Racing the Moon

by Alan Armstrong

  “Let’s go!” she whispered. As she climbed out she looked across the water. On the nearby island she spotted what she figured must be the radio masts on Wallops.

  “It’s over there!” she exclaimed.

  When they got to the road Chuck put out his thumb. Her dad had warned Alex about hitchhiking. It was one of the few things Chuck did that she’d never attempted.

  A boy driving an old pickup piled high with bushels of tomatoes waved a suntanned arm and pulled over.

  “Where you headed?” His accent was soft and musical.

  “Wallops,” said Chuck. “Close as we can get.”

  “Get in, then. It’s gonna be some crowded, but we can do it.”

  The boy was tall and gangly. His shirt was an old plaid so worn and tomato-stained the pattern didn’t show anymore. He didn’t take up much room. Alex fit in the middle, her legs straddling the gearshift. Chuck sat on the outside with Jeep in his lap.

  Alex thought the boy looked familiar.

  The jalopy started up with a shudder.

  “So you’re goin’ to watch the launch, huh? I can drop you by Chincoteague Channel. That’s as good a watching place as any.”

  “Thanks,” Chuck said as he sat tensed on the edge of the Ford’s worn seat. “That’s the closest?”

  “It’s the best for watching,” the boy replied. “Wallops sits out there a mile, mile and a half from most everything ’cepting the marshes, which is why they chose it. Used to be a hunting preserve. Ducks is still there, but the hunters ain’t, so now when they set them rockets off there must be a million birds scares up.”

  Alex stared at him. She thought he was handsome and she liked the easy way he talked. The more she looked at him, though, the surer she was she’d seen him before.

  “But what’s closest?” Chuck pressed.

  The boy rubbed his face a little and stuck out his jaw. Alex noticed the faint beginning of red beard. “Closest I reckon is Ruther’s Point off Chicken House Road. Couples go out there but not to watch the launches on account you don’t get a direct view.”

  Chuck was nodding. “Sounds right for us, though, being closest.”

  “So you all want to go out to the Point?”

  “Yeah,” said Chuck. “But we don’t want to put you out.…”

  “It’s on my way,” the boy replied cheerfully. “The cannery is just beyond where I’ll drop you. I do hauling for the farmers, five cents a bushel for these tomatoes—loading, hauling, and unloading.”

  He pointed to a shoebox full under the seat. “Try one. There’s salt in the corner.”

  It was the tastiest tomato Alex had ever eaten.

  “You work or go to school?” the boy asked.

  Alex started to say “school” when Chuck spoke up. “I’m looking for work,” he replied. “How about you?”

  “I do this. Quit school to help my mom. My dad was killed in the war.” He paused. “It’s my own truck, ’26 T-Model. Rebuilt her myself,” he added proudly.

  “Oh yeah?” said Chuck. “I rebuilt a war surplus jeep. You really get to know ’em that way, feel everything.”

  “Yeah!” piped up Alex. “Even the spark. He tested the dynamo on me—knocked me down!”

  “That was dumb!” the boy exclaimed, sticking out his hand to Alex. “Name’s TJ. First name sounds like Tolliver, second’s Jester. What’s yours?”

  “Alex. This here’s my brother Chuck and our dog, Jeep.”

  TJ looked over at Chuck. “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen. You?”

  “Fifteen. I’ll be sixteen in September.”

  “They let you drive at fifteen down here?” Chuck asked.

  “Agricultural license,” TJ explained. “Special tags on the truck. Can’t run it out of the county.”

  He glanced over at Alex. “Bet you can’t spell my first name.”

  She tried: “T-o-l-l-i-v-e-r.”

  TJ snorted. “Nowhere close! It’s T-a-l-l-i-f-e-r-r-o—a real old name around here. In what they say’s the first cemetery on Chincoteague, the state historical people found a stone with a T carved on it real rough, so maybe it’s the first Talliferro under there. I run my finger in the letter, it made my hair go up, so I think he’s kin. Over to Snow Hill there’s Revolutionary War stones with ‘Talliferro’ spelled out, and a Civil War dead is buried behind our house. My dad was a Talliferro too, but they buried him over in Europe.”

  He frowned and gripped the wooden wheel.

  “When was that?” Alex demanded. “When was that first T person here?”

  TJ gave her a surprised look. “The historian folks who came out from Baltimore said the cemetery is from 1620, so I figure some time before that. Why?”

  “Because maybe you’re kin to Captain John Smith’s servant,” Alex said excitedly. “Our friend Ebbs has got a painting of Captain Smith with him in it. She’s kin to Captain Smith, and has all this stuff he wrote in his journal too—we’ve been reading it, so we know a lot about him. You look like the boy in the picture. In the journal his name begins with what looks like a T, but the rest is too smudged to make out, so maybe Smith left him and he ended up here.”

  “Could be the same one,” TJ said, nodding as he squinted and set his mouth. “I wanna see that picture. Where is it?”

  “Our friend Ebbs has it,” Alex said, pleased to have his attention. “She’s related to Smith, like I said—and maybe you are to T, so you two gotta meet.”

  “Gotta!” TJ agreed.

  “You guys got an old name too?” he asked, turning to Chuck.

  “My first name is,” Chuck replied, fingering the worn gold ring with the beveled blue stone his mother had given him. “It says Carlus inside, ‘Charles’ in Latin. My last name they just hung on me. Alley here, though, her last name is Hart. She owns it OK.”

  “Huh,” said TJ. “What happened to your folks, Chuck?”

  “No idea, but the thing about names is, you could be anybody, right? You could call yourself Adam if you wanted to, and who’d be the wiser?”

  TJ bunched up his mouth a little. “Never thought of it that way, but what would you do for papers?”

  “Papers?”

  “Birth certificate, stuff like that.”

  “Forge one easy as pie. Spies do it all the time like counterfeiters fake money. We’ve read stories about ’em.”

  They rode along silent for a while, the engine clunking away with a hollow sound as whiffs of exhaust and dust swirled in the cab.

  TJ spat out the window.

  Finally he asked, “What kind of work you want to do, Chuck?”

  “Radio, radar, maybe something on Wallops.”

  Alex fidgeted. She wanted TJ to ask her questions.

  Chuck studied TJ’s face. Alex knew what was coming.

  “We’ve got to get out there,” Chuck said, pointing out over the water. “At least I do.”

  “Me too!” said Alex.

  “Wallops? You can’t,” said TJ. “It’s all classified, military, missiles and all. Real secret.”

  “I know,” said Chuck, “but I’ve got to go see the radar dishes.”

  “We,” said Alex. “We’re both students of it.”

  TJ frowned and half turned to Chuck. “Go easy, mister. You’re talking suspicious. That stuff you said about names and forgeries? Folks around here get wind of that and they’ll think you’re dangerous. I’d turn you in if I thought you was, but watch how you talk. We’re all real protective about what goes on over there, what with the Russians and all. There’s warning posters in the post office.”

  TJ slowed the truck and pulled over at the mouth of a rutted track lined with oyster shells.

  “This is you. Point’s about a half mile down. Can’t drive you in on account of this load. All that’s Wallops over there,” he said, waving at the lump of gray beyond the pines. “Good luck. You end up needing supper or a place to sleep, we’re the corner house, Jesters and Main. There’s a sign out front, Jester’s Used Books—
my mom’s business.”

  “Thanks, TJ,” Alex said. “I’m going to get you together with our friend Ebbs. You’ve gotta be the same family as T.”

  “Do that,” TJ said. “I’m real curious.”

  Jeep was already nosing around in the stinking marsh when Alex and Chuck waved off the pickup.

  They walked down to the Point and looked out at Wallops. They could see the launch site shapes and structures where the lights were.

  “No wonder they had to cut the mainland’s power,” Chuck muttered. “Still daylight but they’ve got it lit up like New York City.”

  22

  WALLOPS

  The channel looked to be a mile across at least.

  “I’m hungry,” Alex announced.

  Mosquitoes settled on them like a cloud.

  They were standing on a patch of dried mud patterned like cracked glaze. Jeep was snuffling around a sodden hulk half-sunk in water. Chuck waved his hands like windshield wipers to keep the bugs off his face.

  “So, Alley, how do we get over there?”

  “There’s boats at that place we passed on the road coming here,” she said. “We’ll rent one—tell ’em we’re going fishing.”

  As they crunched back up the white-shelled track Chuck felt in his pockets for money. He fingered up a dime and a quarter. “This is it, Alley—all I’ve got.”

  It was dim inside Cousin Marge’s. It smelled of cigarettes, stale beer, fish, and frying. They had enough for two mugs of soup and a coffee. The hard round crackers and horseradish paste on the table were free, so they filled up on those as Chuck emptied the sugar bowl into the cup of coffee he shared with Alex. Soon as they finished the coffee the cream went into the mug for Jeep. The dog worked the mug like a hummingbird going at a honeysuckle blossom: not a splash, not a drop wasted.

  The jukebox was going in the corner. Two couples sat in separate booths. Three men were hunched together over their beers in another. By studying their shoes and boots Alex worked out that the men had come in the boats outside, the couples had come in the cars.

  The men ordered another round. They were just warming up.

  “We’ll have to borrow from them, Chuck,” Alex said, indicating with her head the men in the booth.

  Chuck paid and they went out, sauntering like tourists down the dock. The skiff at the far end had an outboard. So did the newer-looking dory, but that one could be seen from Marge’s window.

  “The skiff, right?” Alex said as they moved down the dock.

  Chuck swung into it smooth and easy like he owned it. Alex jumped in lightly, dragged in the dog, then lifted the painter from the piling and pushed off hard as Chuck primed the motor, put the throttle to low, and set the choke. Three pulls and it caught, spitting and spluttering. Acting like they were in no hurry, Chuck eased off the choke until he’d brought the motor to a steady purr, then powered it up to a roar and headed out across the channel. They didn’t look back. They couldn’t hear anything over the motor.

  Chuck didn’t aim for the lights. He pointed them toward the far end of the island, the boat going flapaflapaflap as she pounded across the waves. There was fishing gear at his feet and a gray felt hat like their dad’s, only worn and stained. Alex put it on. “Disguise,” she said.

  The oars stowed against the gunwales were banged up, the handles worn with use. None of the fishing gear was fancy sportsman’s stuff. Alex felt bad about taking from a workingman, but then she figured whoever owned the boat would get it back soon one way or another—they weren’t going far.

  Just then the engine staggered a few beats and died.

  Chuck checked the tank and shook his head at Alex. “Dry.”

  The shore was about a block away now. They were close enough to make out trees, branches, and the tall fence festooned with red, white, and blue signs.

  Thinking jellyfish, Alex asked, “Do we swim it?”

  Chuck shoved an oar into the water. Halfway in it stuck in mud.

  “No, it’s not deep. We can walk it. Keep your shoes on; the shells are sharp.”

  Chuck jumped in, gasping at the cold shock. “The bottom’s firm enough. Your turn!”

  Twisting around, keeping her hands on the gunnels, Alex swung herself in, panting and blowing as the cold hit. With a big drenching splash Jeep dived in beside her.

  Alex kept the hat on.

  Jeep swam on before them. Chuck half towed Alex until it was shallow enough for her to clamber on her own, mud and muck sucking at her shoes. They met up with no jellyfish.

  There was a narrow margin of marsh weed and ooze, then the tall Cyclone fence with strands of barbed wire flecked with blades strung in swirls on spokes leaning out along the top.

  Alex figured she and Chuck could make it over somehow, but what about Jeep? They couldn’t leave him. They were stuck: no way in and no way to get back. The boat had drifted out of sight by now. Ebbs will kill me, Alex thought. I was supposed to say no to stuff like this.

  Every fifty feet were red warning signs on the fence: DANGER! NO TRESPASSING. HIGH SECURITY AREA. U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. PENALTY FOR TRESPASSING: FINE AND IMPRISONMENT.

  A flat, slow-paced loudspeaker voice droned in the distance, the breeze and water noise blotting out the words.

  Near where they stood the fence was humped up over a rock the size of a large wastebasket. High tides and storm wash had loosened it.

  Exploring the shoreline they found a heavy piece of driftwood. They dragged it back to the rock, levered the rock aside enough to make a slither hole, pushed Jeep through, then squirmed under themselves.

  “Wallops!” Chuck whooped. “We made it! I’ve got that great taste in my mouth, Alley! This is big!”

  Their faces were streaked, their bodies covered in greasy, dead-smelling mud.

  Jeep shook himself, sending clots of mud and sand flying. Everything except his muzzle was smeared and splattered. The only other unmuddied thing about them was the hat Alex had managed to keep dry and now pulled low over her head.

  “Ha!” Chuck exulted. “Wish I had a picture, Alley! So here’s our plan. We’re Captain Smith going to meet the Turks. We’re going to walk toward the lights. When we get close enough to be seen you’re gonna put that hat up on a stick so if they start shooting that’s what they’ll hit first.”

  Shooting? Then Alex remembered what Ebbs and TJ had said about security on the island—“armed guards.” She caught her breath. She’d been scared before—caught in her spy tree when a thunderstorm came up, knocked overboard earlier that day—but this was worse: soldiers might be shooting at her?

  Chuck doesn’t care, she thought as he kept talking away.

  “Then we’re going to start marching like we’re going to a camp inspection: hut-two-three-four, hut-two-three-four, and, and”—he was getting more and more worked up—“and we’re gonna be singing—yeah!—singing! ‘Halls of Montezuma’—singing it as loud as we can. We’re gonna get caught—we want to get caught, OK? But they won’t shoot if we come on like that. When they get us, let me do the talking. It’s gonna be scary, you’re gonna be scared, me too, but whatever they ask or threaten just pretend they’re all standing around in dirty underwear, embarrassed and wishing they could get away. Got it? Once they see you’re a girl we’ll be OK. They’ll never shoot a girl.”

  Gonna be scared? Alex thought as she tried to wipe the mud away from her tickling nose. The back of her hand was even muddier than her face. Her knuckle smeared on a clown’s mustache. Underwear? They’ll never shoot a girl?

  They started out. Chuck picked up a long stick, forked at the end. “Perfect!” he exclaimed. “When I say to, perch the hat on it so it rides level and hold it up high as a tall man. A decoy!”

  Like what T did for Smith, Alex thought. Hope it works again.

  “Keep control of Jeep,” Chuck ordered. “Don’t let him get excited and lunge or bark or anything. It’s all a game, right? Play it like a game. We’re gonna see that rocket and the radar!”

&
nbsp; It was dark. Lightning bugs flickered. They made their way toward the launch site lights until they came to a long stretch of paving painted with yellow bars. In the darkness they could make out several small airplanes parked off to one side.

  “A landing strip!” Chuck said in a hushed voice. “You know what, Alley? Maybe I’ll fly us out of here in one of those after the launch—do a Captain Smith escape!”

  It was too dark for Alex to see Chuck’s face, but she knew he meant it.

  The loudspeaker was clear now, the voice slow and methodical as it reported the launch protocols: “Procedure thirty-two.” Pause. “Check. Procedure thirty-three.”

  Alex was shivering but she wasn’t cold. Jeep rambled and sniffed, marking territory as he went along.

  They were skirting a lighted circle now, three sides of it a concrete baffle barrier with a clamshell roof pulled back. Suddenly, coming up on the open side, they could see the rocket. Alex forgot about being scared. She caught her breath. It was beautiful—shinier and more wonderful, more alive than anything in Ebbs’s photographs, even though it was smaller than the V-2 in Ebbs’s picture. The rocket was slender and straight-sided, the latticework gantry hugging it like a mother her child, a flag and USA in vertical black letters on the side, its gleaming white nose. The nose was wreathed in swirls of fog-like mist. The rocket was surrounded by a lot of machines and pipes and men scurrying around. It was like a giant white wasp in its cocoon, trembling, dangerous.

  “Liquid oxygen or maybe coolant,” Chuck said softly, pointing at the mist. “Put up the hat.”