Galaxy Joyride

The carnival atmosphere at the mall’s Grand Opening spilled into the parking lot. Cars stood in patient rows like horses in white-lined asphalt stalls. Almost the whole town showed up. Before today, the town of Dixon could was only prideful of a Walmart, four feed stores, and two groceries; three if you count Claggett’s over on Third Street, which no one ever did.

My brother Lonnie dropped me off on his way to work. He works second shift at the factory in Ebbettsville. I don’t know how he stands it, the same thing all day. I wouldn’t be caught dead working at any factory.

"Don’t spend it all in one place," Lonnie joked. A five-dollar bill sizzled in my pocket. Somewhere in the mall a tube of purple lipstick waited for me.

Some clown smiled at me, and I looked the other way. He twisted skinny balloons into animal shapes for the little kids crowding around him. They stood in a tangled mess, shouting for latex poodles and giraffes. I detoured around them almost to the corner of the building.

"Live long and prosper," Mr. Spock said to a group of us inching toward the towering glass doorway.

"I want a red one," piped a small boy, or maybe it was a girl.

It couldn’t be the real Spock, of course, but the voice was an eerie near-perfect imitation of the most famous Vulcan of all.

"For anyone interested in a tour of our intergalactic vehicle, please follow me. We will be showing a short film on modern science fiction in the popular media." His pointy ears were glued on. Leonard Nimoy most likely glued his ears on too, but this guy was no Leonard Nimoy. I thought there must be one of those "collectibles" stores inside the mall like at the flea market in Liberty.

Four of us followed the fake Spock around the corner and halfway down a row of cars to a roped-off area. The "intergalactic vehicle" was an old school bus covered with silver spray paint. Even the windows were painted over.

"Hey, this isn’t the Enterprise," said Donald Vasquez, a gangly boy I knew from school. One of his friends, wearing a baseball cap on backwards, chuckled. His other friend, Roy Bello, a real greaseball, had been in my sixth grade class. Roy was the kid in the back tossing spitballs.

"I didn’t say it was the Enterprise," said Spock, all ears and seriousness. He lifted the rope for us and we stooped under it one at a time.

Spock rapped a secret knock on the door of the bus, a couple of slow, then two fast, then two slow again knocks. The door folded open the same way as other buses.

"Please enter," said an old guy in the driver’s seat.

What a hoot. They all looked at me, so I climbed up the steps first. The dark blue inside of the bus swelled up bigger than any bus I’d seen, and not just because they’d taken out half the seats. The longer I stayed aboard, the bigger the inside grew. At the time I didn’t know the first thing about DSM. That’s Differential Space Management, for the rest of you.

"You may now peruse the displays. The film will be shown in a few minutes, when we have a larger audience," said the driver. There were already a dozen of us in there.