“Ice age,” Hawk grumbled. “Craziest thing I ever heard.”

“I saw pictures of it in the books the Prof had,” said Tim. “Big sheets of ice covering everything.”

Hawk just shook his head and spit over the side.

“It really happened, Hawk.”

“The weather don’t change,” Hawk snapped. “It’s the same every year. Hot in the summer, cool in the winter. You ever known anything else?”

“No,” Tim admitted.

“You ever seen ice, except in the Prof’s pictures?”

“No.”

“Or that stuff he called snow?”

“Never.”

“We oughtta turn this boat around and head back to the island.”

Tim almost agreed. But he saw that Hawk made no motion to change their course. He was talking one way but acting the other.

They fell silent. Tim understood Hawk’s resentment. Probably nobody would listen to them when they got home. The elders would be pretty mad about the two of them running off and they wouldn’t listen to a word the boys had to say.

For hours they skimmed along, the only sound the gusting of the hot southerly wind and the hiss of the boat cutting through the placid water.

“It’s all fairy tales,” Hawk grumbled, as much to himself as to Tim. “Stories they make up to scare the kids. What do they call ’em?”

“Myths,” said Tim.

“Myths, that’s right. Myths.” But suddenly he jerked to attention. “Hey, what’s that?”

Tim saw he was looking down into the water. He came over to Hawk’s side of the boat.

Something was glittering down below the surface. Something big.

Tim’s heart started racing. “A sea monster?”

Hawk shook his head impatiently. “I don’t think it’s moving. Leastways it’s not following after us. Look, it’s falling behind.”

They lapsed into silence again. Tim felt uncomfortable. He didn’t like it when Hawk was sore at him.

Apologetically, he said, “Maybe you’re right. The old man was most likely a little crazy.”

“A lot crazy,” Hawk said. “And we’re just as crazy as he was. The weather don’t change like that. It’s just not possible. There never was a Flood. The world’s always been like this. Always.”

Tim was shocked. “No Flood?”

“It’s one of them myths,” Hawk insisted. “Like sea monsters. Ain’t no such thing.”

“Then what did we see back there?”

“I dunno. But it wasn’t no sea monster. And the weather don’t change the way the Prof said it’s goin’ to. There wasn’t any Flood and there sure ain’t goin’ to be any ice age.”

Tim wondered if Hawk was right, as their boat sailed on and the glittering stainless steel stump of the St. Louis Gateway Arch fell farther and farther behind them.

BROTHERS

Over my desk is a page from a collection of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories. The page contains a brief sketch, set in a town in Spain in the 1920s. Two old bullfighters are watching the young matador who is supposed to be the star of that afternoon’s corrida de toros. But the young star is drunk, dancing in the street with gypsies, staggeringly drunk, in no condition to face the bulls.

“Who will kill his bulls?” one of the older matadors asks the other.

“We, I suppose. . . . We kill the savage’s bulls, and the drunkard’s bulls, and the riau-riau dancer’s bulls.”

The point is, some people get the job done and some people don’t. A successful writer gets the job done. No matter what is happening around him or her. No matter family or weather or finances, a writer writes. The world can collapse and the writer writes. No excuses. No delays. No waiting for inspiration or the right moment or the proper phase of the Moon. A writer works at it. The rest is all talk.

Humphrey Bogart made somewhat the same point when he said, “A professional is a guy who gets the job done whether he feels like it or not.”

“Brothers” is a story about two professionals, doing two very different jobs that needed to be done on a certain day in November 1971.

5 November 1971: Command Module Saratoga, in Lunar Orbit

Alone now, Bill Carlton stopped straining his eyes and turned away from the tiny triangular window. The landing module was a dwindling speck against the gray pockmarked surface of the barren, alien Moon.

He tried to lean his head back against the contour couch, remembered again that he was weightless, floating lightly against the restraining harness. All the old anger surged up in him again, knotting his neck with tension even in zero gravity.

Sitting here like a goddamned robot. Left here to mind the store like some goddamned kid while they go down to the surface and get their names in the history books. The also-ran. Sixty miles away from the Moon, but I’ll never set foot on it. Never.

The Apollo command module seemed almost large now that Wally and Dave were gone. The two empty couches looked huge, luxurious. The banks of instruments and controls hummed at him electrically. We can get along fine without you, they were saying. We’re machines, we don’t need an also-ran to make us work.

This tin can stinks, he said to himself. Five days cooped up in here, sitting inside these damned suits. I stink.

With a wordless growl, Bill turned up the gain on the radio. His earphones crackled for a moment, then the robotic voice of the Capcom came through.

“You’re in approach phase, Yorktown. Everything looking good.”