Phases of Gravity

by Dan Simmons

  The sheriff's car turned right on Catton Street. They passed the schoolyard again. In front of Baedecker's old home a shirtless man with his belly hanging down over his shorts was mowing the yard. He glanced up as the parade went by and flicked a two-fingered salute at Baedecker's Mustang. Three very old people sat on the shaded porch where Baedecker had once played pirate or held off wave after wave of Japanese banzai attacks.

  Two blocks past Baedecker's old home the parade passed the high school and confronted a wall of corn. The band wheeled left onto a county road and led the procession around the high school to acres of open field where the Old Settlers fairground had been erected. Beyond the parking lot were half a dozen large tents, twice that many booths, and a spattering of carnival rides sitting motionless in the midday sun. The high, brown grass of the field had been trampled and littered by the crowds of the night before. Farther north were the baseball diamonds, already occupied by brightly uniformed players and surrounded by cheering crowds. Even farther north, almost back to where the backyard of Baedecker's house had abutted the fields, clusters of fire engines created red-and-green angles on the grass.

  The bands stopped playing and the parade dissolved. The fairground area was almost deserted and few people watched as band members and horses milled around in confusion. Baedecker remained seated for a moment.

  "Well," said Mayor Seaton, "that was a lot of fun, wasn't it?"

  Baedecker nodded and glanced up. The car metal and upholstery were very hot. The sun was almost at its zenith. Near the horizon and just visible in the cloudless sky was the faint disk of a three-quarters moon.

  "Dickie!"

  Baedecker looked up from the table where he was drinking beer with the others. The woman who stood there was heavy and middle-aged with short blond hair. She wore a print blouse and stretch pants that were approaching the designer's maximum expansion limits. Baedecker did not recognize her. The light in the American Legion tent was dim, softened to a buttered sepia. The warm air smelled of canvas. Baedecker stood up.

  "Dickie!" repeated the woman and stepped forward to take his free hand in both of hers. "How are you?"

  "Fine," said Baedecker. "How are you?"

  "Oh, just great, just great. You look wonderful, Dickie, but what happened to all of your hair? I remember when you had this big head of red hair."

  Baedecker smiled and unconsciously ran a hand over his scalp. The men he had been talking with turned back to their beers.

  The woman brought her hands up to her mouth and tittered. "Oh, my, you don't remember me, do you?"

  "I'm terrible with names," confessed Baedecker.

  "I thought you'd remember Sandy," said the woman and aimed a playful slap at Baedecker's wrist. "Sandy Serrel. We used to be best friends. Remember, Donna Lou Hewford and I used to hang around you and Mickey Farrell and Kevin Gordon and Jimmy Haines all the time during fourth and fifth grades."

  "Of course," said Baedecker and shook her hand again. He had no recollection of her whatsoever. "How are you, Sandy?"

  "Dickie, this here is my husband, Arthur. Arthur, this here is my old boyfriend who went to the moon." Baedecker shook hands with a rail-thin man in a Taylor Funeral Home softball uniform. The man was covered with a film of dirt through which red wrinkles were visible at the neck, face, and wrists.

  "Bet you never thought I'd get married," said Sandy Serrel. "At least to anyone else, huh?"

  Baedecker returned the woman's smile. One of her front teeth was broken.

  "C'mon. Next game's starting," said her husband.

  The big woman grabbed Baedecker's hand and arm again in a tight grip. "We have to go, Dickie. It was real good seein' you again. You gotta come over later tonight and I'll show you off to Shirley and the twins. Just remember, I was praying to Jesus all during that moonwalk thing of yours. If it wasn't for all us folks prayin', Jesus never woulda let you boys all come home safe."

  "I'll remember," said Baedecker. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Then she was leaving with her thin husband and Baedecker was left with a scraped sensation on his cheek and a lingering odor of dirty towels.

  He sat down and ordered another round of beers.

  "Arthur does mostly odd jobs out to the cemetery," said Phil Dixon, one of the council members.

  "He's Stinky Serrel's third husband," said Bill Ackroyd. "Doesn't look to be the last one."

  "Stinky Serrel!" said Baedecker and brought his cup down on the table. "Jesus." His single memory of Stinky Serrel, other than of an unwanted presence following his buddies and him down the street, was of a time in fifth grade when she had walked up to him on the playground one lunchtime when someone had ridden by on a palomino.

  "I don't know how you guys do that," she had said and pointed at the stallion.

  "Do what?" he'd asked.

  "Walk around with a cock banging between your legs," she had said softly into his ear. Baedecker remembered his shock at that, stepping back, blushing, being angry that he had blushed.

  "Stinky Serrel," said Baedecker. "Good God." He drank down the rest of his beer and waved at the man in the legion cap for more.

  There were no flowers but the two graves were well tended. Baedecker shifted his weight and removed his sunglasses. The gray granite headstones were identical except for the inscriptions: CHARLES S. BAEDECKER 1893—1956, KATHLEEN E. BAEDECKER 1900—1957.

  The cemetery was quiet. It was shielded by tall cornfields to the north and by woods on the other three sides. Ravines dropped away to unseen creeks to the east and west. Baedecker remembered hunting in the wooded hills to the south during one of his father's furloughs in the rainy spring of '43 or '44. Baedecker had carried the loaded over-and-under shotgun and .22 for hours but had refused to shoot at a squirrel. It had been during his brief pacifist phase. Baedecker's father had been disgusted but had said nothing, merely handing over the stained canvas sack half-filled with dead squirrels for the boy to carry.

  Baedecker dropped to one knee and pulled tendrils of grass away from the sides of his mother's headstone. He put his sunglasses back on. He thought of the body that lay a few feet beneath the rich, black Illinois soil—the arms that had enfolded him when he came, crying, home from kindergarten after the fights, the hands that had held his during nights of terror when he had awakened not knowing where or who he was, crying out, then hearing the soft tread of his mother's slippers in the hallway, the soft touch of her hands in the terrifying dark. Salvation. Sanity.

  Baedecker rose, turned abruptly, and left the cemetery. Phil Dixon had been pleased to drop him off there on his way to his farm for supper. Baedecker had told him that he would walk the one and three-quarters miles back to town.

  He slipped the black iron bar into the latch of the gate and glanced back at the cemetery. Insects hummed in the grass. Somewhere beyond the trees a cow lowed plaintively. Even from the road, Baedecker could make out the empty rectangles of grass near his parents' graves where space had been set aside for his two sisters and him.

  A pickup truck roared up the hill from the east and slid to a stop near Baedecker in a cloud of dust and gravel. A sandy-haired man with a wind-reddened face leaned out from the driver's side. "You're Richard Baedecker, aren't you?" A younger man sat next to him. A gun rack behind their heads held two rifles.

  "Yes."

  "I thought it was you. Read about you coming in the Princeville Chronicle-Dispatch. Me and Galen here are headed into Glen Oak for the Optimists' barbecue. We're going to stop at the Lone Tree for a few cold ones first. I don't see no car. Want a ride?"

  "Yes," said Baedecker. He removed his sunglasses, folded them carefully, and set them in the pocket of his shirt. "Yeah, I sure do."

  According to Baedecker's driver, the Lone Tree Tavern had once sat a quarter of a mile to the southwest, just across the intersection of gravel roads and county lines. The lone tree, a tall oak, was still there. When Peoria County went dry in the 1930s, Lone Tree had packed itself up and moved into Jubilee Count
y to spend the next forty-five years at the edge of the woods on the top of the second hill west of Calvary Cemetery. The hills were steep, the road was narrow, and Baedecker could remember his mother telling of more than a few patrons of the Lone Tree roaring up to the crest of the cemetery hill only to find another car coming in the other direction.

  Gas rationing and the shortage of young men had reduced the carnage somewhat during the war. Baedecker's father had gone out to the Lone Tree to drink when he was home on leave. Baedecker remembered drinking a Nesbitt's Orange in the same cool darkness where he now found himself ordering a shot of Irish whiskey and a beer. He glanced down at the broken tiles of the floor as if the small gunnysack of squirrels might still be there.

  "You don't remember me, do you?" asked the driver. He had introduced himself in the truck as Carl Foster.

  Baedecker drank the whiskey and stared at the red face and transparent blue eyes in front of him. "No," he said.

  "Don't blame you," said the farmer with a grin. "You and me went to fourth grade together, but I was held back a year when you and Jimmy and the rest went on to fifth."

  "Carl Foster," repeated Baedecker. He reached out and took the other man's hand. "Carl Foster. Yes, of course, you sat in front of Kevin and behind what's-her-name, the girl with the bangs and . . . mmm . . ."

  "Big tits," said Carl, returning Baedecker's handshake. "At least for fourth grade. Yeah. Donna Lou Baylor. She married Tom Hewford. Say, this here's my son-in-law, Galen."

  "Galen," said Baedecker and shook the younger man's hand. "Jesus, we were in Scouts together, weren't we, Carl?"

  "Old Man Meehan was scoutmaster," said the farmer. "He was always telling us that a good Scout'd make a good soldier. He gave me a goddamned merit badge for aircraft identification. I used to sit up in the fuckin' hayloft until two A.M. with my silhouette cards, watchin' the skies. Don't know what I would've done if I'd spotted the Luftwaffe coming in to kayo Peoria . . . we didn't get a phone until '48."

  "Carl Foster," said Baedecker. He gestured to the bartender for another round.

  Later, when the shadows were growing long, they went out back to urinate and shoot rats.

  "Galen," said Foster, "get the twenty-two from the truck."

  They stood on the edge of the ravine and relieved themselves onto five decades of accumulated junk. Rusted bed springs, old washing machines, thousands of tin cans, and the oxidizing corpse of a '38 Hudson filled the bottom of the dump. More recent relics crawled up the hundred feet of shadowy hillside to mix with actual garbage. Foster zipped up and took the proffered rifle from his son-in-law.

  "Don't see any rats," said Baedecker. He set down an empty shot glass and pulled the tab on another beer.

  "Gotta stir the little fuckers up," said Foster and fired a shot into an already well-riddled washtub sixty feet down the slope. There was a scurry of dark shapes. The farmer pumped another cartridge into the chamber and fired again. Something leaped into the air and squealed. Foster handed the rifle to Baedecker.

  "Thanks," said Baedecker. He took careful aim at a shadow beneath a Philco console radio and fired. Nothing stirred.

  Foster had lit a cigarette, and it dangled from his lip as he spoke. "Seems to me like I read somewhere that you were in the Marines." He squeezed off a shot at a cereal box halfway down the hill. There was a shrill cry and black shapes ran across garbage.

  "Long time ago," said Baedecker. "Korea. Got to fly with the Navy for a while." The rifle had almost no recoil.

  "Never served, myself," said Foster. The cigarette bobbed. "Hernia. Wouldn't take me. You ever have to shoot at a man?"

  Baedecker paused with the can of beer half-raised. He set it down as Foster handed the rifle back to him.

  "Don't have to answer," said the farmer. "None of my goddamned business."

  Baedecker squinted along the sight and fired. There was the flat slap of the .22 and a thud as an old scrub board tumbled over. "You couldn't see much from the cockpit of those old Panthers," said Baedecker. "Drop your ordnance. Go home. It wasn't much more personal in my three confirmed air-to-air kills. I saw the pilots bail out of two of them. On the last one my visor was cracked and spattered with oil so I didn't see much of anything. The gun cameras didn't show anybody getting out. But that's not what you mean. Not quite the same as shooting at a man." Baedecker pumped the .22 and handed it to Foster.

  "Guess not," he said and fired quickly. A rat leaped straight into the air and fell back writhing.

  Baedecker tossed his empty beer can into the ravine. He accepted the rifle from Foster and held it at port arms. Baedecker's voice was a thick monotone. "I did almost shoot someone here in Glen Oak, though."

  "No shit? Who?"

  "Chuck Compton. Remember him?"

  "That fucker. Yeah. How could you forget a fifteen-year-old still stuck in sixth grade? Smoked Pall Malls in the john. Compton was one mean son of a bitch."

  "Yes," said Baedecker. "I didn't pay any attention to him until I got into sixth grade. Then he decided he was going to beat the shit out of me every other day. Used to wait for me after school. That sort of thing. I tried to buy him off by giving him quarters, giving him stuff from my lunch—Hershey bars when I had them, even by slipping him answers for geography tests and so forth. He took the stuff, but it didn't help. Compton didn't want things from me. He just got a kick out of hurting people."

  "What happened?"

  "My mother told me to stand up to him. She said that all bullies were cowards . . . that if you stood up to them, they'd back off. Thanks, Galen." Baedecker accepted the fresh beer and took a long swallow. "So I called him out one Friday and I stood up to him. He broke my nose in two places, knocked out a permanent tooth, and damned near kicked my ribs to splinters. In front of the other kids."

  "Yeah, that's Compton."

  "So I thought about it for a week or so," said Baedecker. "Then one Saturday morning I saw him on the playground across the street from where I lived. I went upstairs and got my over-and-under out of my mom's closet."

  "You had your own gun?" asked Foster.

  "My father gave it to me on my eighth birthday," said Baedecker. "Four-ten-gauge shotgun on the bottom. Single-shot twenty-two on top."

  "A Savage," said Foster. "My brother used to own one." He threw the stub of his cigarette away. "So what happened?"

  "I waited for Compton to get close enough," said Baedecker. "First I took the screen off the window in my mother's bedroom and waited for him to cross the street. He couldn't see me behind the lace curtains. I loaded both barrels but figured I'd use the four-ten. Figured I couldn't miss at ten yards. He was that close."

  "A four-ten would give you a nice pattern at that range," said Foster.

  "I loaded it with number-six quail shot," said Baedecker.

  "Jesus."

  "Yes. I wanted Compton's guts spilling out on the ground like with the rabbit my father'd shot with number-six pellets a couple of months earlier. I remember how calm I was as I was sighting down the barrel at Compton's face. I lowered the sights to his belt because I always pulled a little high and to the left. I remember trying to think of any reason why I should let the son of a bitch keep living. I honestly couldn't think of one. I squeezed the trigger the way my father had taught me—holding my breath but not tense, squeezing very slow and easy rather than jerking it. I pulled it. The goddamn safety was on. I clicked it down to free the four-ten pin and had to take aim again because Compton had moved a few feet. He stopped to say something to a neighbor girl who was playing hopscotch, and I aimed at his lower back. He was only about seven or eight feet farther away."

  "Then what?" asked Foster. He lit a new cigarette.

  "Then my mother called me for lunch," said Baedecker. "I unloaded both barrels and put the gun away. I stayed out of Compton's way as best I could for the next few weeks. He got tired of hitting me after a while. We moved the next May."

  "Huh," said Foster and took a swig of beer. "Chuck Compton always was an a
sshole."

  "Whatever happened to him?" asked Baedecker and set his beer carefully on the ground. He raised the .22 and took aim down the ravine.

  "Married Sharon Cahill over in Princeville," said Foster. "Got born again. Was real religious for a while. He was working for the State Highway in '66 when he fell off his mowin' tractor and his own blades ran over him. Lived a week or so before pneumonia got him."

  "Hmmm," said Baedecker and squeezed the trigger. A scurrying shape kicked sideways and squealed in pain. Baedecker returned the rifle to port arms and pumped it three times to make sure the chamber was empty. He handed it over. "I've got to get back," he said. "I have a speech to make at eight."

  "Fuckin' A," said Carl Foster and handed the weapon to Galen.

  "Are you sure you wouldn't like some coffee?" Bill Ackroyd asked nervously.

  "I'm sure," said Baedecker. He stood in front of the hall mirror in Ackroyd's home and tried for the second time to knot his tie.

  "How about something to eat?"

  "Had a big breakfast," said Baedecker. "Two of them."

  "Jackie'll heat up some of the roast."

  "No time," said Baedecker. "It's almost eight." They hurried out the door. The twilight bathed the cornfields and Ackroyd's RV in a Maxfield Parish glow. Ackroyd backed the Bonneville out and they roared into town.

  Old Settlers was ablaze with lights. The canvas of the big tents seeped light, yellow bulbs were strung between the gaming booths, the softball diamond was bathed in arc-lamp brilliance, and the carnival rides were outlined in colored bulbs. Baedecker suddenly recalled an August night when Jimmy Haines had been sleeping over. It had been the night before Old Settlers. Sometime after midnight the two boys had awakened as if responding to a whispered summons, dressed silently, gone over the wire fence at the back of the property, and pushed through the high grass of the fields behind the high school until they were close enough to hear the soft curses and commands of the carny men assembling the rides. Suddenly the lights of the Ferris wheel and merry-go-round had blinked on, brilliant constellations against the black Midwestern night. Baedecker and his best friend had stood motionless, paralyzed with the wonder of it.