Jedediah’s Rocket Ship

In the gathering Ohio dusk, the sun had already dipped halfway below the red clouded horizon, leaving behind a haze of heat like a lingering memory. It was October, and perhaps because it was so close to Halloween, the day had decided to "dress- pretend" as a summer afternoon rather than the deep autumn one it was. These things happen in Ohio every now and then. The day had been T-shirt weather rather than flannel, and children in various homes in the town of Mount Vernon had pleaded with their parents to pull out the wading pools or, at least, the sprinklers. Air conditioners had been reactivated as white collared adults hid in office buildings from the humidity and heat. Yet not far from the town, unperturbed by the haze, an old man shuffled down his drive from the farmhouse, drying dishwater-wet hands on his coveralls.

Behind him came the sharp clatter of porcelain and pots, cutting through the general huzz of insects, as Eddy, his wife, finished up dinner dishes in the kitchen. The drive led out to Ohio Interstate 71, and before the old man, just at the point where his drive intersected the main throughway, upon a ramp, aimed away from the house, over the interstate, and upward at a 45 degree angle, stood a rocket ship.

Moments later Eddy laid a steadying hand on a stacked set of dishes as the old wood frame house shook from the engine’s ignition. Satisfied that the dishes were secure, she returned to her work, not even bothering to look out the window and see the yellow flame, brilliant in the evening dusk, shoot from the rocket’s tail. As usual the roar lasted about two minutes and then shut down, the turbines whirling slowly to a stop. A moment of silence and then the katydids and crickets tentatively began to sing their autumn song one more time before the frost silenced them for a year. From the interstate end of the driveway, the old man slowly returned, as he had for years, to his wife and home.

"It looks more Flash Gordanish than Star Warish"

Pong!

Ping!

"Oh, Wasn't there a movie about him done in the eighties? Birdmen and stuff?"

BONG! The large rock ricocheted off, leaving a scrape near the silver bolted hatch.

"Weird, You're right though, this looks like it came more from that movie than StarWars."

Ping-Pang!

"Hey, good one! I wonder what its doing out here?"

Pong!

"Dad says it’s been here for as long as he can remember. Old Jed Starker built it after he came home from serving in the Navy during World War II. People used to stop and get their pictures taken in front of it. You don’t see so much of that now; after all, it’s so old!"

Pong!

The two boys rested their arms. Behind them, their bikes lay in discarded piles, waiting, while their owners looked up at the rocket ship poised, as it had been for years, for launch.

As "old" as it looked, there could be no doubt that this was a rocket ship. Not a "spacecraft" or a "starship" or a "celestial schooner" or anything like that. It was a rocket ship, sleek and silvery with three red stabilizing fins jutting out its end. . Strictly speaking it did not look old at all, just old fashioned. Except for the nicks the boys had placed there with their rocks, the ship’s surface was a spotless silver with only its nose painted a fiery red. The nose itself ended in a needle-sharp cone behind which could be seen a viewing portal. And at its bottom was the unmistakable circular opening for a rocket engine. The authentic, indisputable rocket ship rested on its ramp pointing away from the Starker Farm--home of Crazy Jed Starker.

"Happy Halloween Boys." With a cry the two spun about to find a tall gangling figure in overalls standing between them and their bikes, no escape there.

"M M Mr. Starker! "

The afternoon passed. Eddy directed the weed picking and Jed, after an early supper, worked with the boys with the repainting. The ship's launch pad was lowered so it lay on its side, the entry hatch now easily in reach.

The boys stepped nervously upon the perforated metal deck. Even on its side there was a slant to the floor. Downward, to the rear, was another hatch with a circular wheel lock. Upward where the front portal let in the setting sun, two leather chairs, welded to the floor and looking as if they from some old World War II movie, sat. They faced a whole series of dials and knobs, large switches and a matching pair of airplane steering wheels. The old man sat in the right chair, which he swiveled so he could look at them sideways. Behind him, hanging on the wall was a one-piece flight suit with odd strappings. It had been altered so that it included a harness with a locking belt buckled at the chest. Upon the buckle was the planet Saturn.

Still he wondered how someone like him, who had always dreamt of the future, could suddenly find himself behind the times and "out of it?" Real world responsibilities had crowded out his imagination. Jedediah Starker had always loved stories about space and distant worlds. As a boy he’d read every book he could find by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. And back then he had found himself also out "out of it" because his imagination was getting in the way of his real world responsibilities.

"What’cha got there boy?" Jed's father once found him at eight years old hiding in the backyard tree. Not so high as to be dangerous but still out of sight of parents and nosey sisters, young Jed sat there straddling the lowest and largest branch. Sheepishly he held up the book

In the 1930s Jediah had discovered Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. He also read what later became know as the pulps. Magazines like The Shadow and Amazing had been treasures rarely possible in the hard economic realities of living on a farm during the depression. At night, after saying good night to his parents, Jed had secretly climbed out of his upstairs room window to lay on the porch still warm from the Ohio sun and stare with longing at the distant stars.

Then the war came, and he saw his own chance to see far away places. He became a submariner, a crewman second class aboard the USS Patriot. At the time it seemed like the closest thing to being in a space ship and certainly there were elements of the experience which reminded him of Captain Nemo. But nothing he had read prepared him for the general discomfort and the startling moments of horror that occurred in wartime service. Still the guys, his shipmates, had been great and he had learned so much about sub construction that he had even been offered a job in the Quincy shipworks in Massachusetts.

But Jed was the only son, and the farm called. It offered familiarity, security and, furthermore, it was a treasure. The cost of working that treasure lay etched in the face of Jed's father, a miner's map which Jed studied, and on which it seemed new lines and shafts appeared yearly--especially during the dry times of the thirties. And yet the soil was good and if the weaker stone was eroded what was left was granite in strength. Jed loved the chiseled features of his father's face, admiring the strength it suggested. So there really was no question about where he would go after completing his tour of duty. Jed had returned home to take hold of the plow handle, which had--during his father's time--metamorphosed into a tractor's steering wheel. Dad deserved some rest.

Still Jed dreamed of far away places. A lot of farm work can be done with one’s mind in neutral, not nearly so much as a city slicker might think, but enough to allow Jed time to think and wonder. One day while parking the red tractor into the barn, his eyes fell upon a pile of scrap metal his dad had brought in for odds and ends and a strange idea, as strange ideas will, lit up his brain.

Soon his mother began to hear alien sounds coming from the barn. She knew the noises of labor; her husband had built a good number of the pieces of furniture within their home. However this din was not the familiar hammering, sawing and drilling made in the shaping of wood but were, instead, new and strange. They were the squeals and roars of metal being bent and pounded, of being riveted and welded. And when Jed came in at night, he was elusive about what he was working on back there.

Then came the arrivals from the Army Surplus Catalog. By this time Jedediah’s father was too ill to notice and his mother was of the tradition which said that the maintenance of the farm was the man’s responsibility, meaning she did not question how much was being spent. Still she did wonder. It was in the early spring of March that Jed had towed out the rocket from the barn. His mother and wheelchaired father sat on the back porch as he proudly rolled it by, heading for the launch cradle he had set up in walking distance from the front of the house, not far from the interstate.

The gentleness of his father's disapproval had surprised Jed. He'd been certain his dad would rail about the waist of time and money.

It was during that spring, close to Easter, that Jed's father passed away. He remembered pressing Easter lilies his mother had been given by the church into his face, smothering his grief in their aroma, desperately hoping for the scent of the resurrection, would overcome the foulness of death in his own nostrils.

He'd met Edith Willaims, that summer. The talk about town concerning the rocket ship, which sat so visible from the interstate, had made him a bit notorious around the town. It was around then that the adjective "crazy" got added to Jedediah's name. However, Eddy had not seemed to mind it. She didn't share his interest in other worlds or science fiction either. She did like sitting in the rocket's cockpit, but she liked it because they could talk there privately. And the angle of the ship pointing to the stars assured that they would both behave themselves. Jed married her the following year.

During the fifties when the sky had a new star called sputnik sailing across the heavens, popular interest in things scientific and space jumped. Several newspapers carried stories about Jed's rocket ship, which he christened The Excelsior because so many reporters asked, and it was during this time that the Stalker farm became a stop for tourists. Jed had purchased a cast-off flight suit, which Eddy had modified to fit the space ship theme, and began to pose for shots with families who wanted a spaceman to be seen with as well as a rocket. Eddy was a little embarrassed, and Jed later thought perhaps he should have been. But it had been fun. Still the farm needed maintaining and Jed had to make a clear schedule for visitors to follow and limit his appearances.

At one point he had gotten a call from a talent scout from Hollywood who had seen a photo of him beside The Excelsior. Back then Jed was a good-looking man in the same mode as Buster Crabb, the famous swimmer turned space hero. However, Jed had turned the offer down. He didn't want to go to either California or Hollywood. He had seen enough of human variations during the war. His interested were in ports father away and more exotic.

And so the years passed. Edward was born and Lacey a year or so later. Jed's own mother's pride for her grandchildren almost excelled her delight in the farm's prosperity. Eddy was a marvel at organization and book keeping. And the disquiet she had felt when Jed and Eddy had taken over her old room, the master bedroom was soon replaced by the quiet sense of the rightness of things. When the time came to lay her down beside her husband, Jed realized the gift of peace she had brought to their home.

Farm life is a good life but a hard one. Ed Stalker had no real desire to be a farmer. He worked hard while growing up which left him little extra curricular time for school activities. At college he studied physics and then joined the navy. He ended up in law enforcement. Lacey, meanwhile, loved the farm. Early on she had been a regular at 4-H. Later, she grew tall like corn, tall and flaxen haired like her mother and joined the girls basketball team. After graduation she lived in a small apartment in town, but she was keeping company with a young man who was part of a large family who owned a farm down the road. Eddy and Jed had hopes.

Still week in and week out, Jed made his way to the rocket ship, lowered the ramp, climbed aboard, raised the ship's nose to the stars and did a test firing. During those moments he'd stare out at the distant lights and wonder and wish.

The day the two boys had helped repaint the ship. Halloween evening, Jed was sitting in the front parlor when the knock came at this door. Eddy had long ago gone to bed, so he moved quickly to avoid her being awakened. For a moment he was dizzy, maybe from moving too quickly. But getting a hold of himself Jedediah flicked on the back porch light and opened the back door. There could be no doubt that two aliens stood on his back stoop.

"Trick or treat's over boys." Jedediah tried being funny. However, just by looking at the two slender figures, he knew that no human frame could fit inside such costumes. He passed his hand over their heads, no wires. They meanwhile gazed back up at him.

"Is this a new kind of human greeting Mr. Starker?"

For lack of anything better, they looked like broccoli stalks with three eyes sitting just under the green clumps which passed as their hair or brains or whatever. Just below the slit, which had moved when the one spoke, there was a gold ring and from that point on down, their bodies were blue. In the middle of what would have been the chest of a human was an insignia, the planet Saturn.

The two visitors led the way with Jedediah in tow. Only at the last moment did he recall himself to catch the screen door before it banged shut.

At the base of the driveway Jed found that the rocket had been lowered and the hatch was open. The two visitors stepped quickly in and he followed. The first thing he noticed was that the air was cooler and there was a strange, if not unpleasant, smell. Then his eyes fell on the engine room hatch. It was swung wide open and inside something had taken the place of his old turbine powered engine, something that bubbled and thrummed while giving off a greenish glow.

Jedediah looked hungrily at the machine. There was more than he had seen on Earth. There were worlds where technology bordered on what would seem like magic. And there was also at last confirmation that all he thought of, dreamed of was in fact the truth. Being called Crazy Jed Stalker for years wears on a man. The Excelsior had been a great source of pride, but it also had been a bit of a worry. He had in the middle of Middle America constructed a rocket ship. No one else had gone as far as he had, so he did wonder at times whether, in fact, he was just a little crazy. The first being brought him out of his reveilles with a touch on his arm.

One of the alien's eyes belonging to the alien who was speaking caught the attention of the three of his companion. The companion bowed which seemed similar to a nod.

The flame that spurted out of the tale of the rocket was a bright blue. Flowing about the launch shield of the old bolted metal structure, it seemed for a second to almost consume the rigging, which had cradled the rocket for so many years. Then with a great roar the ship lifted from the pad and shot into the dark night sky.

Within the control chamber the two aliens glared through the view port and then at one another. When they spoke it was in guttural language both harsh and grating to the human ear. Most humans, hearing the talk, would believe themselves in the presence of a terrible menace. And while a basic science fiction truth is that it is wrong to judge something sinister just because it is different from what one is used to, in this case "most humans" would be right. Roughly translated here it what followed:

"Damn Him! Damn Him!"

"Be silent; wishful thinking won't help us now and the Master does not like his feeding habits spoken of casually."

"Well the Master won't know," the creature eyed his companion warily, "Unless you tell him."

"Unless I find some reason to hope for a personal reprieve, I can see no way reporting you will help me. Either way we face strong censure for not securing the old monkey. I'll be too busy screaming to care whether your are screaming a bit more"

"Yes you will," The first slumped deeper into the pilot chair. "I suppose its certain; he dies tonight?"

"It's certain. We lost him although I'm going to remind Zudergut of the infernal assignment board that a review of the old man's file shows that he was making choices against us for years. This was a last ditch effort at best."

"Maybe, but I think we're still in for it. So what should we do with this tin torpedo?"

"Aim it at Area 54: give 'em a thrill. It will at least increase the local suspicion level." With a turn of the rudder, the sleek craft on its maiden flight veered away from the stars and dove towards the state of Utah. Inside the heat spawned by air friction caused the cabin walls to glow and the leather of the chairs to burst into flames.

"We better go."

"Must we? It's just getting comfortable in here." The two figures suddenly burst into flames. For a moment their alien shapes altered to beings with horns and glowing eyes and then they were gone leaving behind the stench of fire and brimstone.

Back at the launch pad the old man stood in the swirling clouds made by the unearthly jet engine. Then shrugging he made his way as he had done for years back to the old wooden framed house. It seemed, however, an unusually long walk tonight. Jed wearily climbed stairs that led to his and Eddy’s bedroom. There he could hear her breathing gently. Straining to move as slow as possible he lay down beside her, but the old springs creaked.

"What keeps you up so late tonight?" she murmured.

"Oh nothing much; just thinking and reviewing about things. It’s been a strange evening." He looked over at her. The harvest moon illuminated her face gazing at him. Grey hair and withered features did not hide the girl who had given herself fully to him and had thus fully filled his heart."

"I love you Eddy."

"What?"

"I love you and I want you to know. . .I’d never leave you."

"I know that."

"I’m not saying it right. You know, darlin’, one day one of us will be left behind. It’s always been possible, but now it’s growing to a real probability. But I want you to know that I’d never go anywhere that I thought you could not follow, and if I go, I’ll wait for you." Eddy reached over and patted her husband’s cheek.

"Get some sleep."

He tried but couldn’t. And so he, straining to move slowly so not to disturb Eddy, got up, and wondered about the house. He touched the walls and the knickknacks. He looked over all the things that Eddy had added to the house which had gradually transformed it from the home of his parents to his and hers. Finally he made his way to Edward’s room. It looked pretty much the same as it had when his son had lived there. In fact, it looked pretty much the same as it had when it was his room. He sat down on the bed and looked through the window out at the stars that shone down on the old porch roof. Carefully he stepped through the window and laid himself down. The scratchy old shingles, retaining the warmth of the day, felt comfortable and familiar under his back. Looking towards the horizon Jedediah saw something shine and then streak across the heavens. He’d made the right choice: she’d follow. Even when the spasm hit him in the chest he smiled, and that was how they found him the next day--All Saints Day, still smiling although his soul had departed to ports unknown.