only students in the G&T classroom at this time of day—the others are here just two periods a week—but today is special, which is why Mrs. Harris is setting up the television.
Amy looks to you again. You recognize the lilac scent coming off her hair, which is still damp from the shower, as White Rain shampoo, the same stuff your brother used on the long death-metal locks he sported before being transformed in rehab. White Rain is about the cheapest shampoo going, except maybe for Breck, and that is why your mother buys it.
You tense up under Amy’s calm gaze, and for lack of anything else to say you tell her, “We’re watching the Challenger launch today.”
“I know. I think everyone in America is watching the Challenger launch today.”
With a sense of relief you dive into a subject you can talk about at length. “Interest in space shuttle missions has been waning in recent years,” you tell her, “just like interest in the Apollo program declined following the moon landing. So NASA created the Teacher in Space program. The end result of which is what you see here today. Or what you will see, as soon as Mrs. Harris gets that cable hooked up. The first civilian in space.”
“It’s exciting,” Amy says. “Don’t you think?”
“Somewhat,” you say. “But really it’s just a public relations gimmick.”
Amy looks at you a moment. “You’re a special one, aren’t you?” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on,” she says. “This is exciting. The entire country has dropped what it’s doing and sat down in front of the television. We’re all watching the same thing at the same time. How cool.”
This is not strictly true, because although NASA has arranged for live broadcast of the mission into schools, the rest of the country will be seeing the launch on slightly delayed replay. Years from now many will recall having watched live when, in point of fact, the only people to witness these events as they happen will be America’s schoolchildren.
On the television an image flickers, then is replaced again by snow. Mrs. Harris, crouched behind the rolling cart, mutters to herself.
You watch as Timothy Pitcairn, who is retarded and easily bored, grows tired of waiting for the television to work and rises from his desk at the front of the class. He ambles up the aisle toward you and Amy. His face is perpetually ruddy, as though he’s always just finished an especially vigorous jump rope session. His eyes bulge behind thick lenses.
Standing between you and Amy, Timothy asks her his favorite question of friends and strangers alike: would she like to see his pistol?
Amy leans around Timothy to look at you. You shake your head gravely—no, she most definitely would not like to see his pistol. She looks up and smiles and says sweetly, “No, I wouldn’t. But thanks.”
Still crouched behind the television, Mrs. Harris calls out: “Timothy, sit down please.” Timothy laughs and makes an exaggerated sighing sound and does as he’s told.
“I thought this was the Gifted and Talented class,” Amy says, watching Timothy return to his desk.
“It is,” you say. “But technically we’re all special education. Just on opposite ends of the special spectrum. Really the thing is, Timothy’s the only retarded kid in school, so they just throw him in with us. He and I are the only ones in here full-time.”
“Why’s that?” Amy asks.
“Because,” you say, “regular classes don’t work for either of us.”
“I can hear the sound working,” Mrs. Harris says. “Is there a picture, kids? Can you see anything?”
You can. On the screen is an image of the Challenger, brooding on the launch pad amidst plumes of gray steam on a cold morning in Cape Canaveral. It is 11:32 a.m., and Mrs. Harris has solved her technical difficulties just in time, as the Challenger will lift off in only six minutes.
The G&T students answer Mrs. Harris’s question in the affirmative, and she emerges finally from behind the television cart, wiping her palms on the front of her skirt and peering at the screen. “Oh, perfect,” she says. “Drew, if you could close the blinds, and I’ll get the lights.”
The room goes dark, and immediately you are more aware of Amy’s presence, the scent of fabric softener on her clothes, the measure of her breath, even the heat from her body. You try to concentrate on the images on the television: a replay of the crew coming down the ramp, dressed in light-blue jumpsuits, smiling and waving to the assembled press; family and friends stiff with waiting and bundled against the cold, shielding their eyes from the sun as they gaze at the distant launch assembly. Despite this drama and anticipation, you are unable to draw your attention fully away from Amy, and while you keep your eyes trained on the television all your other senses are fixed on her.
The sporadic murmuring in the classroom ceases as the launch countdown reaches T minus 15 and things begin to happen. Beneath the shuttle a curtain of white smoke drops to the launchpad and billows out as the public affairs officer announces T minus 10. The PAO, incidentally, was selected for this job not only because of his background in aeronautical engineering, but for his soothingly authoritative voice—no matter what he actually says, it always sounds like “Everything’s just fine,” especially to children.
Whoever is producing the broadcast switches cameras, and now you’re looking at a close-up of the shuttle’s business end, the engines and solid rocket boosters, beneath which a flood of sparks shoots out horizontally, the world’s biggest pilot light. At T minus 6, fuel from the boosters hits these sparks and ignites in three distinct and massive orange fireballs. The fireballs soon narrow to white-hot cones of pure thrust, a physicist’s wet dream, and you can see the shuttle strain upward against the hold-down bolts like an angry Doberman at the terminus of its leash. The PAO counts down: “. . . four, three, two, one . . .” The hold-down bolts fire and the shuttle clears the tower and rises terribly. In the classroom two or three of the students gasp loud enough to be heard over the television. “And liftoff,” the PAO says, somewhat tentatively you think, and then, as the shuttle gains momentum, “. . . liftoff,” he says again, and this time you can hear the smile on his face, hear his heart swell with the courage of noble endeavor, and you, even you, find yourself moved by the spirit in his voice. Everyone claps and cheers. For a moment, as you watch the shuttle rise on a column of fire, you’ve forgotten about Amy.
She leans across the aisle, so close you can feel her breath in your ear. “You’ve got goose bumps,” she whispers. “I told you this would be cool.”
Your goose bumps develop goose bumps, and even though you’re still staring at the screen you are now only half-seeing what’s going on. As it arcs away from the launchpad the shuttle rolls 180 degrees, so that it is flying upside down. “Good roll program confirmed,” the PAO says.
Mrs. Harris stands to the right of the first row of desks, watching along with the students. Her arms are folded across her modest chest, one slender hand grasping the opposite slender forearm, and her dark eyes shine in the light from the cathode ray tube. When she was a girl and her last name was Augden, she used to stay awake to watch the Apollo missions as they came fast and furious during 1968 and ’69, one every few months, leading up to the first moon landing. Long after the public’s collective attention had turned to other things, Mrs. Harris had watched and read and otherwise kept up on the program, because she’d resolved, after Apollo 8, that she was going to be the world’s first female astronaut. Unfortunately for her, the America Mrs. Harris grew up in still indulgently patted the heads of little girls who said they wanted to be anything but housewives, despite the fact that by then the civil rights and women’s liberation movements were in
full swing. She’d applied to the Air Force Academy and been denied despite stellar grades, three varsity letters, and a recommendation from her congress-man, who was a first-rate patter of little girls’ heads but nonetheless willing to nominate her. Instead she’d gone to Hofstra to major in physics and minor in astronomy and had to watch as, only three years after she’d applied, the academy admitted its first female cadet. She realized, though, that even this girl wouldn’t be allowed to pilot a jet, let alone go into space, and the Apollo program was over anyway, so Mrs. Harris had patted herself on the head and gotten her degree and her teaching certificate and married Mr. Harris.
Eight years later the Teacher in Space project was announced, and Mrs. Harris thanked God she’d put off having children and applied and chewed her fingers raw while she waited. Two months later she got a phone call asking her to come to Washington. A week after that she was asked to go to the Johnson Space Center in Texas, where they examined and interviewed her some more, and though she’d done her best, though she had just the right educational background and she’d been running six days a week even though they’d never instructed the candidates to exercise, she knew even before the decision was made that she wouldn’t be the one. She predicted correctly that Sharon Christa McAuliffe would get the nod, and despite the fact that she believed Christa was chosen more for her ready smile and wholesome looks than her qualifications, Mrs. Harris wished her luck and hugged her in the cafeteria and returned home without resentment, grateful in fact to have seen the inner workings of the space program up close.
Still, it is hard, incredibly hard, harder than she had imagined, as she stands here watching the launch with you and the other students. In the darkness of the classroom she lets the tears come and allows herself to think words she would never say aloud, even if there weren’t children around: Goddammit that should have been me. I was so close.
The rumble of the booster rockets fades as the shuttle hurtles away from the camera’s microphone at a rate of 2,257 feet per second. The image of the shuttle moving silently through the sky takes on a surreal quality, is both peaceful and eerie all at once.
In addition to the PAO, you are able to hear exchanges between the Capsule Communicator and the shuttle commander, which consist basically of the CapCom saying something and the shuttle commander repeating it. For example, now: “Challenger, go at throttle up,” the CapCom says, and the reply comes, “Roger, go at throttle up.” The PAO says something about “Three engines now at one hundred four percent,” which jolts you because the average sixth-grader knows that is a mathematical impossibility and you would hope to whatever god exists that so would the people at NASA.
Just after the throttle-up exchange the view shifts suddenly, from the distant aspect you’ve been watching the entire flight to a blurred, shaky close-up. This shot makes you feel like you suddenly need glasses. You can make out the shape of the shuttle, the white swoop of its tail tapering into the fuselage, and the shadows of the booster rockets on either side with novas blazing at their bases. But everything is sort of indistinct and trembling, the background sky suddenly darkened to the perpetual night of the upper atmosphere. You notice that one of the novas has gotten greedy and is flashing from the side of the booster rocket now, and you have just enough time to consider that this seems very wrong, when like some horrifying magic trick the shuttle disappears in a burst of flame and smoke.
This is one of those mercifully rare moments when the mind flat-out refuses to process the signals it is receiving, and so it’s not that you can’t believe what you’re seeing, but that in a very real sense you’re not actually seeing it. To add to the burgeoning sense of unreality, even as the cloud of smoke and debris that used to be the shuttle expands and begins the slow-motion descent back to Earth, the PAO continues to rattle off telemetry—distance, velocity, altitude—as if nothing has gone wrong. Finally he looks up from his computer screen and goes silent for long, long moments.
In actuality the shuttle has not exploded. Rather, it has been ripped apart by sudden intense aerodynamic forces far beyond its performance envelope. The booster rockets, however, are more sturdily constructed, and they fly wildly away from the initial breakup, still under their own power, tracing slow, chunky vapor trails like illiterate skywriters.
In the classroom nobody makes the slightest sound, or even moves, except for Mrs. Harris, whose right hand creeps slowly up through the air in front of her and comes to rest, palm-down, over her mouth.
Timothy Pitcairn is the first to break the silence. “They died!” he says. “Mrs. Harris! They died!” For a moment he is delighted at his powers of deduction, bouncing minutely in his seat and clapping his hands, but then, as suddenly as if he’d been shot, all the energy goes out of him and he sits still and stares into his lap.
That should have been me, Mrs. Harris is thinking. She is thinking about the son and daughter Christa gushed about, pictures shared over the cigarettes they’d smoked on the bench outside the space simulation lab. Virginia Slims, needle-thin cigarettes Christa had produced from her purse, laughing, saying, I don’t even smoke, I don’t know why I bought these things.
Sitting there watching the vapor trails spread across the sky like unraveling intestines, you all wait in desperate silence for the PAO to come back on and say something reassuring, assert some control over this mess, wrestle it down, make it behave. Why is he leaving you here in silence, you wonder. You feel Amy’s palm slide down the back of your hand, and when her fingers interlace with yours and squeeze, you squeeze back. It is not nearly the thrill that it should be. It is bare comfort. And then, as the first pieces of the Challenger hit the water off Cape Canaveral, the PAO finally comes back on. Reluctantly, as though he’s being prodded with the point of a blade, he utters what may be one of the biggest understatements of the twentieth century: “Obviously,” he says, “a major malfunction.”
John Sr.
Major league scouts don’t wait long to start sniffing around young talent. Every once in a while I’d see one at Rodney’s Legion games, but they were just snooping back then. None of them approached me, but I always knew they were there. You can spot them a mile off. Mirrored sunglasses, bald heads scorched from sitting in the sun all day, every day. Cheap dress pants, the bottoms gone shiny from rubbing against aluminum bleachers and jet-liner seats. Usually they’ll have something in their mouth, a toothpick or a pen cap, and be chewing the hell out of it, because most of them are old ballplayers who’ve been trying to kick tobacco for years. Any two of these things together is enough for me to think: scout. But then there’s the really obvious stuff, too, like when one of them will get himself nice and comfortable in the bleachers, wolf down a hot dog from the Elks Club concession stand, wipe his hands on the front of his pants, then break out the notebooks and stopwatch and radar gun. When they make it that obvious, they want you to know they’re there. Because they’re getting serious at that point, and it’s time to start talking business.
Rodney is not a head of cattle, but that’s how most of these guys look at the boys they’re scouting. To them a kid isn’t a kid, but a commodity: an arm, a bat, a pair of legs. He’s an equation, a set of statistics worth a certain amount of money and effort to sign. They’ve got it down to a science. But Rodney’s game has blown their equations to hell. They fall all over themselves trying to convince me the team they represent is the best choice for him. They offer me money just to talk. No strings attached, no obligation, they say, holding out paper bags with cash inside. They ask me, What do you need? I tell them I need a lot, but I don’t plan to take it from them. It’s my boy you’re going to pay, I say.
Sure, they say, laughing in a way that’s supposed to make me feel like we’re chums, sure, but the boy’s only what, seventeen? As if they don’t know how old he is to the very minute. What’s a seventeen-year-old gonna do with the kind of money we’re talking about?
We haven’t talked about money, I say.
Well yeah of course but you
know what I mean. Rodney’s going to command a first-rate paycheck from somebody, and you know it. They wipe at their sunburned heads with handkerchiefs that are stained permanently yellow. Sometimes they clap me on the shoulder and I look at them in a way that makes clear we’re not friends and they don’t do it again.
I don’t have anything against these guys. They’ve got a job to do, and based on the look of them they don’t get paid very much to do it. I can relate. I try not to be an asshole but then again I don’t lie awake at night worrying about whether or not they like me. I lie awake at night wondering if I do a good enough job protecting my son.
Because the truth is Rodney needs protecting, there’s no two ways about it. I don’t like to say anything bad about my boys, and I certainly like Rodney better now than before, but obviously since his brain injury he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s so dopey that at first I thought maybe he was using again. That didn’t add up, though, because he wasn’t hanging with the jean-jacket crowd or cutting school. In fact he was, and still is, almost as dedicated to school as he is to church. Not that he does all that well, even in the program they’ve got for retarded kids, but obviously no one expects much from Rodney when it comes to the books. Besides, with his swing who cares if he struggles with simple arithmetic? He’ll never be able to explain the physics of that swing, and he doesn’t need to, because the results speak for themselves. From both sides of the plate, he’s got the best swing since Ted Williams. And that’s according to the man himself.
Williams took batting practice with Rodney’s high school team this spring. I’d heard he came here a lot, liked to fish up north for brook trout and had a hunting camp around Moosehead, so he knows people in the area. Apparently Williams took a bear hunting trip with Sammy Bowdoin’s father, who is a certified Maine guide. Sammy’s one of the pitchers. And instead of having Williams pay for the trip, Sammy’s dad asked him to take batting practice with the kids. Which Williams did. Just showed up one day and hooked his fingers through the fence and watched for about half an hour before anyone realized who he was.