Day I:

“The morning of her arrest they dressed her in a bright orange jumpsuit and made her walk in full view of the gathered crowds the several hundred feet from the booking office to the city jail instead of riding the underground shuttle, which was the norm. From the video archives you can see how the police gave her a wide berth. They progressed slowly and  made sure not to get too close. Some would later bark on cable news and on internet chat forums that this was a gross violation of her civil liberties, which was an easier way of stating the obvious. But the louder cries argued that it’s no less than what she deserved, and it would have saved everyone a lot of fuss.”

                    - from The Most Hated Woman in America, a Biography 

 

Kadance “Kade” Jerome was a fourteen-year-old high school freshman at the end of 1985. He was watching his best friend Philip “The Lieutenant” Boltzman being tied to a basketball post when his PE teacher, who was watching too, said, “I hear you’re going on a trip to the moon.”

Kade looked at the giant man. His hands and arms were covered in a carpet of hair. He had sweat stains around his armpits.

“I always meant to make it up there. But on a teacher’s salary? Are you kidding me? You’re a fortunate kid.” With that, Kade’s enormous PE teacher turned and waddled away looking a lot like a giant penguin. 

Later, when Kade was untying his friend, Philip said, “I thought I might get away this time. They waited until the end of lunch. I was that close.”

They had tied Philip to the pole every day since the beginning of the school year and every day Philip made the same general comment: “I thought I might get away this time.”

“You should tell someone,” said Kade.

“Who would I tell?”

Kade shrugged. “A teacher?”

“Teachers don’t care. You saw Larry. He just watched.”

Larry wasn’t the name of their PE teacher. His name was Henry Wickman. They called him Larry because he reminded them of a character on a popular TV show about a bumbling plumber trying to take care of his five children after his wife died of cancer. Larry wasn’t the plumber. He was the next door neighbor who showed up each episode when things reached a fever pitch of bumbling madness: the prom dress being made for the eldest daughter somehow gets sewn into the curtains with the daughter still in it; the cake they are making for a birthday party devolves into a food fight and the entire kitchen is covered in flour; a simple tire change results in hundreds of car parts lying around the garage. Larry would enter, shake his head, throw his arms up, and say his signature line: “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time!?” This always got a big fake laugh from the big fake laugh track. 

Anyway, Mr. Wickman looked a lot like Larry the next door neighbor, and it was easy to imagine Mr. Wickman throwing his arms up and shouting, “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time!?”

“Larry’s not a real teacher,” Kade said. “You should tell Ms. Peach.” 

Ms. Peach taught algebra and geometry, and Philip believed he would marry her someday. He was open about his plans. Kade harbored similar desires, but he remained silent on the subject.

“What did Larry say, anyhow?”

They were walking back to class. The bell had rung and the only other person around was a kid named Walter who would stand in a corner, wait for someone to walk by, and start laughing. If you didn’t know Walter, you might ask, “What are you laughing at?” and Walter would glare in your direction, his normally only mildly crossed eyes now darting around independently of each other  and yell at you to get on your way. Philip and Kade knew to ignore Walter. 

“He said I’m going on a trip.”

“That’s weird.”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“The moon.”

“That’s cool. Can I come?”

“Probably not, lieutenant.”

“You scared?”

“No.”

Philip put his hand on Kade’s arm and said, “You think you’re being drafted?”

Kade didn’t need to respond. He knew his friend would love nothing more than for both to be drafted together, even though that was at least four years away, and Philip had - due to his size and general health - been red-carded for military service when he was five, and might not ever get to wear the beloved black uniform of the United States Armed Forces. “The crime of the decade,” Philip called being red-carded, a designation that usually referred to the time Bigfoot assassinated the President of the United States. 

They were walking down a hallway toward their next class when Philip took Kade’s arm and pulled him in the other direction. “Let’s take a look,” he said.

Kade would never go to the library on his own, because – this is something he admitted only to his sister – his anxiety was triggered whenever he looked down the poorly-lit rows of bookshelves. It was as if he couldn’t quite believe that all those stories were made up. If he stayed too long, he felt, one of Moby Dick’s bloodshot eyes would be there looking back at him, or the wolfman, hunched over a body and feasting.

Like fear of spiders, blood, open spaces, airplanes, it made no sense. But there it was. No matter how often you tell yourself how silly it is, you can’t stop that mental and emotional nausea. 

Mrs. Cuong, the librarian, was in her office when Kade and Philip came in, moving her shoulders back and forth to music she was listening to on her phone. It could have been anything from Wham! to Tears for Fears to Madonna to Dire Straits to Phil Collins. Every few seconds she’d sing out in a high voice an unintelligible lyric. 

There was an elaborate moon display in the back of the library – elaborate for a school of three hundred students anyway. Next to the Back to the Future poster there was a giant image of the moon, and a moon model in a glass case. The model was probably two feet in diameter. There were dozens of moon magazines and books as well.

Philip said, “You think he was telling the truth? You really going there?”

“I guess.”

“Which one do you think you’ll go to?”

There were hundreds of model buildings on the model moon. There were neighborhoods with streets, houses, and parks; there were tall office buildings; there were hotels, baseball fields, resorts, malls, movie theaters, and schools. “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea.”

“Wow!”

They were silent as they admired the model.

“Look at this one,” said Philip, pointing. Kade looked. “It has a pool.”

“That one has a tennis court,” Kade said, pointing to another building. 

“Tennis on the moon. What must that be like?”

“Or swimming on the moon.”

“You think the ball floats up into space?”

“Or the water?”

“Wow.” Philip’s eyes were round with wonder. 

When Mrs. Cuong walked, she made juggling motions with her hands. She did this now as she approached Kade and Philip. “Shouldn’t you boys be in class?”

“We were interested in the moon,” Kade said. This is how things always went with Mrs. Cuong. She would make a mild show of discipline so you knew who was in charge, but she’d engage in whatever you expressed interest in. Once, the lieutenant said he was researching the effectiveness of tapeworms on a diet and ended up spending half the day in the library, getting to miss both a grammar quiz and a one-mile run in pouring rain. 

“He’s going on a trip,” Philip said.

“So I've heard,” she said . “The moon.” It was as if they had expressed interest in witchcraft, or the finer points of Fascism. “Colonized in 1969. First family was the Aldrins. Current population is somewhere near twenty thousand, depending on the time of year.” 

“Why does it depend on the time of year?” Philip said. He was looking at a blue portion of the moon globe wondering if it was an ocean.

“A lot of tourism,” said Mrs. Cuong. “About half live and work there full-time, the other half is visitors, business, you know.”

Kade and Philip followed Mrs. Cuong to a globe of Earth. “This is Houston,” Mrs. Cuong said, pointing. “This is where all flights to the moon originate.” Now she sounded like the computer voice on Philip’s phone. 

Kade walked over and looked where her finger was resting. 

“Flying to Houston, I’m guessing?” said Mrs. Cuong. “Or train? Some travel by train to offset the cost of the moon flight.”

She waited for Kade to respond, but he just shrugged. “Two days to get from Houston to the moon,” she said. “Flights leave every Thursday, from what I understand.” 

Kade was looking over the rest of the globe. It was called a “New Globe” because every five years or so they had to make new ones because Earth, as the new President (the one not shot eleven times by Bigfoot) was so fond of saying, was eating itself. Seattle was no longer a seaport. The Puget Sound was gone. San Diego, New York, Miami, Halifax. These were no longer coastal cities. You could drive from Perth to Ho Chi Minh City. There was a train from Tripoli to Malta to Rome. Kade and Philip could, if they wanted, ride their bikes from Seattle straight west to Bremerton (and keep on going to Port Angeles and Forks if they really wanted) if they didn’t mind the scattered remains of whales and porpoises that were left behind when the Sound turned first into a few large lakes, then a hundred and a thousand small lakes, and finally into apartment buildings and gas stations. There were of course places that had changed opposite to this: Kade’s house, for example, had once been several miles from the nearest body of water, but was now the only house on a small island.  

The globe fascinated Philip. He was even more interested in this globe than the one of the moon. Kade, however, was looking away again – he couldn’t help it – down the same rows of books that stretched into shadow. There was a rattle from the ceiling that made him flinch, but he knew it was the heating system kicking in. He felt silly for having flinched. But still, that darkness. He could tell himself it was Mrs. Cuong trying to save the district a few dollars on their energy bill by turning off most of the lights, or burned-out bulbs, or simply badly organized shelves that blocked the light, but it still frightened him enough to draw his attention every few seconds. Already he could feel the mild restriction in his throat that would be there for the rest of the day. 

He would stand there whenever he came to the library, in the same spot - his spot - looking down into the darkness, helpless, waiting for bloody arms to reach for him. He wanted to tell Philip about it, but Philip had his own concerns. He was getting tied up every day to a pole. He was told his parents didn’t like being married to each other and his dad was probably going to move to California “when he scrapes up enough cash.” 

Philip was told his sister was sick and might not get better because they didn’t have money for insurance and even if they did his dad would use it for his escape south where apparently there were women who would appreciate him - his words - and he could start fresh and maybe get it right this time. Philip was being told if he ran away, no one would follow him, but it probably wasn’t a great idea since he was half the size kids his age were supposed to be, the plague of every male in his family. 

Also, his home had recently been washed away - “Whoosh!” was all Philip would say about it - and now they lived in a trailer with one bedroom. Philip had enough things to worry about without Kade telling him his fears that Moby Dick or a demonic Pinocchio was coming for them every time they walked into the library. 

He turned, and Mrs. Cuong was standing close to him. “Don’t,” she whispered.

“What?” he asked, the image of a living Pinocchio breaking free from his strings and chasing after him solidifying itself in his mind. 

“The moon,” she said. “Tell them no.”

Kade looked over at his friend, who had placed both hands on the globe and was looking down at it as if into a crystal ball. He could see strings on his friend. He could see Ahab standing behind him with a spear. 

“The moon is full of them,” said Mrs. Cuong, real fear coming through in her voice. 

Kade looked at her. “Full of what?” he said, his throat now so constricted he could barely speak. 

“The moon is full of monsters.”

 

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