At that time, the early 1980s, movies and TV were rife with extraterrestrials and intergalactic adventures. To Timmy they seemed like entertainments for children. Fantasy did not interest him. Only the real thing would do.
It was just after his twelfth birthday when the teacher was sent into space—a regular person from Concord, New Hampshire, a straight shot up the highway from Boston. Timmy had seen her on television talking about the mission. She looked like his mother, his friends’ mothers, a lady you’d see in the grocery store. When she opened her mouth, he heard his parents, his teachers. She sounded like every person he knew.
The morning of the mission, Timmy ditched school. He had done this before, met Andy Stasko at the seawall to smoke cigarettes and pass a flask of Jameson; but this time he didn’t want company. At school the seventh graders would watch the launch together, Stasko and Dennis Link trash-talking the astronauts and especially Christa McAuliffe, the teacher being sent into space. This was expected behavior at any school-sanctioned activity, and normally Timmy would have joined right in. But the shuttle launch was different. He wanted to watch it alone, silently, reverently; to imagine himself into the capsule, in top condition from months of intensive training, strapped in and waiting for the count.
The launch started nine minutes late. In his parents’ basement, Timmy sat in front of the television, waiting.
We have liftoff!
Sixty-five seconds into the launch, Commander Scobee went to full power. Timmy didn’t understand, at first, exactly what he was seeing, the white smoke billowing in a serpentine chain.
The TV journalist went silent, endless seconds of dead air. When he finally spoke, his voice was shaky. Flight controllers here are looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction.
Something was very, very wrong.
Timmy sat there a long time, staring at the television. He wished that he were in school, where he would be unable to cry and wouldn’t need to, because there would be girls on hand for that purpose. The girls would do the crying for you while you slagged on them and silently blessed them for the distraction, for sparing you the humiliation and pain. But Timmy was alone in his parents’ basement. His mom and dad were at work, his brother and sister at school, and there was nobody, nobody he could call.
HE LEFT PASCO COUNTY AT FIVE IN THE MORNING, WHILE THE sky was still dark. He liked driving at that hour, no one on the road but the professionals. He set his cruise control at a prudent sixty-eight and settled in for the ride, I-4 to I-95, which would take him all the way to Boston. As he blew past his old exit, he felt a pang of guilt. He’d meant to stop and see the Tuna on the way down to Florida, but at the last minute had changed his mind. Next time, he thought. The mission demanded his full attention. He’d be more relaxed once he’d worked the bugs out. Next time he’d come early and spend a day fishing with his son.
No question, there were bugs. Last night, as he was loading the car, the trap had malfunctioned. The compartment simply would not open. He went through the steps again—driver’s seat, defroster, front and rear windows, key card—and still nothing. Finally he called Alex Voinovich.
“What’s the problem?” the kid asked. Techno music in the background, the cawing laugh of a drunken girl.
“The trap won’t open.”
Alex walked him through the steps in order. Still, the trap wouldn’t budge.
“Are you sure?” Alex sounded skeptical.
Timmy said, “I am absolutely fuckin sure.”
“Shit. All right. Bring it over in the morning and I’ll have a look,” the kid said—magnanimously, as though he were doing Timmy a huge fucking favor.
“I’m two thousand miles away. I can’t bring it over in the morning.”
“When you get back, then. It’s probably a short. Simple fix.”