Up and Down

by Terry Fallis

  “Mr. Lundrigan, I’m going to rule that question out of order …”

  “Ms. Bradstreet, it’s fine,” said Landon over the din. “This was bound to emerge. I almost raised it myself, but when Mr. Crank didn’t comment on his sexuality, I decided not to comment on my own. But let me respond – I hope only once – to this extraordinarily invasive question so that we don’t have to deal with it again.”

  Kelly paused, unsure of how to proceed. Eventually, she waved her hand to cede the floor to Landon.

  “Mr. Lundrigan. First of all, whether or not I am a lesbian is none of your business or anyone else’s and certainly has no bearing on my ability to fulfil my obligations as a citizen astronaut. Secondly, yes, I am a lesbian and have been since I was born. And thirdly, please do not ever again refer to it as any kind of a ‘choice.’ Your words reveal a profound ignorance of human sexuality. Do you have any other questions?”

  “My understanding of human sexuality is not on trial here,” Lundrigan sputtered. “If, as you say, your own sexuality is no one else’s business, why did you just confess to being a lesbian?”

  “As Ronald Reagan once said to great effect, ‘There you go again,’ ” started Landon. “ ‘Confess’ is your word, not mine. I merely stated that I am a lesbian in the same way as you might state that you are balding, for neither of us has control over these two realities. As for why I announced this in a news conference rather than keeping it to myself, which is everyone’s right, well, I just didn’t want to be spending the next two months dealing with it. I’m a physician. I’ve always been inclined to lance the boil rather than wait and watch it fester.”

  “A final supplementary, if I may,” Lundigran said, pushing his luck with Kelly. “Are you a Christian?”

  “I’m more of a humanist, but some of my best friends are Christians,” quipped Landon. “I do think there’s plenty to commend in the Good Book, and I even have a look at it now and then. But I’ve always believed you should be judged on what you do in life, and not what you read.”

  Another reporter piped up just before the curtain was to fall.

  “Connie Cranston, MSNBC. Mr. Crank, how do you feel about the possibility of flying in space with a lesbian?”

  Relieved that his colonoscopy was over, Eugene had been looking more relaxed, at least until the Lundrigan question. Now he looked like he’d just been presented with the hospital’s bill for the procedure. He seemed to be trying to create as much space as possible between Landon and him while remaining seated in his chair. So he actually appeared to be leaning away from her at the table.

  “Well, I’m a good Christian boy with a nineteen-year marriage to my high school sweetheart. As far as I’m concerned, anything other than love between a man and woman is what my preacher calls an abomination of the Bible’s teachings. So I guess I’m not thrilled about all this, but I aim to be on that shuttle when it lifts off, with or without her.”

  “Although, given how much time we’ll be spending together, Mr. Crank, I imagine your wife might be quite relieved to hear that I bat for the other team,” interjected Landon with a smile.

  The rest of the day had been spent doing a series of taped interviews from a smaller satellite media studio at the Johnson Space Center. Because of the number of interview requests, Kelly had wisely split up Landon and Eugene so they were not appearing together on talk shows, although that might have been interesting. I was there for every one of her twelve interviews that afternoon. For a couple of the early ones, she was joined by the mission commander, Lee Hainsworth, who had zipped over from the Kennedy Space Center for two days of briefings before returning to Florida. All of the interviews were double-enders, meaning that she was usually alone in the studio, staring into a camera and using an earpiece so she could hear the questions. The talk show hosts were all on their own sets with Landon appearing on a TV monitor. I was exhausted just watching the interviews from the control room but Landon was energized, gracious, articulate, and animated for every one of them. It was an impressive performance.

  I was the only TK person on site, so as we’d agreed, I stayed in touch with Amanda throughout the day, and she kept Diane and Crawford in the loop. I was quite sure that Crawford had gone from apoplectic to homicidal as he watched the news conference unravel. I was quite happy to be half a country away from him.

  We didn’t see Eugene for the rest of the day, and neither of us was unhappy about that. After a late dinner that Landon and I ate on our own in the dining room down the hall from our rooms, I suggested we watch the media coverage together to see how the story was playing. Landon declined, saying she was “hitting the sack.”

  The coverage went pretty well as I expected it would. Most TV networks led with the Lundrigan question and Landon’s pitch-perfect response. Other than airing Eugene’s homophobic reaction, it was really the Landon Percival show. Under the circumstances, the media play wasn’t too bad for us, though I decided not to watch any Fox News coverage. I figured I’d soon be hearing from Crawford and was a little surprised he hadn’t called already.

  I shut down the TV and fired up my laptop. I went straight to Facebook and typed in “Landon Percival” in the search bar. I couldn’t understand how I’d missed the photo that jackass Lundrigan had found. I’d scoured the web for any and all references to Landon Percival and come up with precious little. I’d tried Googling “Landon” but had been inundated with images of Michael Landon from Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie. After scrolling through fifteen pages of images of him, I’d given up. The Facebook search engine had nothing for me. Then I remembered Lundrigan’s words from the caption, “Auntie Landon.” I pumped that into the search engine and was rewarded. It was the Facebook page of a niece of Samantha Sharpe. The photo was as Lundrigan had described. A much younger Landon Percival was holding hands with another young woman, obviously Samantha Sharpe. The shot seemed very familiar and I suddenly realized why. I immediately emailed Sarah Nesbitt.

  To: Sarah Nesbitt

  From: David Stewart

  Subject: Photo of Landon Percival

  Hi Sarah,

  I discovered today that you had used a Facebook photo of Landon in the Sun story but had cropped out the other woman in the shot when you ran it. I assume you knew from the photo that Landon is a lesbian. I’m just curious why you chose to crop the photo and make no reference to what has become big news today. I very much appreciate what you did, but I’m still left with my curiosity.

  Regards,

  David

  I hit Send and then went back to Google. I wanted to learn more about Eugene Crank now that it appeared he was a bit of a troublemaker. I started with a Google Image search, being careful to run his name in quotation marks. I didn’t want every photo of every Eugene on the planet, just those of Eugene Crank. Because of his rather unusual name, I figured it wouldn’t take me long. I was right. There were a couple of group shots from a recent Texas law-enforcement conference, and a headshot of him in full uniform from the Wilkers Sheriff’s Office website. There was a family shot of him and his wife from a few years ago on what must be his church’s website. And then I found a photo of a baseball team, the players looking ecstatic with a large trophy on the field in front of them. The caption listed the players, including Eugene, under the heading “Mississippi High School State Champions.” That rang a bell. I scanned the players’ list in the caption again, and then confirmed it by looking at the player standing right next to Eugene Crank. Unbelievable audacity.

  On a whim, I snagged a screen capture of the team photo and emailed it to Amanda with the Subject line: Just between you and me.

  I checked my BlackBerry just before turning out my light and saw that Sarah Nesbitt had responded.

  To: David Stewart

  From: Sarah Nesbitt

  Subject: Re: Photo of Landon Percival

  David,

  You asked me why? Well, when I found the photo, don’t think I wasn’t sorely tempted. My journalistic instincts
told me to run with it. But I’ve always believed that going public about one’s sexuality should be the singular choice of the person, and no one else. Besides, I bounced it off my significant other of 15 years, and she thought I should crop the shot, too.

  Talk to you soon …

  Sarah

  CHAPTER 12

  I awoke at 6:00 the following morning, our second full day in Houston. I grabbed my iPad while I was still horizontal and did a Google News search on “Landon Percival” for the previous twenty-four hours. Twelve pages of news hits came back from as far away as Melbourne and Moscow. Every single one of the stories recounted the now infamous lesbian question. About half the stories included quotations from others critical of Phillip Lundrigan for asking in the first place. Spokespersons for gay and lesbian rights organizations in Canada and the U.S. were all over the story. But at least a third of the stories featured vitriol from the anti-gay movement and hard-core right-wing Christian groups. In several stories I was pleased to see quotations supporting Landon from my former minister. Even though the story was less than twenty-four hours old, many newspapers ran editorials favouring or denouncing Landon’s status as a citizen astronaut. As one might expect, there was a certain ideological geography to the editorials. Starting in Canada, they were mostly, though not exclusively, supportive of Landon. Major dailies like the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Vancouver Sun, and many others were clearly in Landon’s corner. But a few of our own right-leaning papers and columnists used Landon as a platform to rail against same-sex marriage. There was still support for us in the U.S., but it declined as you travelled south. This was not the kind of coverage we’d wanted for the public launch of the program.

  I picked up the phone and dialled, even though it was only just past 7:00.

  “Kelly Bradstreet.”

  “Good morning, Kelly. It’s David Stewart.”

  “Well, good morning,” she replied, sounding unusually chipper. “I assume you’ve scanned the coverage. It was almost exactly what I expected, after yesterday.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. It looks like it’s running about 50–50 so far. But there are regional pockets of strong opposition. Look, I know this isn’t what either of us were hoping for coming out of the newser, but I think it will recede or even improve as the training unfolds and people get to know more about Landon and her story.”

  “David, I love her story. The lesbian thing caught us all off-guard but she handled it beautifully. And she’s such a contrast to Captain America Eugene. I like the tension that’s being created between them. We need that to sustain interest. Yesterday took us a bit far afield from the NASA story, but it’s only day two. I know we’ll get our message out there over the next several weeks and definitely during the mission itself. I just hope Landon makes it through the training.”

  “I’m relieved to hear you say that,” I replied. “I was worried you’d want to talk about easing her out.”

  “Well, Crawford Blake would like that, based on his four voicemails to me this morning, but I’m not inclined to do anything for the time being. Let’s just try to keep the reporters focused on the training in the next few days.”

  It looked like Landon would survive a few more days at least.

  My BlackBerry buzzed ten minutes later. I glanced at the screen. Yep.

  “Hi, Crawford.”

  “Nice job. You’ve just hijacked the entire news cycle! Have a look at the coverage. Just look at it. NASA is barely mentioned, neither is the space shuttle. It’s wall-to-wall Landon fucking Percival. She is not the client! NASA is paying our fees, and you’d better remember that.”

  “Crawford, I understand that yesterday didn’t exactly roll out the way we thought it would. But I’ve just been on the phone with Kelly, and she’s okay with what went down. Landon turned out to be our big media play on day one, but we’ve got them hooked now. So when this initial flurry dies down, we can then shift the story back to NASA.”

  “She’s our media hook, is she? She’s old! She’s a pagan, for Christ’s sake, and she’s a goddamned dyke to boot. Congratulations, you’ve scored the trifecta. Tell me she’s a commie and my day will be complete. And Eugene got nothing out of yesterday. Sweet fuck-all!”

  “I thought Eugene did fine. But he wasn’t very nice to Landon.”

  “Nice? We’re lucky Gene will even be in the same room with her. He was very tolerant.”

  By this time, I had nearly bitten a hole through my tongue. But I was about at my limit. I hate when people use the word “tolerant” to describe how enlightened they are about gays and lesbians. It would never be acceptable to say that someone is “tolerant” of women, or blacks, or Roman Catholics. But somehow it’s still okay to be “tolerant” of a lesbian. What’s to “tolerate”? I could feel my blood pressure rising but managed to reply in a calm, measured tone.

  “I thought it was interesting that Eugene’s high school baseball exploits in Mississippi were never mentioned in his bio or in Kelly’s introduction yesterday. I gather he was quite the star in his day.”

  Silence. For what must have been about ten seconds, he said nothing. Ten seconds of dead air on the phone is an eternity.

  “Don’t you fuck with me, Stewart,” he hissed. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

  Then he hung up. He was right. I really didn’t know what I was getting into, but I just couldn’t listen to him any more.

  I opened my door and on the floor was a photocopied media coverage package with NASA Clips emblazoned across the cover page. There were copies in front of almost every door up and down the corridor. Next to me, there was no clipping package in front of Landon’s door. I flipped through the clips and saw a few more articles than I’d seen online, but nothing that changed the pattern.

  At 7:45 a.m. there was light tap on my door. When I opened it, a smiling Landon greeted me. She must not have received the clipping package.

  “Breakfast beckons,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  I closed the door behind me and trotted to catch up.

  “Um, how did you sleep?” I asked.

  “Heavy and deep.”

  “Did you watch the news last night, or this morning?”

  “Nope. I was in my own little world last night,” she said.

  Good. Perhaps she was oblivious to the media storm she had triggered.

  “And this morning, I was too busy reading through the newspaper clippings conveniently left on my doorstep to turn on the tube.”

  Great.

  “Oh, so you’ve seen all the coverage. Are you all right?” I asked.

  “David, calm yourself, I’m fine. After that toad’s question yesterday, I knew exactly what would be in the paper this morning. I hope that by tomorrow or the next day, it will have run its course and we can get back to why we’re really here.”

  “You certainly seem relaxed about it all,” I said.

  “Well, I’d rather it had not happened at all, but it was perhaps inevitable. And better for it to be a distraction now, at the very start, than for it to break two days before launch. Right? It’s common sense.”

  “This is what I do for a living, Landon, and common sense doesn’t always prevail when it comes to the media. The beast needs to be fed and I think we might have a difficult week ahead of us. I doubt it’ll clear up quite as quickly as we might like.”

  “As long as they don’t throw me out, I can live with what’s coming.”

  After breakfast, Landon and Eugene went into a three-hour briefing on the content and schedule of the training program. The rest of the crew, including Commander Hainsworth, Martine Juneau, and the shuttle pilot, Jefferson Rand, were there, too. After I escorted Landon to the classroom in a different building on the JSC campus, I headed back to my room to get ready for our first TK status call. Every second day we had scheduled a teleconference so I could update Diane, Amanda, Crawford, and the rest of the D.C. team. As I walked back outside along a paved path, I could hear faint shou
ting, even chanting, in the distance. I followed the noise, and then picked up my pace as it grew louder. I started my own chanting in my head: “Please let it not be a well-organized anti-Landon rally. Please let it not be a well-organized anti-Landon rally.”

  When I reached the main security gate of the Johnson Space Center, my prayers were answered … technically. It was not a well-organized anti-Landon rally at all. It was a massive, very badly organized anti-Landon riot. I made a mental note to aim higher when praying.

  I stood on the safe side of the fence, hoping not to see five satellite trucks from mainstream media outlets. Right again. There were seven. And it looked as if at least half of them were beaming live reports from the scene, the on-the-spot reporters trying to get close, but not too close, to the two hundred or so very angry and animated demonstrators. Because they were so rally-challenged, three or four different chants were going on at one time, so no one could really make out the message. Although the placards were reasonably clear.

  NO DYKES IN SPACE!

  SEND HER TO THE PLANET LESBOS!

  GROUND LANDON PERCIVAL!

  NASA, SAY NO TO LESBIANS IN ORBIT!

  I watched a group of demonstrators handing out to media what appeared to be Landon Percival apple voodoo dolls, dressed in miniature orange coveralls. They attached a line of them to the chain-link fence. It was creepy. It was also uncanny just how much the apple doll’s face looked like Landon’s.

  By listening carefully, I could discern at least one chant delivered in that old familiar cadence: “Hey hey, ho, ho, lesbo Landon’s got to go!”

  How very creative. I’m glad Landon was out of range and sequestered in a classroom. Houston police were out in force but did not intervene. I saw Kelly off to the side of the melee speaking with the senior police officer on the scene. She was smiling and seemed quite relaxed about it all. She saw me and waved, giving me a quick thumbs-up before turning back to the policewoman. I stood there for about three-quarters of an hour. After twenty minutes, five of the seven satellite trucks departed. The remaining two left ten minutes after that. They all had apparently gotten their quota of video. After that, the demonstrators, who were from a particularly extreme local right-wing church, seemed to lose interest. The rally was breaking up as I hustled back to my room in time for my teleconference.