Light This Candle
(An unpublished short story.)
It was summer when the rocket left for the Moon. Warm. Free. Young. Possible. The countdown hit zero and the jets blazed. Fire and power unlike any seen before pushed humanity into a future so far, so close, so known but not experienced, so beautiful and void. Scorched earth the testament to progress. A barren rock our destination. The lunar vessel, carrying two men, all of our ideals, touched down that day in the Sea of Tranquility as the bloody water broke in the passage taking the amniotic cradling of the then into the mucus-covered, shriek-inducing awakening of the later.
It was a long walk across the parking lot from the yellow Ford panel wagon to the medical centerʼs doors. Her older sonʼs hand held hers as he toddled along beside her, and with the other hand she pushed her younger sonʼs stroller. It was warm and expectant as 238,000 miles from the Earth, 800 miles from the Moon, possible and dangerous rushed headlong together. In the parking lot, somewhere between the family wagon and the doors, she paused before continuing. Paused before she took them through those doors.
“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” On the Moon, tucked inside the capsule, Buzz Aldrin broadcast from the moon, through satellites and relay stations, to ask that we all contemplate these events and give thanks in our own way. Then, in a lunar capsule from a command module from a mission all named with such mythological yearning, he took communion. Eagle, Columbia, Apollo, God. One step closer to the unknowable, one step into the infinite-yet-ever-expanding universe, he chose as his remembrance of that moment of sheer awe and brilliance a smuggled chalice, a hidden wafer.
With a child in each arm she climbed the 20 stairs to their apartment. She climbed up, closer to the heavens, still bound to this earth. She put the boys to bed in the only bedroom, with its crib, at-the-ready bunk beds and fish tank. Later, that fish would be undone by an errant belt buckle swinging from their fatherʼs pants hung on the edge of the door. It would clip the tank thermometer dial and pin it on high, simmering the fish overnight to its breaking point. It would not be their fatherʼs fault. He went to night school, worked late, slept little and hoped after a future with closets for clothes, not doors. But now, the fish swam. The children slept. And she cried.
At 10:56 PM Eastern Standard Time on July 20th, 1969, while the Moon reflected light from the sun, Neil Armstrong stepped from the lunar moduleʼs ladder onto the surface. He, for the first time known to this batch of humankind, disrupted the regolith with his left boot. He stepped onto that blanket of rock and looked around.
In her tiny kitchen, she cooked. His plate of hotdogs, macaroni and cheese and canned peas would get wrapped in foil and later heated over a pan of water. But now, she and the boys must eat. She pulled out the fry pan, the sauce pan, the pot and the can opener. She wasnʼt sure how long she stared at them before remembering they were not artifacts, but vessels for providing nourishment. The peas smelled like earth and metal and salt. Just like always. The hotdogs smelled like by-products and plastic wrap. Just like always. The macaroni made that flowing clinking sound as they poured into the water. Just like always.
Armstrong moved away from the ladder farther out onto the Moonʼs surface. Aldrin squeezed through the door, barely fitting like Armstrong before him, and took his small step. They hopped about. They discovered the loping gait of zero gravity. They tested ways to move about on the lunar surface, explored ways to exist in this unfamiliar gravity, this strange atmosphere. They took pictures. They hit a golf ball. They took measurements, planted equipment, took data. They planted a flag, proclaiming this dusty, airless place their own.
She continued to work. There was no other way. When they asked, she told them it had no name. It was a rare type of kidney cancer, and it would not be named for many years yet. There was nothing to look up. No reference. Only the thing. And so, she would leave the boys with their landlady downstairs, the woman who loved tea and little frilly candies. The woman that she would hand the boys to every day, and with whom she would exchange the glance of history, cycle, despair, experience, everything. She would exchange the glance that sought protection, now knew that none could be had. Then, in her whites, she would go to the hospital, clock in at the maternity ward and hand babies to women full of joy and hope and naiveté.
After two and a half hours on the lunar surface, the two astronauts were instructed back to their ship. Before returning, they left a memorial bag containing a gold replica of an olive branch and a silicon message disc. They also left a plaque inscribed with a message of peace. Then they climbed back into The Eagle, hooked back into its life support system and began to jettison equipment, the detritus of exploration into the unknown. Out went their boots, a camera, measuring devices and the portable life support systems that had nearly ended the mission in failure when they almost wouldnʼt fit through the door leading from the relative safety of the capsule into the magnificent desolation of the Moon.
Later, she would have to drive to New York City to see the specialists. She would take both boys most times. To save money she would park on the street instead of the hospital lot. Sometimes, she and the younger boy would sit in the park across the street. He would play and she would watch drug deals and look for ways to escape. Mostly, though, while poison dripped into his brotherʼs arm, the younger boy would sit on the hospital-room floor and play. She would sit in the chair and pray. When they left the hospital, she would take the parking ticket from under the windshield wiper and throw it into the trunk into the bags containing all the others.
While preparing the lunar module for the return trip to Columbia, Aldrin accidentally snapped off the circuit breaker that would arm the engines for liftoff. For some time it seemed that perhaps men could visit the Moon, but never return.
Nothing got better. Deep inside, in that place no one could reach and that she wished would die instead, she knew this would be true. In that place without light, nothing could live, hope withered. Then one day he looked up at her and asked to go to the bathroom. On the walk from the bedroom, the one without a fish, as she carried him in her arms, he died. It was Motherʼs Day.
After their planned-for rest, the two men, with 22 kilos of mission samples, lifted off from the lunar surface, beginning their return trip from the celestial unfolding to the unrelenting gravity of Earth. The moduleʼs ascent stage separated from its base and rose toward its rendezvous with Columbia. The men focused on their tasks. Computers, altitude indicator, thrust, flight. But Aldrin looked up momentarily, just in time to see the flag, which whipped violently in the blastʼs wake, topple over.
Not far from the the inexpensive grave marker, among the cemetery's rolling hills, was a large bronze sculpture, an open Bible. The family, once four, now three, sat at the ceremony. A few feet away was buried the boyʼs paternal grandmother, having died from cancer just six months prior. Later, the rest of the grandparents would also take their place near the large bronze Bible. Later still, so would the young, quickly aging, entirely disbelieving parents.
On July 24th, all three astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean just east of Wake Island. It would be months before their lunar moduleʼs moon orbit would decay and it would crash somewhere on the surface. Now, divers from the USS Hornet secured the capsule and extracted the men. The men were rubbed with sodium-hydrochloride disinfectant and given Biological Isolation Garments. The command module was also disinfected. And the raft containing all the decontamination materials was sunk.
The younger brother, knowing that his brother was not there, learning slowly that he never would, still wanted to play. In a couple years, when he was old enough to walk by himself to the corner, he would stand and yell, hoping the older boy down the street would hear him and come to play. But now it was just her and him playing in the apartmentʼs tiny backyard. At times during their make-believe, she would leave him, go inside and cry. When she had finished, she would head back out and play until it was time to cry again. She wondered in those moments why her first son had died. She wondered why the other son had lived instead. She wondered, too, whether he would also die. The two boys had matching stuffed animals. One day, not long after his brother had died, the younger boy brought his to her saying he would no longer need it.
The helicopter picked up the astronauts, returned to the USS Hornet and was lowered into the lower hanger. The men walked 30 feet to the Mobile Quarantine Facility where they spent the next 21 days, a stay dictated by the Extra-terrestrial Exposure Law, an attempt to ensure that no living thing, save the men, returned from the moon. The practice continued for several years, until it was determined that the Moon was, in fact, lifeless.
After they were reasonably sure the younger son would not die, when he was older than his brother was when he became ill, the family began to grow. Now they were four again, then five. Every December after his death the family would return to the cemetery to lay a grave blanket near the marker. Every fall, for several weeks prior to and several weeks after his birthday, all feeling, communication, air and possibility would collapse. Every spring, for several weeks prior to and several weeks after the anniversary of his death, the same. Three times per year they all stood on the edge of implosion. Three times per year they were driven to their knees by the weight of remembrance. The rest of the time they shouldered the growing mass of anticipation.
On August 13th, 1969, the men moved from quarantine into collective memory. Their capsule was flown to the museum where you can visit it still. Or, if you make the trip, the footprint in the lifeless dust that will never fade.
Poste Restante:
In praise of travel when you could still get lost
(An excerpt from my unpublished travel memoir/how-to about backpacking around the world before cell phones and the internet were ubiquitous.)
Egypt. Since at least 450 BCE when Herodotus, “the father of history,” toured Egypt and published his travel diary, tourists have been tramping through the country. Of all the places on my pre-travel destination list, this is probably the place I was most excited about seeing.
Egypt. Oh, Egypt. You almost killed me, but I loved you. As we fly into Cairo from Athens, me in my usual window seat, the plane banks, and there perfectly lined up beneath me are the Pyramids of Giza. I’m agog as the image burns deep into my soul. I wish I could reach through the page and shake you as you read this, so you too might have the visceral experience I did. And, yes, this is most definitely one of my top flights/arrivals of all time.
I spend those first couple days before I jet off to Israel wandering Cairo. It’s a chaotic, hot, noisy place. And, so foreign. Up until now, I’ve been places that are vaguely familiar because of the generally Western or European feel, or at least plenty of English being spoken. Here, everything is Arabic, the dress is distinctly Middle Eastern to my untrained eyes (though, we’re in Africa) and the cultural aura consists of shades I am not at all familiar with. Yes, I’ve been to Turkey, but this is another step further into the unknown, lacking the heavy European influence.
Of course, I head to the Pyramids and Sphinx first. Some of the oldest extant buildings on our planet, the pyramids are awe-inspiring. Certainly, the oldest I’ve seen in person, and the Great Pyramid is the only generally intact entry of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I’m standing drinking in structures 4,500 years old. We get pumped in the U.S. if a building’s been around a couple hundred years. For comparison, the oldest still-standing structures here are the Taos Pueblo, which wouldn’t come into existence for at least 3,500 years after the pyramids. I don’t mean to negate other indigenous sites. I’m speaking specifically about a building, still intact. And, fuck me, it is. I’m standing right there staring at it.
Just east and south of the Great Pyramid is the Great Sphinx of Giza. It sits, or more appropriately, lies facing due east. The monumental sculpture dates to around the same era of the Great Pyramid, as far as anyone can tell. To give you a small insight into what that means, the Sphinx was buried up to its shoulders in sand when the first excavation was carried out—in 1,400 BCE. Numerous excavations have happened since, always attempting to knock back the sand that stretches to infinity as far as my eyes could tell. I feel like Indiana Jones. Cliché, but the only image I have at the ready at the time.
Continuing my archaeological explorations, I head over to the Egyptian Museum. Having been to the British Museum, and so many others already, I suppose I’m expecting something pretty impressive. I mean, to my mind at the time, these are the artifacts. The real deal. Primo. I let out a stunned chuckle when I enter. The place is relatively small with objects stacked floor to ceiling, and barely a security measure in sight. I’m being 0% hyperbolic when I say I could’ve walked out of that place with my clothes stuffed with any manner of ancient pieces of art. In its own way, it’s refreshingly low-key. It’s also overwhelming, and my brain begins to wilt looking at myriad objects upwards of 6,000 years old. To take it in in a more curated fashion would be staggering, but chock-a-block as it is it’s mind-blowing. Move your eyes a fraction of a degree in any direction and there’s something new to amaze. I stay as long as I can, but after a few hours it’s all just too overwhelming.
My first couple days in Egypt done, I’m off to Israel. In about 10 days, I’ll head back to Cairo via Eilat, then head down the Nile from Cairo to the edge of Sudan in Abu Simbel.
*****
First, a word about the tourist trade. As you wander around the world, you start to get a feel for the overall zeitgeist of traveling. You begin to develop new muscles meant to help navigate the winding road as safely and sanely as possible. You begin to understand that in some places, especially developing ones, with the oldest civilizations, you are bringing a knife to a gun fight. Egypt, India, China, Turkey and to a lesser extent Greece are perfect examples. At the time I’m standing there, tourists have been flooding into Egypt since at least the time of Herodotus 2,500 years ago. They are experts. They are prepared. To take. Your. Money. To say the least. Whether by legal, shady or illegal means, they are prepared. Especially once you leave Cairo, when you arrive at a place by whatever means, a throng will descend upon you like locusts. A cacophony of pitches instantly reach a fever pitch. Imagine the New York Stock Exchange at its heyday, when traders swarmed the floor screaming out some arcane language you cannot fully understand. It’s like that, only the traders are often kids.
There are infinite variations on a theme when it comes to the tourist grift. Here’s one: You’re new in town and looking for a place to stay. You have a vague idea of where you think you want to be, and just need to get there. If there’s no public transport, you grab a rickshaw or any moving conveyance willing to take you there. You negotiate a price, jump in or on and off you go thinking you’ve made the best deal, confident you aren’t being driven to a kidney removal site. Not long after you get going, your captain might start saying he just has to make a stop along the way. He, almost always he, might start telling you about his uncle’s restaurant where we could stop for quick bite before transporting you to where you’ve agreed to go. Scams. If you happen to stop at that restaurant, you will almost certainly find out it’s also a guesthouse, and the team there that is prepared—prepared!—to “welcome” you will make it extremely difficult to remove yourself from the situation. When I’ve felt things going sideways, I’ve jumped from moving vehicles. Always keep your shit with you like that Israeli and his gun.
Again, the schemes are infinitely varied, but there’s a certain noticeable thread. To repeat, you must always be on your toes. Ever notice how animals never really relax, wary at all times at least to some extent? Welcome to backpacking. It’s exhausting and exhilarating.
*****
So, I’m back in Cairo and about to head down the Nile. I decide to go overland, rather than in one of the many tourist boats traveling up and down. This is for a few reasons. One, I don’t want to be ferried from spot to spot. I want to experience traveling piecemeal to get the fuller experience of the place. Two, for this portion, I have little desire to be stuck on a boat with other travelers, whether they be tourists or backpackers. I want to meet Egyptians. I want to take the bus they take. Third, it’s cheaper to go overland, and we all know by now that’s paramount.
I know I have relatively limited time, as I’m meant to meet Travel Buddy in Nairobi soon. That being the case, I plan a route that seems doable down the Nile, through Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, into Aswan and down farther south out into the desert to Abu Simbel.
First, I’m going to have one last dinner in Cairo. I wheel up to a street-food vendor for some kushari, a mixture of rice, lentils, macaroni and spicy sauce. It’s basically the national dish of Egypt, and I love it. Simple, cheap, good. When I sit at the street vendor’s high-top table, I am the only foreign, white face there. This is enough to raise eyebrows of interest from the others, but not enough to engender camaraderie. That’s cool. I’m enjoying the food, the street and my silent companions.
On the table is a communal pitcher of water, and, one by one, everyone there besides me drinks from it. They pass it around, but never offer it to me. Tourists don’t drink the water. It’s a rule. I feel a thought well up. I’ve been on the road for months now. I’m a road-hardened version of my previously soft self. I’ve seen things, man. And, my hand pops up gesturing for the water. All of the men look at me as if I’ve just asked for a spleen. The guy with the water looks at me, looks at the others, hesitates, then hands it to me. I take it as all eyes watch. Is this dude about to drink from our water?! Will frogs fall from the sky?! That’s the vibe.
I take a huge swig and set the pitcher down. Suddenly, the mood makes a drastic turn. The men are literally clapping me on the back. Everyone becomes chatty as fuck. It’s almost as if a cheer has arisen. People walking by stop. Suddenly, I’m sitting with my closest friends, who I can’t understand. The veil creating a false dichotomy between me and them drops. We are humans eating dinner at a street table doing everything in our power to learn more about the “other.” Much broken English and pantomime follows. It’s a lovely, warm night of conviviality, and I hate leaving when I must. I have to convince them I truly need to go. Reluctantly, they allow it, with more clappings on the back to send me on my way.
It’s the best idea I’ve ever had, leading to a wonderful experience of connection and humanity shared—an experience I will treasure.
It’s the worst idea I’ve ever had, leading to what feels like a near-death experience—an experience I will, strangely, treasure.
*****
By the time I get to Luxor, I’m sweating profusely, delirious, energy depleted and barely able to stand, let alone walk. The ship is going down. It’s the first time on this trip that I consider the very real possibility that I will perish and no one will ever know when or where.
As soon as the bus comes to a stop, kids swarm it. Room? Tour? Restaurant? Etc. As I step onto the street, a group coalesces around me. In my current state, the cacophony feels like being stabbed in the head. I can barely carry my pack. I try to focus on the kids touting rooms. There are many. Looking at their faces, I’m zeroing in on who is old enough to take on some responsibility, but young enough to maybe not have developed less desirable ideas.
I choose one as quickly as possible before I drop, and to make that noise stop. I walk up to him and croak, “Take me to yours.” Thankfully, it’s not far. I check in and pay, and he takes me to my room. After I drop my shit, I pull out a few bills. “Can you get me some bread and water—but make sure the top is sealed,” I say. He understands. See, a popular tourist trap is the old refilled and recapped water bottle trick. Check closely before you drink. Every time. Never forget this or you might end up where I did—alone and, frankly, a little scared.
He comes back fairly quickly. I check the water. Good. OK. One for one. So, I ask him to bring me water again tonight. He agrees. I pull out the money and give it to him. Then I pull out another bill and tell him that if he does it and the water is closed, I’ll give it to him. I’m careful not to pull out too much. I want him to understand that I have enough money on me to help, not to rob. He likes that idea, and runs off happy. I close the door, shed some clothes, fall into bed and pass the fuck out.
The next thing I know, the kid is knocking at the door. As I come to, I become conscious of the fact that I’ve gotten exactly zero percent better. Worse, in fact. I’m drenched. My stomach feels like shit. I can barely think straight. I grab the bill; plus another couple, and get the door. I get the impression he had to knock a bit. He has my stuff. I check the water. Good. Two for two. I give him the extra cash for that job, and hand him more. Can he come again tomorrow morning? Indeed, he’s game. I tell him same deal, and he runs off happy again.
I gingerly sip some water. Yes, anything that goes in is coming out fairly violently. top and bottom. I’ll spare you the details. Then I, of course, fall back into bed and pass out. It’s a rough night. Again I’m woken up by knocking. He’s back. Water good. Deal for later made. Pass out.
It goes on like this for three days. At some point on day three, I remember thinking I needed medical help, but also thought there wasn’t much to choose from where I was. I deliriously decide that if I’m not on the mend by tomorrow, I gotta do something. Fast. I’m also conscious of the fact that Travel Buddy at least knows I’m in Egypt, and that’s the closest target they’ll have when they come to find my body.
Day four. I wake up before the knocking. No sweat. I can even think a bit more clearly. Fucking brilliant. I think perhaps I won’t die so close to these ancient tombs after all. Soon, the knock comes. Everything kosher, I ask him to do the job one more time; plus, some more bread. He takes the contract. I gulp water hungrily. Ass blast be damned! I need hydration, stat. I crash again.
I wake up hours later. Better still. I guzzle water. I’m feeling well enough to clean myself as best as I can at the sink. The water helps bring me more to life. I sit on the bed and read more about Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. After a bit, my final life raft arrives. I pay him and give him double his usual fee. I thank him, and he runs off. I’ve wondered since if he went home every time to tell his family about this sick as fuck foreigner he was helping. “He might die!” I imagine him excitedly telling his mother. Honestly, the other reason I zeroed in on him is he looked like he could handle that message if I truly needed to convince someone of that.
I’m feeling well enough that, after sustenance, I head out to walk around a bit. I think to myself, “This would have been a stunning place to die.”