Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure: Short Shories

by Craig Lancaster

  “More than I can say,” she said. She looked down at her hands and tugged at a loose thread on her sleeve. “But you know what? I still feel cheated. I didn’t have nearly long enough with Kevin, just eleven years. He was a miracle in our lives. I was a single mom. I’d been left by my first husband while I was still pregnant with Andy. We were barely scraping by after Ross left. I had to sell our house and move into a little apartment. And then we met Kevin, and he fell in love with us.”

  “Sounds like he was a miracle for a lot of people,” Frank said.

  Laura looked to the ceiling, as if she could see through it to the sky.

  “I hate to say this,” she said, “but I still wish sometimes that he’d been off that day, that it had been someone else’s destiny. Even if it meant that fewer people came home.”

  On the appointed day, Frank drove to Lewis & Clark Middle School.

  “You must be our astronaut,” said the woman who checked him in at the office.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. Flight engineer.”

  “Oh.” She seemed disappointed.

  After a few minutes, Andy came in to collect Frank and walk him to the assembly room for the program.

  “You clean up well,” Frank said, pointing at the tie and blazer the young man wore.

  “Mom made me.”

  “She’s a smart lady.”

  Inside the assembly hall, rows of chairs faced a lectern and microphone. Along the walls, students, teachers, administrators and guests talked and ate Christmas-themed cookies. Strains of holiday music played above the chatter.

  Andy rocked his head side to side in rhythm with the music.

  “Jingle balls, jingle balls, jingling all the way,” he sang-whispered.

  “What’s that?” Frank said.

  “‘Jingle bells.’”

  “It sounded like ‘jingle balls.’”

  “It was. My friends and I changed the words.”

  Frank laughed.

  Frank stared back at two-hundred-some-odd sets of expectant eyes. He wished that the principal hadn’t built this thing up quite so much. (“This will be an experience we’re sure you’ll remember for a long, long time.”) Frank rather enjoyed the speeches by the executive chef, the investment banker and the YMCA director. As he cleared his throat and began to speak, he had little confidence that his words would measure up.

  He thanked the school leaders and acknowledged Andy—“my friend, Andy Elam”—and then he launched into remarks that he had been sweating over for weeks.

  “I was teaching physics at Eastern Montana College here in Billings in 1958 when one of my Air Force buddies asked me to apply for an engineer’s job with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which had just been created by President Dwight Eisenhower. I was thirty-one years old. So if I was thirty-one in 1958, you can figure out that I’m older than dirt today.” At this, the assembly room filled with the laughter of seventh-graders.

  “Actually, that’s not true. I was a sophomore when dirt was a senior.” More laughs tumbled in, and Frank felt more at ease. He looked over at Andy and saw the young man beaming back at him, and he gave the boy a wink.

  One thing surprised Frank: The kids, while mildly interested in things they’d often heard about, like the moon landing, were absolutely entranced by the disasters and near-misses. Frank had seen most of them.

  He lamented the loss of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee on the launch pad with Apollo 1. “We got so many things wrong, from a design standpoint,” he said. “But that drove us harder to get them right, to keep the program alive when a lot of people on the outside wanted to scrap it.”

  He talked about the lifeboat situation in Apollo 13 and how work on the ground—figuring out how to preserve enough power for re-entry, creating impromptu carbon-dioxide scrubbers and relaying those instructions to the crew—was essential to bringing those men back home safely.

  He explained how one person, one very smart person, can make all the difference. “When lightning struck Apollo 12 in the first minute after liftoff, it scattered everything. Instruments weren’t working. We couldn’t talk with the crew very well. Telemetry—the way we measured things from Earth—was a mess. This guy I worked with, John Aaron, an EECOM like me, he’d seen those kinds of telemetry readings a year earlier during a test, and he remembered exactly how to reset them so they’d read normally. Nobody else in the room knew what he was talking about, but Alan Bean, an astronaut up in the capsule, did what John said to do, and everything worked out. If John hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t known what to do, we would have had to abort that mission. After that, we all called John ‘a steely-eyed missile man,’ which is just about the best compliment there is.

  “And let me tell you something else: John didn’t have any opportunity that you don’t have right here. He grew up in a little town in Oklahoma, in an area called Booger Hollow.” The students tittered. “I’m serious: Booger Hollow. He’s just a smart man who has focus and drive and who was constantly looking to learn. Any of you can do the same thing.”

  By the time Frank reached the end of his remarks, a recollection of the Challenger disaster and how that wore out his emotions and sent him into retirement, he didn’t want the day to end. When he said “thank you,” the seventh-graders at Lewis & Clark Middle School gave him a standing ovation.

  Andy and Frank sat at a table in the assembly room, eating finger sandwiches and other snacks and drinking punch during the closing reception for the day’s guests.

  “You were great, Mr. Abrams,” Andy said.

  “Thank you, Andy. Thanks for inviting me.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Those stories about saving Apollo 12 and Apollo 13, they made me kind of mad.”

  “Mad how?”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem fair that you can rescue rockets but nobody could rescue my dad’s plane. Why is that?”

  Frank took a carrot and put it on Andy’s plate, which was otherwise filled with french fries. “Do you remember what I said today about logic and reason and how we kept our heads when things were going badly, that it was the only way to overcome the odds?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That was your dad that day. I can’t tell you why the plane he was flying lost control. But I know this: Your father was the rescuer for a lot of people on that plane, a lot of people who probably would have died if not for him. Those people, every day of the rest of their lives they will be thankful that they were on a plane flown by your dad. And even though you miss him, I bet one day you’ll realize that you’re thankful for that, too.”

  Andy bowed his head, and Frank reached out and tousled his hair.

  On the drive home, Frank felt a surge of energy deep inside. He recognized it, remembered it: adrenaline, something he hadn’t experienced in years. In combat, in Korea, such shots of power kept him focused on a target even as hell rained down around him. On the job, he could use it to block out everything except the problem on his screen.

  Now, all these years later, adrenaline came back to him, and it carried an idea, one he knew he would work on as soon as he got back to the house. He would start with all of the old friends and colleagues whose offers of help he had turned away after Lucy passed on.

  “You would have been proud of me today, old girl,” he said as he made the last turn for home.

  On Christmas Eve, Frank answered the knock at his door and found Laura and Andy standing in the falling snow in matching candy-cane sweaters.

  “Trick or treat,” Andy said, and his mother jabbed him in the ribs.

  “You goof!”

  “Come on in,” Frank said, ushering them into the living room.

  Laura handed him a plate of sugar cookies. “A small gift from a neighbor,” she said.

  Andy gave him a card.

  “From both of us,” the boy said.

  “Do you want me to open this now?” Frank asked.

  “Sure,” Andy sa
id.

  Frank set the plate of cookies down and carefully tore open the envelope. He smiled at seeing the simple, Rockwell-esque pastoral scene on the front, and inside he found a handful of coupons printed on colorful paper: Good for five home-cooked meals. Good for 10 games of cards. Good for a chat on the porch, infinitely redeemable.

  “These are great,” he said.

  Laura gave him a hug. “You’re such a blessing in our lives.”

  “Read the card,” Andy said.

  Frank looked at the inscriptions.

  Dear Frank, you gave us something that neither of us thought we would find under the tree this year. You’ve given us comfort and joy. More than that, you’ve given Andy a role model when I was so afraid that the best one he would ever have was gone. We’ll never be able to repay you for that. Love, Laura.

  Frank: You are a steely eyed missile man! Your friend, Andy.

  They said their goodnights on the front stoop, and then Frank remembered that he, too, had a gift. He dashed inside and then came out with a sealed envelope.

  “Read it when you get home,” he said, handing it to Laura.

  “Okay,” she said. “Will you be over in the morning to watch the unwrapping of the gifts?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  An hour later, after finally persuading Andy to give sleep a try, Laura slit open the envelope and read the letter inside.

  To whom it may concern:

  We who are proud to call Frank Abrams our friend—a more ragged collection of flyboys, number-punchers and pencil-necked geeks you’ll never find—are pleased to announce the establishment of the Kevin Elam and Lucy Abrams Memorial Scholarship Fund at Lewis & Clark Middle School in Billings, Montana. Our initial pledge will ensure that the 2010-11 seventh-grade class—every last member of it—will receive a full scholarship to college upon graduating from high school. It is our hope that the community will take up the challenge of matching this effort so that this might be a perpetual gift that bears the names of a true hero and a woman we all dearly loved.

  Laura came barreling out of the house, simultaneously crying and giggling uncontrollably. Arms extended, she fell backward into her yard. There, illuminated by a street lamp, she waved her arms and legs and carved a joyous snow angel.

  “Thank you, Frank!” she shouted.

  A few yards away, watching through the cracked window he never fixed, Frank Abrams toasted her with his coffee cup.

  * * * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Without being too awfully long-winded about it, I must thank: Jim Thomsen, my literary wingman and editor, who saves me from my worst excesses and happily (or at least not unhappily) takes on the not-inconsiderable chore of talking me through my existential crises; my colleague and buddy Ed Kemmick, for finding the excesses and silly mistakes everybody else missed; the folks who encourage my participation in this racket by reading what I put out there and inviting me to their libraries and their homes to break bread and talk about the work; the booksellers and librarians who are tireless, passionate advocates for words and reading; and, finally, my family—those who are far-flung and those who have to abide my immediate presence. I love you, every last one.

  One last note: The closing story, Comfort and Joy, was originally published as a standalone in e-book form, and net proceeds from its sale were given as a donation to Feed America (www.feedamerica.org). Now that it makes up ten percent of this collection, I’m pleased to be able to say that ten percent of the net proceeds from the sale of this book will continue to go to this fine organization that is trying to stamp out hunger in America.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Craig Lancaster grew up in North Richland Hills, Texas, and now makes his home in Billings, Montana. He’s the author of two novels—600 Hours of Edward, the 2010 High Plains Book Award winner for best first book, and The Summer Son, a finalist for the Utah Book Award in fiction.

  Read more about Craig and his work at www.craig-lancaster.com.

  * * * * *

  PRAISE FOR CRAIG LANCASTER’S WORK

  THE SUMMER SON

  (2011, AmazonEncore)

  “A classic western tale of rough lives and gruff, dangerous men, of innocence betrayed and long, stumbling journeys to love.”—Booklist

  “It does not happen very often that I read a book in one day, in one mad rush.”—Pete Warzel, Montana Quarterly

  “Lancaster tackles a tough topic head-on and reveals much about love and violence.”—The Billings Gazette

  “Lancaster … has reached inside his readers as well—all the way to that secret place where we all avoid the unavoidable.”—New West

  600 HOURS OF EDWARD

  (2009, Riverbend Publishing)

  “... a nearly perfect combination of traditional literary elements, mixing crowd-pleasing sappiness with indie-friendly subversion, a masterful blend of character and action that takes advantage of traditional framing devices in just about the best way possible.” —Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

  “This endearing hero deserves the fine ending the author has bestowed on him.”—The Lively Times