The Universe is a Very Big Place

by APRIL ASHEIM

  Debbie laughed. “I don’t think you have to worry. Jane seemed like she was in a pretty good mood. Hasn’t asked me to fax one useless memo yet."

  Spring furrowed her brow. Jane Letch was never in a good mood. Ever. She reminded Spring of the Queen from Alice in Wonderland. Off with their heads! Perhaps there was going to be a public beheading. That would account for Spring’s summoning and Jane’s good mood. Spring swallowed, gave Debbie one last look, and proceeded down the hall to meet her fate.

  The conference room door was closed but Spring could make out the sounds of muffled conversations and the scrape of moving chairs across the linoleum floor. It sounded like the entire workforce of Teens in Trouble, sans Debbie, had gathered inside. Smells of coffee and bacon wafted up under the door and Spring’s stomach lurched. She had forgotten to eat that morning. Jane rarely sprang for breakfast and Spring guessed there was slim chance anything was left.

  “Serves you right for being late,” she chastised herself, secretly hoping that the laws of karma would kick in and that would be the end of her punishment.

  Spring cautiously pushed open the door and peeped in. Something serious was happening. The normally disorderly conference room had been cleaned up. Five folding tables, normally used for paper sorting and party planning, had been arranged in a horseshoe formation in front of a drop-down screen. Women sat around the table whom Spring recognized as her coworkers, except for an unknown attendee in a purple suit whose name-tag read MEG. Spring gulped. There had been rumors about ‘the poor economy’ and ‘downsizing’ and Spring wondered if her time had come.

  “In times like these you need to make yourself indispensable,” Sam had cautioned her, but she hadn’t listened. Now she regretted tossing aside the Seven Secrets of Highly Successful People and its accompanying day planner Sam had given her on her last birthday.

  Spring tiptoed in and slipped into an empty chair next to Rebecca, the woman she shared an office with. Rebecca was picking at a hole in her paper plate and Spring noticed that everyone’s plates seemed to be cleaned. She picked up a nearby spoon and puckered at her distorted reflection, hoping her lipstick issue had been resolved in the car. Rebecca elbowed her in the ribs and Spring was startled to see that everyone was now staring in their direction. Spring dropped the spoon and it bounced twice, clattering wildly before tumbling onto the floor.

  "Spring, nice to see you again,” said Jane in a sardonic tone.

  Spring swallowed. Apparently her tardiness had not gone unnoticed. A few chuckles from around the table rose and quickly fell, lest they attract Jane’s unwanted attention.

  Spring was about to respond but Jane continued.

  “A few months ago you came up with the idea of adding a mascot to our team to help improve our recognition in the community. Do you remember?” Jane was standing now, twirling a long stick Spring had never seen before. It looked like a cue stick from one of the pool halls her mother used to frequent. Spring squinted to get a better look. Sure enough, the end was tipped in blue felt. Spring wondered which was worse: getting fired or getting hit with the stick.

  “Spring?” Jane asked again. “You do remember the mascot idea, right?"

  Spring nodded. The idea seemed silly now, created during a weak moment when she was low on blood sugar and watching a McDonald’s commercial. “Yes, I remember."

  "Well, I discussed it with the board of directors and they loved the idea! So we hired a public relations firm to develop this. What you’re about to witness is the fruition of your dreams!” Jane directed the stick towards a closet where toilet paper and ink cartridges were stored. She tapped the door three times and stepped aside.

  Nothing happened.

  Jane’s face reddened and she hit the door again, this time with the side of her fist. A scuttling inside caused a collective oooh around the table and everyone leaned forward in anticipation. The door opened and a pink, pencil-like creature emerged, hopping in the direction of Jane.

  “Meet Casey Condom!” Jane waved and the creature bowed clumsily in return, almost toppling over itself. “It’s not actually a condom,” Jane explained. “It’s more like a penis in Saran wrap. But we’re hoping people get the idea.”

  Casey had to be at least seven-feet tall and the color and texture of silly putty. With its scarlet lips and doe-like eyes it had a distinctly feminine appearance. Casey posed on two small ankles garbed in white New Balance tennis shoes.

  "What do you think, Spring? This is your baby, after all."

  “I think she’s finally lost her f-ing mind,” Rebecca whispered out of the corner of her mouth. Rebecca was probably right. Ever since Jane’s husband had run off with that two-dollar-Tallahassee-tart Jane had been doing all sort of strange things. She had stopped shaving her legs, insisted all women in management cut their hair, and no longer allowed employees to discuss soap operas in the break room.

  Spring pulled on the ends of her hair, letting the long strands slide through her fingers. “Actually,” she said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, “I was thinking more along the lines of Snuggle the Dryer Sheet Bear."

  The lady in the purple suit scowled. With great effort she raised herself from the chair, revealing a body that was as wide as it was tall. Her top lip quivered defiantly and Spring noticed a trace of facial hair around her mouth. She tried to look away but between the giant penis, her crazy boss, and the woman’s mustache, there was no safe place to rest her eyes.

  “Casey Condom has presence!” Meg said, nodding to the majestic being beside her. “I designed her myself.” She reached out to touch the creature but Casey hopped backwards, just out of reach. “This agency has been in the Dark Ages far too long. Casey will deliver your message: Cover it up or Cut It Out!” Meg beckoned for Casey to turn around. Sure enough the words were stitched across Casey’s backside.

  "I thought our message was Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder?" Spring looked around the room at the wide-eyed attendees, most stifling laughs under their hands. She checked the corners of the room for cameras. Surely this had to be a prank.

  Jane pointed the stick in Spring’s direction, looking down the shaft like she were taking aim with a rifle. "Look. If it were up to me every penis on the planet would be chucked into pile of wood and burned. But some women still find them appealing. We can’t stop people from expressing their sexuality, but we can keep them from getting genital warts."

  “I’m all for helping girls make informed decisions,” Spring began, feeling her voice begin to shake. “I was a young parent myself. But don’t you think this is a bit extreme?” Spring’s heart was beating so loudly she thought everyone must be able to hear it. She pushed her hands between her knees, feeling every eye upon her. She wasn’t the type to make waves, let alone openly challenge one of Jane’s decisions. She would surely pay for it.

  Jane lowered the stick and cracked a thin-lipped smile in return. “My dear, you haven’t heard the best part. Your dedication to Teens in Trouble has earned you a little promotion. Meg, would you like to tell Spring how she factors into this endeavor?"

  "Certainly,” Meg tagged on. She leaned forward, resting her stubby hands on the table, and looked Spring directly in the eye. "We want you to act as community ambassador for Casey Condom! Take her out and help spread the word. Jane says you will be perfect."

  "Me?" Spring asked as Rebecca whinnied beside her.

  “Yes.” Jane continued for Meg. “I know that you work directly with the girls right now, but I see greater things for you.” Jane twirled the stick, passing it from one hand to the next effortlessly, like a majorette twirling a baton. “And the best part is, your schedule can be a little more…flexible."

  "What about Sarah?" Sarah had been hired to work with Kimberly in the communications department. This seemed like the job she should have. Jane nodded at Casey, and the condom writhed and wiggled until a messy-haired girl with a large nose emerged from the costume.

  Sarah.

  "She will be there, too,�
�� said Jane. "You girls will make one hell of a team! Don’t let me down."

  Sarah shrugged her shoulders and stared at Spring in an expression frozen somewhere between horror and apathy. Jane placed the stick on the table and grabbed her stack of notebooks and pens, signaling to everyone that the meeting was over. There were a few stifled chuckles from coworkers as the herd moved out, but no one lingered behind.

  Sarah shambled towards Spring, dragging the costume behind her. It looked like melted wax. Spring touched it and quickly pulled away. It felt like those sticky hands her sons won in the gum-ball machines, cold, damp and clammy. "They want us to go to schools, news stations, and community health fairs. They want us to march in parades,” Sarah said, gazing out the window into the parking lot. She dropped the costume, and it fell to the floor with a dull thud. “They want us to shake hands with the Mayor."

  “Wearing this?” Spring tugged at the ends of her long hair. “I don’t understand why Jane’s doing this."

  Sarah shrugged noncommittally. “I think we’re being punished. They haven’t said so but it makes sense. Last week I was caught eating one of Jane’s yogurts out of the fridge. It was going to go bad. The expiration date said so.” She wiped her nose with the back of one of her white-gloved hands and sniffled. “It’s not like Jane ever eats anything she puts in the refrigerator anyways."

  “That’s crazy.” Spring said. “Punishing us by humiliating us?"

  “Mostly you, I think.” Sarah said, nodding towards the heap of material on the floor. “I can hide. You can’t."

  Two

  1987

  “Wake up, Johnny boy.” Steve was tugging on his brother’s shoulder, jostling him from his dreams. They were good ones, too. Knights and castles and a fire-breathing dragon. John pulled himself upright, feeling the sting of a bladder that had not been emptied in twelve long hours.

  “Where are we?” John asked, rubbing his eyes. He climbed from his bunk in the back seat through a small set of double windows and joined his brother in the front of the cab. He swiped his hand across the passenger seat window, erasing the mist that had collected during their hours on the road. Morning was beginning to crack, but even without the full assistance of the sun, John could appreciate the beauty of the view.

  “Colorado. I told you you’d like it,” Steve said, grinning.

  John could make out shapes in the distance and rolled his window down to make sure. Yes. They were real. “Mountains."

  Steve laughed and hit the steering wheel good-naturedly with the palm of his hand. “I take you hundreds of miles away from home on your first real adventure and that’s all you can say?"

  John looked at his brother, his jaw hanging down and he popped it shut before he started to drool. He knew Steve expected more from him, but it had been the only word he could produce. Suddenly John felt like one of the simple kids Pete made fun of. But there were no other words for the wondrous rocks that surrounded him––big, beautiful stones that shot up from the ground and into the clouds, kissing the heavens. Blue-grey stairways to the Gods. This was the land of storybooks and dreams. Giants might live here. Or goblins. Or trolls.

  “Not a cornfield in sight,” Steve continued. “Now aren’t you glad you came with me instead of spending another year at Camp Carson? You’re getting too old for that shit."

  John stuck his head out of the car, breathing in the fresh morning air. The feel of it upon his skin as they sped down the highway was like having his soul scrubbed clean. “I never want to leave,” he said, wishing he had brought his sketchbook along. He would have to commit the view to memory, as Steve didn’t stop long enough for even one Polaroid snapshot. They were on a tight schedule, Steve said, and had to get the truck back by morning. But it was long enough for John to see that there was a big world out there that he knew nothing about. A world beyond Samson, Indiana, cornfields, and Little League baseball. Beyond monster truck rallies and tractor pulls. A world full of magic and adventure.

  When he returned home, John decided to build his very own mountain, and after four weeks of moving dirt around with his dad’s old shovel, John had built a hill half as tall as himself and four times as wide.

  "The only mountain in Samson,” his mother bragged to the neighbors over coffee. It wasn’t a real mountain, John knew, but it was all he had. And he took to sitting on it with his books and GI Joes until a big rain came that October and turned it all to mud.

  "When I grow up," he said to the raven that had settled on an ear of corn in the field before him. “...I’m moving far away from here. I’m moving someplace where I can get out and explore and meet interesting people. I’m moving to a place where no rain can ever wash away my mountain."

  “Caw!” the raven answered, gazing across the cornfields.

  The raven could fly. It had seen things John had never seen. For a moment he wished they could change places. But the raven flew away and John was left with just his dreams.

  2005

  “What do you mean you’re moving?” Pete was chucking rocks at an old tombstone, trying to dislodge ghosts. Fortunately for the sleeping dead, most of them missed.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” John said. “It’s disrespectful."

  “What are they gonna do? Haunt me?” Pete laughed but let the rocks tumble from his hand and onto the ground.

  John shrugged. A haunting might do Pete some good, actually.

  “This place is gonna suck if you go,” Pete said, pulling down his zipper, looking for a place to piss. He might have relieved himself on one of the headstones had John not given him the disapproving eye.

  John took in the view of the cemetery. He and Pete had been coming here for the last twenty years and it pained him a little to think that those days would soon end. “I have to go. This place...it’s death to me. Death to my soul."

  Pete laughed. “Death of your soul, man? What the hell have you been reading?” He rubbed his nose with his hand, not caring that he had just held his pecker with that very appendage. “You just need to get laid."

  “That’s not what I mean."

  “Is this about Mara? I told you, it was an accident. You didn’t want her anyway. My dick‘s still burning.”

  If Pete were any other man in the universe, John would have hit him. Mara had been a girl he'd really liked, but of course, like all the other women in Samson, she had a thing for Pete.

  “It’s not about Mara. It’s about living my life. I’m twenty-six-years-old, living in my brother’s old trailer, working a dead-end factory job. I’ve never been in love. I’ve never climbed a mountain. And the only adventure I’ve ever had was getting lost in the corn maze at the state fair."

  Pete snorted. “Yeah, that was funny. You cried like a little girl ‘til we found you.” Pete let out a big laugh and slapped his leg. “You read too many books. But whatever you want, man. I ain't gonna try and stop you from following your dreams.”

  John found this uncharacteristic display of Pete’s humanity creepy, yet touching. The two had grown up together and Pete rarely supported anything that did not somehow support Pete.

  “So where you gonna go then? Colorado?” Pete turned his attention on John, his tone more than curious.

  John reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small section of the Samson Weekly. “No. There’s a recruiter in Evansville looking for people with computer graphics skills to work for a new company in Arizona. I might apply."

  “Arizona?” Pete’s words were heavy with disbelief. “You know how fucking hot it is in Arizona? Your pansy ass can’t take the Indiana summers, let alone an Arizona summer. Besides, thought you wanted to be a real artist, anyway?"

  John shrugged. “It’s a start and better than sweating away in a factory. And how is it you know so much about Arizona?"

  “My cousin lives there. Remember Amy? The girl who finally took your virginity?"

  John blushed. Amy had been his first real girlfriend, but before the end of their Junior year her family had
moved away. They say you never forgot your first love. Amy had been his only love, if you could call it that. On some especially lonely nights John still thought about her and wondered what she was up to.

  “I visited her a few years ago during the Fourth of July. You don’t even need matches to start fireworks out there. They ignite all by themselves.” Pete laughed again and almost chucked another rock. He caught himself and aimed it at a scampering squirrel in the field instead. Fortunately for the squirrel, Pete had a hard time hitting a stationary target, let alone a moving one.

  “Well, it’s gotta be better than this. You hear all anyone’s talking about lately? Harnessing the power of corn and cow farts to save the world. I want no part of it.” John looked past the tombstones, past the gate that opened to the park, past the houses and farms that sat just up the road. In his mind’s eye he knew every detail of this town...every house, every field, every signpost. His mother said that someday he would appreciate the security of the familiarity, but he hadn’t gotten there yet.

  Pete roused him from his thoughts. “Wanna hang out at the VW tonight? Jessica’s back from school and I bet she’s looking to get lucky. Can’t believe she went to an all-girl’s college. Anyway, you can have her this time. I think she’s bringing a friend.” Pete jingled the coins in his pocket and cocked a mischievous eyebrow towards John.

  John cringed and shook his head. Pete had been with every girl in Samson. Twice. His claim to fame was that he had, at one time or another, acquired every venereal disease the free clinic could treat, and a few they couldn’t. The last thing he wanted was to touch anyone or anything that Pete had laid his penis on. That was another good reason to move away. “No thanks. You can give me the details tomorrow."

  “Suit yourself,” said Pete, popping open the last of the six pack they had brought with them. “More for me. But remember, man. You can’t find adventure. You have to make it."