'No.' Baedecker glanced quickly to his left, horrified at the idea of visiting his parents' graves while Bill Ackroyd sat waiting in his idling Bonneville. 'No, thanks, I'm tired. I'd like to check into the motel. Is the one on the north side of town still called the Day's End Inn?' Ackroyd chuckled and slapped the steering wheel. 'Jesus, that old road-house? No, sir, they tore that place down in ‘62, year after Jackie and I moved here from Lafayette. Nope, the nearest other place is the Motel Six over on I-74 off the Elmwood exit.'
'That will be fine,' said Baedecker.
'Aw, naw,' said Ackroyd and turned a stricken face to Baedecker. 'I mean, we'd planned on you staying with us, Dick. I mean, we've got plenty of room, and I okayed it with Marge Seaton and the council. The Motel Six's way the hell gone, twenty minutes by the hardroad.' The hardroad. That was what everyone in Glen Oak had called the paved highway that doubled as the main street. It had been four decades since he had heard the phrase. Baedecker shook his head and looked out the window as they moved slowly down that main street. Glen Oak's business section was two and a half blocks long. The sidewalks were raised strips of concrete three tiers high. The storefronts were dark, and the diagonal parking places were empty except for a few pickup trucks in front of a tavern near the park. Baedecker tried to fit the images of these tired, flat-fronted buildings into the template of his memory, but there was little conjunction, only a vague sense of structures missing like gaps in a once-familiar smile.
'Jackie kept some supper warm, but we could go out to Old Settlers and get in on the fish fry if you'd like.'
'I'm pretty tired,' said Baedecker.
'Good enough,' said Ackroyd. 'We'll take care of all the formalities tomorrow, then. Marge'd be pretty busy tonight anyway, what with the raffle and all. Terry, my boy Terry, he's been dying to meet you. He's a real hero to you . . . I mean, shit, you know what I mean. Terry's real excited about space and everything. It was Terry that did a school report on you last year and remembered you'd lived here for a while. To tell you the truth, that's what gave me the idea of you being guest of honor at Old Settlers. Terry was so interested in this being your hometown and all. ‘Course Marge and the others would have loved the idea anyway but, you know, it would mean an awful lot to Terry if you could spend the two nights with us.' Even at the crawling pace at which they were moving, they had already traveled the length of Glen Oak's main street. Ackroyd turned right and slowed to a stop near the old Catholic church. It was a part of town Baedecker had rarely walked in as a boy because Chuck Compton, the school bully, had lived there. It was the only part of town he had come to when he had returned for his parents' funerals.
'It really wouldn't put us out,' said Ackroyd. 'We'd be real honored to have you, and the Motel Six's probably full with truckers this late on a Friday.' Baedecker looked at the brown church. He remembered it as being much larger. He felt a strange lassitude descend over him. The summer heat, the long weeks of traveling, the disappointment of seeing his son at the Poona ashram, all conspired to reduce him to this state of sad passivity. Baedecker recognized the feeling from his first months in the Marine Corps in the summer of 1951. From there and from the first weeks after Joan had left him.
'I wouldn't want to be any trouble,' he said.
Ackroyd grinned his relief and gripped Baedecker's upper arm for a second. 'Shoot, no trouble. Jackie's looking forward to meeting you, and Terry'll never forget having a real-life astronaut visit.' The car moved ahead slowly through alternate streaks of cream-rich evening light and stripes of dark tree-shadow.
The bats were out when Baedecker went for a walk an hour later. Their choppy, half-seen flits of movement sliced pieces from the dull dome of evening sky. The sun was gone but the day clung to light the same way that Baedecker, as a boy on such an August evening, had clung to the last sweet weeks of summer vacation. It took Baedecker only a few minutes to walk to the old part of town, to his part of town. He was pleased to be outside and alone.
Ackroyd lived in a development of twenty-or-so ranch houses on the northeast corner of town where Baedecker remembered only fields and a stream where muskrats could be caught. Ackroyd's house was of a pseudo-Spanish design with a boat and trailer in the garage and an RV in the driveway. Inside, the rooms were filled with heavy, Ethan Allen furniture. Ackroyd's wife, Jackie, had closely permed curls, laugh wrinkles around her eyes, and a pleasant overbite, which made her appear to be constantly smiling. She was some years younger than her husband. Their only child, Terry, a pale boy who looked to be thirteen or fourteen, was as thin and quiet as his father was stout and hearty.
'Say hello to Mr. Baedecker, Terry. Go on, tell him how much you've been looking forward to this.' The boy was propelled forward by a shove of Ackroyd's huge palm.
Baedecker bent over but still could not find the boy's gaze, and his open hand felt only the briefest touch of moist fingers. Terry's brown hair grew longest in front and dropped over his eyes like a visor. The boy mumbled something.
'Nice to meet you,' said Baedecker.
'Terry,' said his mother, 'go on now. Show Mr. Baedecker his guest room. Then show him your room. I'm sure Mr. Baedecker will be very interested.' She smiled at Baedecker and he thought of early photos of Eleanor Roosevelt.
The boy turned and led the way down the stairs, taking them two at a time. The guest room was in the basement. The bed looked comfortable, and there was an attached bathroom. The boy's room was across a carpeted expanse of open area, which might have been planned as a recreation room.
'I guess Mom wanted you to see this,' muttered Terry and flicked on a dim light in his room. Baedecker looked in, blinked, and stepped in farther to look again.
There was a single bed, neatly made, a small desk, a minicomponent stereo, and three dark walls with shelves, posters, a few books, models, all the usual paraphernalia of an adolescent boy. But the fourth wall was different.
It was an Apollo 8 photograph, one of the Earthrise pictures taken from the external camera's high-speed series on the first and third lunar orbits. The picture had once captured the imagination of the world but had been so overused during the intervening years that Baedecker no longer took any notice of it. But here it was different. The photo had been enlarged to make a super-graphic, floor-to-ceiling wallpaper stretching the width of the room. The earth was a bold blue and white, the sky black, the foreground a dull gray. It was as if the boy's basement room opened onto the lunar surface. The dark walls and dim track lighting added to the illusion.
'Mom's idea,' mumbled the boy. He tapped nervously at a stack of tape cassettes on his desk. 'I think she got it on sale.'
'Did you make the models?' asked Baedecker. Shelves were filled with gray plastic dreadnoughts from Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. Two large space shuttles hung from dark thread in a corner.
The boy made a motion with shoulders and hand, an abbreviated half shrug that reminded Baedecker of his son Scott when he had struck out in a Little League game.
'Dad helped.'
'Are you interested in space, Terry?'
'Yeah.' The boy hesitated and looked up at Baedecker. In his dark eyes there was a brief panic of summoned courage. 'I mean, I useta be. You know, when I was younger. I mean, I still like it and all, but that's sort of kid stuff, you know? What I'd really like to be is, well, like a lead guitarist in a group like Twisted Sister.' He stopped talking and looked steadily at Baedecker.
Baedecker could not stop a wide grin. He touched the boy's shoulder briefly, firmly. 'Good. Good. Let's go upstairs, shall we?'