Once
he had reached a certain age, his mother had told him “You can’t be a cowboy.
There aren’t any cowboys left.” The words hit his soft boy-heart like a meteor
to mud: it had stuck, and it had stuck deep. Even now, between the quiet
gasping of his oxygen tanks and the static of his helmet headset, they clung to
his eardrums. Dropping down from the ladder, he landed almost silently on the
fine gray dust below. He couldn’t help but imagine all of the night skies this
same dust had illuminated, though it wasn’t so white or glowing up close. He
half stepped, half hopped a few paces forward, feeling as if an invisible
bungee cord aided his progress. Then, he stopped. Hanging in the blackness like
half of some kind of ripe fruit, he beheld an unfamiliar view of a very
familiar place.
…
Back in Houston, 39 pairs of tired,
straining ears gathered around a speaker that had just crackled to life. They
made out a voice, but any words were lost in a steady chorus of static. “Please
repeat, Apollo, we’re not hearing you,” said the team leader, setting down his
half-filled mug of lukewarm coffee. The speaker paused for just a moment before
two words pushed through the white noise.
“Yee haw.”
