Launch Day Conditions: 1986

Kerry found a hundred-dollar bill at the gas station near pump three. It was covered in oil. She carried the money inside to show the attendant, Jeremiah. “A hundred bucks! What are the chances?” Kerry said. “Lucky,” he said. She bought two cans of Dr. Pepper, and Jeremiah counted out her change. She slid him back a five. “Lucky,” she echoed. When she got home, Kerry called her sister. It was Sunday. Kerry always calls her sister on Sundays. 6:45 PM sharp. She told her about the hundred. The sisters agreed Kerry should buy a bus ticket and come down for a visit. Greyhound was offering a $55 roundtrip to Florida at the end of January; she would even have some mad money left over to burn. Lucky.

Kerry believes in luck. Believes in routines. She performs even the most mundane – like brushing her teeth two minutes on the top with her right hand and two minutes on the bottom using her left – in predictable patterns. Kerry doesn’t believe everything she does brings good fortune, but she’s unsure exactly which routines, which actions, control her fate, so she stays committed to them all. Like the Sunday phone calls and now the Dr. Peppers. She buys them again and again, carrying them home in the pockets of her brown jacket. The cuffs frayed; its last three buttons lost long ago. Kerry dares not throw it out: a good-luck uniform.

Kerry packs her clothes in layers shirt, shorts, shirt, shorts, then adds a heavy windbreaker — Florida can be unpredictable. On top of her clothes, she puts a framed photograph of herself and her sister at the Minnesota State Fair. In the picture, her sister is a toddler, and Kerry — six years older — holds her sister propped securely on her hip. They are standing next to a brown calf. Like the sisters, the cow looks directly into the camera. That was the year the tornado hit Fridley. It took out their barn, twenty-two of their cattle, thirteen people. Kerry and her sister hid in the laundry room, under the sink. The sky was yellow and green. Their mother kept the front door open, “I want to hear what it sounds like,” she said. She could hear a train. There wasn’t a train. The state fair calf survived. They sold it to a farmer from North Dakota, and for the rest of the summer, Kerry slept in the laundry room. Her mother didn’t argue. The summer storms waned. Later – later –  when the summer passed, when the storms moved on, Kerry moved back into her bedroom, and her sister’s appendix burst. In the room they shared, Kerry listened to her sister cry in pain and pulled her pillow over her head to muffle the moans that kept her awake. In the morning, their mom wiped vomit from her sister’s mouth before placing her in the truck to drive to the hospital. She stayed for a week. At home, Kerry stripped her sister’s bed and washed — and re-washed and folded and re-folded — the twin-sized sheets with a faded strawberry print. Kerry moved back into the laundry room and whispered and whispered — I’m back I’m back do you hear me, hear me — until her throat was raw to whoever, whomever was listening.

At the station, Kerry’s bus is late. Over an hour — delayed by the January snow. Kerry chews on her bottom lip. She checks her watch: 8:13, 8:13, 8:14… At 8:30, she stands up, puts her hands in her pockets, and pulls out a pack of Life Savers. She rolls the candy between her fingers until her knuckles ache. Then, he switches hands and does it again.  Kerry has never been to Florida. Never. “This is a mistake,” she says. Kerry grabs her suitcase and starts to walk out of the station as the bus pulls into her pathway. “This is a mistake,” she says when boarding. Her seat is next to the window. She shares her row with a man from St. Cloud who once played hockey for the University’s Huskies but lost his scholarship when his grades went to shit. “My grades went to shit,” he says. “When mom, got sick, who could care.” And then at the very first stop in Mora, Minnesota – population 2,436 — the televisions, cornered in the corners of the station where people ushered through for bathroom breaks, bitter coffee and easy food, suddenly synced with news outlets across the globe to broadcast the same, the same, the same. This just in. This is a mistake.

So when they watched the spaceship explode, when it burst in the Florida sky, disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean while crowds gathered for the countdown, while news stations went live, while children and their teachers watched in auditoriums across the country to celebrate one of their own who boarded the ship with an apple for luck — seventy-three seconds, then gasses, then fire so explosive, so hot it turned metal, turns bodies, into dust that disappeared into the atmosphere — Kerry stood up and screamed, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Forgive me!”

Eventually, she would get home – as would we all – and unpack our shirts as quickly as we could: shirt, shorts, shirt, shorts. Brushing the sugary candy out of our teeth, the University hockey player off the roster — top right, bottom left. Wash, rinse, repeat as the instructions instruct. The recipe, the rules. Wash, rinse, repeat – prescribed prescription. I’m back I’m back! But by then, it didn’t matter. It is already too late.

And so it goes. The gas station, the cans of Dr. Peppers, the brown jacket with frayed cuffs, hockey players from the north en route to the south, the calls to sisters in Florida. “When are you coming?” she asks. And Kerry responds, “I can’t. I’m sorry. Forgive me.” Now part of the routine, too. And then so it goes. For gracious, merciful, benevolent God in heaven, so it goes.