The Complete X-Ray Rider

III | Last Kid on the Moon-2

IT IS TWILIGHT; THERE is a light snow.

His father swings the El Camino into the employee parking lot of the Central Pre-Mix cement quarry on Freya Avenue, the place they stop at—after loading up on Strombolies at Mike’s Burger Royal—whenever there’s a moon shot. The Kid loves the quarry, loves watching the excavator carry crushed stones, like moon-rock, up from the hopper, as bulldozers and semis belch plumes of black smoke, and belts and pulleys hum and whir. His father tunes the radio while his mother hands out the Strombolies, which are wrapped in thick, white butcher-paper; tunes to a recap of what for them is the day’s top story—Apollo 17. Beneath the silver winter sky, parked amidst the foothills of the towering gravel stockpiles, they listen:

“This is the CBS Evening News: Live Coverage of Apollo 17—Farewell to the Moon, with Walter Cronkite, brought to you by Tang: It’s a Kick in the Glass!”

Everyone leans in, butcher-paper crumpling, marinara sauce dripping. His brother nudges him— the Camino has gotten increasingly cramped over the last several months; like the children’s clothing Mother repeatedly buys only to donate a few months later.

“Bob, this is Gene, and I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step—”

A horn blasts from somewhere across the quarry, drowning the words, causing the Kid and his mother to jump.

“For God’s sake,” says Dad.

He turns up the volume as the horn blows and blows.

When at last it falls silent they hear Walter Cronkite say:

“And that’s the way it was. Commander Gene Cernan, uttering what may be man’s last statements from the Moon. Then, before the long journey back, he took a sample-return handle, and made good on his promise to Tracy, his daughter, scrawling her initials, TDC, in the lunar soil, where they will stand for all eternity.”

The Kid looks down, sees his father taking his mother’s hand.

“I have to pee,” says the Kid.

“You always have to pee,” says his brother. “Why couldn’t you do that before, while we were at Mike’s?”

“I didn’t have to pee then,” says the Kid.

“It’s okay,” says his mother. “Little bladders need more let.” She opens her door, which makes a brief grating sound. “Just stand between me and the door, sweetie. No one will see.”

“But—”

“Just do it. We’ve done this before. I’ll keep watch.”

He climbs over her and steps to the ground—a limy silt with a fresh film of snow, which compresses beneath his Keds like moon dust—and faces away. It is cold, colder than he expected after sitting in the Camino, which is warm whether the windows are up or down because of the heat flowing from under the dash. He looks at his shoes as he starts to pee, taking care not to hit them. The snow hisses and steams, as if pee is some kind of laser weapon—cutting through surface layers, burning through the earth. He gets some on his shoes after all.

The quarry workers have begun exiting the building now, hunched over lunch pails and Thermoses. He watches them as they climb into their vehicles, many of which have banged-up fenders and mismatched colors. Sheldon says something about them seeing his weenie. The Kid ignores him, hearing the motors of the workers’ vehicles sputter to life, watching taillights wink on. He recognizes the Monkeys singing, “Take the last train to Clarksville...” He pees and pees. A freight train rumbles close as the automobiles file past on his father’s side of the Camino—their tires skittering between ruts, dunking in and out of potholes.

“Hi there,” says his dad to each and every worker, waving politely, laughing pleasantly. “Hello—hi there....”

The Kid finishes even as the final car pulls from the lot; as the caboose of the train clack-clacks down the tracks.

“Remember to tap,” says his mother.

“Or you’ll get a pee spot,” says Sheldon.

The Kid has a problem with getting pee spots, and with wetting beds. He looks at the nearby heaps of gravel—ash-gray and cold as the moon—imagines that they’re part of the lunar landscape; imagines, too, that he can see the lunar-lander, crouched upon its golden, spidery legs, ready for launch.

“And with the words, ‘Okay, let’s get this mother out of here,’ they blasted off. As television audiences on earth watched, the rover’s TV camera, directed from Houston, followed their ascent until they were out of sight...”

He imagines a flash of light and an explosion of sparks, sees the lunar module climbing into space.

“...and then slowly scanned the now-deserted lunar surface. The awareness that no living person was around made the scene all the more impressive. It was almost possible to hear the silence.”

He looks at the sky, which is a gray void, and imagines he can see stars, the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, and the moon. He looks at the now-stilled excavator and the American flag draped over the screening tower’s edge. The flag ruffles in the breeze. Now that the bulldozers have quit and the workers have gone—now that Apollo 17 has begun its final journey home—the place feels desolate. A place for winds, the souls of winds. Is this the sound of trouble? The sound of the world breathing whether people share in it or not? That’s not the sound of trouble, says Fast Eddy, as if standing nearby. The sound of trouble is when something goes wrong. He looks back down at his own feet: his peeing has penetrated the silt and snow, revealing a craggy mound of wet, reddish rock, which glistens in the twilight, like the livers his mother brings home from Safeway, but soaked in pee instead of blood, which expands out from the wound, twisting, winding, splitting, spreading.