Page 5 of The Launch

He knows that Jo has come to expect his quiet, serious moods in times of stress. Bill is someone who successfully turns inward for a lot of his processing, and he can keep hisown counsel like nobody’s business. It’s who he is, and who he’s always been, though Jo has occasionally complained about feeling like she can’t get through to him when he’s like this. But if there’s one thing Bill admires in a man, it’s stoicism and the ability to hold himself together under any circumstance. Nothing wrong with that, in Bill’s opinion.

“I’ll see you after work, Jojo,” Bill says to her, leaning down to kiss her one more time; it’s his way of letting her know that while he isn’t saying much, he’s just fine.

Bill walks through the door to the attached garage, leaving his wife standing in a splotch of bright morning sunlight, holding a coffee mug as her long robe swirls around her ankles.

The drive through the new housing development where all the prospective and current astronauts live deposits Bill right into Stardust Beach as he winds his way down streets so new that they look as if they’ve been bleached white. The sidewalks are lined with hamburger drive-ins, grocery stores, gas stations, and shops. On street corners women in summer dresses hold the hands of small children as they wait for the minimal amount of traffic to pass, and on the roads other new cars shine under the morning sunlight just like Bill’s Corvette does.

He drums his thumbs on the top of the steering wheel as he listens to AM radio, eyes hidden behind a pair of aviator sunglasses. So far, Florida seems like a dreamscape to Bill: all this sun, the way the kids seem happier and more carefree already, and a beautiful house for his family to live in that feels wide open. For once, Bill can breathe. The tightness in his chest is gone, and he imagines Jo bringing dinner out onto the pool deck in the rosy-tangerine evening light, maybe as tiki torches burn from stakes around the pool. It’s like they’ve clicked their heels three times and landed in paradise, but it’s also starting to feel like home.

Bill smiles to himself as he hits the accelerator. The car’s engine hums to life as the light at the corner of Jupiter Lane and Milky Way (Clever, he thinks) turns green.

Stardust Beach is a new outpost in the race to space—the race to the moon, at this point—and it reminds him of the way Los Alamos sprung up out of nowhere to house and entertain the families who relocated to work on the Manhattan Project. Stardust Beach is a cheery, youthful town nestled up next to Merritt Island, right between the towns of Cocoa and Rockledge. Bill looks both ways before turning onto the Port Canaveral property on Merritt Island, taking in the newly planted palm trees, the clean sidewalks, and the perfectly manicured lawns and open spaces.

At the end of the long road that leads into Port Canaveral is a low cement sign—a perfect rectangle—emblazoned with the iconic blue and white NASA logo with its smattering of stars and the jaunty red wing, meant to represent aeronautics. Bill takes a slow right onto the property, keeping his speed low as he approaches the 144,000-acre compound.

With a low whistle, Bill turns down his radio, effectively silencing the Beach Boys for the time being. “Isn’t that a sight,” he says to himself, ducking his head beneath the sun visor to get a better look at the steel framework of the service structures built onto the launch pads. They rise up from the ground and shoot heavenward, with the blue sky of a late spring morning as their backdrop. Beyond the Space Center is a swath of rich greenery that bumps up against the turquoise waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Bill parks and leaves the convertible top of the Corvette down, shutting the door with a heavythunk.He makes his way across the smooth, newly-poured asphalt, looking around at the partially full lot. Even this early in the morning, the heat of the day rises up through the soles of his dress shoes. Bill switches hismetal lunchbox from one hand to the other, shielding his eyes with one hand as he tips his head to the sky and searches: not one single cloud. Nothing but clear skies, blue waves out in the distance, and a new career as an astronaut.

The whole thing could be a metaphor for his life lately. Bill gives a self-satisfied smile as he crosses the lot in long, confident strides. He can handle anything that’s coming his way—in fact, he’s been preparing himself mentally for this for years. The time he spent flying planes in the Air Force had only served to whet Bill’s appetite for speed and excitement. He’s always wanted to see what else is out there in the universe, and now the opportunity to find out is right here at his fingertips.

Nothing can come between Bill and his chance to go to space.

“Lieutenant Colonel Booker,” a man in glasses says, pacing the room with a cigarette burning idly in one hand. “Thank you for being our first victim.”

The other men laugh nervously. There are no windows in this meeting room, and eight men are seated around a long rectangular table with a coffee service placed in its center. Nearly every man besides Bill has an ashtray at his elbow that’s already overflowing with a collection of cigarette butts at this early hour.

“Glad to go first,” Bill says, sitting up straighter in his chair. “I’d like the other guys to see that it’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Do you consider yourself a natural leader, Booker?”

“I do,” Bill says succinctly. And he does. In the Air Force, Bill had excelled at decision-making, staying calm no matter what the situation, and guiding the other men through the most harrowing of situations.

The man asking the questions, Arvin North, pulls out a chair at the head of the table and sits. He picks up a manila file and opens it, quietly assessing what looks like a typed list of questions. North pulls a sharpened pencil from behind one ear and taps the eraser against the list of questions.

“I think we should just dive in here, Bill. If you have no preliminary questions for us, then I’d like to begin the actual psychological evaluation.”

Bill spreads his hands wide to indicate that he has nothing to hide, and no questions that he’s waiting to ask. “I’m an open book,” he says, almost meaning it. In fact, he—like any other human being—has things he’d rather not discuss; areas he’d like to leave off-limits. But Bill understands that this particular evaluation will tell the men at the table whether or not he’s of sound enough mind to lead a mission into space. And therefore, he’s going to answer every single question in the most straightforward way he can; he’s going to force himself to be as transparent as possible, and not let a single question that the committee asks ruffle his feathers.

“Fine. Let’s begin.” Arvin North signals to a man who is running a reel-to-reel recorder. The man, whose hair is slicked to one side just like every other guy at the table, and who is wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt with a white t-shirt visible beneath the slightly opened collar, stands and flicks a switch. The reels begin to spin and he nods at Arvin North that it’s safe to begin.

“Booker,” Arvin North says, standing up and taking both his cigarette and the list of questions with him as he begins to pace again. “Please tell me about your immediate family.”

Bill takes a long, deep breath and begins. “My wife, Josephine, and I have been married for about twelve years. We have three kids: Jimmy, who is eleven, Nancy, ten, and Kate, who just turned seven.”

“And Josephine stays home with the children, correct?” Arvin North stops pacing to look at Bill. The only sound in the room is of someone leaning back in a chair that squeaks, and of the reel-to-reel recorder’s internal mechanisms clicking and whirring.

“Of course.” Bill frowns. He doesn’t know anyone whose wife works and leaves the children in the care of others. Not in his circle, anyway.

“Has she previously held a job outside the home?”

Bill is still frowning. “When we met, Jo was a secretary at a dental practice in Minnesota. I was there to get my teeth cleaned.” He pauses, his forehead unfurrowing just slightly at the memory. “She was working at the front desk, and on my way out, she took out a bucket full of lollipops and offered me one. Asked me if I’d been good for the dentist.” He smirks.

“Cheeky.” Arvin North does not smile. “And it’s a solid marriage?”

Bill’s frown returns and he’s jarred out of the reverie of Jo in a tight, pastel pink sweater, smiling up at him from behind a polished wood desk. Shehadbeen cheeky, and he’d loved it. But that sass—that expectant smile—has been missing of late. For a split-second Bill allows himself to wonder if her cheekiness has been squelched by marriage and children, or whether Jo is simply not as happy with her life as she’d been when they first met.

But what he says out loud is, “Absolutely. Solid as a rock.” Jo has always been his rock—that’s no lie. From the day they’d met, Bill had known that she was a stand-up girl. She held down a job, went home in the evenings to help her mother care for Jo’s aging grandmother, and she even went to church on Sundays. He’d promised her mother that he would make sure that Jo saw the inside of a church at least three out of four Sundays a month, but almost as soon as the ink was dry on their wedding certificate,they’d started spending weekend mornings lounging around in bed with a newspaper and two cups of coffee. Which, of course, led to little Jimmy’s birth just ten months into their marriage.

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