Free The Dream Life of Astronauts by Patrick Ryan Page A

branch and leaned out so I could see better. The top of her gray head appeared as she came down the steps. Her arms were stretched out in front of her. Mr. Beal stepped from the car and walked around to the passenger door, but it opened before he got to it. “This must be Ike,” said Mrs. Beal.
    He was small, from what I could tell, and he had a small, brown suitcase in his hand. He was a towhead.
    Gary came out of the house and stood near Mrs. Beal. Mrs. Beal reached down and hugged Ike like she’d known him her whole life. Then the four of them went into the house. After a few minutes, I heard Mr. Beal laughing and the record started again.
    Ike wasn’t ten, it turned out. He was eight. They introduced me to him that night—“Ike, this is our Hannah”—and the five of us ate dinner together. Mrs. Beal had baked what she called a no-surprise orange pie, all the browned orange slices showing on the top of it, and I didn’t even like oranges, so I didn’t have any of it. After the meal, we moved into the den, where Mr. Beal sipped coffee and Gary showed Ike his comic books. I sat at Mr. Beal’s rolltop desk and watched the two of them. Mr. Beal had little use for a rolltop desk, but it had come in with one of the deliveries from Mr. Merrick and had never been moved on to someplace else, so eventually we’d carried it into the house. Gary and Ike looked at comic book after comic book—all of them found in a box of old magazines that had been part of one of the deliveries, though Gary acted like he’d been collecting comic books for years. Mrs. Beal watched the two of them with a glint in her eyes. Bored, I started going through the desk drawers and found a box of matches. I took one out, turned it in my hand, scratched the sulfur end against one of the brass drawer handles. It flared up and I shook it, hoping none of them had noticed, but when I glanced at Mr. Beal, he was eyeing me over his coffee.
    Mrs. Beal asked Ike if he liked it here and Ike said he did. Then Mr. Beal coughed up what sounded like a dumpling and started to tell Ike all about Mr. Merrick, how Mr. Merrick lived in a big house near the south end of Merritt Island, how he provided everything we needed, and how he wanted what was best for us and that was why we were all here together. I listened for a while, then got up and said good night.
    “Stay a little longer, Hannah,” Mrs. Beal said.
    But I shook my head and walked out of the house. Outside, the dirt and the barn looked the same shade of dark, and the gravel was glowing with moonlight. I dragged my feet over the gravel, listening to it move under my boots as I made for the barn.
    —
    T he next morning I was in the garden on my hands and knees, pulling up weeds, when I heard a voice ask what kind of animals I took care of. I looked around and saw Ike standing there, holding a milk carton.
    “Where’d you get that?” I asked.
    “The old lady gave it to me.”
    “She gave you the whole thing?”
    “There’s only a little left in it. She said I could have it.” He asked me again what kind of animals I took care of.
    “I’m not a zookeeper. There’s cows, but I try not to have anything to do with them. And if you walk out that way far enough, there are gators who’d probably love to eat you.”
    He upended the carton and finished off the milk. “In Jacksonville, there was a man who had a monkey he kept chained to a tree in his front yard.”
    “That’s great,” I said. “I’m busy.”
    “The old lady said you’d show me the lake.”
    “It’s not a lake. It’s barely even a pond.”
    “She said you’d show it to me.”
    I ignored that for a little bit. Then I stood up, smacked my hands against my knees, pulled my handkerchief out of my back pocket and dragged it over my face.
    The carton was standing on the ground now next to his feet, and he was staring at me, the milk drying on his lip. I figured it was probably a safe bet Mrs. Beal was watching us from the