Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets

by Jessica Fox

  Instead of passing, the car slowed and stopped. Great, I thought, I’m going to get harassed. Even in Wigtown a woman couldn’t go running without some jerk thinking its an open invitation to yell lewd obscenities. I turned towards the car, defensive.

  Facing me, to my surprise, was an elderly couple in their Subaru Forester. Two yelping dogs were panting excitedly in the back. The old man rolled down the window.

  “My dear,” he said, blinking into the sunshine, “are you all right?”

  This confused me. I stopped jogging to catch my breath. “Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”

  “But,” the old lady leaned over so she could see me, “what are you running from?”

  It suddenly dawned on me that they thought I was in trouble. “Oh no, no. I’m perfectly fine. Just out for some exercise.”

  The old man smiled and held up his hand as he rolled up the window. I watched in amazement as the car drove off and disappeared down the road.

  The cast of characters I met along my morning runs was quickly becoming as familiar to me as the brush strokes of a favourite painting. There was the group of tracksuit-wearing children who yelled “running lady” – perhaps not the most inventive insult – at me on their way to school. The friendlier town residents would wave as they watered their plants in the morning. There was the woman who drove a hearse with red velvet seats, who would smile at me in her goth clothing as she took her child and dog into town. There was the elderly gentleman, always immaculate in a refined tweed suit, neatly pinned at the shoulder where one arm was missing. He took a while to charm but eventually greeted me as warmly as he did the rest of the neighbourhood. Then there was the postman, a truly jolly postman, who knew my name within a day of me being there.

  The one person I struggled to connect with, however, was Euan, who remained quiet and elusive. One day, when the shop was still quiet, he had taken me to see Wigtown’s old stone church, which had an extensive ancient graveyard. It had been foggy, but the church was down the road, an easy walk from the Bookshop. We walked in silence, and I stared at Euan curiously, feeling the soft mist on my cheeks. We had spent hardly any time together since our initial drive from the airport. He had his hands full preparing for the festival and running the shop, but I couldn’t tell if he was actually that busy or purposefully being hard to pin down.

  “I love days like this,” I said, my arms restraining the urge to swim through the air.

  “It’s the har, rolling in from the sea,” Euan responded in his usual deep tone.

  To my right, down the sloping hill, rested the silvery marshland, and beyond it the mist had grown thick, resting above a hidden sea. “This is the most beautiful place in the world,” I gasped.

  “You’re so dramatic, Jessica.” He laughed. His arm had grazed my side but he quickly moved away.

  I still didn’t know much about Euan. He was as mysterious – I dreamily noted – as Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. He would be quite friendly one minute and look distant the next. Sometimes he disappeared for hours at a time, and when he returned he’d walk past me as if I were invisible, looking stressed. There always seemed to be shadows of women surrounding him, like crows flying high around a scarecrow. I was aware of detached voices on the phone or fleeting guests showing up at the Bookshop, but nothing tangible enough to know whether he was dating any of them.

  We had entered the churchyard to our left, past an iron gate, and the scene before us suddenly came into focus. Stone graves rose in all directions out of the ground, reminding me of old, crooked teeth pushing out of the wet, mossy earth. There were patches of brambles growing, intertwined with the graves, and Euan picked me a blackberry. I had taken it and nibbled at it, chillily, thinking of the soil out of which it came.

  The gloomy scene of that churchyard visit felt worlds away as I stepped out into the morning sunshine for my run. The day promised to be clear and bright – no sign of clouds or fog – so I decided to run a bit farther than usual. Normally I turned downhill, in the direction of the sea, past rolling marshland and gently grazing cows. Today I needed time to think so I would make a right where I usually made a left, and head towards the expanse of blue sky, over the hill and away from Wigtown.

  Though I didn’t yet have the red bicycle from my dream, I had been writing, every day, and making slow but sure headway. I was supposed to be working on my new screenplay. An investor in Boston had asked to see it when I returned and I was feeling the pressure. Deadlines were good for writing; the pressure of expectations was not.

  I tried to increase the pace, willing my legs to move faster. My heart beat steadily in my chest to a stubborn rhythm, only quickening when I thought of Euan. Even when I tried to think of other things, my thoughts would wrap around back to him.

  I had found an article in the shop, which described Euan as “Wigtown’s heart-throb”. He had grown red as I teased him about it.

  “It’s biased. The man who wrote it was hitting on me,” he had protested. Clearly I hadn’t been the only person who found the contrast between his shy, quiet demeanour and his tall, shaggy-haired, boyish good looks attractive.

  “I prefer what the poet Rab Wilson called me,” he said.

  “Oh, what’s that?”

  “A cultured minotour,” Euan answered, looking pleased.

  As I ran, my feet hitting upon the soft grass, I felt them throb and ache. I was sore.

  Euan had taken me night mountain-biking with Callum the night before. We had worn headlamps and crashed up and down hills through the dark woods. I hadn’t done anything so physically fear-inducing in years. I had done well though, keeping free of crashes, and had met Euan and Callum back at the van only minutes after they had finished the course. A good thing, as they hadn’t once slowed to help me through the course, or even checked in with me to see if I was okay. Euan’s disregard had been so blatant that I worried I had started to become a burden to him – one more person to chauffeur around and be nice to, while he ran the shop, attended to visitors and prepared for the festival.

  I turned past a bend in the road and open farmland appeared. Above me was as dramatic as the landscape, with large clouds now hanging low in the sky. I stopped to catch my breath. Why couldn’t I stop thinking of him? He was intriguing, kind and mysterious, but I wasn’t getting any signals that my interest was being returned.

  A lone cow approached the fence where I was standing, looking mournfully sympathetic.

  “I didn’t come all this way to open up my heart again,” I found myself saying aloud. “This is supposed to be Me Time. Like a Buddhist monk I am here in remote, beautiful Wigtown for writing and inward reflection only.”

  The cow, maintaining a diplomatic silence, began to eat grass. I stretched my legs before me and started to run again. Yes, I had learned from the past, I thought to myself, this time with a twinge of pride. Grant had satisfied my thirst for unrequited love enough to last a lifetime, and any sniff of indifference now would send me running for the hills. Literally. I hopped over a fence into a rising field and headed up a steep green slope.

  That morning I had received an email about NASA. It was the first unwanted intrusion into my adventure, and had woken me from what had become my fully immersive, intoxicating Scottish dream. Quantum physicists don’t need mathematics or hypothetical worlds to believe in parallel universes; Wigtown was enough of an example that I was living in one. Checking my packed inbox, filled with pages of unopened messages, had reminded me that in another reality my old life still existed, and would be waiting for me when this adventure was done.

  The NASA email was marked as urgent, so reluctantly I had opened it. My project was going well, it said, but my department was experiencing budget cuts. The last two words made my stomach flip. Budget cuts were never a good sign and the tone of the email was one of apology. Pounding up the side of the hill, I told myself to use this solitary time to think about where I was heading. Not just on my run, but in my career, in my life.

  I crested the
hill, out of breath. The moment I had been hired, I had known my job at NASA wouldn’t last for ever. I was a film director after all, and my trajectory, with or without budget cuts, would have led me in a different direction eventually. Perhaps it was time to jump into the unknown again and make a feature? I waited for that pang of intense “YES” to fill my heart, but it didn’t come. I felt nothing. No excitement filled my fingertips in the usual way. The only thing I felt strongly pulled to at the moment was this eccentric seaside town.

  Keeping an eye out for bulls, I continued on my way. Yesterday, Euan had explained to me the “Right to Roam”, a brilliant Scottish concept of walkers being free to walk anywhere.

  “Just be careful,” he had warned; “you don’t want to end up in a field with a bull.”

  “What happens if I do?” I had asked, never having seen a bull before in my life.

  Euan had turned serious. “Run. Fast. And get over any wall or fence you can.”

  So it was with great caution that I began descending the other side of the hill into a neighbouring field, one part of my mind looking out for a large cow without an udder, the rest lost in thought.

  This particular hill was empty, and for a moment I felt like Maria from The Sound of Music. I held out my arms, just like Julie Andrews, and started twirling, singing, out of breath, “The hills are alive…”

  I laughed as I twirled, feeling dizzy and disoriented. As I dropped to my knees to catch my breath and looked at the new scenery, I suddenly realised how far I had strayed from my known route. Carefully scanning the horizon to take in my surroundings, all I saw were green hills – no sign of the sea, no houses, no sign of Wigtown’s monument or large town hall steeple.

  The euphoria wore off, and panic quickly set in. I was far from Wigtown. Without a phone, and no sense of direction, I had, in fact, no idea where I was or how I could get back. I was lost.

  Chapter 10

  “C’est la personnalité qui conte.” – Antoine Bourdelle quoted in JOSEPH CAMPBELL: A FIRE IN THE MIND by Stephen and Robin Larsen: Biography section, under C.

  The sea of green hills stretching before me was as disorienting as a wall of mirrors. I staggered downhill, in no direction in particular, having answered the question of “where am I headed” in a very literal way: I had absolutely no idea. However, stumbling somewhere along the path less travelled seemed better than nowhere. Robert Frost would be proud, I thought, as my steps started to gain confidence again.

  I folded my arms into my chest and I was suddenly hungry. I scanned myself for provisions, but had no pockets to carry snacks or water. I did have a now sweaty five-pound note stuck in my shoe; brilliant forethought, I congratulated myself, until I realised there would be nowhere to spend it. As I descended the muddy hillside, the world before me was empty farmland as far as the eye could see.

  Almost as soon as I got to the road, a red van appeared in the distance. My heart quickened. I tried to keep calm; it could be either Euan’s van, or the Royal Mail's for they looked quite similar. As the van drew near, I discerned the familiar ginger curls of a cultured minotaur in the driver’s seat.

  I didn’t know what to do. If I just waved he might think I was saying hello and not stop. It was a bit dramatic to stand in the middle of the road, or wave my arms, so I opted for the cool, thumbs-up hitch-hiking stance.

  Euan’s van slowed when he saw me, and he rolled down the window. “You need a lift?”

  “That would be great, thanks.”

  As I climbed in, I could see Euan looking bewildered. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

  “I got a bit lost.”

  “I can see that.” Euan tightened his jaw, trying not to laugh. “There are just so many roads out here, I can see how it would be confusing for an American.”

  I smacked him on the arm. “I took short cuts, over the hills. I think I paid more attention to whether there were bulls than the direction I was going in.”

  “Clearly.” Euan was smiling.

  “You know, if you hadn’t come along, I would have found my way back.” I folded my arms, annoyed by how much he was enjoying this.

  “Uh huh.” Euan’s smile widened.

  The van sped down a one-track road and over a small hill, finally turning where the road widened into a larger road that I recognised. The familiar snow-peaked mountains and marshland came into view.

  “It’s Big Bang Day today,” I said, trying to make conversation, instantly wishing I had picked a cooler topic. But Euan’s amusement seemed to be growing.

  “Really?”

  “The Large Hadron Collider is supposed to smash its first atoms together.” I couldn’t help myself.

  “I heard that on the radio,” Euan said. “Apparently it could create a massive black hole. I’d better get my errands done before that happens. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Not at all.” Errands in a new land were an adventure. I was relaxing, enjoying his company. Euan turned up the volume on the radio. “What are we listening to now?”

  “Radio 4,” Euan said, handing me an open pack of Maltesers, which I had miss-called Maltese Balls, much to everyone’s amusement. I relished the milky chocolate as it melted in my mouth. “There’s BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 4,” Euan said, in response to my questioning expression.

  “There are only four radio stations? I don’t under-stand.”

  “What’s so hard to understand?” Euan was looking amused again.

  “It just feels so… so… socialist.”

  “What?” Euan looked surprised. “That’s ridiculous. BBC Radio is highly regarded worldwide for being the most unbiased media.” He seemed personally insulted. “I can’t believe you think it’s socialist.”

  Coming from a world where the American dream was synonymous with choice, and support for public broadcasting was ever being cut, I couldn’t imagine people embracing four government-funded channels for their radio.

  “I didn’t mean the content,” I said quietly.

  His expression lightened and he shot me a playful glance. “It’s not like the American drivel you’re used to, I suppose.”

  We rode in silence, up the highway, the sparkling sea beside us extending into Wigtown Bay. I could see Wigtown on the other side of the water, resting like an ideal city upon the hill.

  *

  The week before the festival passed in a blur of unrelenting rain. The postman stopped and slid a couple of envelopes marked for Euan into my hands.

  “It’s dreech out there,” he said. “Dreech,” he repeated, as he searched my puzzled face. “It’s Scottish for…”

  “Dreary?” I offered.

  “No, not really, it’s not depressing enough. It’s Scottish for… for… this,” he said and pointed out of the window. Having said his piece, he left.

  Wigtown was shrouded in a silvery haze and each day was like the last, damp and dreech, but I didn’t mind. I was in love with the place. Like a golden child, everything it did in my eyes was perfect. The weather, trees, hills, town and people all added to my rose-tinted bliss. My heart, which had always been missing something, slightly askew with a constant, mysterious pang of homesickness – for what, I could never put my finger on – for the first time in my life, felt whole and content.

  Tennyson’s Ulysses explained his constant thirst for something intangible as “all experience is an arch wherethro’/Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades/For ever and ever when I move”. However, among the green hills and open spaces of Galloway, my unrest was gone. There was no shpilkus. It was as if all along my true home had been out there, in that “untravelled world” and it was just a matter of finding it…

  NASA had continued to send me emails, each more worrying than the last and rousing fresh concern – like a car kicking up dust, my thoughts dashed about in different directions with the velocity of Brownian Motion. The investor wanted to see a screenplay soon too, and Josh had been trying to contact me. The other world, my life in America, was no longer p
olitely ringing the doorbell but banging on the door, and I avoided answering these unwanted intrusions by volunteering in the shop. My help was needed as the lead-up to the festival began in earnest and there were chairs to be moved, tables to be brought out of storage and people to meet and greet. I felt distracted – far away from LA – but couldn’t hide from the anxiety of what I would do next, which hung like an impending question mark before me.

  “I haven’t seen him, Eliot, sorry,” I said, moving a stack of books that had fallen over. Eliot had popped in, panicked, looking for Euan. He needed Euan, or more precisely Euan’s van, to shuttle cases of wine for the festival’s opening party. Though it seemed like a small task, it was an important one, almost more crucial to the festival’s success than the books.

  “I thought you two were tied at the hip,” Eliot said, pacing back and forth. He was leafing through pieces of paper that he found crumpled in his pocket. “Right, fine. Next task. I need to know where we put the gift bags for the authors.”

  I shrugged. Eliot was panicking because the festival was starting the next day and his panic was contagious. My stomach churned in sympathy and I began to feel as agitated as he looked.

  “Great. Fine. Right. That’s okay.” Eliot waved his hands in the air. Quickly realising I was completely useless, he turned on his heels and left. I found myself alone in the shop, heart racing.

  I used the nervous energy to tidy shelves, explore the nooks and crannies of the Scottish Room, warm up by the roaring fire next to the Poetry section – Euan was seriously lacking in E.E. Cummings, I noted, disappointed – and finally, realise my dream of sitting back behind the long wooden counter. Just as if my dream had been real, I sat snug in Euan’s woolly jumper, contemplating the universe as I looked out of the window, my vision of my journey complete.

  Outside, the large white tent for the festival was getting pounded with wind and rain. A car pulled up into the empty street, and I was delighted to see an elegantly dressed woman emerge, shield herself from the weather and head bravely towards the shop. The little bell rang loud and clear.