WHAT I THOUGHT: The spaceman and his kind have been looking for me for a long time. They have observed me from up above. They have traveled with me to farms. They have watched me treat horses and goats and llamas and cows and lambs from the sky. Now they need me on their planet. There is some kind of animal they have that is dying, that is going extinct, like our bats. Maybe there is a man on earth who can help them. I am their man.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: You are my biological father.
WHAT I THOUGHT: Or the spaceman and his kind need help with gravity, and they think I’m their man. Their planet is losing their field, and they think I can help them restore it.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: How can that be?
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: He was a donor, a long time ago. Twenty-seven years ago, to be precise. My mother wanted a medical student. She had seen his picture. He was handsome. He had scored well on tests. She decided on him.
WHAT THE WIFE SAID: Why?
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: Money. One hundred dollars for a sperm donation was the going rate. I think we look alike, don’t you think? the spaceman said to Jen. Jen looked at the spaceman, then she looked at me. Yes, a little, she said. Excuse me, she said. I have to check on the children. And it was a good thing she went. Sarah was screeching. It seemed that Sam had stolen her tooth that she had left in an envelope for the tooth fairy and Sarah was chasing him with a broom, ready to smash the handle on top of his head. Alarm! Alarm! Sam was screaming in a German accent, and running through the upstairs of the house.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID TO ME: I’m sorry to tell you this way. While driving up here I imagined a million ways I could do it. There didn’t seem to be a good way. I guess I could have written you a letter. But what if you didn’t answer? I tried calling a few times. I asked who you were, but then I hung up. I’m sorry. I know it must be a shock. But I want to tell you how happy I am to finally meet you. The spaceman smiled. His teeth looked very straight.
WHAT I SAID: Your teeth are so straight.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: Yes, I had braces as a child.
WHAT I SAID: You’ve got a cleft in your chin.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: Yes, I can see I inherited that from you.
WHAT I SAID: How did you get here?
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I drove. My car’s out there. The spaceman pointed out the window, into the darkness. You may not have heard it, the engine’s electric, the spaceman said.
CALL: A horse that needs stitches above its eye. It was the same horse that I thought for a second I had put a stomach tube down its lungs instead of its stomach.
ACTION: Asked the spaceman if he wanted to go with me to sew up the horse. Spaceman answered yes. Stood at the bottom of the stairs and yelled up to Jen that we were going out now to treat a horse. Jen yelled back, All right. But maybe she had yelled all right to Sarah, telling her it was all right now, and not to screech any longer, Sam would give her back her tooth for the tooth fairy.
WHAT I NOTICED WHILE WALKING TO MY TRUCK: The spaceman is the same height that I am.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: See, there is my electric car. And he pointed to a dark shape in the driveway.
We drove talking about his life. He had loving parents and a blue heeler. I wanted to hear all about the blue heeler, as I have always been fond of the breed but worried they would be too protective of their owners and would have a tendency to bite children. He said his blue heeler had indeed bitten a girl on her head, and years later, he found out the girl had fallen off her bike and so X-rays were taken and the doctors believed that she had a tumor and it wasn’t until they operated that they found out that it was old scar tissue from the bite on the girl’s head from his blue heeler. The spaceman said he knew it didn’t make sense, him coming from a loving family, why he’d still want to meet me after all these years, but he did. There were some things that happened in life that he would never have the answers for, he said. And when he said it I wondered if he wasn’t really Jesus Christ, too, and maybe Ted from the pool wasn’t Jesus Christ at all, but this spaceman was because he talked so plainly and clearly. And what did that make me, being the biological father of Jesus Christ the spaceman?
WHAT I COULD NOT SEE IN THE DARK WHEN WE DROVE UP TO THE OWNER’S HOUSE: I could not make out, in the darkness, the hill the woman had once pointed to that her husband and son had climbed to hunt deer. I could not make out the front lawn, either, where the woman had said she had watched the buck while her husband and son were up in the woods with their rifles at the ready.
I introduced the spaceman to the owner. I told her, This is…, but she interrupted. Oh, your son, the owner said. Pleased to meet you. You look just like your father, the owner said and the owner shook the spaceman’s hand. The owner said the horse was banged up pretty good. The owner assumed it was the mud he had slipped in. We were slipping in it, too. We slipped in it on our way to the barn, only the spaceman didn’t slip as much because the owner showed him a board she had put down over the mud, so he could walk on it without slipping. He did not have the proper shoes. He wore deck shoes, the kind with the leather uppers and the useless bit of short leather lace that was threaded through the four eyelets, the kind that had the flat, treadless sole that was white or light colored, reminiscent of marshmallow. Do you sail? I asked the spaceman as he walked across the plank, and I walked beside him, my boots sturdy in the mud.
WHAT THE SPACEMAN SAID: I don’t sail. I’ve been sailing, but other people sailed the boat. I’m afraid I don’t know the first thing about it. I traveled the waters of Turkey in a schooner. Turkey is a beautiful country, he said.
WHAT THE HORSE WAS LISTENING TO IN THE BARN: Classical music on the radio. It was Dvořák, the spaceman said.
RESULT: I had to shave the hair around the horse’s cut, so at first I gave the horse some tranq. Then I brought out my shears, but there wasn’t anywhere to plug them in. I thought I could unplug the horse’s radio, but the owner said not the music. Dvořák was one of his favorites. Sometimes I think the music calms the horse down, the owner said. The spaceman and the owner searched for another outlet. The owner found one behind some blankets that were hanging up. The music still played while the shears buzzed around the horse’s cut. I could feel the spaceman watching me as I worked. I sewed up as much of the cut as I could, but the horse had lost a chunk of flesh, so there was a bit that I couldn’t sew, due to the lack of skin. I’m leaving this part open, I told the owner. I think it will heal all right. It won’t leave too big a scar. The owner nodded. She said she expected it wouldn’t. Then the spaceman nodded, too, as if it were also his horse and he was understanding what I was telling him. I wanted to ask the owner if her husband and her son had any luck the rest of the season, if they had bagged a deer, if they had ever bagged the big, beautiful buck she had seen by herself sitting in her house and looking out her picture window. But I didn’t ask. The spaceman was busy talking to the owner about barrel racing. I hadn’t known she was a barrel racer. I had only pictured her in her free time sitting in her chair, looking out her picture window at the deer. She started talking loudly and quickly about barrel racing. She had learned to ride as a girl. She never had lessons, she just sat on horses and taught herself. She loved being at a complete stop one moment, and then the next moment being at a full gallop and making the tight turns around the barrels. There was a chest in the barn and she pulled blue ribbons out of it that smelled of mildew. The spaceman held the ribbons up to the light. The light was near the radio, and it seemed as if Dvořák’s music made the tails of the blue ribbons flutter slightly. The spaceman said the woman should hang her ribbons up where people could see them. He fastened a ribbon to the barn wall by sliding part of the ribbon into the space between two wooden boards. You wouldn’t think the ribbon would stay up like that, with so little holding it, but it did stay up.