The Last Pilot: A Novel (35 page)

Talking to you?

Yeah.

She thought for a moment, then said, yeah.

He looked at her, then thought for a minute.

All right, he said. Let’s go.

The trout in the mountain lakes were golden; succulent and firm and robust. It was work to reach them, but worth the effort. They liked the cold water high up in the Sierras. Fried up fresh with a little butter, they were the best thing Harrison had ever tasted.

They fished, and camped, then moved higher and fished the next day, eating what they caught. What they couldn’t eat, they stashed in a cold icebox. When they got home, they shared the haul with Pancho, who put half in her freezer and half on the menu.

Soon after their trip, Harrison started turning up at Rosamond First Baptist Church on a Sunday, just after the service had started. Soon after that, he started turning up on time.

It was early fall, the end of September; Harrison had started to fly again. He was fixing a sandwich in Pancho’s kitchen when the telephone rang. He wiped his hands, walked through to the bar and picked up the receiver.

Yeah? he said.

Heard you got your wings back.

The gruff voice took him by surprise.

Well, he said, someone’s got to show this new breed how it’s done.

Heh, Deke said.

Pancho stuck some cardboard wings on my chest, Harrison said. Inscription said
ass-tronaut.

That was my idea, Deke said. How you feelin?

Good, Harrison said.

You wanna come fly for us again? Deke said. Gemini’s just wrapped up. Lovell and Aldrin; three EVAs, over five hours outside the spacecraft. Plus we grew some frog’s eggs in zero-g.

Yeah, Harrison said, I heard about Aldrin’s record.

I’m not gonna say we can’t do it without you, because we can. But we got a hell of a lot of work to do in the next three years if we’re gonna get to the moon by nineteen seventy and we need all the good men we can get.

I sure appreciate that, Deke, he said. And everything else, I really do.

Deke grunted.

I don’t know, though, Harrison said. Tell you the truth, I’ve been thinkin about quitting; retiring from the air force too. Maybe set up a little trout farm in the mountains, lead a peaceful life.

Sounds like a damn fine idea, Deke said. Might even join you when Apollo slips into the early eighties. Get the hell out, and don’t tell anyone.

I’ll send Pancho over in the Mystery Ship.

Heh. I’m still owed a flight, so I guess I’ll be stickin around for a while longer. There might be something else for you, though, if it takes your fancy. Based at Edwards. Pancho got a teleprinter?

Yeah, he said.

Got the number?

He read out the number pinned on the wall above the telephone.

All right, Deke said. I’ll send you something to look over. Call me if you’re interested.

He hung up. Harrison replaced the receiver and walked through to the cramped office behind the bar. He sat by the teleprinter and waited. After a couple of minutes, he returned to the kitchen to finish making his sandwich. He heard the bell ring and walked back to the office, eating his lunch. The Fernschreiber 100 spooled paper. He tore it off, sat down, and read.

Pancho was in the stables looking over six new quarter-horse stallions she’d just bought in Oklahoma. Harrison walked in and handed her the teletype.

What’s this? she said.

Take a look.

She read it and handed it back to him and turned her attention to the horses.

Well? he said.

She fixed him a look.

You so much as think about turning this down I swear to God and Jesus Christ his son I will hang you upside down by your peckerwood and invite the entire goddamn state of California to throw shit-clods at your balls.

Take it I got your blessing then?

She ignored him and talked to her horses.

A few weeks later Glennis invited him to dinner and he went and Grace was there and it was good. After dinner he followed her onto the veranda for a smoke and they looked into the darkness together and he said I miss her and she turned to him and saw his wet eyes and he said I miss her so much.

She picked him up the next day and they drove to Rosamond and parked in the small lot at the entrance to the cemetery. The day was unusually humid. They walked together down to where their daughter lay and stood in front of the simple stone that marked her grave. The inscription read,
FLORENCE MAYTON HARRISON
. Underneath her name, it said
“DUCK
”. Then, below that, it said,
MAY 7
,
1959—DECEMBER 12
,
1961
. Grace slid her hand into his and they stood for a while. Then they walked back to the car.

EPILOGUE
VICTORVILLE, CALIFORNIA
CHRISTMAS EVE, 1968

The television glowed in the low light of the living room. It was dark outside. The new house was so drafty they’d had to roll up newspaper to block cracks between the wall and the floor and poke balls of it into the holes in the window frames. They’d moved to Victorville that fall. The living room was a small nook, the kitchen larger, and there were two good-size bedrooms upstairs, as well as an old outhouse and a barn outside that they wanted to turn into a stable. An oil-filled heater stood next to the sofa where they sat, warming the room. As commandant of ARPS, Harrison had given himself Christmas off.

The broadcast was live, a ghostly hue traveling a quarter of a million miles to Earth from where Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders were in lunar orbit. Cronkite, erudite, steady, mustache groomed and hair slicked, was anchoring the CBS News Special Report,
Apollo 8: Historic First Flight to the Moon.

Bet ol Shaky never thought that one Christmas Eve he’d be flyin round the moon, Harrison said.

I just feel sorry for Marilyn, Grace said.

She’ll be sweating the Trans-Earth Injection, he said. That’s the burn that’ll bring them home.

And if it goes wrong? she said.

They’ll be spending plenty more Christmases around the moon, he said.

Well aren’t you Captain cheerful. What’s their odds?

Of making it home?

Yeah.

Honestly?

Yeah.

Fifty-fifty, he said.

Jesus, she said.

This is Apollo 8, coming to you live from the moon
, Borman said.

Harrison turned his attention to the television. In the kitchen, the telephone rang.

I’ll go, Grace said.

We’ve been flying over the moon at an altitude of sixty miles for the last sixteen hours.

He heard Grace pick up. It was Pancho. Yeah, Grace said, we’re watching.

We are now approaching lunar sunrise
, Anders said.
And for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send to you.

Harrison sunk back into the sofa.

IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH; AND THE EARTH WAS WITHOUT FORM AND VOID, AND DARKNESS WAS UPON THE FACE OF THE DEEP; AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED UPON THE FACE OF THE WATERS. AND GOD SAID, “LET THERE BE LIGHT”; AND THERE WAS LIGHT. AND GOD SAW THE LIGHT, THAT IT WAS GOOD. AND GOD DIVIDED THE LIGHT FROM THE DARKNESS.

You got it, Frank,
Lovell said.

No, it’s your […]

AND GOD CALLED THE LIGHT DAY,
Lovell said,
AND THE DARKNESS HE CALLED NIGHT. AND THE EVENING AND MORNING WERE THE FIRST DAY. AND GOD SAID, “LET THERE BE A FIRMAMENT IN THE MIDST OF THE WATERS, AND LET IT DIVIDE THE WATERS FROM THE WATERS”; AND GOD MADE THE FIRMAMENT AND DIVIDED THE WATERS WHICH WERE UNDER THE FIRMAMENT AND THE WATERS WHICH WERE ABOVE THE FIRMAMENT, AND IT WAS SO. AND GOD CALLED THE FIRMAMENT HEAVEN. AND THE EVENING AND THE MORNING WERE THE SECOND DAY.

Can you hold the camera?
Borman said.

You want to pass it over here, Jim?
Anders said.

AND GOD SAID, “LET THE WATERS UNDER THE HEAVENS BE GATHERED TOGETHER INTO ONE PLACE,”
Borman said,
“AND LET THE DRY LAND APPEAR” AND IT WAS SO. AND GOD CALLED THE DRY LAND EARTH, AND THE GATHERING TOGETHER OF THE WATERS HE CALLED THE SEAS. AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD.

Harrison sat very still. On the screen was the surface of the moon.

And from the crew of Apollo 8,
Borman said,
we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.

The camera swung up, showing the Earth, hanging in the darkness, burning, blue.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This work of fiction would not have been possible without the labor of many others. I am deeply indebted to the many writers, biographers, historians and filmmakers who have come before me and documented this extraordinary period in history. In particular, I would like to cite the following works that provided information, detail and dialogue crucial to the writing of
The Last Pilot
:

Across the High Frontier
by Charles E. Yeager and William R. Lundgren

First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong
by James R. Hansen

The Right Stuff
by Tom Wolfe

Yeager
by Chuck Yeager and Leo Janos

The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes
by Lauren Kessler

A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts
by Andrew Chaikin

Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth
by Andrew Smith

Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13
by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger

Deke!
by Donald K. Slayton with Michael Cassutt

Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys
by Michael Collins

Return to Earth
by Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr. with Wayne Warga

Rocketman: Astronaut Pete Conrad’s Incredible Ride to the Moon and Beyond
by Nancy Conrad and Howard A. Klausner

Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age
by Matthew Brzezinski

Countdown
by Frank Borman with Robert J. Sterling

We Seven
by the Mercury astronauts

The Astronaut Wives Club
by Lily Koppel

Live from Cape Canaveral
by Jay Barbree

Of a Fire on the Moon
by Norman Mailer

And the following motion pictures:

The Legend of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club
(2009; dir. Amanda Pope)

For All Mankind
(1989; dir. Al Reinert)

Apollo 13
(1995; dir. Ron Howard)

Thirteen Days
(2000; dir. Roger Donaldson)

The Right Stuff
(1983; dir. Philip Kaufman)

In the Shadow of the Moon
(2007; dir. David Sington)

When We Left the Earth
(miniseries, 2008; dir. Nick Green et al.)

From the Earth to the Moon
(miniseries, 1998; dir. Tom Hanks et al.)

Rocket Science—The History of Space Exploration
(2004; prod. Casablanca Media Television)

In addition, I would like to credit two poems that appear in the story:
High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., written in 1941, and
Oh Little Sputnik
by G. Mennen Williams, first published in
The New York Times
in 1957.

I would like to thank Col Jeff Hosken, USAF (ret.) for graciously fielding my many queries and Charlie Duke for talking to me about his experiences and answering my questions.

Finally, I was fortunate enough to meet Jim Irwin in 1990, and will always be grateful for his generosity and advice.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Juliet Pickering, my agent; thank you.

To Elizabeth Bruce, my editor; thank you.

Thank you to everyone at Blake Friedmann and Picador USA.

I’m grateful to Arts Council England for their generous grant and to everyone who wrote letters of support.

Thanks also to Kirsty Mclachlan, Anna Watkins, Scott Pack, Jon McGregor, Sarah Savitt, Francesca Main, Annabel Wright, Elena Lappin, Gillian Stern, Kat Brown, Melanie Welsh, Chris Gribble, Sam Ruddock, Laura Owensby, Ian Ellard, Rachael Beale, Rowan Whiteside, Clare Stevens, Amy Farrant, Philip Loveday, Adam Modley, Alireza Afshari, Vicky Howells, Keith and Halcyon Meldrum, Jacqui and Esa Kalliopuska, James and Rachel Webster, Helen and Mike Bansback.

Thank you, Elizabeth Jenner.

Thank you, Susan and Brian Webster.

Thank you, Robert and Delores Johncock; Dad, especially, for introducing me to the astronauts.

Finally, thank you, for everything, Jude, Elsa, Jesse.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR