Snow on Sugar Mountain

ELIZABETH HAND

W

HEN ANDREW WAS SEVEN, his mother turned into a fox.

Snow freed the children from school at lunchtime, the bus skating down the hill to release cheering gangs at each sleety corner. Andrew got off last, nearly falling from the curb as he turned to wave good-bye to the driver. He ran to the front door of the house, battering at the screen and yelling, “Mom! Mom!” He tugged the scarf from his face, the better to peer through frost-clouded windows. Inside it looked dark; but he heard the television chattering to itself, heard the chimes of the old ship’s clock counting half past one. She would be downstairs, then, doing the laundry. He dashed around the house, sliding on the iced flagstones.

“Mom… I’m home, it snowed, I’m—”

He saw the bird first. He thought it was the cardinal that had nested in the box tree last spring: a brilliant slash of crimson in the snow, like his own lost mitten. Andrew held his breath, teetering as he leaned forward to see.

A bluejay: no longer blue, scattered quills already gray and somber as tarnished silver, its pale crest quivering erect like an accusing finger. The snow beneath it glowed red as paint, and threads of steam rose from its mauled breast. Andrew tugged at his scarf, glancing across the white slope of lawn for the neighbor’s cat.

That was when he saw the fox, mincing up the steps to the open back door. Its mouth drooped to show wet white teeth, the curved blade of the jay’s wing hanging from its jaw. Andrew gasped. The fox mirrored his surprise, opening its mouth so that the wing fell and broke apart like the spinning seeds of a maple. For a moment they regarded each other, blue eyes and black. Then the fox stretched its forelegs as if yawning, stretched its mouth wide, too wide, until it seemed that its jaw would split like the broken quills. Andrew saw red gums and tongue, teeth like an ivory stair spiraling into black, black that was his mother’s hair, his mother’s eyes: his mother crouched naked, retching on the top step in the snow.

After that she had to show it to him. Not that day, not even that winter; but later, in the summer, when cardinals nested once more in the box tree and shrieking jays chased goldfinches from the birdbath.

“Someday you can have it, Andrew,” she said as she drew her jewelry box from the kitchen hidey-hole. “When you’re older. There’s no one else,” she added. His father had died before he was born. “And it’s mine, anyway.”

Inside the box were loops of pearls, jade turtles, a pendant made of butterfly’s wings that formed a sunset and palm trees. And a small ugly thing, as long as her thumb and the same color: marbled cream, nut-brown in the creases. At first he thought it was a bug. It was the locust year, and everywhere their husks stared at him from trees and cracks in the wall.

But it wasn’t a locust. His mother placed it in his hand, and he held it right before his face. Some sort of stone, smooth as skin. Cool at first, after a few moments in his palm it grew warm, and he glanced at his mother for reassurance.

“Don’t worry,” she laughed wryly. “It won’t bite.” And she sipped her drink.

It was an animal, all slanted eyes and grinning mouth, paws tucked beneath its sharp chin like a dog playing Beg. A tiny hole had been drilled in the stone so that it could be tied onto a string. “How does it work?” Andrew asked. His mother shook her head.

“Not yet,” she said, swishing the ice in her glass. “It’s mine still; but someday—someday I’ll show you how.” And she took the little carving and replaced it, and locked the jewelry box back in the hidey-hole.

That had been seven years ago. The bus that stopped at the foot of the hill would soon take Andrew to the public high school. Another locust summer was passing. The seven-year cicadas woke in the August night and crept from their split skins like a phantom army. The night they began to sing, Andrew woke to find his mother dead, bright pills spilling from one hand when he forced it open. In the other was the amulet, her palm blistered where she clenched the stone.

He refused the sedatives the doctor offered him, refused awkward offers of comfort from relatives and friends suddenly turned to strangers. At the wake he slouched before the casket, tearing petals from carnations. He nodded stiffly at his mother’s sister when she arrived to take him to the funeral.

“Colin leaves for Brockport in three weeks,” his aunt said later in the car. “When he goes, you can have the room to yourself. It’s either that or the couch—”

“I don’t care,” Andrew replied. He didn’t mean for his voice to sound so harsh. “I mean, it doesn’t matter. Anywhere’s okay. Really.”

And it was, really.

Because the next day he was gone.

North of the city, in Kamensic Village, the cicadas formed heavy curtains of singing green and copper, covering oaks and beeches, houses and hedges and bicycles left out overnight. On Sugar Mountain they rippled across an ancient Volkswagen Beetle that hadn’t moved in months. Their song was loud enough to wake the old astronaut in the middle of the night, and nearly drown out the sound of the telephone when it rang in the morning.

“I no longer do interviews,” the old astronaut said wearily. He started to hang up. Then, “How the hell did you get this number, anyway?” he demanded; but the reporter was gone. Howell glared at Festus. The spaniel cringed, tail vibrating over the flagstones, and moaned softly. “You giving out this new number?” Howell croaked, and slapped his thigh. “Come on—”

The dog waddled over and lay his head upon the man’s knee. Howell stroked the old bony skull, worn as flannel, and noted a hole in the knee of his pajamas.

Eleven o’clock and still not dressed. Christ, Festus, you should’ve said something.

He caught himself talking aloud and stood, gripping the mantel and waiting until his heart slowed. Sometimes now he didn’t know if he was talking or thinking; if he had taken his medicine and slipped into the dreamy hold that hid him from the pain or if he was indeed dreaming. Once he had drifted, and thought he was addressing another class of eager children. He woke to find himself mumbling to an afternoon soap opera, Festus staring up at him intently. That day he put the television in a closet.

But later he dragged it back into the bedroom once more. The news helped remind him of things. Reminded him to call Lancaster, the oncologist; to call his son Peter, and the Kamensic Village Pharmacy.

“Festus,” he whispered, hugging the dog close to his knee. “Oh, Festus.” And when he finally glanced at the spaniel again was surprised to see the gentle sloping snout matted and dark with tears.

From the western Palisades, the radio tower blazed across the Hudson as Andrew left the city that dawn. He stood at the top of the road until the sun crept above the New York side, waiting until the beacon flashed and died. The first jet shimmered into sight over bridges linking the island to the foothills of the northern ranges. Andrew sighed. No tears left; but grief feathered his eyes so that the river swam, blurred and finally disappeared in the burst of sunrise. He turned and walked down the hill, faster and faster, past bus stops and parked cars, past the high school and the cemetery. Only when he reached the Parkway did he stop to catch his breath, then slowly crossed the road to the northbound lane.

Two rides brought him to Valhalla. He walked backwards along the side of the road, shifting his backpack from shoulder to shoulder as he held his thumb out. A businessman in a BMW finally pulled over and unlocked the passenger door. He regarded Andrew with a sour expression.

“If you were my kid, I’d put your lights out,” he growled as Andrew hopped in, grinning his best late-for-class smile. “But I’d wish a guy like me picked you up instead of some pervert.”

“Thanks,” Andrew nodded seriously. “I mean, you’re right. I missed the last train out last night. I got to get to school.”

The man stared straight ahead, then glanced at his watch. “I’m going to Manchester Hills. Where do you go to school?”

“John Jay.”

“In Mount Lopac?”

“Kamensic Village.”

The man nodded. “Is 684 close enough?”

Andrew shrugged. “Sure. Thanks a lot.”

After several miles, they veered onto the highway’s northern hook. Andrew sat forward in the seat, damp hands sticking to his knapsack as he watched for the exit sign. When he saw it he dropped his knapsack in nervous excitement. The businessman scowled.

“This is it… I mean, please, if it’s okay—” The seat belt caught Andrew’s sneaker as he grabbed the door handle. “Thanks—thanks a lot—”

“Next time don’t miss the train,” the man yelled as Andrew stumbled onto the road. Before he could slam the door shut, the lock clicked back into place. Andrew waved. The man lifted a finger in farewell, and the BMW roared north.

From the Parkway, Kamensic Village drifted into sight like a dream of distant towns. White steeples, stone walls, granite turrets rising from hills already rusted with the first of autumn. To the north the hills arched like a deer’s long spine, melting golden into the Mohank Mountains. Andrew nodded slowly and shrugged the knapsack to his shoulder. He scuffed down the embankment to where a stream flowed townward. He followed it, stopping to drink and wash his face, slicking his hair back into a dark wave. Sunfish floated in the water above sandy nests, slipping fearlessly through his fingers when he tried to snatch them. His stomach ached from hunger, raw and cold as though he’d swallowed a handful of cinders. He thought of the stone around his neck. That smooth pellet under his tongue, and how easy it would be then to find food…

He swore softly, shaking damp hair from his eyes. Against his chest the amulet bounced, and he steadied it, grimacing, before heading upstream.

The bug-ridden sign swayed at the railroad station: KAMENSIC VILLAGE. Beneath it stood a single bench, straddled by the same kid Andrew remembered from childhood: misshapen helmet protecting his head, starry topaz eyes widening when he saw Andrew pass the station.

“Hey,” the boy yelled, just as if he remembered Andrew from years back. “HEY.”

“Hey, Buster.” Andrew waved without stopping.

He passed the Kamensic Village Pharmacy, where Mr. Weinstein still sold egg creams; Hayden’s Delicatessen with its great vat of iced tea, lemons bobbing like toy turtles in the amber liquid. The library, open four days a week (closed today). That was where he had seen puppet shows, and heard an astronaut talk once, years ago when he and his mother still came up in the summer to rent the cottage. And, next to the library, the seventeenth-century courthouse, now a museum.

“Fifty cents for students.” The same old lady peered suspiciously at Andrew’s damp hair and red-rimmed eyes. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Visiting,” Andrew mumbled as she dropped the quarters into a little tin box. “I got relatives here.”

He shook his head at her offer to walk him through the rooms. “I been here before,” he explained. He tried to smile. “On vacation.”

The courtroom smelled the same, of lemon polish and the old lady’s Chanel No. 5. The Indian Display waited where it always had, in a whitewashed corner of the courtroom where dead bluebottles drifted like lapis beads. Andrew’s chest tightened when he saw it. His hand closed around the amulet on its string.

A frayed map of the northern county starred with arrowheads indicated where the tribes had settled. Axe blades and skin scrapers marked their battles. A deer hide frayed with moth holes provided a backdrop for the dusty case. From beneath the doeskin winked a vole’s skull.

At the bottom of the case rested a small printed board. Andrew leaned his head against the glass and closed his eyes, mouthing the words without reading them as he fingered the stone.

… members of the Tankiteke tribe of the Wappinger Confederacy of Mohicans: Iroquois warriors of the Algonquin Nation…

When he opened his eyes they fixed upon an object at the bottom of the case: a carved gray stone in the image of a tiny animal with long eyes and smooth sharp teeth.

Shaman’s Talisman [Animistic Figure]

The Tankiteke believed their shamans could change shape at will and worshipped animal spirits.

From the narrow hallway leading to the front room came the creak of a door opening, the answering hiss of women’s laughter.

“Some boy,” Andrew heard the curator reply. He bit his lip. “Said he had relatives, but I think he’s just skipping school…”

Andrew glanced around the courtroom, looking for new exhibits, tools, books. There was nothing. No more artifacts; no other talisman. He slipped through a door leading to an anteroom and found there another door leading outside. Unlocked; there would be no locked doors in Kamensic Village. In the orchard behind the courthouse, he scooped up an early apple and ate it, wincing at the bitter flesh. Then he headed for the road that led to The Fallows.

In the dreams, Howell walked on the moon.

The air he breathed was the same stale air, redolent of urine and refrigeration, that had always filled the capsules. Yet he was conscious in the dreams that it tasted different on the moon, filtered through the spare silver ducts coiled on his back. Above him the sky loomed sable, so cold that his hands tingled inside heated gloves at the sight of it: as he had always known it would be, algid, black, speared with stars that pulsed and sang as they never did inside the capsule. He lifted his eyes then and saw the orbiter passing overhead. He raised one hand to wave, so slowly it seemed he might start to drift into the stark air in the pattern of that wave. And then the voice crackled in his ears, clipped words echoing phrases from memoranda and newscasts. His own voice, calling to Howell that it was time to return.

That was when he woke, shivering despite quilts and Festus snoring beside him. A long while he lay in bed, trying to recall the season— winter, surely, because of the fogged windows.

But no. Beneath the humming cough of air-conditioning, cicadas droned. Howell struggled to his feet.

Behind the bungalow the woods shimmered, birch and ancient oaks silvered by the moonlight streaming from the sky. Howell opened the casement and leaned out. Light and warmth spilled upon him as though the moonlight were warm milk, and he blinked and stretched his hands to catch it.

Years before, during the final two moon landings, Howell had been the man who waited inside the orbiter.

Long ago, before the actors and writers and wealthy children of the exurbs migrated to Kamensic Village, a colony of earnest socialists settled upon the scrubby shores of the gray water named Muscanth. Their utopia had shattered years before. The cozy stage and studios rotted and softly sank back into the fen. But the cottages remained, some of them still rented to summer visitors from the city. Andrew had to ask in Scotts Corners for directions—he hadn’t been here since he was ten—and was surprised by how much longer it took to reach The Fallows on foot. No autos passed. Only a young girl in jeans and flannel shirt, riding a black horse, her braids flying as her mount cantered by him. Andrew laughed. She waved, grinning, before disappearing around a kink in the birchy lane.

With that sharp laugh, something fell from Andrew, as if grief could be contained in small cold breaths, and he had just exhaled. He noticed for the first time sweat streaking his chest, and unbuttoned his shirt. The shirt smelled stale and oily, as though it had absorbed the city’s foul air, its grimy clouds of exhaust and factory smoke.

But here the sky gleamed slick and blue as a bunting’s wing. Andrew laughed again, shook his head so that sky and leaves and scattering birds all flickered in a bright blink. And when he focused again upon the road, the path snaked there: just where he had left it four years ago, carefully cleared of curling ferns and moldering birch.

I’m here, he thought as he stepped shyly off the dirt road, glancing back to make certain no car or rider marked where he broke trail. In the distance glittered the lake. A cloud of red admiral butterflies rose from a crab-apple stump and skimmed beside him along the overgrown path. Andrew ran, laughing. He was home.

The abandoned cottage had grown larger with decay and disuse. Ladders of nectarine fungi and staghorn lichen covered it from eaves to floor, and between this patchwork straggled owls’ nests and the downy homes of deer mice.

The door did not give easily. It was unlocked, but swollen from snow and rain. Andrew had to fling himself full force against the timbers before they groaned and relented. Amber light streamed from chinks and cracks in the walls, enough light that ferns and pokeweed grew from clefts in the pine floor. Something scurried beneath the room’s single chair. Andrew turned in time to see a deer mouse, still soft in its gray infant fur, disappear into the wall.

There had been other visitors as well. In the tiny bedroom, Andrew found fox scat and long rufous hairs clinging to the splintered cedar wall; by the front door, rabbit pellets. Mud daubers had plastered the kitchen with their fulvous cells. The linoleum was scattered with undigested feathers and the crushed spines of voles. He paced the cottage, yanking up pokeweed and tossing it into the corner, dragged the chair into the center of the room and sat there a long time. Finally, he took a deep breath, opened his knapsack and withdrew a bottle of gin pilfered from his mother’s bureau, still nearly full. He took a swig, shut his eyes and waited for it to steam through his throat to his head.

“Don’t do it drunk,” his mother had warned him once—drunk herself, the two of them sipping Pink Squirrels from a lukewarm bottle in her bedroom. “You ever seen a drunk dog?”

“No,” Andrew giggled.

“Well, it’s like that, only worse. You can’t walk straight. You can’t smell anything. It’s worse than plain drunk. I almost got hit by a car once, in Kamensic, when I was drunk.” She lit a cigarette. “Stayed out a whole night that time, trying to find my way back…”

Andrew nodded, rubbing the little talisman to his lips.

“No,” his mother said softly, and took it from him. She held it up to the gooseneck lamp. “Not yet.”

She turned and stared at him fiercely, glittering eyes belying her slurred voice. “See, you can’t stay that long. I almost did, that time…”

She took another sip. “Forget, I mean. You forget… fox or bear or deer, you forget…”

“Forget what?” Andrew wondered. The smoke made him cough, and he gulped his drink.

“What you are. That you’re human. Not…”

She took his hand, her nails scratching his palm. “They used to forget. The Indians, the Tankiteke. That’s what my grandfather said. There used to be more of these things—”

She rolled the stone between her palms. “And now they’re all gone. You know why?”

Andrew shook his head.

“Because they forgot.” His mother turned away. “Fox or whatever— they forgot they once were human, and stayed forever, and died up there in the woods.” And she fingered the stone as she did her wedding ring, eyes agleam with whiskey tears.

But that night Andrew lay long awake, staring at his Mets pennants as he listened to the traffic outside; and wondered why anyone would ever want to come back.

Howell woke before dawn, calling, “Festus! Morning.” The spaniel snorted and stared at him blearily before sliding off the bed.

“Look,” said Howell, pointing to where tall ferns at wood’s edge had been crushed to a green mat. “They were here again last night.”

Festus whined and ran from the room, nails tick-tocking upon the floor. Howell let him out the back door and watched the old dog snuffle at the deer brake, then crash into the brush. Some mornings Howell felt as if he might follow the dog on these noisy hunts once more. But each time, the dawn rush of light and heat trampled his strength as carelessly as deer broke the ferns. For a few minutes he breathed easily, the dank mountain air slipping like water down his throat, cold and tasting of granite. Then the coughing started. Howell gripped the door frame, shuddering until the tears came, chest racked as though something smashed his ribs to escape. He stumbled into the kitchen, fingers scrabbling across the counter until they clutched the inhaler. By the time he breathed easily again, sunlight gilded Sugar Mountain, and at the back door Festus scratched for entry, panting from his run.

The same morning found Andrew snoring on the cottage floor. The bottle of gin had toppled, soaking the heap of old newspapers where he lay pillowed. He woke slowly but to quick and violent conclusions when he tried to stand.

“Christ,” he moaned, pausing in the doorway. The reek of gin made him sick. Afterward, he wiped his mouth on a wild grape leaf, then with surprising vigor smashed the bottle against a tree. Then he staggered downhill toward the stream.

Here the water flowed waist-deep. Andrew peeled off T-shirt and jeans and eased himself into the stream, swearing at the cold. A deep breath. Then he dunked himself, came up sputtering, and floated above the clear pebbled bottom, eyes shut against the shadows of trees and sky trembling overhead.

He settled on a narrow stone shelf above the stream, water rippling across his lap. His head buzzed between hunger and hangover. Beneath him minnows drifted like willow leaves. He dipped a hand to catch them, but they wriggled easily through his fingers. A feverish hunger came over him. He counted back three days since he’d eaten: the same evening he’d found his mother…

He blinked against the memory, blinked until the hazy air cleared and he could focus on the stream beneath him. Easing himself into the water, he knelt in the shallows and squinted at the rocks. Very slowly, he lifted one flat stone, then another. The third uncovered a crayfish, mottled brown against chocolate-colored gravel. Andrew bit his hand to stop it shaking, then slipped it beneath the surface. The crayfish shot backwards, toward his ankles. Andrew positioned his feet to form a V, squatting to cut off its escape. He yelped triumphantly when he grabbed its tail.

“Son of a bitch!” Pincers nipped his thumb. He flung the crayfish onto the mossy bank, where it jerked and twitched. For a moment Andrew regarded it remorsefully. Then he took the same flat stone that had sheltered it and neatly cracked its head open.

Not much meat to suck from the claws. A thumb’s worth (still quivering) within the tail, muddy and sweet as March rain. In the next hour he uncovered dozens more, until the bank was littered with empty carapaces, the mud starred with his handprints like a great raccoon’s. Finally he stopped eating. The mess on the bank sickened him. He crawled to stream’s edge and bit his lip, trying not to throw up. In the shadowy water he saw himself: much too thin, black hair straggling across his forehead, his slanted eyes shadowed by exhaustion. He wiped a thread of mud from his lip and leaned back. Against his chest the amulet bounced like a stray droplet, its filthy cord chafing his neck. He dried his face with his T-shirt, then pulled the string until the amulet dangled in front of him.

In the late summer light it gleamed eerily, swollen as a monarch’s chrysalis. And like the lines of thorax, head, wings evident upon a pupae, the talisman bore faint markings. Eyes, teeth, paws; wings, fins, antlers, tail. Depending on how it caught the light, it was fox or stoat; flying squirrel or cougar or stag. The boy pinched the amulet between thumb and middle finger, drew it across his cheek. Warm. Within the nugget of stone he felt a dull buzzing like an entrapped hornet.

Andrew rubbed the talisman against his lips. His teeth vibrated as from a tiny drill. He shut his eyes, tightened his fingers about the stone, and slipped it beneath his tongue. For a second he felt it, a seed ripe to burst. Then nausea exploded inside him, pain so violent he screamed and collapsed onto the moss, clawing wildly at his head. Abruptly his shrieks stopped. He could not breathe. A rush of warm air filled his nostrils, fetid as pond water. He sneezed.

And opened his eyes to the muddy bank oozing between black and velvet paws.

Perhaps it was the years spent in cramped spaces—his knees drawn to his chest in capsule mock-ups; sleeping suspended in canvas sacks; eating upside down in metal rooms smaller than a refrigerator—perhaps the bungalow had actually seemed spacious when Howell decided to purchase it over his son’s protests and his accountant’s sighs.

“Plenty of room for what I need,” he told his son. They were hanging pictures. NASA shots, Life magazine promos. The Avedon portrait of his wife, a former Miss Rio Grande, dead of cancer before the moon landing. “And fifty acres: most of the lakefront.”

“Fifty acres most of it nowhere,” Peter said snidely. He hated the country; hated the disappointment he felt that his father hadn’t taken the penthouse in Manhattan. “No room here for anyone else, that’s for sure.”

That was how the old man liked it. The bungalow fit neatly into a tiny clearing between glacier-riven hills. A good snow cut him off from the village for days: the town’s only plow saved Sugar Mountain and the abandoned lake colony for last. “The Astronaut don’t mind,” the driver always said.

Howell agreed. After early retirement he took his pension and retired, truly retired. No honorary university positions. No airline endorsements. His investments were few and careless. He corresponded with crackpots, authors researching astral landing fields in rain forests, a woman who claimed to receive alien broadcasts through her sunglasses, an institutionalized patient who signed his letters Rubber Man Lord of Jupiter. During a rare radio interview, Howell admitted to experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs and expressed surprising bitterness at the demise of the Apollo program, regret untempered by the intervening years. On spring afternoons he could be seen walking with his English cocker spaniel on the dirt roads through Kamensic. The village schoolchildren pointed him out proudly, although his picture was not in their books. Once a year he spoke to the fifth graders about the importance of the space program, shyly signing autographs on lunch bags afterwards: no, the Astronaut did not mind.

The old man sighed and walked to his desk. From his frayed shirt rose a skull barren of hair, raised blue veins like rivers on a relief globe. Agate blue eyes, dry as if all the dreams had been sucked from them, focused now on strange things. Battalions of pill bottles. Bright lesions on hands and feet. Machines more dreadful than anything NASA had devised for his training. The road from Sugar Mountain lay so far from his front door that he seldom walked there anymore.

The medicine quelled his coughing. In its place a heaviness in his chest and the drug’s phantom mettle.

“I wish the goddamn car keys were here,” he announced to Festus, pacing to the door. He was not supposed to drive alone. Peter had taken the keys, “for safety.” “I wish my goddamn dog could drive.”

Festus yawned and flopped onto the floor. Sighing, the astronaut settled onto the couch, took pen and notebook to write a letter. Within minutes he was asleep.

Andrew staggered from the sound: the bawl of air through the trees, the cicadas’ song a steady thunder. From beneath the soil thrummed millipedes and hellgrammites, the ceaseless tick of insect legs upon fallen leaves. He shivered and shook a ruff of heavy fur. The sunlight stung his eyes and he blinked. The world was bound now in black and gray.

He sneezed. Warm currents of scent tickled his muzzle. So many kinds of dirt! Mud like cocoa, rich and bitter; sand fresh as sunlight; loam ripe with hidden worms. He stood on wobbly legs, took a few steps and stumbled on his clothes. Their rank smell assaulted him: detergent, sweat, city gravel and tarmac. He sneezed ferociously, then ambled to the streambed. He nosed a crayfish shell, licking it clean. Afterward he waded into the stream and lapped, long tongue flicking water into his eyes. A bound brought him to the high bank. He shook water from his fur and flung his head back, eyes shut, filled with a formidable wordless joy. From far away he heard low thunder; he tasted the approach of rain upon the breeze.

Something stirred in the thickets nearby. Without looking he knew it was a rabbit, smelled milk and acrid fear clinging to her. He raised his head, tested the air until he found her crouched at the base of a split birch. He crept forward, his belly grazing the dirt. When he was scarcely a muzzle-length away, she spooked, hind legs spraying leaves in his face as she vaulted into the underbrush. He followed, slipping under grapevines and poison ivy, his dewclaws catching on burdock leaves.

The rabbit led him through a birch stand to a large clearing, where she rounded and disappeared into a burrow. He dug furiously at the hole, throwing up clouds of soft loam, stopping finally when he upturned a mess of black beetles clicking over a rock. Curious, he nudged the beetles, then licked up a mouthful and crunched them between his long teeth. The remaining insects scurried beneath the earth. Suddenly tired, he yawned, crawled inside a ring of overgrown ferns heavy with spores and lay there panting.

The air grew heavy with moisture. Thunder snarled in the distance. How could he ever have thought the woods silent? He heard constantly the steady beat, the hum of the turning day beneath his paws. Rain began to fall, and he crept deeper into the ferns until they covered him. He waited there until nightfall, licking rain from the fronds and cleaning the earth from between his footpads.

At dusk the rain stopped. Through slitted eyes he saw a stag step into the clearing and bend to lick rain from a cupped leaf, its tongue rasping against the grass. Nuthatches arrowed into the rhododendrons, and the bushes shuddered until they settled into sleep. He stretched, the hair on his back rustling as moisture pearled and rolled from his coat. In the damp air scents were acute: he tasted mist rising from the nearby swamp, smelled an eff beneath a rotting stump. Then the breeze shifted, brought a stronger scent to him: hot and milky, the young rabbit, motionless at the entrance of its burrow.

He cocked his ears to trace the faint wind stirring the rabbit’s fur. He crouched and took a half step toward it, sprang as it bolted in a panic of flying fur and leaves. The rabbit leaped into the clearing, turned and tripped on a fallen branch. In that instant he was upon it, his paws hesitantly brushing its shuddering flank before he tore at its throat. The rabbit screamed. He rent skin and sinew, fur catching between his teeth, shearing strings of muscle as he growled and tugged at its jaw. It stopped kicking. Somewhere inside the fox, Andrew wanted to scream; but the fox tore at the rabbit’s head, blood spurting from a crushed artery and staining his muzzle. The smell maddened him. He dragged the rabbit into the brush and fed, then dug a shallow hole and buried the carcass, nosing leaves over the warm bones.

He stepped into the clearing and stared through the tangle of trees and sky. The moon was full. Blood burned inside him; its smell stung his nostrils, scorched his tongue so that he craved water. An owl screeched. He started, leaping over the rank midden, and continued running through the birch clearing until he found the stream, dazzling with reflected moonlight. He stepped to the water’s edge and dipped a tentative paw into the shallows, rearing back when the light scattered at his touch. He crossed the stream and wandered snuffling across the other bank. A smell arrested him: overwhelming, alien to this place. He stared at a pile of clothes strewn upon the moss, walked to them stiff-legged and sniffed. Beneath his tongue something small and rough itched like a blister. He shook his head and felt the string around his neck. He coughed, pawed his muzzle; buried his face in the T-shirt. The talisman dropped from between his jaws.

On the bank the boy knelt, coughing, one hand clutching the bloody talisman. He crawled to the stream and bowed there, cupping water in his hands and gulping frantically. Then he staggered backwards, flopped onto the moss to stare exhausted at the sky. In a little while he slept uneasily, legs twitching as he stalked fleeing hares through a black and twisted forest.

Rain woke him the next morning, trickling into his nostrils and beneath his eyelids. Andrew snorted and sat up, wiping his eyes. The stream swelled with muddy whirlpools. He stared as the rain came down harder, slicing through the high canopy and striking him like small cold stones. Shivering, he grabbed his clothes and limped to the cottage. Inside he dried himself with his damp T-shirt, then stepped into the tiny bedroom. It was so narrow that when he extended his arms his fingertips grazed opposing walls. Here sagged an ancient iron-framed camp bed with flattened mattress, hard and lean as an old car seat. Groaning, he collapsed onto it, heedless of dead moths scattered across the cushion. His crumpled jeans made a moist pillow as he propped himself against the wall and stared at the ceiling.

He could come back here every day. It was dry, and if he pulled up all the pokeweed, swept out the dirt and fallen feathers, it would be home. He had the stream for water; a few warm clothes in his knapsack for winter. At night he could hunt and feed in the woods, changing back at dawn. During the day he’d sleep, maybe go to the library and look up survival books. No one would ever find him. He could hide forever here where the Tankiteke had hunted.

It didn’t have to drive you crazy! If you didn’t fight it, if you used it in the right places; if you didn’t care about family or friends or school. He pulled fiercely at the string and held the amulet before his eyes.

They would never know. Ever: no one would ever know.

Howell’s treatments stopped that winter. One evening Dr. Lancaster simply shook his head, slid the latest test results into the folder and closed it. The next morning he told Howell, “No more.”

The astronaut went home to die.

As long as there was no snow, he could walk with Festus, brief forays down the dirt drive to check the mailbox. Some afternoons he’d wait there with the spaniel for the mail car to pull up.

“Some winter, Major Howell,” the mailman announced as he handed him a stack of letters from the insurance company, vitamin wholesalers, the Yale hospital. “Think we’ll ever get snow?”

Howell took the mail, shrugging, then looked at the cloudless sky. “Your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably.”

They laughed, and the car crept down the hillside. Howell turned and called Festus from the woods. For a moment he paused, staring at the brilliant winter sky, the moon like a pale eye staring down upon the afternoon.

That night he dreamed of the sky, ice melting into clouds that scudded across a ghostly moon so close that when he raised his hands his fingers left marks upon its face, tiny craters blooming where he touched. When he awoke the next morning it was snowing.

The blizzard pounced on Kamensic Village, caught the hamlet as it drowsed after the long Christmas holidays. A brief and bitter autumn had given way to a snowless winter. Deer grew fat grazing upon frosty pastures. With no snow to challenge them, school-bus drivers grew complacent, then cranky, while children dreamed of brightly varnished toboggans and new skis still beribboned in frigid garages. In The Fallows a fox could find good hunting, warm holes to hide in; the door blew off an abandoned bungalow and leaves drifted in its corners, burying a vinyl knapsack.

Beneath a tumbledown stone wall, he’d found an abandoned burrow, just large enough to curl up in and sleep through the bitter days. He avoided the cottages now. The fetid scent of men still clinging to the forsaken structures frightened him, ripe as it was with some perplexing memory. He yawned and drew his paws under him, tail curving to cover his muzzle and warm the freezing air he breathed. Above him the wall hid the remains of the grouse he’d killed last night. The faint rotting smell comforted him, and he slept deeply.

He woke to silence: so utterly still that his hackles rose and he growled softly with unease. Even in the burrow he could always hear the soft stirrings of the world—wind in dead leaves, chickadees fighting in the pines, the crack of branches breaking from the cold. Now he heard only a dull scratching. Stiff-legged he crept through the tunnel and emerged into the storm.

Stones had prevented snow from blocking the entrance to his den. He slunk through the narrow burrow and shook himself. Snow fell so fast that within moments his fur was thick with it. Everywhere branches had collapsed. Entire pines bowed toward the ground until they snapped, dark trunks quickly and silently buried. He buried his muzzle in the drift, then reared back, snarling. Abruptly he turned and leaped atop the stone wall. As he did so, he dislodged a heavy ledge of snow that fell behind him without a sound.

From the wall he tested the wind. Nothing. It blew his ruff back until he shivered beneath snow so thick that he could not shake himself dry. He slunk down, stumbling into a drift, and sniffed for the burrow entrance.

Gone. Displaced snow blocked the hole. He could smell nothing. Frantically he dug at the wall. More snow slid from the stones, and he jumped back, growling. From stone to stone he ran, pawing frenziedly, burying his muzzle as he tried to find a warm smell, the scent of frozen blood or spoor. Snow congealed between his pads, matting his legs so that he swam gracelessly through the shifting mass. Exhausted, he huddled at the base of the wall until cold gnawed at his chest. Then he staggered upward until he once again stood clear at the top. Bitter wind clamped his muzzle. His eyelids froze. Blindly he began to run along the wall’s crest, slipping between rocks and panting.

The wall ended. A wind-riven hill sloped away from him, and he leaped, tumbled by the storm until the snow met him and he flailed whimpering through the endless drifts.

Howell sat before the window, watching the storm. The telephone lines linking him to the village sagged drearily in hoary crescents. He knew they would break as they did during every blizzard. He had already spoken to Peter, to Dr. Lancaster, to Mr. Schelling, the grocer, who wondered if he needed anything before the store closed. He could snap the lines himself now if he wanted. There was no one else to talk to.

He no longer cared. The heaviness in his lungs had spread these last few weeks until his entire chest felt ribbed in stone, his legs and arms so light in comparison they might be wings. He knew that one by one the elements of his body were leaving him. Only the pills gave him strength, and he refilled the plastic bottles often.

A little while ago he had taken a capsule, washing it down with a scant tumbler of scotch. He took a childish pleasure in violating his body now.

“Festus,” he croaked, his hand ruffling the air at his side. Festus shambled over, tail vibrating. “Hey Festus, my good dog. My good bright dog.”

Festus licked Howell’s hand, licked his chops and whined hopefully.

“Dinner?” Howell said, surprised. “So early.” Then wondered in alarm if he had fed the dog yesterday; if he had forgotten that as he had sometimes forgotten the mail, his clothes, his own meals. He stood uneasily, head thrumming, and went to the kitchen.

A moist crust still rimmed the dog’s dish. There was water in his bowl. But when Howell opened the cabinet beneath the sink there were no cans there. The tall red Purina bag was empty.

“Oh no,” he murmured, then looked in the refrigerator. A few eggs; some frozen vegetables. There would be soup in the cupboard. “Festus, Christ, I’m sorry.” Festus danced expectantly across the planked floor to wait at his dish.

Howell leaned against the sink and stared outside. Schelling’s might still be open; if not, Isaac lived behind the store. There was gas in the car. Peter had returned the keys, reluctantly, but Howell hadn’t driven in months. If he waited it might be two days before anyone called or checked Sugar Mountain. He rummaged through closets until he found boots and heavy parka, then shoved his inhaler into a pocket. He paused in the kitchen, wondering if he should bring the dog with him.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said at last, rumpling the spaniel’s ears. Then he swallowed another pill.

Outside, flakes the size of his thumb swirled down and burst into hundreds of crystals upon his parka. The sky hung so low and dark that it seemed like nightfall. Howell had no idea what time it really was. He staggered to the car, kicking the door until snow fell from it and he could find the handle. He checked the back seat for shovel, sand, blankets. Then he started the engine. The car lurched forward.

He had heard the snowplow earlier, but the road was already buried once more. As the car drifted toward a high bank, Howell wondered why it was he had decided to go out, finally recalled Festus waiting hungrily at home.

In a few minutes he realized it was futile to steer toward one side of the road or the other. Instead he tried to keep a few feet between car and trees, and so avoid driving into the woods. Soon even this was difficult. Pines leaned where he had never seen trees. The stone walls that bounded the road had buckled into labyrinthine waves. Down the gentle slope inched the car, bluish spume flying behind it. The heater did not work. The windshield wipers stuck again. He reached out and cleared a tiny patch to see through the frigid black glass starred with soft explosions.

Through the clear spot, Howell saw only white and gray streaks. Smears left by his fingers on the glass froze and reflected the steady green and red lights of the dashboard. His hands dropped from the wheel, and he rubbed them together. The car glided onward.

Dreaming, he saw for an instant a calm frozen sea swelling beneath tiny windows, interior darkness broken by blinking panel lights while, outside, shone the azure bow of Earth. Then his forehead grazed the edge of the steering wheel, and he started, gently pressing the brake.

An animal plunged in front of the car, a golden blur like a summer stain upon the snow. It thudded against the bumper.

“Son of a bitch,” murmured Howell.

The car stopped. As he stepped out he glanced behind him, shielding his eyes. Snow already filled the tracks snaking a scant hundred feet to the end of his drive. He pulled the hood tight about his face and turned.

In front of the car sprawled a naked boy, eyes closed as if asleep, skin steaming at the kiss of melting snow. Long black hair tangled with twigs; one fist raised to his lips. A drowsing child. The astronaut stooped and very gently touched his cheek. It was feverishly hot.

The boy moaned. Howell staggered against the bumper. The freezing pain jolted him. He stumbled to the door, reaching for the old Hudson’s Bay blanket. Then he knelt beside the boy, head pounding, and wrapped him in the blanket. He tried to carry him: too heavy. Howell groaned, then dragged boy and blanket to the side of the car. For a moment he rested, wheezing, before heaving the boy into the passenger seat.

Afterward he couldn’t remember driving back to the house. Festus met him at the door, barking joyfully. Staggering beneath the boy’s weight, Howell kicked the door shut behind him, then kneeling placed the bundle on the floor.

“Festus, shh,” he commanded.

The dog approached the boy, tail wagging. Then he stiffened and reared back snarling.

“Festus, shut up.” Exhausted, Howell threw down his parka. He paused to stare at the blizzard still raging about the mountainside. “Festus, I’m throwing you out there if you don’t shut up.” He clapped and pointed toward the kitchen. “Go lie down.”

Festus barked, but retreated to the kitchen.

Now what the hell is this? Howell ran his hands over his wet scalp and stared down at the boy. Melting snow dripped from the blanket to stain the wooden floor. Tentatively he stooped and pulled back a woolen corner.

In the room’s ruddy light the boy looked even paler, his skin ashen. Grime streaked his chest. The hair on his legs and groin was stiff with dirt. Howell grimaced: the boy smelled like rotting meat.

He brushed matted hair from the thin face. “Jesus Christ, what have you been doing?” he murmured. Drugs? What drugs would make someone run naked through the snow? Wincing, Howell let the tangled locks slip from his hand.

The boy moaned and twisted his head. He bared his teeth, eyes still tightly shut, and cried softly. His hand drooped upon his chest, fingers falling open. In his palm lay a stone attached to a filthy string around his neck.

Howell crossed the room to a bay window. Here a window seat served as spare bed, fitted neatly into the embrasure. He opened a drawer beneath the seat and pulled out blankets, quickly smoothed the cushion and arranged pillows. Then he got towels and tried his best to dry the boy before wrapping him in a clean blanket and dragging him to the window. Grunting, he eased him onto the bed. He covered him first with a cotton comforter, then heaped on coarse woolen blankets until the boy snorted and turned onto his stomach. After a few minutes his breathing slowed. Howell sank into an armchair to watch him sleep.

From a white dream, Andrew moaned and thrashed, floundering through unyielding pastures that resolved into blankets tangled about his legs. He opened his eyes and lay very still, holding his breath in terror. The darkness held an awful secret. He whimpered as he tried to place it. Turning his head, he saw a shining patch above him, a pale moon in a cobalt sky. His eyes burned. Shrugging free of the comforter, he sat up. Through the window he glimpsed the forest, snowy fields blued by moonlight. Colors. He glanced down and, for the first time since autumn, saw his hands. Slowly he drew them to his throat until they touched the stone there. His fingers ached, and he flexed them until the soreness abated. New blood tingled in his palms. He sniffed tentatively: dust and stale wood smoke, his own sweat—and another’s.

In an armchair slept an old man, mouth slightly ajar, his breathing so soft it scarcely stirred the air. At his feet lay a dog. It stared at Andrew and growled, a low ceaseless sound like humming bees.

“Hey,” whispered the boy, his voice cracking. “Good dog.”

The dog drew closer to the old man’s feet. Andrew swung his legs over the bedside, gasping at the strain on forgotten muscles. As blankets slid to the floor, he noted, surprised, how the hair on his legs had grown thick and black.

Even without covers the room’s warmth blanketed him, and he sighed with pleasure. Unsteadily, he crossed to a window, balancing himself with one hand against the wall. The snow had stopped. Through clouded glass he saw an untracked slope, a metal birdfeeder listing beneath its white dome. He reached for the talisman, remembering. Autumn days when he tugged wild grapes from brittle vines had given way to the long fat weeks of a winter without snow. Suddenly he wondered how long it had been— months? years?—and recalled his mother’s words.

… they forgot… and stayed forever, and died up there in the woods…

Closing his eyes, he drew the amulet to his mouth and rubbed it against his lip, thinking, Just for a little while, I could go again just for a little while…

He had almost not come back. He shook his head, squeezing tears from shut eyes. Shuddering, he leaned forward until his forehead rested against the windowpane.

A house.

The talisman slipped from his hand to dangle around his neck once more. Andrew held his breath, listening. His heartbeat quickened from desire to fear.

Whose house?

Someone had brought him back. He faced the center of the room.

In the armchair slumped the old man, regarding Andrew with mild pale eyes. “Aren’t you cold?” he croaked, and sat up. “I can get you a robe.”

Embarrassed, Andrew sidled to the window seat and wrapped himself in the comforter, then hunched onto the mattress. “That’s okay,” he muttered, drawing his knees together. The words came out funny, and he repeated them, slowly.

Howell blinked, trying to clear his vision. “It’s still night,” he stated, and coughed. Festus whined, bumping against Howell’s leg. The astronaut suddenly stared at Andrew more closely. “What the hell were you doing out there?”

Andrew shrugged. “Lost, I guess.”

Howell snorted. “I guess so.”

The boy waited for him to bring up parents, police; but the man only gazed at him thoughtfully. The man looked sick. Even in the dimness, Andrew made out lesions on his face and hands, the long skull taut with yellow skin.

“You here alone?” Andrew finally asked.

“The dog.” Howell nudged the spaniel with his foot. “My dog, Festus. I’m Eugene Howell. Major Howell.”

“Andrew,” the boy said. A long silence before the man spoke again.

“You live here?”

“Yeah.”

“Your parents live here?”

“No. They’re dead. I mean, my mother just died. My father died a long time ago.”

Howell rubbed his nose, squinting. “Well, you got someone you live with?”

“No. I live alone.” He hesitated, then inclined his head toward the window. “In The Fallows.”

“Huh.” Howell peered at him more closely. “Were you—some kind of drugs? I found you out there—” He gestured at the window. “Butt naked. In a blizzard.” He laughed hoarsely, then gazed pointedly at the boy. “I’m just curious, that’s all. Stark naked in a snowstorm. Jesus Christ.”

Andrew picked at a scab on his knee. “I’m not on drugs,” he said at last. “I just got lost.” Suddenly he looked up, beseeching. “I’ll get out of your way. You don’t have to do anything. Okay? Like you don’t have to call anyone. I can just go back to my place.”

Howell yawned and stood slowly. “Well, not tonight. When they clear the roads.” He looked down at his feet, chagrined to see he still had his boots on. “I’m going to lie down for a little while. Still a few hours before morning.”

He smiled wanly and shuffled toward the bedroom, Festus following him. In the kitchen he paused to get his inhaler, then stared with mild disbelief at the counter where an unopened sack of dog food and six cans of Alpo stood next to a half-filled grocery bag.

“Festus,” he muttered, tearing open the sack. “I’ll be damned. I forgot Pete brought this.” He dumped food into the dog’s bowl and glanced back at the boy staring puzzled into the kitchen.

“You can take a shower if you want,” suggested Howell. “In there. Towels, a robe. Help yourself.” Then he went to bed.

In the bathroom Andrew found bedpans, an empty oxygen tank, clean towels. He kicked his comforter outside the door, hesitated before retrieving it and folding it upon the sofa. Then he returned to the bathroom. Grimacing, he examined his reflection in the mirror. Dirt caked his pores. What might be scant stubble roughened his chin, but when he rubbed it, most came off onto his fingers in tiny black beads.

In the tub stood a white metal stool. Andrew settled on this and turned on the water. He squeezed handfuls of shampoo through his long hair until the water ran clear. Most of a bar of soap dissolved before he stepped out, the last of the hot water gurgling down the drain. On the door hung a thin green hospital robe, E. HOWELL printed on the collar in Magic Marker. Andrew flung this over his shoulders and stepped back into the living room.

Gray light flecked the windowpanes, enough light that finally he could explore the place. It was a small house, not much bigger than his abandoned cottage. Worn Navaho rugs covered flagstone floors in front of a stone fireplace, still heaped with dead ashes and the remains of a Christmas tree studded with blackened tinsel. Brass gaslight fixtures supported light bulbs and green glass shades. And everywhere about the room, pictures.

He could scarcely make out the cedar paneling beneath so many photographs. He crossed to the far wall stacked chest-high with tottering bookshelves. Above the shelves hung dozens of framed photos.

“Jeez.” Andrew shivered a little as he tied the robe.

Photos of Earthrise, moonrise. The Crab Nebula. The moon. He edged along the wall, reading the captions beside the NASA logo on each print.

Mare Smythii. Crater Gambart. Crater Copernicus. Crater Descartes. Sea of Tranquility.

At wall’s end, beside the window, two heavy gold frames. The first held artwork from a Time magazine cover showing three helmeted men against a Peter Max galaxy: MEN OF THE YEAR: THE CREW OF APOLLO 18, printed in luminous letters. He blew dust from the glass and regarded the picture thoughtfully. Behind one of the men’s faceplates, he recognized Howell’s face.

The other frame held an oversized cover of Look, a matte photograph in stark black. In the upper corner floated the moon, pale and dreaming like an infant’s face.

APOLLO 19: FAREWELL TO TRANQUILITY.

Outside, the sun began to rise above Sugar Mountain. In the west glowed a three-quarter moon, fading as sunlight spilled down the mountainside. Andrew stood staring at it until his eyes ached, holding the moon there as long as he could. When it disappeared, he clambered back into bed.

When he woke later that morning, Andrew found Howell sitting in the same chair again, dozing with the dog Festus at his feet. Andrew straightened his robe and tried to slide quietly from bed. The dog barked. Howell blinked awake.

“Good morning,” he yawned, and coughed. “The phone lines are down.”

Andrew grinned with relief, then tried to look concerned. “How long before they’re up again?”

Howell scratched his jaw, his nails rasping against white stubble. “Day or two, probably. You said you live alone?”

Andrew nodded, reaching gingerly to let Festus sniff his hand.

“So you don’t need to call anyone.” Howell rubbed the dog’s back with a slippered foot. “He’s usually pretty good with people,” he said as Festus sniffed and then tentatively licked Andrew’s hand. “That’s good, Festus. You hungry—?”

He stumbled, forgetting the boy’s name.

“Andrew,” the boy said, scratching the dog’s muzzle. “Good dog. Yeah, I guess I am.”

Howell waved toward the kitchen. “Help yourself. My son brought over stuff the other day, on the counter in there. I don’t eat much now.” He coughed again and clutched the chair’s arms until the coughing stopped. Andrew stood awkwardly in the center of the room.

“I have cancer,” Howell said, fumbling in his robe’s pockets until he found a pill bottle. Andrew stared a moment longer before going into the kitchen.

Inside the grocery bag he found wilted lettuce, several boxes of frozen dinners, now soft and damp, eggs and bread and a packet of spoiled hamburger meat. He sniffed this and his mouth watered, but when he opened the package the smell sickened him and he hastily tossed it into the trash. He settled on eggs, banging around until he found skillet and margarine. He ate them right out of the pan. After a hasty cleanup he returned to the living room.

“Help yourself to anything you want,” said Howell. “I have clothes, too, if you want to get changed.”

Andrew glanced down at his robe and shrugged. “Okay. Thanks.” He wandered to the far wall and stared a moment at the photos again. “You’re an astronaut,” he said.

Howell nodded. “That’s right.”

“That must’ve been pretty cool.” He pointed to the Men of the Year portrait. “Did you fly the shuttle?”

“Christ, no. That was after my time. We were Apollo. The moon missions.”

Andrew remained by the wall, nodding absently. He wanted to leave; but how? He couldn’t take off right away, leave this man wondering where he lived, how he’d get there in three feet of snow. He’d wait until tonight. Leave a note, the robe folded on a chair. He turned back to face Howell.

“That must’ve been interesting.”

Howell stared at him blankly, then laughed. “Probably the most interesting thing I ever did,” he gasped, choking as he grabbed his inhaler. Andrew watched alarmed as the astronaut sucked the mouthpiece. A faint acrid smell infused the room when Howell exhaled.

“Can’t breathe,” he whispered. Andrew stared at him and coughed nervously himself.

Howell sighed, the hissing of a broken bellows. “I wanted to go back. I was queued next time as commander.” He tugged at the sleeves of his robe, pulling the cuffs over bony wrists. “They canceled it. The rest of the program. Like that.” He tried to snap his fingers. They made a dry small sound. “Money. Then the rest. The explosion. You know.”

Andrew nodded, rolling up his sleeves until they hung evenly. “I remember that.”

Howell nodded. “Everybody does. But the moon. Do you remember that?”

Andrew shook his head.

“You forget it?” said Howell, incredulous.

“I wasn’t born,” said Andrew. He leaned against the wall, bumping a frame. “I’m only fourteen.”

“Fourteen,” repeated Howell. “And you never saw? In school, they never showed you?”

The boy shrugged. “The shuttle, I saw tapes of that. At school, maybe. I don’t remember.”

Howell stood, bumping the spaniel so that Festus grumbled noisily before settling back onto the floor. “Well here then,” he said, and shuffled to the bookcase. “I have it, here—”

He fingered impatiently through several small plastic cases until he found one with NASA’s imprimatur. Fastidiously he wiped the plastic cover, blowing dust from the cracks before opening it and pawing the tape carefully.

In the corner a television perched on a shelf. Beneath it was a VCR, meticulously draped with a pillowcase. Howell removed the cloth, coughing with excitement. He switched the set on.

“Okay,” he announced as the flickering test pattern resolved into the NASA logo. “Now sit back. You’re going to see something. History.”

“Right,” said Andrew loudly, and rubbed his eyes.

Static. A black expanse: dead black, unbroken by stars. Then a curve intruding upon the lower edge of the screen, dirty gray and pocked with shadow.

The image shifted. Static snarled into a voice, crisply repeating numbers. A beep. Silence. Another beep. The left side of the screen now snowed a dark mass, angular limbs scratching the sky.

“What’s that?” asked Andrew. It was all out of focus, black and white, wavering like cheap animation.

“The lander,” said Howell. “Lunar lander.”

“Oh,” said Andrew: the moon. “They’re there already?”

Howell nodded impatiently. “Watch this.”

The mass shuddered. The entire horizon dipped and righted itself. From a bright square within the lander something emerged clumsily like a tethered balloon, and descended the blurred pattern that must be steps. Andrew yawned, turning his head so the old man couldn’t see. A voice answered commands. Garbled feedback abruptly silenced so that a single voice could be heard.

The figure bounced down, once, twice. The landscape bobbed with him. Andrew fidgeted, glancing at Howell. The old man’s hands twisted in his lap as though strangling something, pulling at the hem of his robe. His eyes were riveted to the television. He was crying.

The boy quickly looked back at the screen. After another minute the tape ended. Angry hissing from the television. Andrew stood and turned down the volume, avoiding Howell’s face.

“That’s it, huh?” he remarked with hollow cheerfulness, hitting the rewind button.

Howell stared at him. “Did you see?”

Andrew sat back on his heels. “Yeah, sure. That’s real interesting. The moon. Them landing on the moon.”

“You never saw it before?”

He shook his head. “No. I like that stuff, though. Science fiction. You know.”

“But this really happened.”

Andrew nodded defensively. “I know. I mean, I don’t remember, but I know it happened.”

Howell coughed into a handkerchief, glaring at the boy. “Pretty boring to you, I guess.” He stepped to the machine and removed the tape, shoving it back into its case. “No lights. Nothing exciting. Man lands on moon.”

Embarrassed, Andrew stared at him. Howell returned his gaze fiercely, then sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Who cares,” he coughed; then looked suddenly, helplessly at the boy.

“That’s all I ever wanted to do, you know. Fly. And walk on the moon.”

“But you did. You went. You just told me.” Andrew gestured at the walls, the photographs. “All this—” He hesitated. “Stuff, all this stuff you got here—”

Howell stroked the videotape, gnawed fingertips catching on its plastic lip, and shook his head, shameless of tears that fell now like a disappointed child’s. Andrew stared, horrified, waiting for the old man to stop, to apologize. But he went on crying. Finally the boy stood and crossed the room, turned to shut the bathroom door behind him, ran the water so as not to hear or think of him out there: an old man with a dog at his ankles, rocking back and forth with an old videotape in his hand, heedless of the flickering empty screen before him.

Andrew made dinner that night, a couple of meals on plastic trays slid into the microwave. He ended up eating both of them.

“I’ll bring in some wood tomorrow,” he said, pausing in the kitchen doorway to hitch up his pants. Howell had insisted on him wearing something other than the old hospital robe. Andrew had rummaged around in a bureau until he found faded corduroy trousers and a flannel shirt, both too big for him. Even with the pants cuffed they flopped around his inkles, and he had to keep pushing back his sleeves as he ran the dinner plates under the tap. When he finished the dishes he poured Howell a glass of scotch and joined him in the other room. The old man sipped noisily as the two of them sat in front of the cold, fireplace, Andrew pulling at his frayed shirt cuffs. In the kitchen he’d swallowed a mouthful of scotch when Howell wasn’t looking. Now he wished he’d taken more. “I could bring in some wood tonight, I guess,” he said at last.

Howell shook his head. “Tomorrow’ll be fine. I’ll be going to bed soon anyway. I haven’t had a fire here since Christmas. Peter built it.” He gestured at the half-burned spruce. “As you can see. My son can’t build a fire worth a tinker’s damn.”

Andrew pushed a long lock of hair from his eyes. “I don’t know if I can either.”

“That’s okay. I’ll teach you.” Howell took another sip of scotch, placed the glass on the floor. Festus stood and flopped beside Andrew, mumbling contentedly. The boy scratched the dog’s head. He wondered how soon Howell would go to sleep, and glanced at the back door before turning to the old man. In the dim light, Howell’s cheeks glowed rosily, and he looked more like the man on the magazine cover. Andrew tugged at the dog’s ears and leaned back in his chair.

“You got Man of the Year,” he said at last.

“We all got Man of the Year. Peter was just a kid. Not impressed.” Howell grimaced. “I guess it comes with the territory.”

Andrew looked away. “I was impressed,” he said after a moment. “I just didn’t remember. They don’t have any of that stuff now.”

Howell nodded. For a few minutes they sat, the silence broken only by the battering of wind at the roof.

Then, “You’re a runaway,” said Howell.

Andrew stared fixedly at the dog at his feet. “Yeah.”

Howell rubbed his chin. “Well, I guess that’s not so bad. At least in Kamensic it’s safe enough. You found one of the abandoned cabins down there.”

Andrew sighed and locked his hands behind his head. “Yeah. We used to go there when I was a kid. My mother and I. Up until a few years ago.” He tousled Festus’s ears with elaborate casualness. “You gonna call the police?”

Howell peered at him. “Do you want me to?”

“No.” The boy drew back his hand, and Festus yawned loudly. “There’s no one to go to. My mom died last summer. She killed herself. My father died before I was born. Nobody cares.”

“Nobody looked for you?”

Andrew shrugged. “Who’s to look? My aunt, I guess. They have their own kids. I did okay.”

Howell nodded. “Until the first snow.” He coughed. “Well, you must be a damned resourceful kid, that’s all I can say. I won’t call the police. But I can’t let you go back out there alone. It’ll snow again, and I won’t be around to find you.”

Andrew shook his head. “Just leave me alone.” He rubbed his stinging eyes. “No one ever cared except her, and she—”

“That’s okay,” Howell said softly. He coughed again, then asked, “What happened to your father?”

“Dead. He disappeared one day. They never found him.”

“The war?”

Andrew shook his head. “Up here—he was up here. Visiting. We had family. He—my mother said he died here in the woods.” He stared at the floor, silent.

He wants to leave, thought Howell. In the dimness the boy looked very young. Howell recalled other nights, another boy. His heart ached so suddenly that he shuddered, gasping for breath. Andrew stood in alarm.

“Nothing—nothing—” Howell whispered, motioning him away. His head sank back onto his chest. After a few minutes he looked up. “Guess I’ll go to bed now.”

Andrew helped him into the bedroom. Not much bigger than the room in Andrew’s abandoned cottage, but scrupulously neat, and almost all windows except for the wall above the double bed. Howell slipped from his robe, leaving Andrew holding it awkwardly while the old man eased himself into bed, grunting from the effort.

“Just put it there—” Howell pointed to the door. Andrew hung the robe on a hook. He tried to avoid looking directly at Howell, but there was little else: the black windows, a bureau, a closet door. Above the bed a framed NASA photo of the moon. Andrew pretended interest in this and leaned over Howell to stare at it. In the white margin beneath the moon’s gray curve someone had written in a calligraphic hand:

Come on all you

Lets get busy

for the speedy trips

to all Planets

and back to earth again.

“Huh,” said Andrew. Behind him, Festus shambled into the room and, grumbling, settled himself on a braided rug.

The old man winced, twisting to stare up at the photograph. “You like that?” he said.

“Sure,” said Andrew, shrugging. “What’s it mean? That poem or whatever. You write that?”

Howell smiled. He was so thin that it was hard to believe there was a body there beneath all the smooth quilts and blankets. “No, I didn’t write that. I’ll show you where it came from, though; tomorrow maybe. If you want. Remind me.”

“Okay.” Andrew waited: to see if Howell needed anything; to see if he would be dismissed. But the old man just lay there, eyes fluttering shut and then open again. Finally the boy said, “Good night,” and left the room.

It took Andrew a long time to fall asleep that night. He sat on the widow seat, staring out at the snow-covered fields as he fingered the amulet around his neck. He didn’t know why he’d stayed this long. He should have left as soon as he could that morning, waited for the old man to fall asleep (he slept all day: he must be really sick, to sleep so much) and then crept out the back door and disappeared into the woods.

Even now… He pulled at the amulet, holding it so tightly it bit into the ball of his thumb. He should leave now.

But he didn’t. The wrinkled white face staring up from the double bed reminded him of his mother in the coffin. He had never noticed how many lines were in her face; she really hadn’t been that old. He wondered how long Howell had been sick. He remembered the astronaut he’d seen in the library that summer, a disappointment, really. Andrew had been expecting a spacesuit and something else: not ray guns, that would be dumb, but some kind of instruments, or moon rocks maybe. Instead there’d been an old man in Izod shirt and chinos talking about how the country had failed the space program. Andrew had fidgeted until his mother let him go outside.

It must have been the same man, he thought now. Major Howell, not really any more interesting now than he’d been then. He hadn’t even walked on the moon. Andrew dropped the amulet onto his chest and pulled a blanket about his knees, stared out the window. Clouds drifted in front of the rising moon. At the edge of the woods there would be rabbit tracks, fox scat. A prickle of excitement ran through him at the thought, and he lay back upon the narrow bed. He would leave tomorrow, early, before Howell got up to let the dog out.

He didn’t leave. He woke to Howell calling hoarsely from the bedroom. Andrew found him half-sitting on the side of the bed, his hand reaching pathetically for the nightstand where a glass of water had been knocked over, spilling pill bottles and inhalers and soggy tissues onto the floor.

“Could you—please—”

Andrew found Howell’s inhaler and gave it to him. Then he straightened out the mess, put more water in the glass and watched as Howell took his pills, seven of them. He waited to see if Howell wanted anything else, then let Festus outside. When the boy returned to the bedroom, Howell was still sitting there, eyes shut as he breathed heavily through his nose. His eyes flickered open to stare at Andrew: a terrified expression that made the boy’s heart tumble. But then he closed them again and just sat there.

Finally Andrew said, “I’ll help you get dressed.” Howell nodded without opening his eyes.

It didn’t take Andrew long to help him into a flannel robe and slippers, and into the bathroom. Andrew swore silently and waited outside the door, listening to the groan of water in the taps, the old man’s wheezing and shambling footsteps. Outside, Festus scratched at the back door and whined to be let in. Sighing, Andrew took care of the dog, went back to the bathroom and waited until Howell came out again.

“Thank you,” the old man said. His voice was faint, and he trembled as he supported himself with one hand on the sink, the other against the door frame.

“It’s okay, Major Howell,” said Andrew. He took Howell’s elbow and guided him into the living room. The old man was heavy, no matter that he was so thin; Andrew was terrified that he’d fall on the flagstone floor. “Here, sit here and I’ll get you something. Breakfast?”

He made instant coffee and English muffins with scrambled eggs. The eggs were burned, but it didn’t really matter: Howell took only a bite of the muffin and sipped at his tepid coffee. Andrew gave the rest to Festus. He would eat later, outside.

Afterward, as Howell sat dozing in the armchair by the fireplace, Andrew made a fire. The room filled with smoke before he figured out how to open the damper, but after that it burned okay, and he brought in more wood. Then he took Festus outside for a walk. He wore Howell’s parka and heavy black mittens with NASA stenciled on the cuffs. The sunlight on the snow made his eyes ache as he tried to see where Festus ran up the first slope of Sugar Mountain. He took off one glove, unzipped the neck of the parka and stuck his hand inside. The amulet was still there, safe against his chest. He stopped, hearing Festus crashing through the underbrush. Would the dog follow him? Probably not: he was an old dog, and Andrew knew how fast a fox could run, knew that even though he had never hunted this spot it would be easy to find his way to a safe haven.

Then the wind shifted, bringing with it the tang of wood smoke. Festus ambled out of the woods, shaking snow from his ears, and ran up to Andrew. The boy let the amulet drop back inside his flannel shirt and zipped up the parka. He turned and walked back to the house.

“Have a nice walk?” Howell’s voice was still weak but his eyes shone brightly, and he smiled at the boy stomping the snow from boots too big for him.

“Oh yeah, it was great.” Andrew hung up the parka and snorted, then turning back to Howell tried to smile. “No, it was nice. Is all that your property back there?” He strode to the fireplace and crouched in front of it feeding it twigs and another damp log.

“Just about all of it.” Howell pulled a lap blanket up closer to his chin. “This side of Sugar Mountain and most of the lakefront.”

“Wow.” Andrew settled back, already sweating from the heat. “It’s really nice back there by the lake. We used to go there in the summer, my mom and me. I love it up here.”

Howell nodded. “I do too. Did you live in the city?”

Andrew shook his head. “Yonkers. It sucks there now; like living in the Bronx.” He opened the top button of his shirt and traced the string against his chest. “Once, when I was a kid, we heard an astronaut talk here. At the library. Was that you?”

Howell smiled. “Yup. I wondered if you might have been one of those kids, one of those times. So many kids, I must have talked to a thousand kids at the school here. You want to be an astronaut when you were little?”

“Nah.” Andrew poked at the log, reached to pet Festus. “I never wanted to be anything, really. School’s really boring, and like where I lived sucks, and…” He gestured at the fire, the room and the door leading outside. “The only thing I ever really liked was being up here, in the woods. Living in The Fallows this year, that was great.”

“It’s the only thing I liked, too. After I stopped working.” Howell sighed and glanced over at the pictures covering the wall, the sagging bookcases. He had never really been good with kids. The times he had spoken at the school he’d had films to back him up, and later, videotapes and videodiscs. He had never been able to entertain his son here, or his friends, or the occasional visiting niece or nephew. The pictures were just pictures to them, not even colorful. The tapes were boring. When Peter and his friends were older, high school or college, sometimes Howell would show them the Nut File, a manila envelope crammed with letters from Rubber Man Lord of Jupiter and articles clipped from tabloids, a lifetime of NASA correspondence with cranks and earnest kooks who had developed faster-than-light drives in their garages. Peter and his friends had laughed at the letters, and Howell had laughed too, reading them again. But none of his visitors had ever been touched, the way Howell had. None of them had ever wondered why a retired NASA astronaut would have a drawer full of letters from nuts.

“Andrew,” he said softly; then, “Andrew,” as loud as he could. The boy drew back guiltily from the fire. Festus started awake and stared up, alarmed.

“Sorry—”

Howell drew a clawed hand from beneath the blanket and waved it weakly. “No, no—that’s all right—just…”

He coughed; it took him a minute to catch his breath. Andrew stood and waited next to him, staring back at the fire. “Okay, I’m okay now,” Howell wheezed at last. “Just: remember last night? That picture with the poem?”

Andrew looked at him blankly.

“In my room—the moon, you wanted to know if I wrote it—”

The boy nodded. “Oh yeah. The moon poem, right. Sure.”

Howell smiled and pointed to the bookcase. “Well here, go look over there—”

Andrew watched him for a moment before turning to the bookcase and looking purposefully at the titles. Sighing, Festus moved closer to the old astronaut’s feet. Howell stroked his back, regarding Andrew thoughtfully. He coughed, inclining his head toward the wall.

“Andrew.” Howell took a long breath, then leaned forward, pointing. “That’s it, there.”

Beneath some magazines, Andrew found a narrow pamphlet bound with tape. “This?” he wondered. He removed it gingerly and blew dust from its cover.

Howell settled back in his chair. “Right. Bring it here. I want to show you something.”

Andrew settled into the chair beside Howell. A paperbound notebook, gray with age. On the cover swirled meticulous writing in Greek characters, and beneath them the same hand, in English.

Return address:

Mr. Nicholas Margalis

116 Argau Dimitrou

Apt No. 3

Salonika, Greece

“Read it,” said Howell. “I found that in the NASA library. He sent it to Colonel Somebody right after the war. It floated around for forty years, sat in NASA’s Nut File before I finally took it.”

He paused. “I used to collect stuff like that. Letters from crackpots. People who thought they could fly. UFOs, moonmen. Outer space. I try to keep an open mind.” He gestured at the little book in Andrew’s hand. “I don’t think anyone else has ever read that one. Go ahead.”

Carefully Andrew opened the booklet. On lined paper tipsy block letters spelled PLANES, PLANETS, PLANS. Following this were pages of numerical equations, sketches, a crude drawing labeled THE AIR DIGGER ROCKET SHAPE.

“They’re plans for a rocket ship,” said Howell. He craned his neck so he could see.

“You’re kidding.” Andrew turned the brittle pages. “Did they build it?”

“Christ, no! I worked it out once. If you were to build the Margalis Planets Plane it would be seven miles long.” He laughed silently.

Andrew turned to a page covered with zeros.

“Math,” said Howell.

More calculations. Near the end Andrew read,

Forty years of continuous flying will cover the following space below, 40 years, 14,610 days, 216,000,000,000,000 x 14610—equals 3,155,750,000,000,000,000 miles. That is about the mean distance to the farthest of the Planets, Uranus.

Trillions, Quatrillions, Billions and Millions of miles all can be reached with this Plan.

Andrew shook his head. “This is so sad! He really thought it would fly?”

“They all thought they could fly,” said Howell. “Read me the end.”

“ ‘Experimenting of thirty-five years with levers, and compounds of,’” read Andrew. “ ‘I have had made a patent model of wooden material and proved a very successful work.

“ ‘My Invention had been approved by every body in the last year 1944, 1946 in my native village Panorma, Crevens, Greece. Every body stated it will be a future great success in Mechanics.

“ ‘Yours truly.” “

Andrew stopped abruptly.

“Go on,” prodded Howell. “The end. The best part.”

On the inside back cover, Andrew saw the same hand, somewhat shakier and in black ink.

I have written in these copy book about 1/1000 of what actually will take in building a real Rocket Shape Airo-Plane to make trips to the Planets.

There in the planets we will find Paradise, and the undiying water to drink so we never will die, and never be in distress.

Come on all you

Lets get busy

for the speedy trips

to all Planets and

back to earth again.

Nicholas S. Margalis

Aug 19 1046

Howell sat in silence. For a long moment Andrew stared at the manuscript, then glanced at the old man beside him. Howell was smiling now as he stared into the fire. As Andrew watched, his eyelids flickered, and then the old astronaut dozed, snoring softly along with the dog at his feet. Andrew waited. Howell did not wake. Finally the boy stood and poked at the glowing logs. When he turned back, the blanket had fallen from the old man’s lap and onto the dog’s back. Andrew picked it up and carefully draped it across Howell’s knees.

For a moment he stood beside him. The old man smelled like carnations. Against his yellow skin broken capillaries bloomed blue and crimson. Andrew hesitated. Then he bowed his head until his lips grazed Howell’s scalp. He turned away to replace the booklet on its shelf and went to bed.

That night the wind woke Howell. Cold gripped him as he sat up in bed, and his hand automatically reached for Festus. The dog was not beside him.

“Festus?” he called softly, then slid from bed, pulling on his robe and catching his breath before walking across the bedroom to the window.

A nearly full moon hung above the pine forest, dousing the snow so that it glowed silvery blue. Deer and rabbits had made tracks steeped in shadow at wood’s edge. He stood gazing at the sky when a movement at the edge of the field caught him.

In the snow an animal jumped and rolled, its fur a fiery gleam against the whiteness. Howell gasped in delight: a fox, tossing the snow and crunching it between its black jaws. Then something else moved. The old man shook his head in disbelief.

“Festus.”

Clumsily, sinking over his head in the drifts, the spaniel tumbled and rose beside the fox, the two of them playing in the moonlight. Clouds of white sparkled about them as the fox leaped gracefully to land beside the dog, rolling until it was only an auburn blur.

Howell held his breath, moving away from the window so that his shadow could not disturb them. Then he recalled the boy sleeping in the next room.

“Andrew,” he whispered loudly, his hand against the wall to steady himself as he walked into the room. “Andrew, you have to see something.”

The window seat was empty. The door leading outside swung open, hanging against the wall in the frigid wind. Howell turned and walked toward the door, finally stopping and clinging to the frame as he stared outside.

In the snow lay a green hospital gown, blown several feet from the door. Bare footprints extended a few yards into the field. Howell followed them. Where the shadows of the house fell behind him, the footprints ended. Small pawprints marked the drifts, leading across the field to where the fox and dog played.

He lifted his head and stared at them. He saw where Festus’ tracks ran off to the side of the house and then back to join the other’s. As he watched, the animals abruptly stopped. Festus craned his head to look back at his master and then floundered joyfully through the drifts to meet him. Howell stepped forward. He stared from the tracks to the two animals, yelled in amazement and stood stark upright. Then stumbling he tried to run toward them. When Festus bounded against his knees the man staggered and fell. The world tilted from white to swirling darkness.

It was light when he came to. Beside him hunched the boy, his face red and tear streaked.

“Major Howell,” he said. “Please—”

The old man sat up slowly, pulling the blankets around him. He stared for a moment at Andrew, then at the far door where the flagstones shone from melted snow.

“I saw it,” he whispered. “What you did, I saw it.”

Andrew shook his head. “Don’t— You can’t—”

Howell reached for his shoulder and squeezed it. “How does it work?”

Andrew stared at him, silent.

“How does it work?” Howell repeated excitedly. “How can you do it?”

The boy bit his lip. Howell’s face was scarlet, his eyes feverishly bright. “I—it’s this,” Andrew said at last, pulling the amulet from his chest. “It was my mother’s. I took it when she died.”

His hands shaking, Howell gently took the stone between his fingers, rubbing the frayed string. “Magic,” he said.

Andrew shivered despite the fire at his back. “It’s from here. The Indians. The Tankiteke. There were lots, my mother said. Her grandfather found it when he was little. My father—” He ended brokenly.

Howell nodded in wonder. “It works,” he said. “I saw it work.”

Andrew swallowed and drew back a little, so that the amulet slipped from Howell’s hand. “Like this,” he explained, opening his mouth and slipping one finger beneath his tongue. “But you don’t swallow it.”

“I saw you,” the old man repeated. “I saw you playing with my dog.” He nodded at Festus, dozing in front of the fire. “Can you be anything?”

Andrew bit his lip before answering. “I think so. My mother said you just concentrate on it—on what you want. See—”

And he took it into his hand, held it out so that the firelight illuminated it. “It’s like all these things in one. Look: it’s got wings and horns and hooves.”

“And that’s how you hid from them.” Howell slapped his knees. “No wonder they never found you.”

Andrew nodded glumly.

“Well,” Howell coughed. He sank back into the chair, eyes closed. He reached for Andrew, and the boy felt the old man’s hand tighten about his own, cold and surprisingly strong. After a minute Howell opened his eyes. He looked from the flames to Andrew and held the boy’s gaze for a long time, silent. Then,

“You could fly with something like that,” he said. “You could fly again.”

Andrew let his breath out in a long shudder. “That’s right,” he said finally beneath his breath. He turned away. “You could fly again, Major Howell.”

Howell reached for the boy’s hand again, his fingers clamping there like a metal hinge. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I think I’ll go to sleep now.”

The following afternoon the plow came. Andrew heard it long before it reached Sugar Mountain, an eager roar like a great wave overtaking the snowbound bungalow. The phone was working, too; he heard Howell in the next room, talking between fits of coughing. A short time later a pickup bounced up the drive. Andrew stared in disbelief, then fled into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.

He heard several voices greeting Howell at the door, the thump of boots upon the flagstones.

“Thank you, Isaac,” wheezed the astronaut. Andrew heard the others stomp into the kitchen. “I was out of everything.” Andrew opened the door a crack and peered out, glaring at Festus when the dog scratched at it.

Howell motioned the visitors into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Andrew listened to their murmuring voices before storming back into the living room. He huddled out of sight on the window seat, staring outside until they left. After the pickup rattled back down the mountainside, he stalked into the kitchen to make dinner.

“I didn’t tell them,” Howell said mildly that evening as they sat before the fire.

Andrew glared at him but said nothing.

“They wouldn’t be interested,” Howell said. Every breath now shook him like a cold wind. “Andrew…”

The boy sat in silence, his hand tight around the amulet. Finally Howell stood, knocking over his glass of scotch. He started to bend to retrieve it when Andrew stopped him.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “Not like that.” He hesitated, then said, “You ever see a drunk dog?”

Howell stared at him, then nodded. “Yes.”

“It’s like that,” said Andrew. “Only worse.”

Festus followed them as they walked to the door, Andrew holding the old man’s elbow. For a moment they hesitated. Then Andrew shoved the door open, wincing at the icy wind that stirred funnels of snow in the field.

“It’s so cold,” Howell whispered, shivering inside his flannel robe.

“It won’t be so bad,” said Andrew, helping him outside.

They stood in the field. Overhead the full moon bloomed as Festus nosed after old footprints. Andrew stepped away from Howell, then took the talisman from around his own neck.

“Like I told you,” he said as he handed it to the old man.

Howell hesitated. “It’ll work for me?”

Andrew clutched his arms, shivering. “I think so,” he said, gazing at the amulet in the man’s hand. “I think you can be whatever you want.”

Howell nodded and turned away. “Don’t look,” he whispered.

Andrew stared at his feet. A moment later the flannel robe blew against his ankles. He heard a gasp and shut his eyes, willing away the tears before opening them again.

In front of Andrew the air sparkled for an instant with eddies of snow. Beside him, Festus whined, staring above his head. Andrew looked up and saw a fluttering scrap like a leaf: a bat squeaking as its wings beat feebly, then more powerfully, as if drawing strength from the freezing wind. It circled the boy’s head—once, twice—then began to climb, higher and higher, until Andrew squinted to see it in the moonlight.

“Major Howell!” he shouted. “Major Howell!”

To Howell the voice sounded like the clamor of vast and thundering bells. All the sky now sang to him as he flailed through the air, rising above trees and roof and mountain. He heard the faint buzzing of the stars, the sigh of snow in the trees fading as he flew above the pines into the open sky.

And then he saw it: more vast than ever it had been from the orbiter, so bright his eyes could not bear it. And the sound! like the ocean, waves of air dashing against him, buffeting him as he climbed, the roar and crash and peal of it as it pulled him upward. His wings beat faster, the air sharp in his throat, thinning as the darkness fell behind him and the noise swelled with the brightness, light now everywhere, and sound, not silent or dead as they had told him but thundering and burgeoning with heat, light, the vast eye opening like a volcano’s core. His wings ceased beating and he drifted upward, all about him the glittering stars, the glorious clamor, the great and shining face of the moon, his moon at last: the moon.

Andrew spent the night pacing the little house, sitting for a few minutes on sofa or kitchen counter, avoiding the back door, avoiding the windows, avoiding Howell’s bedroom. Festus followed him, whining. Finally, when the snow glimmered with first light, Andrew went outside to look for Howell.

It was Festus who found him after just a few minutes, in a shallow dell where ferns would grow in the spring and deer sleep on the bracken. Now snow had drifted where the old man lay. He was naked, and even from the lawn Andrew could tell he was dead. The boy turned and walked back to the house, got Howell’s flannel robe and a blanket. He was shaking uncontrollably when he went back out.

Festus lay quietly beside the body, muzzle resting on his paws. Andrew couldn’t move Howell to dress him: the body was rigid from the cold. So he gently placed the robe over the emaciated frame, tucked the blanket around him. Howell’s eyes were closed now, and he had a quiet expression on his face. Not like Andrew’s mother at all, really: except that one hand clutched something, a grimy bit of string trailing from it to twitch across the snow. Andrew knelt, shivering, and took one end of the string, tugged it. The amulet slid from Howell’s hand.

Andrew stumbled to his feet and held it at arm’s length, the little stone talisman twisting slowly. He looked up at the sky. In the west, above the cottage, the moon hung just above the horizon. Andrew turned to face the dark bulk of Sugar Mountain, its edges brightening where the sun was rising above Lake Muscanth. He pulled his arm back and threw the amulet as hard as he could into the woods. Festus raised his head to watch the boy. They both waited, listening; but there was no sound, nothing to show where it fell. Andrew wiped his hands on his pants and looked down at the astronaut again. He stooped and let the tip of one finger brush the old man’s forehead. Then he went inside to call the police.

There were questions, and people from newspapers and TV, and Andrew’s own family, overjoyed (he couldn’t believe it, they all cried) to see him again. And eventually it was all straightened out.

There was a service at the old Congregational church in Kamensic Village near the museum. After the first thaw they buried Howell in the small local cemetery, beside the farmers and Revolutionary War dead. A codicil to his will left the dog Festus to the fourteen-year-old runaway discovered to have been living with the dying astronaut in his last days. The codicil forbade sale of the bungalow and Sugar Mountain, the property to revert to the boy upon his twentieth birthday. Howell’s son protested this: Sugar Mountain was worth a fortune now, the land approved for subdivisions with two-acre zoning. But the court found the will to be valid, witnessed as it was by Isaac and Seymour Schelling, village grocers and public notaries.

When he finished school, Andrew moved into the cottage at Sugar Mountain. Festus was gone by then, buried where the deer still come to sleep in the bracken. There is another dog now, a youngish English cocker spaniel named Apollo. The ancient Volkswagen continues to rust in the driveway, next to a Volvo with plates that read NASA NYC. The plows and phone company attend to the cottage somewhat more reliably, and there is a second phone line as well, since Andrew needs to transmit things to the city and Washington nearly every day now, snow or not.

In summer he walks with the dog along the sleepy dirt road, marking where an owl has killed a vole, where vulpine tracks have been left in the soft mud by Lake Muscanth. And every June he visits the elementary school and shows the fifth graders a videotape from his private collection: views of the moon’s surface filmed by Command Module Pilot Eugene Howell.

Author’s note: Nicholas Margalis’ manuscript is in the archives of the National Air & Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

In memory of Nancy Malawista and Brian Hart

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