Last Man on the Moon

The snow is coming down erasing the city. My red hat muffling the whole world. A yellow scarf over my mouth. I must look like a stamp on a parcel. Ready to be collected and sent away.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

A SHORT STORY

I tell this story to the woman standing in front of me, and from the way she’s squinting, you could tell, she doesn’t believe any of it.

We’re all here. A long snake of people that goes all the way to the refrigerators with frozen vegetables and curves back into the nappies aisle. Everyone waiting for the only cashier open for check-out.

The woman, she’s got spots of pink lipstick over her front teeth. The mountain trails the skin on her face turned into, she could be on display in a history museum. With her hand full of bracelets all dangling and swinging, she clutches my wrist, saying, “Oh, sweetheart.”

I don’t tell her that I don’t like to be touched. Instead, with my free hand I cross my heart. Pinky promise. Young Scout promise. I tell her the story it’s for real. And a big tear spurts out of her eye. I say that it’s all true. I swear.

Sometimes you tell a story and your friends hold a yawn. Stretching nostrils with sealed lips. Pretending to listen, waiting for their big moment to share the movie they watched. That incredible person they met. Sometimes you tell a story and nobody believes you.

Like a misleading weather forecast. All those storms named after crazy relatives, you wish they never come too close.

Announcing storm Brendan. Storm Ciara. Dennis. Jorge.

Shut your door, lock your windows, and wait for the worst.

Sometimes you share the truth, but they only hear what they’ve always believed.

People are walking out the shop cinching up their coat over their mouths. Flying plastic bags and paper wraps slapping their faces. The wind recycling in a tornado of rubbish. What nature needs, nature takes.

Here the storm will hit soon and everyone is stocking up with no idea how long they’ll be locked in for.

Back at home, Dad shook an empty can of beer and said, “We’re running out.” His eyes on the TV, without even looking at me. I said, you are.

Dad didn’t even wave goodbye. He never does.

The day Mum asked if he needed anything from the shop, Dad said nothing. His legs splayed on the couch, he just turned the volume up. Mum, she kissed me goodbye, her lips squeezed on my hair for a moment too long, and left. Nothing on my wardrobe fits me anymore, and we’re still waiting for her to come back. Now Dad nibbles and snores on the couch with the TV that doesn’t answer to questions he doesn’t ask.

I walked around the shop tilted on one side. Balancing out the weight of all the beers and canned food in my basket. Sneaked in the queue right behind this woman. She twists her neck toward me, glances at my beers and says, “Doing the groceries for your parents?” With the broken smile that would kill a date, she says, “It can be quite lonely with all that snow. Isn’t it?”

Around here the snow always comes down in buckets. Drowning streets and everything else. You never know if something died frozen beneath until the sun comes out. Most of the time it’s just a squirrel. A bird. Sometimes it’s a person that couldn’t find a shelter on time, turning all stiff with blue lips.

I look at the woman’s basket. Cream and yeast, flour and blueberry. She might make a cake. For her husband. Grandchildren. Go figure.

Lock yourself with a snowstorm and you’ll find the cook hidden in you.

I tell her, does she know that we’re forty per cent DNA identical to a yeast cell?

Looking at her own shoes, the woman says, “That might explain my swelling ankles.”

On her feet I can count three floppy rolls of skin choked in her grey stockings.

The checkout queue stops moving because a man on a walking stick doesn’t have enough cash. He apologises and fumbles with one hand in his pocket.

A voice in the queue shouts, “Hey grandpa, are you having a stroke there or what?” And the grandpa, he turns all blushing cheeks and lips curved on the side. The voice in the queue says, “I’ve got a life to live.”

To the woman in front of me, I say that she’s the same as the trees. And she says, “I’ve been called worse.” I say, does she know we are the same as the stars?

I tell her that Sean told me that. He knows so much he could write an encyclopaedia.

The eyebrows come together and, focussing on a spot on my face, the woman says, “Sean?” So I told her the story. The story of how I met the last man on the moon.

The three-leg grandpa leaves behind a carton of milk and a loaf of bread. And we all move a step forward.

The day snow drenched the streets in bright white, Sean and I were selling snowballs. Everything the colour of a mental hospital ward. Internalised being outside.

Sean filled a bench with big snowballs the size of a grapefruit. The handwritten price tag said five pennies each. Written in red, to make it stand out, Sean said.

Sean, you could have pictured him all grown up drinking expensive bottles with cork instead of a cheap twisting cap. Living in a top-floor and one of those kitchens in the magazines too tidy to cook in. He could have tricked people to buy things they didn’t need. But Sean, he had other plans.

That day, standing by the bench, Sean cups his gloves around his mouth and shouts to no one, “Buy some fun for a few pennies.” A car drives by giving us two fingers. Squeezing its horns until it becomes a small dot in the distance.

Cold you feel in your bones, Sean and I wrapped in gloves and woollen hats mixing bright yellow and blood red and cucumber green. Looking like in a toddler scrawled with random colours. You could have spotted us from blocks away. On days like these, wear something white, a coat, a jacket and you become invisible. Wear any shade of white and car drivers will mistake you for another floating snowflake. Running you over with pop songs coming out of the radio.

Our neighbour walks by. Soggy trousers wet up to his knees, he’s muttering something to himself about the weather. The storm. His wife. Go figure. He glances at our bench. His eyes flickering between those frozen rainbows we turned into and says, “Does your father know about this business of yours?”

Sean’s dad wears a uniform and drives around in a police car. He’s one of the officers in town.

The neighbour says, “And why the hell should I buy snowballs anyway?”

You can grow old and forget how to have fun. Reverse Peter Pan syndrome. Your job and family sucking up all of what’s left of you. And you become what Peter Pan would be if Wendy dumped him for a lorry driver.

Sean clears his throat buried behind his scarf and says, “Simple.” He grabs a ball, swings his arm back the way you see baseball players do and says, “To do this.”

The snowball smacks our neighbour’s face. Leaving crystal and white make-up hanging on his eyelashes. Sean giggles. I don’t. I only cup both hands on my mouth, eating all the dirt and snow on my gloves.

The neighbour's nose turning pink, then red, then it’s just frozen. He grabs two balls from the bench, one with each hand, and squashes them on Sean’s ears. He claps, claps his gloves, and says, “How about that, you little prick?”

And Sean smiles. He stretches his hand, palm facing the sky and says, “That will be ten pennies. Thank you very much.”

Sean said that the snowball business would have made us rich. There was potential for a massive expansion. But the only thing that expanded was the amount of snow on the street. We got stuck inside our houses for days. Me, eating canned food and watching my parents drinking wine from a box ignoring each other. We didn’t have a landline and the lights were always off. We moved in the dark saving money on the electricity bill.

But Sean and I worked out a way to talk.

One day, when the snow started to melt, showing what was alive and what was dead, there’s a knock at the door. Outside, the world found its acrylics to paint again everything with colour. Dad watching TV so loud you’d think someone is getting shot in the leaving room. Mum somewhere trying to stay away from him. Behind the door is Sean. One-side smile, red gloves and his new smoke grey coat. He’s holding this big square box in his hands. Long wires following him all the way to the front yard. Slithering everywhere like a dead octopus.

Sean says, “Why do they make these things so heavy?”

His knees bending together, his face redding from the cold and his arms shaking. I ask, have you robbed a hardware store or what?

We bring it to my basement and after plugging in some wires Sean crosses his legs and with one hand taps on the box, saying, “This will solve everything.”

Looking like a car salesman. Making you buy a car you don’t need.

Some people generate chaos. Some others just fix problems.

What Sean brought was a radio transmitter. One his dad got from the police station. Too old and antique to be used anymore. Police stuff, Sean said.

The idea was that when the snow locked us inside with no phone, we could talk on the radio. Tuned to the same frequency and the icy world outside didn’t exist anymore.

Sean pushes a button and a red light starts to blink on the box. There’s a croak from the speaker and Sean says, “How about that?” He rolls a handle for a bit and says, “Don’t move.” And he runs away.

Sean’s house is a sweaty run away. But I see the second hand on my watch go around a few times and a voice comes out the speakers.

“One, two, three. Radio check. Roger?”

I sit at the chair next to the table and say, how did you get home so fast?

And the radio says, “Can you hear me, Roger?”

I say, who the hell is Roger?

“Press the button on the microphone,” Sean’s voice says. “Press the button when you talk, otherwise I can’t hear you.”

Every time the storm hit outside and we had no snowballs to sell, we talked on the radio. Travelling to space like meteorites made of dreams.

Radio check. Roger.

Can you hear me, Roger?

From the cracked window in the basement, I can see the stars. Upsides of living in this neighbourhood. Everyone saving every penny however they can. Keeping the lights off, flushing once a day. It all smells of turds and sewer, but this way the night sky looks beautiful.

One, two, three. Roger.

On the radio Sean says the only difference between us and the stars is distance. He says they stopped sending people to the moon. They’ve planted a flag, left their footprints. Drove on the space dust in a four-wheeler and then forgot about it.

The speaker cracking his voice, the way a frog would talk. Sean says that there’s so much more to explore. All those stars winking at us at night.

Sean wanted to feel weightless. Lose the echo of his voice. Climbing up on my rooftop and stretching our hands out in the night trying to catch a beam of moonlight, it wasn’t enough anymore.

He says, “We are participants in this great unfolding story of life.”

I look at the blinking red light on the transmitter case and his voice says, “I’ve made up my mind.” I press my ear closer to the speaker, making sure not to miss a word. And Sean says, “I’ll go to the moon.”

I asked if he would take me with him. And he said, “I’ll take you with me. I promise.”

But he didn’t.

The day the sun burnt on the street, melting ice and dirt, bringing up rotting apples and forgotten bicycles. The day we could open our front door again, that was the day Sean left.

My father comes down to the basement with a beer in one hand and says that I have to be strong. He puts a hand on my shoulder. A whiff of beer and clothes worn for too long. Dad says, “I’m sorry, kiddo.”

Sean was there. And then he wasn’t.

Dad says, “He’s in a better place now. A happy place.”

Sean left without me.

I waited staring at the red flickering light on the radio. Waiting to hear the speaker cracking his voice, waiting for Sean to talk to me.

But he didn’t.

That night I climbed all the way up the rooftop and sat there. The sky was a sheet of aluminium foil reflecting the streets. All the universes hidden and spinning around without being noticed. I hugged my knees waiting for the wind to push the sky away. Looking for the blinking light of a star. Waiting for a brushstroke of the moon from far, far, far away that never came.

In the shop, the guy behind the counter asks the next customer if he has a loyalty card. And I tell the woman that when Sean left I felt like a burger without a bun. A cherry without a cake. If she knows what I mean. And she says, “It’s like losing the last piece of a jigsaw.”

Someone in the queue is shouting if for the love of God they can open another checkout before we’re all stuck inside here. Everyone raising their voices and waving their fists.

I say, I thought he had forgotten about me. But he hadn’t. And the woman, she frowns and with her lips pressed together she says, “Oh.” A smile lifting up the side of her mouth, says, “It must be nice to have him back then.”

The guy behind the counter keeps looking down at the beep, beep, beeping ignoring the angry mob in front of him. A voice says that the shop will close in thirty minutes, please approach the checkout line.

And to the woman, I say, “Who said he’s back?”

Every time a snowstorm hit I was there. Sitting by the radio transmitter with the red light pulsing in my basement, flickering red everywhere like in a horror story.

Roger. Radio check.

One, two, three, Roger.

But the only sound was the wind blowing snow outside and carrying lives away.

Sean was God knows where. Gone. Without me.

My parents brought over one of their friends. She sat on the couch. Mum and Dad went to check if the milk in the fridge was expired and their friend asked me how things were. She asked me how I was feeling. If I could still see Sean. I said, of course not. And a spark of peace beamed in her eyes.

I said, “Sean is in space.” I told her I was just waiting for him to get in touch. And she scribbled something on a notepad.

After she left, Dad shouted that getting me a hooker would be cheaper and probably more helpful. Mum yelled to lower his voice. After that, their friend, she never came back.

I turned on the radio transmitter and waited for communication. For a message. I waited for the speaker to croak Sean’s voice.

Roger.

Radio check.

Mum left for the shop but never brought any groceries back. And Dad shaped the couch with his hips.

One, two, three, Roger.

Sean not there.

I waited. And waited. And waited.

Until one day, with the snow road-sign high, Sean answered.

On the radio speaker, Sean’s voice says, “Sorry.” He says, “It took a while to get here.”

Up here. On the moon. Sean got closer to those stars far, far away.

The red light keeps flickering and on the speaker Sean’s voice says, “Listen to this.”

The only thing I can hear is a car marching slowly and cracking the snow on the street. I press my left ear to the speaker and there’s only Sean breathing.

Listen close enough and everything is speaking to you. Sometimes in words. Sometimes in sound. It’s all about how close you choose to listen to it.

Then Sean’s voice says, “Did you hear that?”

I say, hear what? Couldn’t hear a thing.

“Affirmative,” Sean says. “That’s the sound of space.”

Nothingness. The emptiness of the universe.

Somewhere behind the blanket of clouds, there where you see craters and the moon smiley face, there’s a blinking dot with greasy hair and dirty under his fingernails staring at you.

Sean the last man on the moon. Alone. All by himself.

Sean says that sometimes he has to take a look at the earth to make sure it’s still there.

On the speaker his voice says, “It might sound quite corny.” The speaker cawing for the long-distance transmission. Sean says, “But the view from up here is out of this world.”

In our radio transmissions Sean’s voice says that the atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars. And stars exploded scattering elements across the galaxy. Forming planets with ingredients that can make life.

Snowflakes piling outside, a murder, a stabbing coming from the TV upstairs and Sean says, “You are special.”

And I say, yeah, sure.

He says, “Seriously.” Sean says, “You’re special not because you’re different from the universe.” The nothingness behind him. I close my eyes and see the dark empty sky stitched with burning lights at a distance. Sean says, “You’re special because you’re the same as the universe.” The way we all look with our plastic bottles floating in the ocean. Scampering around with thoughts and fear. How space must look from up there. How space looks from so far away. Sean says, “We’re not figuratively, but literally, stardust.”

Back in the shop, all the people in the queue squint and peek from behind shoulders in front of them. The woman in front of me, she’s sobbing now. Everyone looking at me. Looking at her. Wondering what I said to make her weep. She wipes tears on her puppy eyes, takes a handkerchief out of her sleeve and blows so loud the guy at the counter looks at us and rolls his eyes to the ceiling.

I ask if her husband is still alive. If she’s got grandchildren. A cat. A goldfish. Someone else she could go and cry to.

The click, click, click from the counter scans another customer. The queue moves forward and her wrinkled-up hand is on my wrist. The woman says, “Oh, sweetheart.” The way your spirit animal would talk to you.

Those eyes wrinkled up the way you’d crumple a paper, looking at me with the compassion of a natural disaster.

Outside there’s rain turning into snow turning into hail. A car window breaks and the alarm shrieks in the parking lot. The security guard looks at the queue and shouts, “Whose car is that?”

The woman lets me take her spot. She says, “If you’re in a rush to talk to Sean tonight, go ahead.” And she’s all whimpering. Layers of wrinkles squeezing her eyes. A man behind her yells if I’m jumping the queue. And the old lady, she tells him to shut the hell up. I’m not jumping anything.

At the counter, the guy asks me if I’m old enough to buy all this beer. I say, it’s not for me, it’s for my dad. And he scans it, saying, “Yeah, sure.”

I pay. And the queue moves forward filling in my spot. I wave at the woman with a rake of canyons on her cheeks. And she says, “Say hi to Sean for me, will you?”

It takes twenty minutes to walk to our house. Short it to ten if you can cover the distance without ending up scissor legs splayed on the iced pavement.

At home, there’s the sound of horses galloping everywhere in the house. Dad pushing western movies to the next level. When I walk in, he shouts, “Who’s that?”

I say, a ghost. I drop the beers in the fridge and I run down to the basement.

The red light flickers and speakers are cracking.

Roger.

One, two, three, Roger.

Sean’s voice says, “Did you get me anything nice from the supermarket?”

Space jokes. I tell Sean I can steal a beer from Dad if he likes. With my hands I’m opening a can of fizzy drink. It sprays all over and I say, “A woman with lipstick on her teeth says hi.”

The microphone on the table sending my voice in the universe. The snow falling outside. Covering cars and cracking under people shoes.

And Sean laughs. There’s no echo because nothing echoes in space. Just soundless emptiness. The way nothing can move. Or hurt.

I take a gulp from the can and Sean says, “All that sobbing was a bit embarrassing.”

I blow in my fists to warm them up and say, I know. She didn’t believe the story I told her.

Sean says, “You should have asked her for a slice of cake. Maybe it’s as good as the one your Mum used to make.”

Upstairs my Dad says that the beers are warm as piss.

Sean says, “Listen.” And I stick my hands between my knees, my ear squeezed on the speaker.

Sean says, “Why don’t you join me?”

The wind knocking at my cracked window, trying to get in. Everything outside turning in a hundred shades of white.

Sean says to go to the rooftop and wait. Waiting to fly on that poached egg peering from the sky. Waiting to be the last men on the moon, together.

When I walk past the living room, on the screen a sheriff is circling around on his horse, shooting bullets up in the air. Dad sprays another beer on his chest and says, “They’re in the saloon, you idiot.”

And I climb up to the rooftop.

The snow is coming down erasing the city. People walking around with soaked rims of their jeans and shuffling their feet not to slip and break their neck. My red hat muffling the whole world. A yellow scarf over my mouth. I must look like a stamp on a parcel. Ready to be collected and sent away.

I make a snowball with my gloves and juggle it in my hand. It’s so white and gleaming you can’t see the houses next door. The streets. The world reduced to a colourless empty canvas.

I bend my legs to my chest. Duck my chin between my knees. Getting small to feel warmer. And I wait.

Sean is coming. This won’t take long.