Entry One: Hermit of Iapetus (Excerpt)

I have stopped going to the Alamo.

The Alamo: A slab of rock perhaps left over from an asteroid strike, perhaps popped out of the moon’s surface like an enormous green-grey zit. Blockish, with dark portholes and a roundish peak. Ice and dust sublime down its surface, creeping pillars dribble like candle-wax. It is a startling sight on the regio, standing out in the blight, where else on Iapetus there are craters and dust and mountains and crunchy crystals of ice.

But the song follows me. The song follows me. A song of old San Antone . . .

Deep within my heart lies a melody,
A song of old San Antone.
Where in dreams I live with a memory,
Beneath the stars, all alone.

Well it was there I found, beside the Alamo,
Enchantments strange as the blue up above.
For that moonlit pass, that only he would know,
Still hears my broken song of love.

Enchantments strange as the black up above. As Patsy sings, they come over the horizon. The squirrels in cowboy hats, riding saddled steers, their horns wider than the arc of Saturn’s rings, in the black up above. They pour over the horizon, whistling at their mounts, pulling on the reins, pirouetting and dancing beneath the Saturn-shine. When they see me, they tip their diminutive ten-gallon hats. And wink. And when the steers defecate, their dung leaves fresh craters on the blasted soil.

Moon in all your splendor, known only to my heart,
Call back my rose, rose of San Antone.

Cacti spring from the dung-craters and their needles grow longer than the steers’ horns, longer than the great horn in the black sky up above. They are thick, ghastly things, yet the steer rub against them.

They do not pop.

They inflate, and soon the sky is filled with steer satellites, each mounted by a ten-gallon-hatted squirrel, riding rodeo-style, as their mounts careen and buck and cavort and drop more bombs, more bombs, to the surface, where the cacti blossom into roses.

Broken song, empty words I know,
Still live in my heart all alone.
For that moonlit pass by the Alamo,
And rose, my rose of San Antone.

Now the steers are dancing and the squirrels are screaming in delight as the rodeo numbers on their backs flap in zero-gravity. Occasionally, one of the squirrels loses its grip and flies off into the black, drifting among the other steers and still-riding squirrels to float across the face of Saturn, to occult the stars shining above, to eclipse the sun to cast their furry shadows on the surface of the moon where the Alamo lies, slowly melting, slowly melting.

But it is not until the aardvarks appear over the horizon, somberly pushing their handcarts, that I concede I might possibly be mad.

In their carts, no provisions. But pump-organs, grandfather clocks, cook-stoves and other great hunks of carpentry and iron-mongery that my ancestors bore over the plains to bring joy and warmth and time to their pioneer homes in the wastes of Utah and the cold of Wyoming and the sagebrush of Idaho. The aardvarks – they sing, and lustily, their eyes proud, their armor clattering, their claws wrapped around the handcart pull bars.

They sing as the squirrels on their cows float above:

We’ll find the place which God for us prepared
Far away, in the west.
Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid
There the Saints will be blessed
We’ll make the air with music ring
Shout praises to our God and king
Above the rest, these words we’ll tell:
All is well, all is well.

They waddle like ducks, the lean forward like old men walking. Never fast in their march, but never ceasing. Over the horizon, they swarm like a flood, those behind never following in the tracks of the others. Foxes leap into the carts to play the pump-organs. Coyotes leap into the carts and strum the grandfather clocks like cellos. The song of the aardvarks and the foxes and the coyotes melt together with the song of the squirrels and the roses on the cacti sing along.

The roses on the cacti sing along.

They sing along.

They sing along.

Broken song, empty words I know,
We’ll find the place which God for us prepared
Still live in my heart all alone.
Far away, in the west.
For that moonlit pass by the Alamo,
Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid
And rose, my rose of San Antone.
There the Saints will be blessed.

I step back so I do not interrupt their revels. Amusement is spare on Iapetus; I have to let it come when it is willing. It is as the prophet Jacob wrote: Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy. And joy is watching a man watching the squirrels chase their untethered mounts through the starlit sky as the aardvarks toil and sing below, leaving handcart tracks in the virgin soil, howling, howling and barking with the foxes and coyotes as they sing and bay at the moon-like thing cradled in the arms of its rings above, above, above.

And rose, my rose of San Antone
There the Saints will be blessed.