Up and Down (20 page)

“Right, well, let me bring you up to date,” I began, trying to stick to my plan for as long as I could. “Reaching Cigar Lake was a little less challenging than Shackleton’s quest for the south pole, but not by much. The Toronto to Calgary leg was fine but my connection through to Prince George was a little unnerving. The plane was so old I expected Orville and Wilbur to welcome us on board from the cockpit. But we somehow made it, and I went on to Mackenzie by car. Then it was the final push to Cigar Lake aboard a Beaver float plane.”

“Okay, okay, we know it was a tough trip to B.C., we got it,” chided Amanda. “Tell us about our winner.”

“I’m getting there. I’m just trying to set the scene. So Cigar Lake is shaped kind of like … um … a cigar. We landed and I was eventually delivered to the cabin of our winner, and was introduced to Landon Percival.”

“I bet he was over the moon,” Amanda said excitedly. “What does he look like? Are we happy with him?”

“Well, actually, Landon is a woman’s name. I don’t know why we assumed L. Percival is a he, but he’s a she.”

“Really. Well, that’s fine. It’s better in some respects,” Amanda noted. “What does she look like? Can we see a photo?”

I’d totally forgotten to snap any photos while I was there except for shooting those few minutes of video of Landon whirling in her hepped-up carousel-on-crack.

“Um, I haven’t been able to transfer the photos from my camera to my computer yet. I have a glitch somewhere. But she’s very nice. Not big. A bit wiry and very strong. Very pleasant looking,” I started. “But you won’t believe her story. I think we’ve hit the jackpot with Landon Percival.”

“Carry on. We’re listening,” Diane prodded.

“Okay. In a nutshell, she’s passionate about space and has been for almost her entire life. She’s a physician and a bush pilot who flies in to remote communities to see patients all through Northern B.C.”

“Nice!” Amanda said. “I like that!”

“Wait, there’s more. In her spare time, she’s spent much of her life searching the area for any trace of her bush pilot doctor father who’s been missing and presumed lost in a plane crash, um, some years ago. Finally, and get this, she’s been training to be an astronaut on her own in case she ever got the chance to go up. She’s in peak physical and mental condition and even trains daily in a home-built centrifuge that simulates the G forces of a shuttle launch and re-entry. She’s articulate and intelligent. She’s just amazing, incredible.”

I spent the next fifteen minutes or so thoroughly briefing them on my visit, while studiously avoiding any reference to her age,
sexuality, or penchant for morning skinny-dipping. I knew I’d have to come clean sometime but I wanted them on my side before they learned she was born before the start of World War
II
. I recounted my encounter with the bear, my trip on the centrifuge, our canoe around the lake, our mutual interest in Sherlock Holmes, and the glories of the monohole outhouse. I was starting to get into my story. Amanda and Diane seemed transfixed, perhaps even spellbound.

“I think you’re right, David, she sounds like a brilliant candidate,” Amanda said.

“Yes, she certainly has crammed a lot into her life for a twenty-one-year-old,” Diane observed. “I didn’t know you could actually be a doctor at twenty-one.” She tilted her head, puzzled, squinting at me.

And there it was. The end had kind of snuck up on me just when I’d been starting to enjoy my own story. Time to fess up.

“Well, you’ve hit upon an interesting part of this story, Diane,” I started. “You see …”

The speaker phone pod at the centre of the board table suddenly blasted its nuclear ring tone, either signalling that a foreign air force was about to start carpet bombing Toronto, or that there was another party on the line eager to speak with us. It was the latter. You might say that the piercing sound caught me somewhat off-guard. You might say that, because in my advanced state of surprise, my reflex was to fling my pen straight up in the air where it stuck fast in a ceiling tile. I mouthed “Sorry” to Diane as Amanda hit the big green button.

“Crawford, is that you?” she asked the sleek speaker phone pod.

“Hello, frozen Canadians. Yes, it’s Crawford here and I’ve got the
D.C.
team with me. I know we’re a few minutes early, but are we all ready?”

“We’re all set here. David was just giving us a bit of a sneak peek at our lucky Canadian winner and I think you’re going to be pleased,” Diane said.

Great, just great, I thought to myself. By dragging out the story, and skirting the seventy-one-year-old lesbian elephant in the room, I was setting myself up for a big fall in front of the entire team. Nicely handled.

“Looking forward to it,” Crawford responded, taking control of the meeting. “All right, let’s get started. Our agenda for this call is quite straightforward. First, we’ll introduce you to our American citizen astronaut. And we’re quite excited about him. Then we’ll turn it over to Toronto to hear about the Canadian winner. Sound good?”

No one replied, so Crawford filled the silence.

“Okay then, let’s start. Here in the U.S., the very first name we drew has passed through our qualification procedure with flying colours and we’ve already briefed
NASA
on him and they’re happy. So if they’re happy, we’re happy,” Crawford declared. “So let me tell you a bit about him. He exactly fits the model we were hoping to find. His name is Eugene Crank. He’s a thirty-eight-year-old deputy sheriff for a small county in Texas. Born and raised a couple states over in rural Mississippi, he’s a
God-fearing Christian, married with two sons. He’s good looking, in great shape, and is no stranger to the microphone, having won several local karaoke competitions. In my mind, he’s the archetypal American hero, protecting his fellow citizens, serving his community, and soon, carrying the dreams of a nation into space.”

Unfortunately, I was no longer carrying the Ziploc freezer bag Landon had given me that last time I’d felt close to losing a meal.

“We’ve now spent some time with Eugene and believe that he is the ideal candidate, which is why
NASA
was so quick to add their stamp of approval. While he’s slightly older than expected, he’s just the kind of winner we were hoping to find when we presented this idea to
NASA
several months ago.”

“Crawford, it’s Diane here. I assume you’ve done a full background check on this guy. It would not be good to have something from his past bite us in the ass when the eyes of the world are on him.”

“Already done, Diane. He’s as clean as they come. He’s a lawman, for God’s sake. I’m telling you, can we pick ’em or can we pick ’em!”

The
D.C.
contingent clapped for their fearless leader, so we did too, though somewhat anemically. They couldn’t see us, after all.

“Thank you. Okay. Now let’s hear about our Canadian candidate. Diane?”

“Thanks, Crawford. I’m going to ask David Stewart to introduce Landon Percival, our Canadian citizen astronaut. David?”

Amanda smiled at me as she pushed the phone pod closer to me so that when I went down in flames, everybody on the call would be able to hear the crash in Dolby surround sound.

“Hi, everyone,” I started. My voice was higher than usual. Here we go. “I’ve just returned from Cigar Lake in northern British Columbia where I spent a couple of days off the grid with Landon Percival. This is a distinctly Canadian story, which is just exactly what we were looking for.”

I proceeded to spin Landon’s extraordinary tale with every bit of drama and emotion I could muster. Her birth on the shore of Cigar Lake, her home schooling, her stint in the big city, her success at medical school, her mother’s tragic and early death, her father’s last logbook entry and mysterious disappearance, her return to Cigar Lake to search for her father and carry on his work, her lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut, her years studying space, her own personal astronaut training in the centrifuge she built out of parts from a sailboat and a snowmobile, and her sheer delight and excitement at having been granted the chance to live her dream.

I confess I got caught up in my own performance. Modesty aside, I was on a roll. I was
on
. My ten-minute soliloquy left Diane and Amanda wide-eyed, even though they’d already heard a pared-down version of the story. To be clear, everything I said was the unembellished truth. I just didn’t quite tell the whole truth.

As planned, I steered well clear of the Landon Percival danger zones, including her 1983 rejection from the Canadian
astronaut training program. It would come out soon enough, I knew. I finished with this.

“Landon Percival is a great Canadian with a very Canadian story. We couldn’t have selected a more appropriate candidate. She was born to do this. She was meant to do this. The miracle of her random selection from over 1.7 million entries is, quite simply, destiny. There’s no other way to describe it. It was a privilege to spend time with her as she begins the journey to fulfil her destiny.”

I stopped talking. Silence descended and then abruptly ended in a burst of wild applause and cheering from both sides of the border. Diane and Amanda were beaming as they clapped. I felt sick. I had to play it this way to honour my promise to Landon. I had to draw them in and get them invested in her story. I needed all of my colleagues hugging one another and singing “Kumbaya.” It was the only slim hope we had. Because sooner or later, everyone would know that there were seventy-one candles burning on Landon’s last birthday cake. And that would generate a lot of heat.

“Outstanding. Glad you managed to find such a perfect candidate,” Crawford said. “Can you send us a photo? I’d like to see what this young woman looks like.”

“Um, yes, I’m working on getting photos.”

“Okay, folks, that about does it. You all know how important this is and what our next steps are, so let’s keep moving and stay on track,” Crawford said. “Amanda and David, we’ll need to
present Landon to
NASA
for approval, so can you pull together a bio package on her and get it down to me?”

Amanda, always looking for an opportunity to interact with Crawford, piped up fast. I didn’t even consider responding.

“Absolutely, Crawford, you’ll have it shortly.”

“David, one more thing,” Crawford said over the noise of his team vacating the
D.C.
boardroom. “How old is this Landon miracle again?”

I clenched. Better for it to come out now than when were farther down the road. I would have been fired later on in the process. Now I would probably just be kicked off the account.

“She’s only twenty-one,” offered the ever-helpful Amanda, chipper as ever when Crawford was around.

“Actually, there’s a funny story about that,” I began, in full back-pedal. “Turns out she’s a little older than we thought. But her story is so amazing, I don’t think it should be an issue. After all, sixty is the new fifty, right?”

“Shit, she’s not sixty, is she?” Crawford snapped. “Tell me she’s not sixty. Please somebody tell me our Canadian citizen astronaut is not a decade more than half a century old.”

“Um, of course not, no, not exactly, um, no, she’s certainly not sixty …” I stammered, laughing a little, and watching the moment of truth hurtle towards me like a speeding locomotive.

“Well, thank Christ for that!” blasted Crawford over the speaker.

“Landon Percival is seventy-one years old.”

I kind of mumbled the number, but I did say it.

“Sorry, what did you say? You cut out a bit,” Crawford asked. Everyone else in the room knew enough to stay silent now.

“She’s seventy-one,” I repeated, clearer this time, but still a little under my breath, to be honest.

Crawford was getting a little exasperated.

“Sorry, David, we’re having trouble hearing you,” he began. “That time it almost sounded like you said seventy-one. So can you try it again in your big-boy voice?”

“Landon Percival is seventy-one years old. She was born in 1939, has wiry grey hair, and looks kind of like an apple doll, but with more wrinkles, and she sort of smells like engine grease.”

There I’d said it. It was finally out in the open. Diane and Amanda were both staring at me, faces frozen, mouths agape, undergoing what looked like the first recorded case of synchronized strokes. The silence held for an eternity. I couldn’t stand it.

It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, just after Crawford pulled it from the grenade. I jumped back in.

“But I still think she’s a great candidate with an amazing story. Let me tell you the best part …”

“Stop, David,” said Crawford.

“You won’t believe this but back in ’83, she …”

“
Stop
, David …”

“She applied to be one of Canada’s first astronauts, but was rejected because she was too old. So when I said this was destiny, I …”

“
Shut the fuck up
!” Crawford shouted, exhausting every cubic centimetre of air in his lungs.

He paused for effect and perhaps to allow the ringing in my ears to abate, then he spoke in a voice that was barely above a whisper. This made him all the more sinister as the three of us in the room leaned in to the speaker phone pod. In his agitated state, his southern drawl kicked into high gear.

“I do not give a flyin’ fuck how good her story is. I do not care if she’s actually Amelia Earhart, she’s a goddamned ancient old biddy who will not be takin’ her walker, readin’ glasses, and weak bladder on board the space shuttle. It will not happen. And
NASA
will never know she even existed. Because you are going to pick another goddamned name and it’s going to be a fuckin’ ice-skatin’, dog-sleddin’, snow-shovellin’, eh-sayin’, very polite lumberjack with a face for
TV
!”

I have no idea where I found my voice after his tirade, but I suddenly had this vision of Landon, and she was smiling and seemed to be urging me into the fray.

“I really think we should carefully consider moving forward with Landon …”

“I really think you should carefully consider your future with this firm, because you have just wasted a half-hour of our professional time that we can never get back with one of the most boneheaded and asinine ideas I’ve ever heard. Pick a new
fuckin
’ winner!”