11 comments/ 9600 views/ 2 favorites Charlie's Spaceship By: sojourner2001 Be forewarned, this is not a stroke story. In fact there's only one brief kiss. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you enjoy. * I knew what was coming when I got called into the owner's office that afternoon. I had been working at the small job shop as a machinist for 3 years and I knew business was slowing down. In fact, I had already started reading the want ads but there wasn't much out there. Three others had been called into the office earlier that day and been given the bad news. I figured I was next in line and I was. "This is the worst thing about this job," began Jack Rogers. It wasn't exactly easy for me either. I really liked the guy. He was actually a decent human being, unlike some of those other ass holes I had worked for. I mean he paid reasonable wages, had good benefits and never talked down to anyone. Even better, he realized that I knew what I was doing, so he basically left me alone to do my job. Anyway, he began by telling me what I already knew. Business was bad and there wasn't enough work to keep everyone busy. People were being let go and I was one of them. He hated to do it, but then, he did something unexpected. He took a picture on his desk, turned it around to me and showed it to me. "This is my adopted son, Charlie. Three years ago my wife and I took him home. The agency that placed him with us said he was found sitting in a field somewhere in Vermont not too far from here. Nobody knows how he got there or who he really is. He is just such a sweet, wonderful kid, but it seems he is mentally and physically retarded. We think he must be at least ten years old but it's as if his biological clock stopped the day he turned five." I wondered where this was going. "He spends most of his time drawing plans for what he says is a space ship and he keeps asking us to build it for him. Frankly, it sure as hell doesn't look like one to me, but my wife has been after me and I don't have the time. We will pay you your usual hourly rate to take a look at it and see what you think, that is if you're interested." "Sounds like a plan to me." "I want an estimate before you actually build anything and I should forewarn you that I had someone else start it and he did a half assed job. Charlie became quite furious with him for not following his instructions. I want you to either take it seriously or not take it at all." I figured why not? I had nothing to lose and it wasn't as if I really needed the money anyway. There was a lot Jack didn't know about me, but that's getting a head of the story anyway. The point was, I liked Jack and I was a bit curious about this kid for some reason. If worst came to worst, I could just beg off and be done with it. I nodded and he and I shook hands and he gave me directions to his house in the country. I told him I would be there bright and early Monday morning and went back to the shop to get my tools and clean up my stuff. I sure as hell didn't have to be told not to tell anyone that I was going to be building a space ship for the owner's kid. Eight o'clock in the morning, I was there at the house. It wasn't all that big but they did have a good-sized barn and a couple of horses. Jack's wife Mary was your typical slightly overweight, busy stay at home mother. "Charlie is playing in the den. I told him you would be coming over to look at his drawings," she explained. "He is such a wonderful child," she said leading me down the stairs. He looked and acted like your typical five-year-old did, or what I thought a five-year-old would be like. Me, I didn't have kids and didn't want them so I really didn't know for sure mind you. He had a short attention span, but he was polite, easy going, and there was something about him that I just liked. He was just playing there quietly with a big Irish setter looking over him. The dog, Daisy was her name, kind of looked up at me when I entered, but when Charlie was told who I was, his eyes seemed to light up and he said something I couldn't understand to the dog and she gave me her approval. "Let me take a look at your drawings," I began as we found a place to lay them out and study them. Boy, did he have drawings, dozens of them actually. He had so many, he didn't even know what they all were. Right away, something caught my eye about them. They were so detailed it was almost incredible. The second thing that caught my eye was that all of the numbers and letters were in another language. Now, I'm hardly an expert but I knew it certainly wasn't in English or any other so called "western" script. "Charlie," I asked him as I tried to figure it all out, "what is this?" I asked pointing to some figures on a drawing. "How big," he replied. That was a start. "Is it inches or feet or meters?" "No," was all he said. "And what is this?" I asked point to other figures. "What it is," he replied, "stuff, you know." "Not sure that I do," I replied. He looked so forlorn, like a dog who really wanted to like you and all you had to do was pet him. "I'll keep working on it," I replied. That seemed to cheer him up. I found the key a few minutes later. At first, I just couldn't believe it. I almost wasn't sure what it was. It had been so long since I had even seen one, I had almost forgotten what it looked like. He had drawn the periodic table of elements. It's basic chemistry really and I hadn't seen one since high school, hadn't any use for one really. So, how was a five-year-old able to draw one and what was the language? I took a break and found Mary in the kitchen. "How are you two doing?" she asked politely. "Do you have an encyclopedia?" I asked "or Internet around here?" "No, we don't have an encyclopedia and yes, we do have Internet, like everyone else." "Does Charlie use it?" "Of course not." "Any chemistry books around here?" "None at all. Why do you ask?" "Then how can he have drawn this?" I asked explaining to her what it was. "It's not even in English or any other language that I know of. I don't have a real one to compare it to so I'm not sure how accurate it is, but I've got a really scary feeling that it may be dead on." "One way to find out," she said and took me into their den where the computer was kept. A few minutes later, I had a print out of the table. "He's calculated the atomic weights to six places," I replied. "This chart only shows five. How could he have known?" "You're scaring me," she said nervously. "I'll bet this is the key to all of his drawings. I can translate all of his numbers from this and probably most of the alphabet. Then I can copy everything into cad files on my laptop," I said, glad that I had brought it with me. "You're serious about this, aren't you?" "Jack told me to either do it right or not at all. Said something about another guy you hired who got Charlie mad." "Yes," she smiled. "The only time I've ever seen Charlie really upset. We had a carpenter work on the barn and I thought it would be nice if he could build Charlie his space ship. Charlie wasn't happy at all." "Probably didn't understand the drawings at all." "No, it seems he didn't." "Does Charlie watch much television?" I asked. "Is he a Star Trek fan?" "No, he doesn't watch much at all. I really try and discourage it as much as possible. Has no interest in science fiction if that's what you mean. He does seem to like the History Channel and Discovery, the educational stuff, which I guess is good. At least he doesn't watch the soaps." I knew there was a reason I liked the kid. I smiled and laughed. I got my laptop computer, found Charlie and plugged it in and began translating the drawings as best I could into cad files and making some sense of them. The numbers from the chart allowed me to translate the numeric data but I still didn't have a clue about how big anything was. I mean, was I dealing in something like an inch or a yard? I was stuck but then it was lunchtime. I brought a sandwich and it turned out Charlie also liked peanut butter and jelly. I had a donut and he had a chocolate chip cookie with his as we sat out on the patio and ate. He was quite content to be with me and seemed very much at ease. We joked for a little bit and played a game out in the sun tossing something around as Daisy ran around playing with us. The dog was seemed utterly devoted to Charlie and he in turn, seemed to be very protective of her. In the kitchen, I asked Mary about them. "Yes, he talks to her. It's almost as if she understands him." "She's getting on, isn't she?" I asked. "She has arthritis in her legs. Some days, I can look in her eyes and almost see the pain. I am so scared because I know in a couple of years, she won't be with us any more and I just don't think Charlie will be able to understand. I had to take her to the vet a couple of months after we got Charlie, and she always hated to go there, but this time I brought Charlie along and I tried to explain it to him, that it was just for a check up, and he said something to her and she just went along and was a really good about it. Charlie is now in charge of giving her her medicine. I've never seen a dog take pills so agreeably. It's almost as if she understands him." I was beginning to wonder if perhaps she didn't. "Not that it's any of my business, but have the doctors figured out what Charlie's problem is?" "I'm afraid not. They just don't have a clue. None of them have ever seen anything like it. It's as if his body and mind just stopped when he turned five." I stood there in the kitchen, looking out of the window at Daisy and Charlie playing and then turned around and found one of my answers. They had three other children and in the kitchen, they had a wall with the heights marked as they each grew. "Can you write down how tall you are, Charlie?" I asked him once we were inside. I had a piece of paper and he carefully put down three figures. I translated them and finally had my reference point. Whatever those numbers were, it translated into thirty-two inches. With that as my start, the software automatically made the calculations for all of the other measurements. I actually became so intent on the drawings that I didn't even notice the time. Before I knew it, it was dinnertime and Mary asked me to stay and talk to Jack. It was an offer I couldn't refuse, especially because Charlie found out and wanted me to stay too. Then, there was the fact that I wasn't married and had no real reason not to. It was after dinner when I got around to asking Jack about the periodic table of elements. "I have no idea how he knew that," he said. "I never took chemistry myself. Majored in business and took the company over from my father," he explained. "Could he be one of those idiot savants?" "I can't even begin to answer that one. It just seems so odd that everything he's done is so precise, so methodical." "But it's in crayon!" "It's all he's had to work with. It's all kids ever use." "But what are you saying?" he asked me. "Do you think this thing will fly? Is that what you're saying?" "I just don't know right now. I might have a better idea in a day or two once I get a handle on the details." In a strange way, I did know even then but I couldn't admit it to anyone. I knew it would fly. It shouldn't have. It looked nothing like a space ship. Instead, it looked more like a big birdcage, for that is what it really resembled. The ship was about twenty-four feet tall, nine feet in diameter with a conical top. The walls were actually made out of tubing which was filled, as I later discovered, with inert gases. The tubes were about an inch in diameter and spaced about two inches apart. The tubes all curved up to the top where they came together in a point. The outer shell itself also rotated. There was a round platform inside with a couple of seats and some odd controls. The platform did not turn but was stationary. Access was through a small doorway in the shell. Underneath the platform were four round discs that were wired into the controls. Each disc had a specific composition but it made absolute no sense to me at all. Yet, somehow, I sensed it would work. The drawings consumed about three full days of my time. It took that long to get every detail correct. Then came the fun part. I had to source all the material and try and estimate how much it would cost to build it. It was not fun at all. The problem was that Charlie was very specific about the materials to be used. The tubing in particular was something it turns out that had never been made before. "It's possible," said one engineer I spoke to, "but why?" "I'm working for an inventor," I tried to explain. I couldn't tell the truth, that it was for a kid's space ship. In the end, I found a supplier who would not charge too much above the normal price. Luckily, I needed enough of it that it was worthwhile for them to make it. "So, how much is this going to set me back?" asked Jack one evening over dinner. "Fifty thousand, give or take," I explained. "Mostly for the tubing, but then there's some other parts I have to fabricate and some electrical stuff." I didn't tell him how much I would be contributing either. There was some equipment I would have to beg, borrow or buy and I guess that was going to come out of my own very deep pockets. I figured this was the price I was going to have to pay for agreeing to this in the first place. "That's an awful lot of money," he sighed. "You said you wanted it done right." There was a pause as he thought about it for a few moments. "This thing can't possibly work, can it? I mean, really, it can't possibly fly?" "Not a chance," I assured him. He had been asking me for the past week, wanting to know for certain that nothing would happen. Rather than tell the truth, I had taken to lying. I was becoming convinced that it would somehow work. Charlie was making a believer out of me, but I didn't quite know what I was being asked to believe in. Charlie had convinced me that there was something more to him. I would ask him for help, and if I put it correctly, I would sometimes get very detailed answers. For example, I asked him about the material for the tubes. I had figured out the formula and written it in English and it meant nothing to him. When I copied it back to his language and asked him, "can I change this?" he seemed to understand exactly what I was talking about and told me no, that it couldn't be altered. Another instance, he went and made another drawing that made some changes. How could he be so precise? His revision fit exactly into the other drawings, even though he didn't even look at them. It wasn't all work with him either. He took to playing with me for a short while after lunch every day. If the weather was nice, and it usually was, we would go outside. Sometimes we would explore the old barn. He seemed quite fascinated by the two horses out there and he kept wanting to try and talk to them. He didn't seem to understand that they did not understand a word that he said. Daisy was always there, trying to keep up with him, barking at anything out of the ordinary and in general, acting like your typical dog, completely devoted to Charlie. Jack gave me the go-ahead on the project the next day, much to my own surprise. It was going to be a very expensive toy for Charlie and I wasn't quite sure that they could afford it. I didn't ask the details but instead just concentrated on the task at hand. I took over the barn. That was the only place to build this space ship of Charlie's. The tubing would take eight weeks to make, about what I thought considering how special it was. In the mean time, I had jigs to make and other odds and ends. My trouble was, I certainly didn't have eight weeks of work. I debated on what to do until the tubing arrived. I just couldn't justify charging them for time spent doing nothing and I wasn't sure it made much sense hanging around when there were so many places I could go if I wanted to, or if I was still wanted there. There was so much that Jack and Mary didn't know about me and I guess there was still a lot that I didn't know about myself for that matter. I mean, Jack was so proud of his MBA from the local State University. What would he have said if I told him I had one from Harvard, at the precocious age of twenty-one? What would he have said if I had told him that my trust fund alone was worth more than his entire company and that, if I had chosen to do so, could have just sat back for the rest of my life and done absolutely nothing? Jack thought of me as John Ennis, machinist, tool and die maker, machine operator. My family thought of me as the black sheep, the one who had the Big Nervous Break Down at the age of twenty-eight. John Ennis, heir apparent to the investment banking firm of Ennis and Company, barons of Wall Street, with houses in Aspen, the South of France and the Hamptons on Long Island. My great-great grandfather had started the company. He was one of the very few Irish bankers in the city. It was rumored that he was not so much smarter than everyone else, but more ruthless. By the time I was born, there were three generations in the business and I would be part of the fourth and I actually made a decent start at it too. One day, however, all the pressure, all the stress, all the tiny threads of my life as "John Robert Ennis IV" came undone. I didn't go berserk. I didn't tell my father where to go. I didn't shoot anyone. My body just froze in terror. I was hospitalized for a month. The doctors were clueless, but I knew what was wrong. My father was appalled. My mother was shaken. I would not go back to the bank, ever again. I would do what I wanted for the very first time in my life. I wanted to make things. I managed to con my way into an apprenticeship program for tool and die makers. I was given a machine to run and parts to make and I found great comfort in having something to show for my work at the end of the day, even if it wasn't my own but belonged to someone else. I liked being able to say that "I made that" at the end of the day, if only part of it. I stole from no one. I cheated none. It was honest, if hard, labor and it had suited me perfectly for the fifteen years since then. My mother was less appalled now than she was then. I was still something of a black sheep in her eyes. Still a bit of a failure in my father's. He and I had reconciled some years ago but he was still unhappy about my life. I was the only blue collar worker in three generations. My two sisters and two brothers, all younger than I, had gone into the business, even if only part time. Mostly, they didn't understand either except Emily, younger than I by thirteen months. "I saw the pressure you were under," she told me once. "I just couldn't imagine how you coped with it at all. You had to be so perfect." "Not sure how I survived either. I guess I really didn't, did I?" "Perhaps you did. I mean you didn't go off and kill anyone, did you? It could have been worse and now you seem quite happy and you're leading a decent life." That I was. "But you're not married yet. Such a shame." Her words were echoed by Jack's wife Mary at a weekend get together I was invited to at their house. I had taken a week off with nothing to do and lied to Jack about working part time. I had become good about lying to people over the years and I often wondered when it would catch up to me, but it hadn't yet. Anyway, Jack told me that Charlie missed me and they were having a few friends over on that sunny June afternoon for a small cook out and Charlie insisted that I show up. I liked the little kid so I did, leaving my Porsche at home and arriving in my pick up truck. I wasn't sure if it was Jack and Mary who set me up or Charlie himself, but when I arrived, I found him playing a game with, in Mary's words, "his favorite aunt," who was her older sister. Charlie saw me and immediately I was dragged into the game with her. She was actually a nice enough woman, not unpleasant to look at, just a couple of years younger than myself. Her teenaged children played with Jack and Mary's other three older children while I tried, with some difficulty, to not seem too out of place once the game ended. Charlie's Spaceship A failing of mine, I apparently lacked the social graces necessary to function in the real world. Summers in the Hamptons were not pleasant experiences for me, except when I was able to sneak into the garage, behind my mother's back, and help the chauffer work on one of the cars -- not that any of them did much mind you. Still, it was then that I got my hands dirty and felt the grease and grit on my fingers and began to learn that all these wonderful things that populated my pampered world had actually been made by someone and had not just appeared out of thin air. "You look so distracted," commented Mary's sister Nancy as I sat on the deck overlooking Charlie and Daisy playing together in the tall grass behind the house. "Thinking of summers at the Hamptons," I replied. "Isn't that where Billy Joel and those types live?" she asked. "Yes, it is," I replied hoping that I would not regret admitting it. "They were not happy summers," I added. "I'll bet it's a lot different now with all the rich people living there. Did your parents have a house there before it got so exclusive?" Damn it. I was starting to like her right then and there. She had such a pleasant voice and like I said, she was reasonably easy on the eyes. "They owned the Hamptons," I said, "and still own more of it than anyone else." "Oh," she added quite surprised. I pointed to Jack and Mary, getting the grill ready for the hot dogs and hamburgers. "He's got an MBA from what is it, NYU? Probably in the middle of his class, I would guess. Harvard, suma cum laud, number two in my class, at age twenty two." "You're not joking are you?" "No, I'm not." "Jesus, what are you doing here?" "Nervous breakdown at twenty eight. Couldn't deal with it any more. I was John Robert Ennis the fourth. Now I'm just John Ennis," I replied. I told her a little bit more, more than I think I had ever told anyone else up until that time. "Do they know?" she asked. "Nope, don't have a clue." "I won't tell," she promised and I actually thought she might keep it too as we just sat there and chatted on the patio as the kids played and the burgers burned. I learned she had an ex-husband she who was not in her life and was about as shy around men as I was around women. We liked the same music and thought Charlie was just a wonderful kid. Once or twice as we chatted, Charlie would come up us to say something he thought was really important and we would both smile and nod and he seemed to really like fact that she and I were there together that sunny afternoon in June. "It's very nice of you to build the space ship for Charlie," she said as we sat and ate our hamburgers together. "It really means a lot to him, you know. Jack and Mary never seemed to take it very seriously until now." "How can you take a five year old's drawings in crayon seriously?" I asked, "especially when you don't understand a thing that he has written." "But you do, don't you? Charlie told me you're really going to build it. He said you're going to make it fly." She paused. "Is it?" she asked. "Is it really going to fly?" Damn it, I was going to tell her the truth. Oh well, she already knew I had a nervous breakdown so she probably thought I was crazy anyway. "Yeah, I think it is going to work. Don't know how, but I think it's going to take Charlie back home." It was out in the open. I had said what I was beginning to suspect after only knowing him for two weeks. She just stared at me for a moment, not quite comprehending I guess what I had said. "He really is very strange, isn't he?" she asked. "How can a kid who has never seen a periodic table of the elements draw one and calculate the atomic weights to six decimal places in a language that doesn't exist? How can a kid using crayons make drawings for parts that fit together using tolerances to within a few microns, less that the thickness of a human hair?" I paused. "So you're going to ask me how that birdcage space ship of his is going to work and I just don't have a clue, but I really believe it will." She smiled for a moment, looked at me and then said, "then so do I." Her kids interrupted us once or twice and after dinner, they took off in her abused minivan and I realized that I had desperately wanted to get her phone number but hadn't had the courage to ask her for it. Mary, good sister that she was, saw that I had spent most of my time talking to Nancy and quietly came up to me and offered me the number I had been afraid to ask for. I spent most of the next week wondering if I should call her and restoring an old Duisenberg car that I had picked up several years ago at auction and was finally getting around to working on. One of the problems I had with trying to live a normal life and working a regular job was that I ended up having little free time for such things. The regular job though, did keep my days filled and focused and often left me so tired at the end of the day that my demons usually left me alone. In the end, it wasn't me who called, but she. Mary and Jack were going off on a long weekend and she would be taking care of Charlie and she thought it would be good for him if I showed up. When summoned, I invariably came and this was no exception and as I drove there, I resented it. There I was forty six years old, being summoned and still obeying. I had wanted to be free and I wasn't. I was getting angry with myself until I realized where I was being summoned. I liked Charlie. I liked Nancy. So what was the big deal anyway, duh? I was too afraid to call, so she called. Charlie was delighted to see me. It was as if I was some long lost friend of his whom he hadn't seen in years instead of only a mere week. "Mary said he had been depressed when you didn't show up during the week," she explained. I had tried to explain things to Charlie and I guess either I failed or he wasn't capable of understanding the concept of "lead time" as in how long I had to wait for the tubing he required. I know, it was a bit much to ask a five year old to understand and even more for me to explain to a five year old. I made another attempt -- and would continue to do so -- until it was finished. I made many promises to him that I would finish his ship but perhaps like a lot of us, I think he may have been let down too many times to get his little hopes up. I spent part of that warm June morning in the barn, looking things over and making sure it was much as I had left it. Charlie told me I could build it inside the barn but it would have to be moved outside in the sunlight to work. I had told him I thought it might be too heavy to move but he assured me it would not be a problem. That left me and Nancy both puzzled but I had long since given trying to figure out how this ship would work. Either it did or it didn't and if it didn't it certainly wouldn't be my fault as I explained to her. "Were things your fault?" she asked outside the barn. "What?" I asked bewildered by the question. "When you were growing up, were things always your fault?" "Just the nervous breakdown," I sighed. "I was the perfect child, too perfect perhaps, but no, I never did anything wrong until then. That certainly made up for a lot," I laughed. It might just have been one of the very few times I had actually laughed about it. "The one thing that went wrong that probably wasn't my fault, and I get the blame." "Everything was my fault," she said. "When it rained, it was my fault. When he gambled and lost, it was my fault. When he hit me too." How could anyone have hit her was beyond me. She said little and I was able infer a bit more and it made me realize that while my family had been dysfunctional, they had never been abusive, at least not physically anyway. My parents may have been cold and distant, and if there may not have been a lot of love, at least there was no hatred either. I tried and failed to make some sense of it all that day as we basically stayed around the house, watching over Charlie who really needed no watching over, just someone to help him with the basics, like making dinner for him and tying his shoes and listening to his important stories. She talked a bit about her life that afternoon, about growing up in a suburban home to suburban parents who struggled to make ends meet, about how both her parents worked to support her and her sister and brother. She was middling in school, and unable to afford college, went to work out of high school, married a boyfriend, had two children and was divorced and on her own at thirty one, the result of one too many black eyes I suppose. It was a life I could only imagine. "You're lost again," she said looking at me in the afternoon sun. "You've told me so little." "I just enjoy listening to you," I said. It was true, I really did. "Would you like to see my life?" I asked. "My father's eightieth birthday is coming up. I've been restoring a classic car for the past few years, a 1931 Duisenberg and I've decided to give it to him. I thought I would drive down there and charter a plane and fly back. It will make for a long weekend, perhaps leave Friday morning and return on Monday." I really thought she was going to say no. I really did. She was silent for more than a few minutes. "I'm just thinking about who I can get to take care of the kids and feed the dog," she said. "What will I wear?" "I know you're struggling to make ends meet, so if there's anything I can do to help with this. It's in two weeks," I added. "Of course I'll go with you," she said a moment later. "Perhaps I can have my sister Emily call you and the two of you can decide if you need anything." Oh yes, I was crazy all right. I was agreeing to spend a long weekend with a woman I barely knew at my parent's summer house in the Hamptons. My sister Emily couldn't have been happier when I called. She was even happier when she called me after talking to Nancy. "She sounds so wonderful. I'm looking forward to seeing both of you." On a warm June Friday morning, I picked her up at her modest apartment building and we took off down the road in the old Duisenberg. I had to admit I had done an excellent job restoring the old car and I really had not wanted to give it up, but there was nothing left to challenge me and I knew it would make my father happy. I kept to the two lane highways as we were not pressed for time on the drive down to New London where we caught the ferry to Orient Point. A short hop and we were on the first of two ferries, the first from Greenport to Shelter Island, the second from Shelter Island into the Hamptons. I had warned her about the house on the drive down. "Oh my God. Is that it? It's, it's huge!" I had lived in apartment buildings that had been smaller. It had a dinning room that was bigger than most tract houses where I now lived. There was a subdued, yet festive air about the place when we arrived. I had gone back most years for a visit, if only briefly, so I was not entirely a stranger, though I no longer spent my summers there as did a younger sister and her family, along of course, with my parents who now lived there full time, leaving the Manhattan mansion behind them for good now that he longer went to the office everyday. Emily, bless her, was there and took charge of a by now very nervous and intimidated Nancy while I sought out my father. He was sitting on the back veranda, drinking his usual Martini, playing gin with someone I did not know. "Hello," I said politely, not sure I should disturb him. He looked up at me and half smiled. "Lieutenant Governor Thomas," he said by way of introduction. "My eldest, John the fourth," he said to the man. We shook hands and then I introduced them to Nancy. He looked up in approval I think, then nodded that the game was over for now and relaxed for half a second. "I've brought you a present but it's too big to be wrapped so I was wondering if you'd mind having a look at it now." Like most of us, I usually gave polite presents that had proved to be totally useless. I mean, what do you give someone who could buy anything and almost anyone, who could pay the national debt of some small countries? His interest was piqued as was that of my sister and by the time we arrived out front, the whole family was there. His eyes opened when he stood out on the granite front steps and saw the car. "It isn't in the car, is it?" "No, it is the car," I said handing him the keys. I think for the first time in his life, he was speechless. It could not have been a bigger surprise and he was clearly delighted with it. He was almost like a kid with a new toy. "I always thought these were great cars," he said for about twenty times. I wanted to ask him why he never bought one. I mean, it wasn't like he couldn't afford to buy one that had been restored. Maybe he didn't know how. Perhaps that was it. Maybe it had just never occurred to him to do it. The rest of the weekend became a blur. I felt so sorry for Nancy and I almost wished I hadn't asked her to come along. I knew almost everybody there and she knew no one except Emily and I. Yet, she was a trouper. It was separate bedrooms for us that weekend, not that I minded. It was a bit early in our relationship for that and my mother did not approve of those things anyway and never tolerated any of us who wanted to sleep in the same room with our "significant others". She had her rules and as long as it was her house, we obeyed or else. Saturday morning I borrowed a Bentley and took Emily into the Hamptons for some shopping and a general ride around the area. In the afternoon, it was the party itself. It began around three ish and ran well into the night. There was quite a crowd there and more than a few of the local celebrities dropped by. Nancy was pretty much in awe of the whole thing and her eyes almost popped out when she saw some of the people. "Is that who I think it is?" she asked more than once. At least she had sense enough not to ask for autographs. Me, I pretty much stayed in the background with her. It was, after all, my father's birthday and not mine. He was supposed to be the center of attention and not me and he certainly was. Sunday was lazy, reading the Times by the fireplace in the Great Room, walking with Nancy along the beach at Montauk, and a quiet dinner with just the family. Nancy was more comfortable there that night. She seemed less in awe, perhaps because there were fewer people there or perhaps she was now so numb to it all. I think my parents actually liked her. I know Emily certainly did. More than once she said how lucky I was and how happy she was for me. Monday morning, we said our "goodbyes" and left. I think for the first time in my life, my father actually hugged me. "You've done well, John," he said. I wanted to cry but didn't. That was all I ever wanted from him, from either him or my mother. Emily drove us to the airport where a chartered jet waited patiently for the two of us. It flew us back north in no time and we landed, took a taxi back to my place where I showed her my modest house that I had above my garage and workshop. "The Great Room is bigger than your whole house," she said. "How could you leave all that?" "How could I stay?" Did she understand? Did I even know myself? I took her into my shop and showed her the three cars I was restoring, showed her my tools and my life reduced to nuts and bolts and axle grease. "Remarkable," she said. We chatted and ate lunch and I returned her home in the Porsche and we promised to go out the following weekend. I had almost forgotten about Charlie. I had dropped by once or twice a week, mostly to do some minor work and also to check up on my little friend and make sure he understood that I was not abandoning him. "The tubing is shipping tomorrow," Jack said on the phone not two weeks after my weekend at the Hamptons. "It should be at the house the day after that." He was using his company to purchase the tubing. They wouldn't sell it to him otherwise and it made life easier anyway. He would simply reimburse the company and be done with it. Now I had to build it. What a project! I had jigs to make, tubing to bend, and forms to prepare. I built the craft on its side in the barn and ended up renting a crane to lift it upright. There was just no other way. "How much is this costing me?" asked Jack who still did not know. "A friend owes me," I said politely. Charlie was ecstatic. Finally, his space ship was coming together now very quickly. He had sense enough to stay out of my way most of the time, but I made sure that he saw the progress a couple of times a day and I let him inspect it too. He seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what was going on I think. He was only disappointed when I went home every night. "Soon, Charlie," I would tell him. "Monday at high noon," I told Nancy over dinner two days later. It was Saturday and I was having dinner with her and her two children. We had spent the afternoon together and I had taken them to my modest house and shown it to them as they were now getting curious about me and my relationship with their mother. Her seventeen year old son was slightly impressed with the antique cars and knew a little bit about them. I think he was more interested in the Porsche I owned than in the Packard or the Cord I was restoring. Her daughter I think was bored to tears by it all but was too polite to admit it. She would be off to college in the fall on scholarship anyway. The Great Day finally arrived. It was bright, almost cloudless morning and I got there just after eight. I had a lot of last minute work to do. For one, the craft had to be hauled out of the barn. It had to be in sunlight for it to work. I had known about that of course and mounted heavy duty wheels on its five legs. My only concern was that it might tip over as I moved it, but I got it outside far enough without any problem. I then placed four video cameras all around it. I wanted it documented from every possible angle. If something went wrong, I wanted it on tape. I would also carry one inside the craft myself. "Are you sure it's safe for me?" I had asked Charlie. "You're my friend," he said. "I would never hurt my friend. I promise," he smiled. We figured the sun would be directly overhead at about 11:45 so about half an hour before, we started getting ready. Charlie insisted that Daisy come along too, so the three of us walked over to the barn. Mary and the other two children were also out there and I explained to them that I wanted the entire event video taped. "You're serious, aren't you?" she asked. "Yes, very." "Do you know something you're not telling us? I mean, Nancy has hinted at a few things herself. She trusts you more than she has ever trusted anyone else, so I guess I do too." "I have suspicions, nothing more. We'll know for sure in a little while." "He isn't coming back, is he? He's going somewhere else?" "I think he's going home," I replied. "Then I'd better go and say goodbye." I couldn't watch as she went over to Charlie. I was certain she was going to cry. She had loved him and taken care of him as if he was her own biological child and now she was thinking she might never see him again. At about 11:30 the three of us climbed into the craft. It took a few minutes for me to seal the hatch properly and pressurize all the tubes. Charlie manned the few controls, five dials actually, and at 11:35, began turning one of them. The outer shell began to slowly spin. I had no sensation of movement but after another minute or two, the craft was filled with an almost blinding white light. I closed my eyes but it did no good. It didn't hurt mind you and I opened them up a minute later after it passed. "Oh my God, it works!" We were in space. The sun was behind us, and through the rapidly spinning shell, I could see stars all around. Charlie's Spaceship Charlie laughed like the little child he was, then turned another dial and said, "watch this!" I began to float. We were in zero gravity. It was so funny watching poor Daisy float. Charlie and I played around for about five or ten minutes, I'm really not sure how long, and then he returned to the control panel, turned a dial ever so slightly and said, "watch out!" and then gravity gently returned. We came upon another star and again, the craft was filled with white light for about a minute or two, and then, the light faded, and the shell slowly stopped rotating. "Open the hatch," said Charlie. "Is it OK for me?" I asked him. "I would never hurt my friend," he said. I still wasn't sure but I had no choice. I was going to be the first human being to set foot on another world. Gently, I opened the hatch and what a world it was. The colors were so different. It was as if some mad man had just gone berserk and painted everything with the most unusual hues in his palate that he could possibly find. The shapes and textures looked vaguely familiar so that was slightly reassuring. Charlie and Daisy bounded out of the craft and down the short stairs and onto the solid ground. I could only follow as best I could. We were in a field of some kind, not unlike the field we had left from. There were no buildings within sight but there appeared to be a small pathway leading away and the two of them romped forward. The gravity seemed slightly less than Earth and the sky was very pale blue, and it and the thinness of the air reminded me of the higher attitudes in the Rockies. I was not sure that I wasn't dreaming but it seemed so very real. After no more than five minutes, we came to another clearing and spotted two tall beings. From a distance, I would say they would have been about my size, slightly human looking but definitely not human. Paleish in color, they had long robes which covered almost their entire bodies. The arms were long and spindly and their heads had an almost science fiction look to them and again, I wondered if I hadn't seen far too many episodes of Star Trek. Charlie and Daisy ran over to them and Daisy barked, more in curiosity than fear I think and I just stood at a distance and watched them for a few moments, looking perhaps as a young child returned home to his parents, for that was exactly what it was. After some discussion, Charlie and one of the beings took off down the path while the other one approached me. No, I did not say "take me to your leader", not that I would have anyway. I was just so in awe of my surroundings. I had stooped down to touch the soil and vegetation beneath my feet and smelled the not unpleasant scent in the air and I was busy just observing as the being approached. "Thank you for returning our child," said the being in very polite and formal English, a bit stilted perhaps and pronounced stiffly and slowly. "You are very welcome," I replied slowly. "Where am I?" "You have so very many questions don't you?" "Of course I do. It is in our nature. We are a curious people." "We know. Our child, you call him Charlie, has already transferred his vast knowledge to us. It is now part of who we are and will be. Your methods for sharing knowledge are so primitive and slow you may not understand how, but the moment he arrived here, he shared everything he learned with all of us. That is how I know your language. That is how I know your name and how I know you are a good, decent person." "I have tried," I merely replied. "That is why you were brought here, because he thinks you are ready to learn and that you will use wisely. Please, walk with me." And so I walked with an alien being, perhaps a woman I think, down a path, through a clearing and came upon what I could only call a small village. Charlie and Daisy were there, the center of attention. My guide explained a little about their world and gave and told me a little of their way of life and I tried desperately to remember it. Like an idiot, I had left the video camera in the craft and thought to go back but my guide informed me later that it would not have mattered as the magnetic interference from the craft would have erased the tape (which it did, but that's getting a head of the story again.) There were about a dozen other people there, mostly staring at Daisy until I arrived, and then they stared at me for a moment. One waved some kind of rod over me and it was explained that they now had all my biological information, down to my DNA. "This is my home," explained Charlie as he turned to them, said something and turned back to me. "I told them you are my friend." "I am honored to be here," I replied. Charlie and his mother showed me a little of their village. It was so unusual, I can barely describe it. It was nothing like anything I had ever seen or imagined. "Our children learn from the adults and the adults learn from the children," said the woman. "That is why Charlie was on your world, to learn and to teach us," she explained as we walked. "But something went wrong, didn't it?" I asked. "Yes, his ship crashed. He survived with the knowledge of how to build a new ship, just as you too will have that knowledge. He learned how to survive on your world and he has done well because you have helped him. We thank you for your help." They were taking me back to the craft. "You cannot stay here much longer," she said. "It will not be healthy if you do and we would never wish harm to you," she said. "And what about Daisy, the dog?" I asked. "She will be an honored guest here. Her life will be much as it was. You have my word." "And how do I get back home? I don't know how to operate this ship." She handed me three small disks. They seemed to have almost no weight, but they were about the size and shape of a half dollar. "This one is all you will ever need to know about the ship. Hold it, let it touch you and you will understand. These other two are for the two who took such good care of Charlie. Give one to each of them and they too will understand." I stood at the side of the craft, resting there in a field on another planet and was just amazed. I had a brother who was now in orbit above earth and there I was, a billion miles away in the blink of an eye. Charlie and I said goodbye to each other and he wished me well as I climbed back inside the small craft. I found the disk and held it in my hand. I gazed at it for a moment or two and then I knew. It was all so amazingly simple. With a flick of the dials, I took control of my little craft and before I knew it, I was racing through the stars again and as if by magic, after an all too short time, I was back home. I opened the hatch. It was as if nothing had changed. I stepped out. "What happened?" asked Mary. "It worked! I was there, on another planet. My God, it was incredible, just incredible." "But, you didn't go anywhere. Nothing happened. The hull spun around for a few minutes and then stopped." It was only twenty minutes since Charlie and I had gotten into the craft. "Charlie, what about Charlie?" she asked. "He's home, he's at home on his other world," I tried to explain. Oh, did I try to explain. Finally, I just gave her the disk, and then she understood. "It really happened, didn't it? I mean, I just didn't believe you at first, but it really happened." At least she believed me and so did Jack later that afternoon. Nancy also believed me and that helped. The story should have ended there but an adopted child just cannot vanish into thin air without problems for someone and that someone was me. The words kidnapping, and murder were used over the next few days. I was arrested. Thank God it was a little town, out in the middle of nowhere and thank God nobody associated me with my family's business otherwise I think my father would have disowned me. It was bad enough that I was accused of some crime, but this of all things. I knew trouble was coming about an hour or two after I got back. I mean, I wasn't that stupid or anything. I hired a lawyer right away and when the police read me my rights, I knew who to call. "They're talking about murder," he explained to me in my cell. "Charlie is very much alive." "Then they will talk about kidnapping." "And they can't even prove he existed," I said. "But everyone saw him." "And the pictures of him are fuzzy and out of focus," I replied. I learned that from Mary after I was arrested. "Then where is he?" He did not believe my story. Nobody except Jack, Mary Nancy and perhaps my sister Emily thought that I was anything but guilty as charged. "Perhaps you had another nervous breakdown," suggested my lawyer. "An insanity defense perhaps?" "Obviously I must be crazy for thinking that craft can fly. That alone should be proof." "Nobody can get inside it, you know," he said referring to the craft. "They tried to move it with a crane. You said you towed it out there with tractor?" "Mary and the kids watched and taped it." "Yes, we saw the tape. The police want to know how you did that." I paused for a moment. "What if I bring back some proof that the craft can go into space and return?" "What kind of proof?" "A moon rock perhaps, soil from Mars, perhaps I could jumpstart that Martian lander with the dead battery. How about that?" "You're serious aren't you? No one will ever agree to that." Everyone thought my idea was totally insane, or almost everyone. There was the concept of innocent until proven guilty and as the days passed, they realized it was not going to be easy to prove me guilty. Like I said, they had no body and Jack and Mary stood beside me, even after they found out how rich I was, which they did when I posted a million dollar bail, then I posted theirs and we all got out. I had to tell Jack and Mary at least some of the truth about myself, or as much as I could deal with then. We all had dinner a couple of days later along with Nancy who was looking after Jack and Mary's kids. It had gotten real ugly for them too. "You've got to end this, John," pleaded Jack. "I know you didn't hurt Charlie. If I thought for a second that you had or could, I'd say so, but even without the disk, I believed you." But the disk didn't work for anyone else, just them. "I can't plead guilty to something I didn't do." That much was obvious. Hope came a couple of days later. The district attorney was willing to take me up on my offer. "Come back with proof and I might consider dropping the charges." "I need a spacesuit first," I explained. "Hey, that's your problem, not mine," he replied. Money solves things. NASA wouldn't loan me one, but the Russians were more than willing to sell me one, right off the shelf. It came with instructions and a technician even came along to help me with it. A couple of days later, with what seemed like half the police in the rural county watching, I climbed into the space suit and walked over to the craft. It had prevented anyone else from entering it but I had no problem at all. It allowed me inside as if it sensed my presence or perhaps it was because I believed. There was someone else who tried to enter behind me and it refused him entry. At precisely ten minutes before the sun was due to be directly overhead, I turned a couple of dials, the craft was filled with light, then a few more twists and I saw stars for only a moment or two and then, I landed on Mars. NASA had sent a craft there to explore but something had happened to it and it never responded once it landed. I found it right away and set my craft down almost on top of it. I opened my hatch and became the first human being to set foot on the Martian surface. The craft had contained a Martian rover which, upon landing had ended up upside down and almost wedged against a boulder. I set it upright, found the solar panels to be bent and straightened them out and got them deployed. It took about thirty minutes of hard work and I wanted to stick around and make sure it worked, but as long as I was around, it never would. The craft caused temporal and magnetic disturbances that would interfere with any normal communications. It would have been great if it could have taken a picture of me, there on the Martian soil. I did take some samples but that was all I could do before climbing back inside my craft. My next stop was the moon and the site where Apollo 12 landed. They left behind a few small artifacts which I gathered up. How could anyone doubt me now, I wondered. By my reckoning, I was gone a couple of hours, but as before, it was only twenty minutes. I had my doubters. I had taken the soil with me, said some. I faked the evidence. On and on. It was all a charade. I still had no proof. My lawyer believed me now though. At least that was a start. It might have stayed like that, and I might have gone to jail for a very long time but not for another almost disaster. After the Columbia shuttle disaster, NASA became almost paranoid about the heat shield on the shuttles. They found a way to patch damaged sections in space and even sent a repair kit up to the international space station. The problem was, when Endeavor was found to be missing some tiles, the shuttle was on the opposite side of the world and running low on fuel. There was no way it was going to make it to the space station and then land. I was approached by a man from NASA. "Can you do it?" he asked me. "Can you get the repair kit from the station over to Endeavor and how quickly?" he asked one evening. "Yes, I can do it, but not until noon tomorrow." "I need you up there now," he almost snapped at me. "And you're one of the people who said I faked the Martian and Lunar soil samples, aren't you?" "You never left ground. You could not possibly have gone there." "If I can't leave the ground, then why are you asking me to try?" "I was told to," he snapped, "by the President of the United States and by God, if the President asks me to do something, I do it whether I like it or not, even if I think it's the craziest damn thing I've ever heard of." "Then you can tell the President that I would be honored to help, but I will need some cooperation and something in return." He glared at me. "I didn't kidnap Charlie and he's very much alive so I won't be prosecuted for anything, will I? Secondly, you'd better contact the space station and the shuttle and tell them to expect a visitor and that when I arrive, communications won't work. It's too complicated to explain, but it won't. Thirdly, my brother Jerry is up at the station, he loves fresh lobster, and I'd love to bring him one." And here I had thought the President was just another jerk and he was agreeing to my requests. I even had it all in writing before I climbed into the space suit along with an insulated box with a lobster in it for Jerry. "Can I come along?" asked Nancy as I was getting ready to leave. "Sorry, only one space suit. Once I open the hatch, all the air will go out and that will be the end of you. Besides, I got myself into this. It's best I got myself out." We kissed and then I once again walked out to the craft, climbed up inside, closed the hatch and then turned the dials. It was the briefest of flights to the space station. I had to literally knock on the door to be let inside. "I don't believe this," exclaimed Jerry when he opened the hatch. "Nice surprise," I said handing him the lobster. "You're not in the space program. How the hell did you get here and why the hell all the secrecy?" "It's a story nobody believes and it's a bit long and complicated. Let's just say I'm a mad scientist who has built his own little space ship and leave it at that." "My wife did say you were a bit strange." I only had a few more minutes to chat, then I took the repair kit with me and hauled it over to my own ship, then flew it over to the Endeavor. They saw my craft from the window, in fact I made a point of being seen, and they had more than a hard time believing it, but there I was and with me was the repair kit. It could not be doubted this time. "I'd like to hang around and help you," I said, "but this Russian suit leaks and it's past my lunch time." Ten minutes after high noon, I emerged again from my craft. It took a few minutes to reestablish communications with the space station and Endeavor but Jerry had his lobster and the Endeavor had its parts and me, I got it all I guess. Yes, the district attorney dropped all charges. I had saved the crew of the Endeavor and proved that although the craft never left the ground, that I had been out there and back. Nobody understood it, but, nobody cared much either. The crew was safe. I also got the space ship, well Jack and I did. We became partners, part owner of the only nonflying space ship in the world. We weren't sure what we were going to do with it yet, but we'd figure something out. And, oh yes, about six months later, I married Nancy. Just thought you ought to know. I think that was the best part. I'd tell you where we honeymooned, but you'd never believe me, but we didn't have to worry about the phones. Then again, maybe you would believe me.