Lenny looked hard at the boy, started to say something, then thought better of it. Instead, he reached down under his chair—no small feat for a man of his stature—and brought forth a large, white cardboard box that barely fit underneath the chair. He lifted the lid a sliver and peeked into it, checking its contents at a glance, then resumed his admittedly falsely dignified demeanor.
“Hayden, there's a lot of unknowns in the world. Sometimes we have to face them.”
Hayden looked again at his hands. Their skin refused to give up the secrets of life and death that were wrapped therein. He looked up again at Lenny, who followed the boy's eyes as his gaze lifted up to the old man's eyes. In that interchange was an unspoken connection. Even Lydia could sense that something had changed in the air. She lifted her hands from the dishwater. Drying her hands on a towel, she listened to old Lenny, enthralled.
“Matter of fact, there's a lot of things we don't understand. For example, just the other day the planets Neptune and Pluto lined up for the first time in 403 years. Before that there was something the scientists on the radio called a ‘Grand Conjunction,’ where the Sun, Moon, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and Earth were all lined up like ducks in a row. Now, I don't know about all the mechanics on how it happened, maybe Mister Simms could tell you,” he paused. “But I do know that that's a marvelous, beautiful thing. You see, the unknown doesn't always have to be scary.”
A feather of worry tickled Hayden's heart.
“When I get scared, which happens once in a long while, scared of the unknown, that is...” Lenny said.
The feather grew into a set of nervous wings fluttering about in Hayden's chest.
“...At those times, I think about some heroes of mine.”
The wings flapped furiously, threatening to tear his heart from behind his ribs.
Lenny could sense the boy's discomfort, could see the fear taking hold at the corners of his widening eyes. He thought Hayden might break into tears. He looked up at Lydia, who stood with folded arms, leaning up against the sink. She gave him the “you're on your own” shrug.
“My heroes aren't afraid of the unknown,” a certain surety entered his voice, not the falsely dignified basso he earlier used to boost his own confidence, but a calm certainty. “They step right into it. To them, the unknown is an adventure and an opportunity.”
The anxiousness on Hayden's bird-ribcage started to subside.
“Now you know I sell a lot of things in the spring and summer, right, Hayden?”
Hayden smiled. “Right.” How could he, or anyone, forget the auctioneer's roadside bazaars? Every weekday—weekends being taken up at the auction house—the trailer park lawn between old Lenny's place and Highway 14 became a veritable Midwestern Marrakesh, a half-acre of trash turned treasure, from hand tillers to collectible Santa plates to broken-in baseball mitts. It was the closest thing to a department store for many miles around, and its reputation rivaled that of even some of those department stores. Cars from several counties away, some even from out of state, could be found parked in a long line on the side of the highway on a summer day, their drivers and passengers ambulating through row upon row of gleaming wares, porcelain and aluminum glinting in the sun. Among the streams of potential buyers—for everyone was a potential buyer, Lenny said—was such a variety of people that the trailer park's lawn looked like a miniaturized Chicago on a Friday afternoon, minus the giant buildings, of course. And for those who somehow had not heard of old Lenny's ongoing sale, the spectacle that it created caught passers-by like the allure of a carnival. Heck, even Joe McCarthy stopped to shop there one time on his way from Madison to a Shakespeare play out at some country playhouse up among the hills of the driftless area. The senator showed a great sense of humor, buying a hammer and a small hand-scythe that he called a sickle and claiming with a wry grin that “capitalism is again victorious” as he handed over his payment. Old Lenny liked that guy. Maybe the senator had told all his friends in Washington about old Lenny's bazaar. Maybe JFK himself would show up and buy a Cuban cigar, all in secret, of course, now that there was an embargo.
“Well,” Lenny's words brought Hayden out of his summer daydream, back into the winter trailer, “I also keep a few things for myself. I don't sell everything.”
Hayden heard a twinge of guilt in old Lenny's voice that gave the statement an air of confession.
“You see, Hayden, I've got some heroes, like I said. You know those old serials that they show nowadays on television, the space adventure ones?”
“You mean like Tom Corbett? And Flash Gordon?”
“And Buck Rogers, yeah,” a smile spread across Lenny's face.
“Well,” Lenny readjusted himself in his seat, relaxing a bit. “These are my heroes. Call me strange, but I used to sneak into the movie theaters before they put those kind of shows on T.V. I think I was the only adult outside of the projection booth.
“I learned a lot from those heroes. Still do. One thing I learned about was being plucky—taking chances, no matter what the odds, jumping into the unknown.”
Hayden spoke timidly, not wanting to offend him.
“But Mister Lenny, you've never been in danger like that.”
“I...” Lenny stopped, stumped.
“Ah, look,” he slowly opened the box. “I've got something for you.”
The blocked coloring of the thing distracted Hayden from taking in its whole shape at once. Navy blue, matte gold, and bright red blocks drew his eye from spot to spot—blue on the right half, gold on the left, and three red bumps, one on either ear and one on the top of the helmet. It could have been a jet pilot's helmet, given the blue-glass visor that fit over the wearer's eyes. But the three red protuberances, surmounted by glass cones, each encrusted by a three-ring-encircled antenna, gave it a bizarre, otherworldly air, though “air” seemed to Hayden to be the wrong word.
“The H4000,” Lenny said proudly, handing the helmet to the boy. Hayden rolled it around in his hands, admiring its solidity and clean workmanship, traits found less and less often in an increasingly industrialized age whose waning dedication to craftsmanship was apparent even to a teenage boy.
“I want you to have it,” Lenny said, “with one condition.”
Hayden looked up at him quizzically, but not nearly as quizzically as his mother, who walked out of the kitchen area and into the living area to see the gadget and register a faint protest.
“But we can't...” she began.
“Yes, you will,” old Lenny insisted. Then, raising a cautionary finger, he said “But, as I said, there is a condition.”
He set the box on the floor and sat back in his chair, letting the silence set the stage for his dramatic words. He spoke in a quiet, almost solemn voice.
“It is reputed,” he said with as much of a wise tone as he could muster, “that the H4000 helmet has many functions. But one of those functions, Hayden, is to heal.”
Tears started in Lydia's eyes. She wiped them away quickly, in an effort to be strong for her son.
“Hayden, you've got some great doctors over there in Madison that are going to take care of you. But those chemo-therapeutics,” he struggled through the syllables, “are new medicine. So I'm giving you the H4000 as a booster to help you on your way. Wear it every night for at least twenty minutes a night before you go to the hospital. And be strong. Be plucky, and you're gonna make it through.”
“I will, sir,” Hayden said, wondering to himself why the word “sir” should come so readily while talking to old Lenny. Still, it seemed right, and when Lenny left there was an air—and this time “air” was the right word—an air of dignity about the man.
Lydia silently confirmed this with a hand on her son's shoulder and a whispered “thank you” as the auctioneer slipped out into the night.
* * * *
April
The utter weakness brought on by his treatments left Hayden feeling small. His hair was beginning to grow back, but he felt that his soul had wi
thered into remission along with the cancer. He was alive, but different, diminished somehow. His knees began to buckle as he stepped down the front porch of his trailer, but he managed to keep upright by reminding himself that his father would not approve of him excusing himself, of giving up.
It was, he remembered, six years past that Sheriff Blakely stood on his doorstep speaking in soft tones to his mother, who offered a stoic “thank you, Sheriff,” before gently closing the door, calmly walking to her room, and sitting, staring at a photo of his father, Gene, through the entire night. She dutifully tended to chores, meals, and dishes the next day, only shedding a tear when she sat down to eat and realized that she had, out of habit, set Gene's place. But Gene's plate would not be filled with food, nor his seat with him, again. So strong was her silent strength that the realization of his father's death didn't hit Hayden until the following morning, when the gaping maw of the empty carport snapped shut the jaws of finality.
He walked across the carport, still empty save for some oil stains from a leak that had dried up a long, long time ago. He tried to take meaning from the stains but, finding none, lifted his eyes to the bazaar.
Lenny and Simms stood there like twin sentinels, talking with each other, but barely moving. They were fixtures, as much as the bins of tools, piles of plates, and stacks of books and bric-a-brac laid out in orderly squares like garden plots growing second-hand bouquets of Bakelite and chrome. Between the rows bustled over a dozen people, emptied from half a dozen cars that were lined up on the side of the road like the metal segments of a gigantic caterpillar. The cars, combined with the brightly clothed people, formed scintillating jewels in the crown of old Lenny's market. Every once in a while one of the people would walk up to Lenny, haggle, exchange money for goods, and drive off, only to be replaced by a fresh car or two in a couple of minutes.
Hayden had a lot of time to watch this, since he was slower than usual and the men's backs were turned to him. He snuck up on them, hoping to hear in their private talk some heretofore hidden indication of the profound affection that he suspected each held for the other.
But he could have guessed that they would be arguing—respectfully, but arguing nonetheless—about some current event. He would have guessed right.
“We had no business being there, Lenny,” Simms said, in consternation. “They had every right to rebel—they were being oppressed.”
“Oppressed? You ever seen a postcard from Havana?”
Simms lowered his voice to a near whisper, exasperated and almost out of energy. “All those beautiful hotels you see in the postcards, Lenny, were built on the backs of the poor.”
Hayden looked around at the trailer park, the conversation fading into background noise as he considered the poverty surrounding him. Simms was possibly the wealthiest person in the trailer park, and he was only a retired school teacher. At least he had a college degree, which qualified him as the most educated person in the park. Lenny was, obviously, completely uneducated, but he had work, of a sort, which was a far cry more than most men in the area. When Hayden's father died the unemployment rate in the park rose, but just barely.
Hayden looked at the shoppers mulling about Lenny's piles of junk—and it was mostly junk, the boy suddenly realized. He wondered why people would stop by the roadside to buy junk, then he noticed, as if his eyes had just been opened, that the highway shoppers were by no means the jet-set that Lenny claimed had frequented his bazaar from time to time. Sure, old Joe McCarthy had stopped there, but the senator's impromptu visit and purchase might just as well have been a photo opportunity as much as the product of an honest interest in Lenny's goods. He pictured a newspaper photo of the smiling senator with the caption “McCarthy Among the People,” the “People” being a euphemism for the poor. Who knows how many votes the senator might have bought with such a picture?
No, these customers were average people—average in another community. They seemed a class above Simms, even, and they were just average people, nothing special. Even the Hispanic family looking at appliances drove a nicer car than anyone in the park, and the finish on their old Chevy was already showing signs of wear, paint chipping off the fins.
The old men's conversation came back to the boy, as if he were emerging from under water into the open air.
“...crazy spics running around with machine guns!” Lenny blurted out.
The Hispanic couple glared at him, somehow taking the toys out of their children's hands, setting the toys down gently, leading their children to the car, and getting them into the car without taking their eyes off of him.
Lenny smiled stupidly at them and waved, not wanting to offend a potential customer, even as they drove off. The other shoppers, all white, ignored the entire incident.
“Now see what you've done,” Lenny blamed Simms. “I lost my customers because of you.”
“Me?” Simms’ voice had risen considerably from their earlier conversation. “You were the one using racial slurs! It's your ignorance that...”
“My ignorance? Who are you to talk?”
Another couple ushered their children into their car.
“I've got a degree from the University of Iowa.”
“Well,” Lenny's bravado faded somewhat, “your university friends just smashed a spaceship into the far side of the moon.”
“Those men, need I remind you, were hired by the same stupid government that backed those poor counter-revolutionaries being tried in Cuba, the same government that sent them as sacrificial lambs against a government that has every reason to be in power there!”
The walkways between the bazaar's rows of junk were becoming veritable exit-lanes for consumer traffic.
“If we hadn't supported the Bay of Pigs force, those men wouldn't be in the predicament they're in right now!”
“But they're commies down there!” Lenny retorted.
“Then send McCarthy's ghost to scare ‘em out!” Simms threw his hands up in the air.
“Hey, I liked that guy,” Lenny said in a voice that bespoke defeat. “Besides,” he said in a suddenly apologetic tone, “I didn't mean what I said about those university guys. I don't think they smashed that spaceship into the moon. I think something, or someone else out there didn't like us intruding on their territory, if you know what I mean.”
Simms shook his head and walked away from Lenny, toward Hayden, who had taken a seat on a tree stump at the edge of the sale. He sat down beside the boy, watching as Lenny walked over to the highway to wave at passing travelers in an effort to convince them to stop and peruse his wares now that the first wave had retreated.
“This is all wrong,” Simms said in a voice that portended much more than mere annoyance.
“You guys always fight,” Hayden laughed a weak laugh.
“No, not Lenny,” Simms said. Hayden admired the patience that Simms had regained in such a short amount of time. “It's Cuba I'm worried about. Things are heating up between us and them. It might be war again, and we're not yet fully recovered from Korea.”
“You think it'll get that bad?” Hayden asked.
“I do.”
“How do you know?” Hayden asked. Simms didn't miss the hint of cynicism in the boy's tone.
“Logic.” He looked at Hayden searching for a reaction. The boy was too sick to give any outward indication of his thoughts.
“We try to invade Cuba with counter-revolutionaries. The counter-revolution fails dismally. We impose an embargo. They try the counter-revolutionaries, who will certainly be executed. A pattern is emerging, and I don't like where it's leading.”
Hayden considered for a moment.
“You don't believe old Lenny, do you?”
“About what?”
“About Ranger 4.”
“The spacecraft?”
“Yeah, the crash and all.”
Simms smiled at the boy's naivety and at the boy's emerging understanding of the world.
“That some alien influenced the crash? No.”
Hayden sat silently for a time, watching Lenny begin to pack up his crates of items. After several halting false-starts, he spoke.
“He was right, you know.”
“About what?” Simms asked, suspicious.
“About the treatment. I think his helmet helped.”
Simms smiled, stifling a laugh.
“The treatment was successful, Hayden. The procedure worked and now your cancer is in remission.”
Hayden fidgeted, unwilling for a time to let the words come out of his mouth. Finally, he could hold back no longer.
“But,” he paused momentarily, as if questioning himself, “but they said it only had a 15 percent chance of actually working.”
Simms put his hand on Hayden's shoulder.
“Doctors are sometimes wrong. Because of that, they need to give out a low estimate on a new procedure's success rate. Otherwise they are legally liable. So they tell people that they are more likely to be wrong about the procedure working. Thankfully, this time,” Simms patted Hayden's back affectionately, “they were wrong in your favor.”
The boy sat for what seemed like a long time, deep in thought.
“Maybe you're right, Mister Simms. Maybe you're right.”
The sun glinted off some chrome object in old Lenny's hand just as he tucked it away in a cardboard box, the last item to be put away before the sun settled behind the hills. Hayden could have sworn it was a gun.
* * * *
August
It was a ruse, but Doctor Simms Zarkov played the part brilliantly. Khrushchev the Merciless, Premier of Planet Mongo, looked over the Doctor's shoulder to see the phonograph-horn-shaped display that showed the video-feed from the cube-man army.
In a rocky cavern on the other side of Mongo, Lenny Gordon, entirely too plump for his tights, and Lydia Arden, dressed in a skirt so short it made her watching son shiver in fear of his Freudian excitement, stood with their backs to a blazing pit. Lava glowed from below, under-lighting the pair, making Lenny Gordon seem even more large and oafish, and revealing even more of Lydia's enticingly forbidden figure.
The cube-man army approached slowly, but inevitably, their segmented tubular legs shuffling in time with the flailing of their claw-appended, snake-like arms, limbs constricted by the awkward manner in which they were attached to their cubical bodies. Mongo's engineers were, it seemed, concerned primarily with utility, only secondarily with elegance.
Asimov's SF, June 2008 Page 10