SEA OF TRANQUILITY

72 American Short Fiction
and the lights along the hills and those matchstick houses on the
eastern plains with all their windows lit. Th e red taillights two miles
away on Academy Boulevard streaking northward through the city.
Th ings began in shadow and got sharper as they receded. Th ere was
an enormous circle of blackness around him; he understood this
now. It was big as an ocean and getting bigger, and it followed him
wherever he went.
❖
In the fall of 1961, something knocked a Soviet spacecraft off its
orbit. He’d read about this when he was little. Th ere were three
cosmo nauts inside, though even now the Russians will deny it. You
can listen to the tapes if you know how to fi nd them. An Italian
monitoring station caught the fi nal exchanges when the cosmonauts
asked for help. You can hear their breathing over the static. One
of them was praying and it sounded like a song, but they drifted
outward and nobody could bring them back and nobody ever tried.
What did that last surviving cosmonaut see as he fl oated into space?
Th e books won’t tell us. Four hundred thirty miles from Earth but
no closer to the stars.
❖
She set his hand on her belly. It was only September, but the nights
were already crisp. Th ey were together in Old Farm Park just behind
the silo, and the grade wasn’t steep, but she’d huff ed when she
led him up the hill. “If I get any bigger, they’ll need a forklift to
move me,” she said. “Th ey’ll need one of those piano cranes.” He’d
set his jacket down on the concrete bench so she wouldn’t be too
cold. Sitting on cold stone wasn’t good for the baby, he’d learned
this from his mother. She worked his hand in circles, and he could
feel her belly button through the wool of her sweater. It stuck out
like a little thumb.