Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut [120]
So here goes. When Bud and Charlene were about eight, why I came home one night with a fish bowl and two goldfish. There was one goldfish for each twin, only it was impossible to tell one fish from the other one. They were exactly alike. So one morning Bud got up early, and there was one goldfish floating on top of the water dead. So Bud went and woke up Charlene, and he said, "Hey, Charlene—your goldfish just died." That’s the story Charlene asked me to tell you, Mr. Ivankov.
I think it is interesting that you are a mason. That is a good trade. You talk as if you lay up mostly stone. There aren’t many people left in America who can really lay up stone. It’s almost all cement-block work and bricks here. It probably is over there, too. I don’t mean to say Russia isn’t modern. I know it is.
Bud and I laid up quite a bit of block when we built the gas station here, with an apartment up over it. If you looked at the first course of block along the back wall, you would have to laugh, because you can see how Bud and I learned as we went. It’s strong enough, but it sure looks lousy. One thing wasn’t so funny. When we were hanging the rails for the overhead door, Bud slipped on the ladder, and he grabbed a sharp edge on the mounting bracket, and he cut a tendon on his hand. He was scared to death his hand would be crippled, and that would keep him out of the Air Force. His hand had to be operated on three times before it was right again, and every operation hurt something awful. But Bud would have let them operate a hundred times, if they had to, because there was just one thing he wanted to be, and that was a flyer.
One reason I wish your Mr. Koshevoi had thought to mail me your letter was the picture you sent with it. The newspapers got that, too, and it didn’t come out too clear in the papers. But one thing we couldn’t get over was all that beautiful water behind you. Somehow, when we think about Russia, we never think about any water around. I guess that shows how ignorant we are. Hazel and I live up over the gas station, and we can see water, too. We can see the Atlantic Ocean, or an inlet of it they call Indian River. We can see Merritt Island, too, out in the water, and we can see the place Bud’s rocket went up from. It is called Cape Canaveral. I guess you know that. It isn’t any secret where he went up from. They couldn’t keep that tremendous missile secret any more than they could keep the Empire State Building secret. Tourists came from miles around to take pictures of it.
The story was, its warhead was filled with flash powder, and it was going to hit the moon and make a big show. Hazel and I thought that’s what the story was, too. When it took off, we got set for a big flash on the moon. We didn’t know it was our Bud up in the warhead. We didn’t even know he was in Florida. He couldn’t get in touch with us. We thought he was up at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod. That was the last place we heard from him. And then that thing went up, right in the middle of our view out the picture window.
You say you’re superstitious sometimes, Mr. Ivankov. Me too. Sometimes I can’t help thinking it was all meant to be right from the very first—even the way our picture window is aimed. There weren’t any rockets going up down here when we built. We moved down here from Pittsburgh, which maybe you know is the center of our steel industry. And we figured we maybe weren’t going to break any records for pumping gas, but at least we’d be way far away from any bomb targets, in case there was another war. And the next thing we know, a rocket center goes up almost next door, and our little boy is a man, and he goes up in a rocket