The Last Starfighter (3 page)

“No, but you stuck your fat head in my way.”

“Did not!”

“I heard you were in the millions last week on Stargate in town,” Otis said.

Alex shrugged, concealing the pride he took in his accomplishment. “Yeah, but lots of guys do that around the country. Stargate’s easy compared to Starfighter.” He added casually, “Though I haven’t heard of anybody else breaking half a million besides me.”

“Maybe you’d win a national contest if they held one.”

“I guess I might have a chance. But only the big game companies run contests like that. Atari, Sega, Nintendo, Williams. I never heard of the company that makes this Starfighter game. Must be some new outfit.”

“Maybe so. Maybe they will have a contest if they get big enough.”

“Yeah. You going to pay my way to it, Otis?”

The older man chuckled. “Not on my social security I’m not, Alex. Tell you what, though. You keep practicing and if a Starfighter contest ever comes up, we’ll see about gettin’ you to it.”

Alex grinned. “It’s a deal.”

Otis nodded to his right. “Looks like somebody lookin’ for you, Alex.”

He turned, saw Maggie exiting the side gate carrying a picnic basket, towels and a small ice chest. The chest was sweating, suggesting inviting contents. At the same time a new pickup pulled in off the highway, rolled into the parking lot in front of the store. It was filled with kids Alex’s own age, all laughing and joking while fighting not to spill over the tailgate.

“Come on, Alex, they’re here!” Maggie broke into a trot, managing her awkward burden easily as she headed for the truck.

For an instant Alex wondered what the hell she was talking about. Then memories from real life came flooding in.

“Silver Lake! The picnic. I forgot.” He started to run after Maggie.

“Hey, Alex.” Louis pointed at the game. “You won a free credit.”

“What about it?”

“You just gonna
waste
it?”

Alex concealed a smile. The greed was as bright on his little brother’s face as a thousand-watt halogen lamp. He deepened his voice, trying to imitate the game.

“Starfighter Alex Rogan requesting permission to turn over gunstar controls to my little brother Louis, sirs.” A brief pause, then he added, “Telepathic communication confirms okay. She’s all yours, Louis.”

Unable to believe his luck, the ten-year-old hastily wrestled the chair he’d been standing on around until it fronted the console.

“Oh boy!” He hit the start button, his small fingers waiting tensely above the fire controls. Alien warships appeared on the glass, firing out at him. Grinning, Alex turned to follow Maggie while Otis just shook his head and started back toward his trailer. Louis’s excited voice followed both of them.

“Okay, alien dorks, you’re dead, cause it’s me, Louis Rogan flyin’ the gunstar now!” A bright red flare filled the screen and Louis’s expression immediately became one of inexpressible disgust. “Oh,
crapola
! Gimme a chance, willya?”

Everyone in the pickup was already wearing swimming gear. Well, he could borrow some, Alex knew, in case Maggie had forgotten his. Or he’d shock them all by swimming in the buff.
Sure
he would.

It was Jack Blake’s pickup. Not that he’d expected anything else, just as there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Besides owning the pickup, Blake had money for gas. Money for gas, money for beer, for movies, for concert tickets. Which was another way of saying that his parents had money.

What was it they’d learned from the Constitution? “All men are created equal.”

Bullshit. When did he get equality with Jack Blake? Somehow the writers of the Constitution had left that one out. He’d asked his mother about it.

“There are no guarantees in life, Alex, and it isn’t always fair.” That’s what she’d told him. Jane Rogan versus Thomas Jefferson, et al. From what he’d observed of life so far he’d long since decided he’d be better off listening to his mom than any of the founding fathers. Most of them had been rich, too.

The pickup was a big, fat, bright red Dodge Ramcharger, with a chrome towbar on the front and four big bright deer spotters mounted atop the cab. Even the damn rollbar was chromed. Conspicuous consumption.

Blake sat lazily behind the wheel, cowboy hat slightly askew, looking like something out of a sarcastic Waylon Jennings song, the kind Jennings used to sing back before he and Nelson got big, in west Texas towns like Breckenridge. In the back a couple of kids sipped cokes (the beer would emerge from hiding later, at the lake), leaning back in lawn chairs and soaking up the rays.

Just plain unfair, Alex mumbled to himself.

As he passed the row of rusty mailboxes mounted near the store he paused to peer inside the one labeled ROGAN in reflective plastic letters. A daddy longlegs scurried for cover as Alex’s fingers probed.

Jack Blake waited behind the wheel of the idling truck, racing the oversized engine. He was fully conscious of his status in the local adolescent hierarchy and gloried shamelessly in it, not yet old enough to realize that it would all vanish the moment he entered the adult world beyond, where they didn’t give a damn about ostrich-skin boots or red pickups. For now, though, he was a king, and there was nothing altruistic or benevolent about his despotism.

His eyes traced the outlines of Maggie’s body as neatly as Mrs. Hawkins’s opaque projector traced scientific drawings for projection on the screen in their darkened science class. Foxy chick, Maggie Gordon, even if she did hang around too much with that nerd Alex Rogan. Rogan was harmless, though. Beneath Blake’s notice.

Cindy Hammond sat next to him, staring impatiently out the window, anxious to get to the lake. He looked forward to finding out if she’d fall out of her bathing suit. Such thoughts didn’t keep him from coveting Maggie Gordon. More important than having either one of them was having what was denied to him. It was the taking that was important, the acquiring, though Blake formed the idea in much cruder language.

“C’mon, Alex!” one of the boys in the back yelled.

“Pile in . . . Jump in, Maggie!”

She handed up the basket, ice chest and towels, then climbed agilely over the tailgate, making sure to leave room for Alex to follow. She saw him inspecting the mailbox.

“Did it come yet?”

“Not yet.” Reluctantly, as though it might still appear, Alex shut the front of the box. It didn’t close all the way. Mailboxes never did. All manufacturers designed them so they wouldn’t close completely, Alex knew, on explicit orders from the post office.

Seeing this, two of the guys in the truck bed began razzing the slow-moving Alex.

“What is it this time, Rogan?”

“Yeah, you joining the foreign legion or signing up for Space Shuttle school?”

“They don’t take vidiots for Space Shuttle pilots, Rogan!”

Not one to be left out of the chorus, Blake leaned out the driver’s window. “Yessir, folks, step right up and meet the boy adventurer Alex Rogan, on the last leg of his worldwide trip to nowhere.”

Alex continued toward the pickup, a sour smile creasing his face. “
Very
funny, Blake. If you guys think I’m gonna stick around here, watch you shine your pickups, get drunk and vomit every Saturday night and wind up at City College like everybody else, forget it. I’m gonna do something with my life!”

“You sure are, turkey,” said Blake readily. “You’re gonna go to work for old man Fargi fixin’ TV sets. I’ll remember what you just said when you come over to fix my big-screen Sony.”

“You haven’t got a big-screen Sony, Blake.”

The driver of the pickup smiled smugly. “No, but I’m going to, which is more than you can say for you, dumbutt.”

Alex had a brilliant riposte prepared, but the duel was interrupted by a voice not as easily dismissed.

“Alex?”

Wincing, he turned to look back toward his tin house. It was his mom, sure enough, leaning out one window to call to him.

“Alex, Elvira’s electric is out again.” Innocent enough on the surface, commanding underneath.

The occupants of the truck were unable to stifle their laughter. His face burned. At least Maggie wasn’t laughing, though at this point that was small comfort. He tried to make his reply sound manly and forceful, to no avail. No matter how hard he tried it still came out sounding like a whine.

“Ah, Mom. That’ll take all day. I was going to Silver Lake.”

She nodded, looked sympathetic as she gazed past him toward the truck full of his friends. Unfortunately, someone had to fix the electricity, and Alex was trailer park repairman number one.

“I’m working lunch and dinner at the cafe, Alex. I’ll be gone all day.”

That was a low blow, he thought angrily. Why did mothers always have to fight like that? Must be a talent passed down from mother to daughter, one of the many unfathomable maternal secrets boys could never share. She wouldn’t think of
ordering
him to do it, oh no.

He sighed, knowing that he’d already lost the battle, just as he knew she wouldn’t have asked him to do the work if she could have managed it herself.

“Okay, Mom, I’ll do it.”

She smiled back at him and he felt better. But only for a moment.

Turning back to the truck he sought Maggie’s eyes. Maggie, who somehow managed to look twice as pretty as any other girl in town despite the lack of makeup and the baggy old sweatshirt she wore on top. He forced his reply. It made him sound noble, which was not how he felt.

“You better go ahead,” he said.

“No, I’ll wait for you.” Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, all the great tales of heroic love he’d studied in school thrilled him no more than those few words from Maggie.

“No, this could take a while.” More than a while, but he needed to use the lie now, to spare both of them later embarrassment. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

She understood. He could tell by the look on her face. It was a small consolation.

“Okay. See you later.”

“Sure,” he muttered. “Later.”

“Yeah, we’ll be lookin’ for you to fly over,” said Blake, leading the others in laughter as he peeled the pickup out of the lot and toward the highway.

Alex could still hear the laughter in his ears long after the big engine had faded into the distance.

2

People who spend their lives in big cities see blue sky only on television. Oh, on rare clear days they may think they’re seeing sky blue, but it’s not real, only a fake faded blue like the kind used in dyed turquoise. To see the real sky you have to leave the city, get far away from the megalopoli. Out in the country the universe crowds a little nearer the Earth and the hues of the spectrum have meaning.

The one other place where colors are always rendered purely is in any advertisement for faraway regions. This extended to the starfield map which covered part of one wall of Alex and Louis’s room. It was surrounded by equally garish, less enlightened posters reflective of the more mundane aspects of reality. The walls of the boys’ room were more colorful than their clothing.

Especially that particular evening, when Alex finally shuffled into the room. He was exhausted and filthy. Beneath his nails was the kind of sand and grit you can’t wash out, the kind you learn to live with for days until repeated baths have soaked it away—the kind of grime that has the look and consistency of black concrete. Alex’s spirits were lower than the surrounding desert’s water table.

The small desk was filled with notes and scribblings for school. He slumped down in the used office chair and swiveled to face the center of the room as he wrestled with his muddy boots, carefully removing them and setting them aside so as to dirty the floor as little as possible.

Then he leaned back, letting his eyes focus on the mobile dangling from the ceiling. It pivoted in the light of sundown, aimlessly reflective, its indecision about how to turn a mirror of his own feelings.

From beyond the thin wall and window came the conversation of neighbors. Alex recognized each one and began to silently mimic the rarely changing words.

“Pleasant day today, eh?”

“Yep. Goin’ be a pleasant day tomorrow, too.”

“Goin’ to be a pleasant summer, accordin’ to the
Farmer’s Almanac
.”

The talk continued, but Alex had stopped imitating the unseen speakers. Instead he found himself sitting straight up in his chair, frightened and aware. Aware of how that conversation had reached him virtually unaltered on hundreds of similar evenings. Aware that if he didn’t so
something
, and do it soon, he’d be fixing ’lectrics and patching water lines and repairing recalcitrant garbage disposals while listening to the same chatter for the rest of his life.

Such simple, cunning traps existence laid for the unwary! His mother owned the trailer park outright. Easy enough for him to ease into handling the books as well as the repairs, to take over day-to-day operation of the business from her. Was that what mom really wanted for him? Was she carefully and efficiently leading him down that safe, secure, lethally dull path? He’d always doubted it before. Now he wasn’t so sure.

One thing he was certain of, though. If he fell into that waiting trap and allowed himself to take the easy way out of making a living, he’d never escape. Never do anything in the world. It would be exactly like Jack Blake had said, and the laughter that had trailed back to Alex from behind the pickup would follow him, in the slightly more circumspect fashion of adults, for the rest of his life.