1.
The teens pair off two by two like animals boarding Noah's ark--except for Jim. And like those beasts, he thinks, they're as unreasoning about what draws them to the amusement park each summer. They come on instinct: girls with sticky pink bubble gum, boys with tawny arms, like Jim's, roped with muscle from hauling hay and fence posts all summer, skin tanned deep from the sun.
Jim's eyes catch on Bobby Johnson's throat as he throws his head back laughing. Bill Rogers' shirt stretches across his shoulders when he wraps an arm around Patty Evans. Jim drops his eyes to his shoes whenever he senses someone might look his way. Or, if he's caught, shifts his gaze to something else in the same line of sight--the ticket booth, the moon display sign.
He can practically feel the heat coming off their bodies as they stand impatiently in the crowded line for the lunar display. It's the new feature, added since President Kennedy's promise to land a man on the moon, and the only reason Jim is there at all.
He doesn't care for the tired exhibits or the rides, and especially not the freak show. The two-headed calf, the bearded woman, and the rest fill him with unease for the singular creatures without a kind of their own.
He'd read about Disneyland's Rocket to the Moon exhibit, but California is so impossibly distant it might as well be the actual moon, so the amusement park has to do. But when the doors open and the crowd moves into the display area and the dumb teens gasp, Jim sighs. He didn't expect Disneyland, but what he sees is not just inferior--it's altogether wrong.
The display is in a darkened room, the floor covered with gray sand and gravel. Boulders made of chicken wire covered in gray tarp, Jim guesses. The flimsy walls are painted indigo to simulate the night sky, with tiny white lights twinkling through them--a sad excuse for distant stars.
Worst of all are the plants--plastic, Jim assumes--spray painted gray, with pointed leaves and curling fronds. As if there could be vegetation on the airless moon. The diorama he'd made for the science fair was far more accurate, if a fraction of the size, and no further than his own bedroom.
The other teens stand by, dumb and unthinking. The girl nearest him chews cotton candy, her hand snaking around the muscled arm of her boyfriend. He's good-looking, with a cowlick at the crown of his sandy hair, and the short sleeves of his white t-shirt rolled halfway up his shoulder. He's that type, so at ease in his own body.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the guide announces, "you are looking at the surface of the moon, or our best approximation of it!"
A speaker crackles and plays President Kennedy's words, uttered just a year earlier:
*This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth.*
"But what will we find there?" the guide asks. "What new life will we encounter? What wonders? What... menaces? What of the Man on the Moon?"
2.
On cue, one of the constructed boulders nearest Jim shifts as something--or someone--lunges out of hiding. It's the same gray as the surroundings, but it has ribbed arms and dull talons for fingers, reaching out for the girl beside Jim. She shrieks and folds into her boyfriend. The guy pulls back an arm to throw a punch, but his elbow hits Jim hard, knocking him to the gravel floor.
Curled up on the gravel, blind in one eye except for the stars flashing there, Jim makes out the boy throwing the punch being spun away by something--or someone--stronger. Girls scream, and red, white, and pink sneakered feet stomp on and around him. Jim hears the guide say,
"What the--Jesus Christ!"
Amid the chaos, with his one good eye, Jim sees only two feet moving with clear intent, but unlike the others, they're dark and scaled, reptilian, making their way purposefully toward him. The Man on the Moon.
"Kid," a muffled voice says. "You okay?"
Cold, rubbery hands pull Jim up off the floor, where he can better see the alien--or the alien costume. It's ridiculous, more sea monster than spaceman, with big fishy eyes and gills, painted gray to match the cheesy display.
When let go to stand on his own, Jim's legs go wobbly. As he drops, the monster catches him and lifts him in its arms. It walks away, carrying him like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, as if Jim is as weightless as the chicken wire boulders.
He can hear, as if very far away, the voice of the guide saying, "What a mess. Take care of this shit."
And then, even more distantly, the recorded voice of the President on the crackling speaker:
*We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.*
The Man on the Moon carries Jim to a set of doors, backing into them to open, bringing him into a cooler, quiet dark room filled with cardboard boxes. As the door closes behind them, the monster gently sets Jim down on a workbench, helping him into a sitting position. His head aches and his eye struggles to see right, but he manages to stay upright.
The monster crouches, grasping at the gills on its neck with webbed, clawed hands, twisting side to side. "God damn it," it says, and its head comes off in its hands, revealing underneath just a man. Of course.
He's a rough-looking guy, with a blunt nose and short-cropped blond hair. His lips are full, jaw covered with dirty blond scruff. Free from his costume, the man shakes a spray of sweat from his head, just a trace of it misting Jim.
"You okay, kid?" he asks again. His eyes are cool blue and crinkle at the corners when he breaks into a full smile.
3.
"I..." Jim sputters, holding a hand to his head, trying to cover his hungry stare. He feels something wet at his fingertips and, looking, sees blood.
"Oh boy," says the man in the monster suit, bending at the waist and cocking his handsome head to assess. "That's gonna be a shiner. Maybe a stitch or two up there." He grazes Jim's forehead with his rubbery hand, and Jim winces. "Oh yeah."
Jim feels a little queasy, but he's not sure how much is from the sight of his own blood and how much is being so close to the handsome carny with the deep voice.
"Let me get out of this damn thing," the man says, tugging at the arms of the monster costume. It sways side to side, loosening but not much more. "God damn it. Kid, would you unzip me?"
Jim is unsure what he's being asked, but the man turns around and points with a gloved thumb at his back. Jim sees a sturdy zipper running down the back of the costume, from his shoulders to the small of his back.
Still seated on the workbench, Jim grasps the zipper with one hand--his other pressed to his aching eye--and pushes against the man's sturdy back. With some effort, he yanks the zipper down in jerks, the rubbery suit splitting to reveal the man's flesh beneath. He's tan and sweaty, and when Jim lets his fingertips run down his spine, tiny blond hairs spring up after his touch.
The man turns and pulls at one side of the collar, then the other. The tip of his tongue juts between his teeth as he concentrates, and Jim feels a stirring in his underwear, swallowing down a gulp.
The costume loosens and slowly peels off the man's muscled shoulders--not boyish muscles like the teens Jim knows, not even after summer's farm work, but dense and adult.
"They didn't make this damn thing for one man to get in or out of," he says with a smirk, twisting his arms out, one and then the other. They're inked with tattoos, which Jim has never seen in person--like a sailor in Moby Dick or Treasure Island.
The heavy costume falls to his waist, exposing the broad V from his brawny shoulders to his slim hips. His chest muscles are squared off like a movie star's, with pink nipples and sparse blond hair running in a faint trail down his belly. More tattoos: on his arms, his flanks.
Jim is tempted to count them--there must be twenty at least--but between the ache in his head and in the crotch of his jeans, he's not so concerned with the number as he would be otherwise.
The man slides out of the bottom of the costume, pulling out his legs one at a time. Standing in just a pair of boxers, his bare legs are firm, hairier than his torso but the same dull blond, and there are more tattoos on his thighs.
