Michael Martone - The Moon over Wapakoneta: Fictions and Science Fictions from Indiana and Beyond

THE MOON OVER WAPAKONETA

THE MOON OVER WAPAKONETA

FICTIONS AND SCIENCE FICTIONS FROM INDIANA AND BEYOND

MICHAEL MARTONE

TUSCALOOSA

Copyright 2018 by Michael Martone

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

FC2 is an imprint of The University of Alabama Press

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to The University of Alabama Press

Book Design: Publications Unit, Department of English, Illinois State University; Director: Steve Halle, Production Assistant: Charley Koenig

Cover Design: Lou Robinson

Typeface: Adobe Garamond Pro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Martone, Michael author.

Title: The moon over Wapakoneta : fictions & science fictions from Indiana & beyond / Michael Martone.

Description: Tuscaloosa : FC2, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018006878 (print) | LCCN 2018011516 (ebook) | ISBN 9781573668798 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781573660686 (pbk.)

Classification: LCC PS3563.A7414 (ebook) | LCC PS3563.A7414 A6 2018b (print)

| DDC 813/.54dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006878

FOR SAM & NICK

THE WILD. THE BLUE. THE YONDER.

There is the moon, full, over Wapakoneta, Ohio. Everybody I know has a sister or a brother, a cousin or an uncle living up there now. The moon is studded green in splotches, spots where the new atmospheres have stuck, mold on a marble.

Im drunk. Im always drunk. Sitting in the dust of a field outside Wapakoneta, Ohio, I look up at the moon. The moon, obscured for a moment by a passing flock of migratory satellites flowing south in a dense black stream, has a halo pasted behind it. That meant something once, didnt it?

When the moon is like it is now, hanging over Ohio, I come over to Wapakoneta from Indiana where I am from. I am legal in Ohio, and the near beer they can sell to minors is so near to the real thing it is the real thing. I told you I was drunk. The foam head of this beer glows white in the dull light like the white rubble of the moon bearing down from above. Over there, somewhere, is Indiana, a stones throw away.

Everybody I know has a brother or cousin or whoever on the moon, and I am using this pilsner for a telescope. Where is everybody? The old craters are percolating. Theyve been busy as bees up there. Every night a new green explosion, another detonation of air. This is where I make myself belch.

The reflection of the moon over Wapakoneta sinks into each flat black solar panel of this field where I sit, a stone swallowed by a pond. In the fields, the collectors pivot slowly, tracking even the paler light of the moon across the black sky. Theres this buzz. Cicada? Crickets? No. voltage chirps, generated as the moons weak light licks the sheets of glass.

Lets power up my personal downlink. Where am I?I ask by nudging the ergonomic toggle. Above me, but beneath the moon over Ohio, a satellite, then, perhaps, another peels away from its flock to answer my call. Lets leave it on. More satellites will cock their heads above my head, triangulating till the cows come home. But soft, the first report is in. Ohio, the dots spell out, Wapakoneta.

What part of the moon is the backwater part? Maybe there, that green expanse inches from the edge where they are doing battle with the airless void generating atmosphere from some wrangling of biomass. Yeah, back there under the swirl of those new clouds, some kid after a hard day ofwhat?making cheese, lies on his back and has a smoke consuming a mole of precious oxygen. He looks up at the earth through the whiffs of cloud and smoke and imagines some Podunk place where the slack-jawed inhabitants cant begin to imagine being pioneers, being heroes. There it is, Ohio.

A pod of jalopies takes off from the pad of Mr. Entertainers parking lot, racing back to Indiana where its an hour earlier. The road is lined with Styrofoam crosses, white in the moonlight, and plastic flowers oxidized by the sunlight. X marks the spot where some hopped-up Hoosier goes airborne for a sec and then in a stupor remembers gravity and noses over into the ditch next to a field outside of Wapakoneta on the trailing edge of Ohio.

They are launching their own satellites from the moon; a couple of dozen a day the paper says. Cheap in the negative gees. Gee. I look hard at the moon. I want to see the moons of the moon. The moon and its moons mooning me. In Ohio, I pull my pants down and moon the moon and its moons mooning me back. And then, I piss. I piss on the ground, my piss falling, falling to earth, falling to the earth lit up by the moon, my piss falling at the speed of light to the ground.

I am on the move. I am moving. Drawn by the gravitational pull of Mr. Entertainer with its rings of neon, I am steering a course by the stars. Better check in. More of the little buzz bombs have taken up station above my head. Surprise! I am in Wapakoneta. I am in Wapakoneta, but I am moving. I am moving within the limits of Wapakoneta. I like to make all the numbers dance, the dots on the screen rearranging. X, Y, and Z, each axis scrolling, like snow in a snow dome. The solar panels in the field around me slowly track the moon as it moves through the night sky.

Over there in Indiana, its an hour earlier. Dont ask me why. You cross a road, State Line Road, and you step back in time. It can be done. Heading home, I get this gift, an extra hour to waste. But wait! I lost one someplace coming here. I shed it when I crossed the street, like sloughing skin. It must be somewhere, here at my feet. This pebble I nudge with my toe. Just what time is it? I consult my other wrist where the watch burbles, all its dials spinning, glowing softly, little moon. The laser beam it emits ricochets off my belt buckle, noses up to find its own string of satellites, bouncing around a bit, kicking the can, homing for home, an atomic clock on a mountaintop out west to check in on each millisecond of the passing parade, then, in a blink, it finds its way back to me here, makes a little beep. Beep! Heres the report: Closing Time.

Mr. Entertainer is not very entertaining. Its powering down before my eyes, each neon sign flickers, sputters in each dark window. The whole advertised universe collapsing in on the extinguished constellation of letters. How the hell did that happen. I had my eye on things, and the moon over Wapakoneta hasnt moved as far as I can tell. The rubble of the bar is illuminated now by that soft indifferent dusty light diffused through the dust kicked up by the departed cars. The slabs of its walls fall into blue shadow; its edges, then, drift into a nebulous fuzz, a cloud floating just above the ground.

What time is it on the moon? Its noon there now. Its noon on the moon. From the stoop of the extinct bar, I consider the moons midday that lasts for days, lunch everlasting, amen. They must get drunk on the light. They must drink it up. They must have plenty to spare. The excess is spilling on me, pouring on me down here in Ohio, enough light for me, a heavenly body, to cast a shadow on the studded gravel galaxy of the empty parking lot, a kind of time piece myself, the armature of an impromptu moon dial, the time ticking off as my celestial outline creeps from one cold stone to the next.

Cars on the road are racing back to Indiana. I hear them dribbling the sound of their horns in front of them, leaking a smear of radio static in the exhaust. I am looking for my clunker. Its around here someplace. According to my uplink, I am still in Wapakoneta. A slow night for the satellites, they have been lining up to affirm that consensus, a bakers dozen have been cooking up coordinates. I punch a button on my car key releasing the ultrasonic hounds hot on the magnetic signature of my piece of shit. The nearby solar panels pivot toward me sensing the valence of my reflection, hunger for the light I am emitting. Hark! Somewhere in the vast relative dark the yodel of a treed automobile. I must calculate the vectors for my approach.