Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel by Michael D. O'Brien Page A
Authors: Michael D. O'Brien
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
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Memory. My father.
I was seventeen years old, not yet graduated from high school. Hadn’t kissed a girl, not for lack of optimism. Still succumbing to mad crushes that remained entirely hidden from other human beings. My main distraction from this sweet desperation was reading science and pursuing an obsessive-compulsive habit of killing snakes. Hundreds of them fell before my wrath each year. I harvested them from the glue board daily with unhealthy glee. I stalked them in the desert with unflagging determination. I had purchased my first set of cowboy boots by then, with money earned at the box factory during summer break. The boots were snakeskin laminate with a diamond pattern. I got a lot of teasing about it at school, but this ruffled not a feather of my homicidal soul—more accurately, my serpecidal soul. I wore the boots along with leather chaps whenever I went out into the desert with my .22, and later my .303, which blasted my victims conclusively. Later, a shotgun—even more satisfying.
I was a bit deranged at the time, but my parents understood, even approved.
That year, my father and I had built onto the trailer a plywood box extension that became my new bedroom. It seemed a mansion to me, with a ceiling taller than the trailer’s. It had inbuilt bookshelves, stuffed full in short order. I kept a collection of rattler tails in a jar on a shelf. My mother insisted on a crucifix on the wall near the foot of the bed, so that I could look at it every night before falling asleep and see it again upon waking. But I was lapsing. My new religion was all about justice in this world. It had a single dogma. Nailed to the outside wall on the backside of the trailer were three whopping great rattler pelts, two diamondbacks that I’d shot in the bushes at the edge of the trailer park, and a sulphur yellow black-tail, which I’d shot out of a piñon tree. They were protected species, but I didn’t give a rip about that. I could have gone to jail for what I’d done, but I was never caught. The neighbors never told on me. They all hated snakes too.
Yup, I was seventeen years old and angry about fate, about life (though rather glad to have it), plus the other standard teenage stuff. I had pimples, my ears stuck out too far, and all of this was snarled up with the unfairness of the limp. I knew that I could never be part of the basketball team. Never.
My father was now working as a heavy-equipment operator, outside of Santa Fe, pulling in good money. He and my mother had agreed that any extra should be invested in saving to put a down payment on his own dump truck, which would enable him to operate independently of the big guys. But this meant delaying the purchase of a home of our own. He drove down to Las Cruces on weekends, hoping that our beat-up 2031 Hydra would make it there and back again. He’d bought the thing, used, for a thousand Unis and disconnected its solar power and hydrogen apparatus, re-rigging it for compost-biomethane fuel. I think he bought it mostly because the logo looked like a guy in a cowboy hat. I always wondered if the Malaysians designed the logo with full knowledge that they were making a great big Yankee joke. I rather doubt it.
(Note: Back home in my real cabin, I have five rusting Hydra logos nailed to the wall of my garage. Also some snakeskins. They will have disintegrated by the time I return—the skins, I mean, not the cowboys.)
So, this one Saturday afternoon, we were prowling along the arroyo bed, both of us with .22s in hand, earnestly looking for the snake that had messed up my life three years earlier. I think in retrospect that his earnestness was less than mine, but his intention was strong, a commitment to justice. Or maybe just showing me I wasn’t alone.
We had no luck, then or later, in finding any big rattler in the arroyo. Perhaps it died of old age, but I hope its life ended badly.
The day was hot, and we were sweating hard. We agreed to take a break and
Memory. My father.
I was seventeen years old, not yet graduated from high school. Hadn’t kissed a girl, not for lack of optimism. Still succumbing to mad crushes that remained entirely hidden from other human beings. My main distraction from this sweet desperation was reading science and pursuing an obsessive-compulsive habit of killing snakes. Hundreds of them fell before my wrath each year. I harvested them from the glue board daily with unhealthy glee. I stalked them in the desert with unflagging determination. I had purchased my first set of cowboy boots by then, with money earned at the box factory during summer break. The boots were snakeskin laminate with a diamond pattern. I got a lot of teasing about it at school, but this ruffled not a feather of my homicidal soul—more accurately, my serpecidal soul. I wore the boots along with leather chaps whenever I went out into the desert with my .22, and later my .303, which blasted my victims conclusively. Later, a shotgun—even more satisfying.
I was a bit deranged at the time, but my parents understood, even approved.
That year, my father and I had built onto the trailer a plywood box extension that became my new bedroom. It seemed a mansion to me, with a ceiling taller than the trailer’s. It had inbuilt bookshelves, stuffed full in short order. I kept a collection of rattler tails in a jar on a shelf. My mother insisted on a crucifix on the wall near the foot of the bed, so that I could look at it every night before falling asleep and see it again upon waking. But I was lapsing. My new religion was all about justice in this world. It had a single dogma. Nailed to the outside wall on the backside of the trailer were three whopping great rattler pelts, two diamondbacks that I’d shot in the bushes at the edge of the trailer park, and a sulphur yellow black-tail, which I’d shot out of a piñon tree. They were protected species, but I didn’t give a rip about that. I could have gone to jail for what I’d done, but I was never caught. The neighbors never told on me. They all hated snakes too.
Yup, I was seventeen years old and angry about fate, about life (though rather glad to have it), plus the other standard teenage stuff. I had pimples, my ears stuck out too far, and all of this was snarled up with the unfairness of the limp. I knew that I could never be part of the basketball team. Never.
My father was now working as a heavy-equipment operator, outside of Santa Fe, pulling in good money. He and my mother had agreed that any extra should be invested in saving to put a down payment on his own dump truck, which would enable him to operate independently of the big guys. But this meant delaying the purchase of a home of our own. He drove down to Las Cruces on weekends, hoping that our beat-up 2031 Hydra would make it there and back again. He’d bought the thing, used, for a thousand Unis and disconnected its solar power and hydrogen apparatus, re-rigging it for compost-biomethane fuel. I think he bought it mostly because the logo looked like a guy in a cowboy hat. I always wondered if the Malaysians designed the logo with full knowledge that they were making a great big Yankee joke. I rather doubt it.
(Note: Back home in my real cabin, I have five rusting Hydra logos nailed to the wall of my garage. Also some snakeskins. They will have disintegrated by the time I return—the skins, I mean, not the cowboys.)
So, this one Saturday afternoon, we were prowling along the arroyo bed, both of us with .22s in hand, earnestly looking for the snake that had messed up my life three years earlier. I think in retrospect that his earnestness was less than mine, but his intention was strong, a commitment to justice. Or maybe just showing me I wasn’t alone.
We had no luck, then or later, in finding any big rattler in the arroyo. Perhaps it died of old age, but I hope its life ended badly.
The day was hot, and we were sweating hard. We agreed to take a break and
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