Get Started

I’m a rocket man. Damn, just love the power of those engines pushing a 100 foot cylinder of metal out into space. All that smoke and exhaust and you can see the solid column of flame pushing the earth away, separating the vessel from any ties to where it was made.  There’s a visible strain, a trembling of all tangible evidence the rocket was formed by hands, by another being’s ideas and effort and desire to put the rocket to his own use and then... there is freedom. An absence of sound, a loss of breath. Weightless, loosed from the planet’s hold, the rocket is gone.

“Did I ever tell you I used to work on those rockets, Son? Oh yeah, lot of firepower around in those days, in that nitrogen fuel and those bottles in the desk drawer. Not a day went by that some suit stopped me walkin’ by his glass walls and said ‘Parker you sumbitch we did it again. Come have a toast to the U.S. of A.!’ And I of course obliged him, always good to drink with a man and get to know what you might need to know someday. Don’t forget that Son, don’t ever miss the opportunity to shake a hand, slap a back and shoot the shit -- they’re all regular guys, just like you, get past the fancy suits and be one of the men in the right room! How you ever gonna be somebody if you don’t meet somebody that already is?

“Anyways, that’s what we used to do.”

I pulled the blanket up tighter on his shoulders, careful not to brush it against his chin unless I wanted to hear the “damn scratchy blankets and where’s my stuff from home” diatribe.  If I tucked him gently, without either of us giving any attention to the fact I was tucking him in, he usually wound down with a few sighs and drifted off, into sleep or the television or 1962 I could never tell since his eyes stayed open just enough to catch movement towards the door. I tried leaving my shoes outside his door, dusting the shelves and picture frames around the room slowly, step by step, paying extra attention to the last picture by the door, the one of my parents on New Year’s Eve, which I dusted with my left hand as my right slowly turned the doorknob. A throw pillow had been strategically placed on the floor under my celebrating parents to catch the feather duster as I scraped through the barely open door into the hall, which despite the stale air and echos of winding down lives allowed my first deep breath since knocking on his door.