Sophomores

by Sean Desmond

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “I like Bob, but he reminds me of my mother-in-law’s terrier.” Borman smiled and studied the Earthrise photograph again. “Always barking.”

  “Well, you always know where you stand with Mr. Crandall.” Pat wasn’t going to fall into the trap of bad-mouthing him. This is the test to see if you’re loyal. “But he is a terrific leader and I’m proud of my time at American.”

  “These classes of kids come in from all across Miami to tour the planes, and they meet me, the astronaut, you know what the question I get most is?”

  Pat smiled with confusion—the Irish call it a shit-eating grin—as he realized the interview had veered back to the moonshot.

  “‘How do you go to the bathroom in space?’” Frank Borman shook his head. “So I tell them all about the waste management protocols. For number one, we had this tube, and you roll on the condom, open the valve, and try to go—with your Johnson Space Center there connected to the vacuum and the void. And then you dump it and it freezes into droplets of ice that are iridescent in the sunlight. It’s quite beautiful actually.”

  Pat could swear that Borman was almost floating off the ground in memory of pissing into space. “Now, number two is much trickier, and I should know. The first twenty-four hours of the Apollo mission I was sick as a dog. Could have been flu, but I now think it was my last meal on Earth, steak and eggs, was undercooked. Lord knows, but I had diarrhea, and in a space suit that is just not going to work out for you. So NASA had come up with this flypaper thing for your rear end, and what a mess, and so that doesn’t work, and now we’re chasing it around with paper towels.”

  Borman told the story with utter seriousness, and Pat had no idea how to react to the fact that he had turned Apollo 8 into a flying shitcan.

  “And Anders and Lovell are downplaying it—last thing we wanted was to stay in Earth orbit and scratch the mission.”

  All these astronaut stories—maybe Colonel Borman is trying to impress me and carry on as a way of getting me to come to Eastern.

  “So that’s the story I tell these kids. I went faster and farther than any human at that point.” Borman shook his head and let go of the invisible controls. “And what I really needed was a commode.”

  “Did the Eastern stewardess at least offer you a blanket and a magazine?” Pat found himself yelling a little as he noticed the thread for Borman’s hearing aid.

  “Ha!” The joke landed, and Borman cracked a smile. “Yes, she worked the first leg, but because of union rules, we had to leave her on the moon.”

  “So who served drinks on the ride back?”

  “I tell you, these labor issues could drive you to drink, but I’m a teetotaler now.” Borman’s tone was instantly stern. He turned away from his wall of fame toward the glass slab of his desk. Pat followed, waiting to take a seat. “You’ve probably heard about my wife, Susie, and her problems.”

  Pat shrugged. He noticed a plaque on Borman’s desk: ex aequo et bono.

  “Well, she had a problem with booze.” Borman plopped down in his padded leather chair. “She was expected to appear to the public as the perfect wife married to the perfect husband who was a perfect astronaut with a perfect American family raising perfect children.” Borman stared out the window at the gauzy Florida sky. “Mission impossible.”

  Pat scratched his palm, growing uneasy about why Borman was telling him this.

  “She was crying for help, and I always put my mission and flying first. I feel guilty about that, and when her drinking was out of control, I blamed myself. I wanted to help her, but the doctors told me it was Susan Borman, not Frank Borman, who had to change.”

  Frank looked straight at him. “Now, Pat, I’ve heard things.”

  Here it comes. Pat had worried so much about the MS that he was caught unprepared for this.

  “Sir, let me stop you right there. I’ve been sober since before I left American.” It was a lie, but it sounded right somehow. He had been trying that long at least.

  “Good. You know I instituted a rehabilitation and counseling program at Eastern, but we’re talking about a very stressful labor situation. And I need all hands on deck and I need to know my team is mission focused. I love my guys who work out there on the aircraft, but their union is run by a bunch of thugs. Animals, Pat. I’m getting death threats. I had to meet with the FBI. They told me to wear a bulletproof vest in public. Can you believe this? Instead I have this little guy.” Borman kicked his leg up on the desk and rolled up the cuff of his pants to reveal a .38 Special holstered on his ankle. “That’s why I need my director of employee benefits running on the straight and narrow. I’ll be honest with you, Pat. If we don’t bring these jerk bosses to heel, our board of directors will lose faith and panic. And then my ass is on the line. So I need men I can count on.”

  Pat felt certain the colonel would rather take live fire than negotiate. “It’s not a problem you have to worry about.”

  “Thank you, Pat. I’m not worried about it. If we work together, I just want you to stay on the path, and if you need help with it, I’ll be there.”

  “This all sounds good to me, and I appreciate your personal interest.” Pat wasn’t sure where he stood or what to say. Did he just offer me the job? No, but close I think. Should I pledge sobriety? Before he could find a way to elaborate, Borman stood up from the desk.

  “I always used to say, don’t think about the parachute, think about the controls. But I was young then and didn’t know any better.” Borman put out his hand to shake Pat’s. “There’s more to life than living.”

  * * *

  An hour later Pat was in Eastern business class headed back to Dallas. He hadn’t closed the deal in the room, and any positive indications from Borman were scrapped by the head of HR telling him they had more candidates to interview, ending with the normal “We’ll call you” bullshit. Pat played back the tape on his talk with Borman and sank into dejection. They never really discussed his work experience, just more detail about how you have to slow-roll a space capsule like it’s on a barbecue spit so as to evenly spread the radiation against the hull, how Apollo 8 touched down into ten-foot swells in the Northern Pacific and Borman got seasick, how he had passed on Apollo 11 and why he didn’t want to go back to the moon, “Seen it, done it, knew what was in store for that crew . . .” Pat left knowing more about lunar telemetry than he did about a job at Eastern. So he picked his sour grapes: Everyone knows Eastern is a shit show, an airline on the ropes, and the colonel—Pat still couldn’t believe he was packing a pistol—is going full Nixon on his enemies in the union. His days seem numbered. Maybe that was too strong, but Pat got the distinct sense that Borman was a good but troubled man, who alternated between velvet glove and iron fist, between bended knee and thrusting chest, and that was very hard to read in a boss.

  The airplane taxied from the gate, and Pat stared out the window at the shimmering runway, and beyond it, a grassy ditch filled with black puddles. Feeling underwater himself, Pat was suspicious of a place where rain collected rather than ran off. Always smells like a storm is coming. And then something caught his eye. An alligator climbed onto the bank of the runway. It was at least five feet long, its scales dark and wet, and it slunk leisurely with its belly close to the ground until it was on dry grass.

  “Can I get you something, sir?”

  Pat looked at the blue face of his Timex like it mattered. He ordered a Johnnie Black double, rocks. If Borman had a spy on the plane, so be it.

  The plane took off and gained altitude, and Pat sipped but strangely found himself not thirsty for it. He was sick of the taste, sick of chasing it. The plane leveled off, and Pat closed his eyes, imagining a rocket launch and that cauldron of white and yellow fire. Borman was right; after the initial acceleration there is no sense of motion. Pat opened his eyes and asked the stewardess to clear his drink. He looked out the
Plexiglas oval and saw the Everglades below. Thick knots of vegetation, steam clumped over the canopy, thousands of roosting birds like white pinpoints on the map. To the distant south, a long brown smudge of fires burning. To the north, the afternoon storm clouds were churning in, the lightning glowing like flashbulbs under wads of cotton. Always a storm coming. The stewardess brought Pat a fresh drink—she had misunderstood. Pat knew they were moving, but he couldn’t feel it. He looked at the drink and then back at this long green tangle until it gave way to the western shore and the gray, waveless waters of the gulf.

  [ APRIL 8 ]

  “Your Honor, the defense calls the Reverend Standing Raleigh.”

  Anne Malone snuck a peppermint Life Saver from her pocketbook and studied Raleigh as he moved in tandem with his attorney toward the witness box. Raleigh looked down, unassuming, penitential. The same well-practiced demeanor he used for Sunday services, Anne thought. Haynes Whiteside laid a binder open on the lectern and adjusted the black foam tip of his microphone. Sergeant Redman administered the oath to the witness, and you could hear the shutters of a dozen cameras. Even though this moment for the media had been sanctioned by Judge Samuels, he erupted when it carried on too long.

  “I will have this room cleared . . .”

  Judge Sam pointed his gavel at the line of cameramen, who lowered their lenses. Then silence.

  “Proceed, Mr. Whiteside.”

  The defense attorney shook off his annoyance. Having Raleigh testify was a huge gamble, and the judge had just aggravated the delicate tension. The bailiff brought Raleigh a fresh glass of water as Whiteside began.

  “Reverend Raleigh, did you attack your wife?” Whiteside asked, calm as could be.

  “No I didn’t,” he replied, rubbing his eyes but showing no tears. Raleigh was wearing a dark blue suit, a starched white shirt with a forward point collar, and a red paisley tie. Too flashy for a minister, Anne thought, anywhere except Dallas.

  “Do you know who did?”

  “No, I don’t.” Raleigh’s voice broke slightly.

  It was the Friday after Easter. The trial had restarted two weeks before. The delays brought on by Raleigh’s suicide attempt had been compounded by hearings about his mental health, his ability to take the stand, and an endless parade of motions and side contests that had put Judge Barefoot Sam in a very ornery mood. Many in the press thought for sure that he would declare a mistrial, but the defense was strangely keen on continuing. Whiteside had drawn a jury he liked, apparently, so no restart, and through juristic half steps and a procedural stubbornness, Judge Sam had kept this trial going as it entered its sixth month.

  On their return to court, the defense had spent its first few days rehashing the testimony of Officer Bodel, Detective Hume, and all the other witnesses from the record. Then an FBI forensic specialist had explained the keystroke matches between the death-threat letters and the typewriter in the offices of Raleigh’s church. That was followed by the DA’s bombshell witness, Lucy Goodfellow.

  Through tears, Miss Goodfellow confirmed her affair with Raleigh. He had visited her the night of Peggy’s attack, but they had an argument, and she felt he was close to breaking up with her.

  “He was angry we couldn’t be together,” she confessed, “but I’m sure Standing is not capable of violence of that kind.”

  Good Lord, she still thinks she can have him. She still wants him to leave his family for her. Lucy Goodfellow came off a little airheaded—Self-deluded, but believable, and too naïve to be covering for him. She was accounted for by a confiding call to her sister Libby, which was proven with a long-distance phone bill, as well as neighbors who put her car on the block and Lucy in her apartment that entire night. Her real purpose on the stand was to show Raleigh was a liar, an adulterer, and a hypocrite. Point made, but the supposed bombshell witness was ultimately a dud. If anything, Anne reasoned, the fact that his mistress is a run-of-the-mill bimbo and not conniving enough almost plays in the reverend’s favor.

  On Holy Thursday, almost a year since the supposed death threats against Raleigh had begun, District Attorney Blackburn had rested the people’s case.

  On Easter Monday, Haynes Whiteside had begun the defense with a parade of character witnesses for Raleigh. The Times Herald deemed it the “Raleigh Revival” as parishioners, church leaders, and everyone minus Raleigh’s own mother told the jurors how great a pastor he was. This did not sway Anne. Oblivious holy rollers, she deemed them all. Pharisees in the street.

  And now, on Bright Friday, the defense presented their last, key witness.

  “When did you meet your wife, Reverend?”

  “At SMU, we were both graduate students. I was studying theology, she was studying music. She was the best organist I ever heard play.”

  Anne’s antennae tuned in on that. Rehearsed. It was in the manner of married couples who have pat answers about each other, but there was something else to Raleigh’s reply—something throwaway that came off as inauthentic.

  “She is the light of my life.” Raleigh’s voice cracked again.

  Whiteside corralled Raleigh’s recollection to the days leading up to the attack and the death threats he had received.

  “The church had a pretty large file of unsigned letters, referring to me as a Negro lover, a communist, that I should keep my nose in the Bible and out of politics.”

  Raleigh then testified about the precautions taken as a result of this—primarily, the security alarm installed at the house. But the Raleighs weren’t used to having it, he claimed, and Peggy didn’t activate the alarm regularly. Why didn’t he take his family’s security more seriously? And why hasn’t anyone bothered to theorize who else could have done this? Anne puzzled. She then noticed Raleigh’s shoulders hunch in tension as Whiteside began talking about the night in question.

  “I came home that night, I’d say around six thirty. Peggy was out in the garage trying to fix the latch on the garage door. It was sticking, and she was trying to loosen it with Palmolive.”

  Unbelievable.

  “Then what happened?”

  “We had a glass of wine, chatted about the kids, and I left.”

  Another lie.

  “Where did you tell Peggy you were going?”

  “Back to the library at SMU to work on my sermon.”

  “And where did you go?”

  “I went to the apartment of Lucy Goodfellow.”

  “What was the nature of your relationship with Miss Goodfellow?”

  Raleigh dropped his chin and bit his lip. “We were having an affair.”

  “Did you have sexual relations with Miss Goodfellow during this visit?”

  “No, we had a fight.”

  The real fight was with Peggy about Lucy.

  “How long did you stay at Miss Goodfellow’s apartment?”

  “Thirty minutes, I think.”

  That’s not right, Anne thought. She couldn’t remember exactly, but it was longer than that. They are messing with the timeline. Compressing, distorting it.

  “Then did you go to the library?” Whiteside caught himself leading Raleigh. “Sorry, withdrawn, where did you go next?”

  “To Bridwell Library.”

  “For how long?”

  “About an hour.”

  “So you left Bridwell around eight thirty?”

  “Correct.”

  “Where did you go then?”

  “I went to the Texaco on Greenville to get gas.” Raleigh tried to offer a faint chuckle. “And some alcohol.”

  “Any reason why you were drinking that night, Reverend?”

  “The fight with Lucy had rattled me. I was trying to find courage in a bottle.”

  Courage is not the word I’d use.

  “I had told Lucy that we couldn’t see each other anymore. I told her it was wrong in the first place, and then with the d
eath threats I was receiving, I felt we were being watched.”

  Trying to raise a bogeyman . . . the killer still at large—all this felt weak to Anne. And then a strange, sudden thought occurred to her: Did Pat ever have suspicions of me? He knew who Ronan was, but what else did he know, or worse, suspect? Anne sank into bitter realization. My husband is oblivious, and in this I’m no better than Standing Raleigh.

  “So where did you go next?”

  “I went back to Bridwell.”

  “Straight there?”

  “Straight there.”

  “Did anyone see you there? Any of the library staff?”

  “There was an attendant at the desk, but I can’t say for sure.”

  Anne looked over at the prosecutor’s table. Blackburn and his associate were conferring nervously.

  “Why did you go back to the library?”

  “I was finishing my sermon, and I was looking for a certain book. Which I left a note for.”

  “With the desk attendant?”

  “No, I left the note on the desk of the research librarian.”

  “Your Honor, I would like to bring into evidence the note Reverend Raleigh wrote that night.”

  “Objection, Your Honor.” Blackburn was turning all shades of pissed off. “We have no witness to this piece of evidence—”

  Whiteside: “Judge, this note comes with an affidavit from—”

  “Your Honor”—Blackburn started halfway around his table—“we cannot—”

  Judge Sam raised his hand to halt him. “Mr. Whiteside, bring me the note and the affidavit.”

  After a minute of scrutinizing the note, the judge called the lead lawyers and their associates into a sidebar. Anne tried to read the body language, but the attorneys remained restrained and professional. They don’t have to fix the prosecutor’s timeline, Anne realized, just punch holes in it. Judge Samuels passed the note to his clerk. The lawyers returned to their stations.

  “Defense is allowed to enter the exhibit into evidence.”