The Road Not Taken

 

Once, long ago in my youth, I visited my grandpap.  It was summer break, and we were having one of those intolerably hot summers in the city. My folks decided that it would be best to get me away from the baking concrete and out to the suburbs where it was cooler.  It wasn't, of course.  It only seemed that way to city folk who always imagined things were better in the 'burbs. 

When my folk's automobile pulled up in front of his rundown Cape Cod-style home, I could see Grandpap in his rocking chair on the front porch.  Even now, after so many decades,  I can recall his whiter-than-white crown of hair that always reminded me of cumulous clouds rather than bunches of unkempt follicles.  His perpetually bloodshot slate gray eyes often gazed at some indeterminate point in the distance and his craggy skin reminded me of the bark of an ancient oak. He seemed to be older than old; a man who defied aging precisely because he could age no more.  The truth was, he wasn't all that old. Whenever I asked just how old he was, mom would just smile and say, "Not as old as you think." 

Truth be told, I was always somewhat nervous visiting my grandpap.  There was something uneasy about his ways, like a man who was forever glancing over his shoulder, wary of shadows that only he could see.  He would spend hours in that damned chair of his, rocking to an erratic rhythm that only he could hear, and just stare, stare, stare with the occasional insensible mumble.  Hard living is what mom said. "He has been many places. Far, far places that are hard to reach. Done many things; not easy things. You must understand." I didn't.

My parents and I settled into the guest bedrooms at Grandpap's place and soon tried to beat the heat in the suburban way, which is to splash around in the small, above ground pool my grandpap had in a tiny backyard that was bordered on two sides by wary neighbors, and on one side by a failed strip mall that glowered at the occupied homes.  It was in the pool where grandpap seemed most at peace. He would float on his back with the aid of some pastel-colored, air-filled pool toy that smelled of vinyl and chlorine, the perfume of suburban summers, and hum a wordless tune with a slack smile on his face, his eyes starring at the milky blue skies of humid heatwaves. Once I worked up the courage to ask him what he was thinking about. "Polycarbonate reflections and Nomex caresses," he answered with dreamlike detachment.  "Hallowed horizons."  

I swam away.

That summer, relief came in the form of a Canadian low-pressure cell that brought cooling downpours from the far north where climbing global temperatures were locked in a rearguard action with arctic chills. Too cold to swim, too wet to play.  Boredom, the mortal threat to children everywhere, closed in.  Fidgeting on the floor of my grandpap's den, bathed in the flickering light of a television screen, I happened to glance at a leatherbound book nearly hidden in the perpetual dark of the underside of a nearby couch.  I absentmindedly snatched at it and dragged it across the faded green carpet.  Its brown cover was dusty, untouched for years. I opened it and found old photos of the distant past: my mother, flush with the beauty of youth, beaming at the camera;  a tall, straight-backed middle-aged man wearing a tux at a wedding - Grandpap at my parent's wedding? With one eye on the TV,  I flipped through the photo album pages but soon lost all interest in the TV when the photos left behind the banalities of birthdays and weddings and were almost exclusively about space travel. Earth's L3 gateway to the stars, Armstrong Dock, as seen from an ascent shuttle in one; the various passageways and crew billets of some transport ship in another. The next photo had a younger version of the man in the tux, this time lounging on a zero-g bunk wearing a white t-shirt and gray cargo pants and waving casually at the camera. It must be grandpap! Was he a spacer?!

 The next photo was a stunning panorama of two planets hanging in the blue sky of some snowy planet, a small gray moon suspended between them.  The tiny, solitary figure of a man donning a yellow exo-excursion suit was looking up at the incredible sight. Was that grandpap? I needed to find out more about this incredible picture!

I grabbed the photo album and ran to find grandpap. As expected, he was in his spartan bedroom and sitting next to the room's only window, now streaked with silvery veins of rainwater.  I cautiously approached, laying the photo album on the adjacent bed. I opened the album, removed what I had already started referring to as "the spaceman photo" in my head, and held it out to grandpap. He didn't notice, his eyes continued to stare unblinkingly out the window at the rain-slicked street that ran in front of his home. Mustering up my courage, I poked him in the arm gently, and asked, "Is this you, grandpap?" 

His consciousness seemed to seep slowly back inside of him, and he gingerly took the photo from my hands. A look of wonder briefly crossed his face and...sadness I think. He made to speak but the words seemed to catch in his throat. After a cough or two, his phlegmatic voice said, "Gretchen One-Six-Niner."

"You were there?!" I asked, unable to hide my excitement that grandpap visited another world. My grandpap was a spacer! "That is you!" I said, more accusatory than I meant it to be.

"That was me...," he answered dreamily. "Is me?" he asked.  After a pause, "Will be me...." 

By now I had learned to ignore his more enigmatic responses.  "Who took the photo, grandpap?"

He was starring at it, a look of passive indifference returning to his features. After a moment, he seemed to hear my question. "Huh? Oh...a companion drone.  The Company wouldn't foot the bill for tandem missions, so we were sent out alone. All alone. Just metal and microchips for companionship in the maw of space." 

"It looks cold there. On the planet, I mean."

He slowly nodded. "Cold." He then pointed at his chest. "In here." 

I think that was the most I had ever heard my grandpap speak. I hurriedly returned to the photo album on the bed while he still absentmindedly fingered the photo. I found another, this time of him once again encased in his exo-excursion suit standing in ankle-deep snow, and in front of what appeared to be a stone of some sort, its black bulk split by a vein of purple lightning. It was night when the photo was taken, something that added a spooky vibe to the scene. I handed him the photo, both out of curiosity as well as to keep him talking.

He took it with shaky hands. Grunted. "All the Company ever cared about. The Score. The Haul. Why we were out there. Damned Iridescite. Harder to find than happiness. Buried under rock and ice and snow. It doesn't want to be found. It curses those who do find it." 

Rain began to pelt the window next to grandpap as the storm intensified.  I didn't know what to say to that. After a pause, he resumed. "I spent the better part of four hours digging that damn rock out from the methane permafrost. By the time I did, and carried its frozen bulk to the cargo hold of my skipper, the eternal cold soaked its way into my gloves and blackened by fingers." An odd smile crept across his ghostlike face.  "I had a damned time piloting the skipper back to the outpost.  A hell of a damned time."

I quickly returned to the photo album and found another photo, one with a building in it.  "The outpost?" I asked him, shoving the picture in his hand.

He nodded. "Yeah. Yeah.  That's it. Run by a funny little alien. Unlike me, his corp allowed him to leave. He had the comforts of home in there. As they say, nice work if you can get it."

"Did they help you?  I mean, you hand?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Nah. The freighter was just there to pick up the ore.  Nothing else was their concern."

"What about the...the alien?"

"He...she...it? Wasn't there. On leave.  But I had the access codes to get inside though and use the medical station...after I arranged for the ore's pickup from the freighter, of course." He handed me back the photo. "Wasn't easy, though. Half my hand came off with the glove." He returned to gazing out the window.

I swallowed hard at the thought of nearly losing a hand to the intense cold of an alien planet. I stared at the photo for a bit, the thrill of an alien vista still running strong through me.  But that thrill was soon replaced by the newfound respect I had discovered for my grandpap. His odds ways now made more sense.  I glanced at his rugged features, now understanding how each line in his face, each white hair on his head was earned, no, offered to the cosmos.  Before the summer break, my English Lit class had just studied the classic Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken.  With a start, I suddenly realized I understood what it meant.