The Event horizon
Katie Erbs
He’s waving his gun around like he’s some kind of hotshot. Right there in the middle of her one room apartment. It’s 1960 and Kennedy will win in November. The radio plays Chuck Berry. Maybellene why can’t you be true. Three years previous the Soviets sent Laika into space. Today they’ll send Belka and Strelka up in Sputnik 5. Belka and Strelka. They’ll be okay. Strelka will even go on to have a litter of puppies back here on earth. Back here on earth, my grandmother is six months pregnant with my mother and she’s still wearing her three-inch heels. It’s her apartment and it’s her father— my great-grandfather—that’s waving around his goddamn gun again. That goddamn gun. He keeps pointing it at her too. You done started back doing the things you used to do. In 1960 Sharon Tate gets her first acting gig. Advertising Tareyton cigarettes. A taste to die for! And there’s death in the air. You can taste it. In Saint Louis the summer air gets so hot it bends light. Makes the asphalt shimmer. It riles people up, it sets their teeth on edge. The only AC is in JCPenney’s or Woolworths. The same soda counter where black students will sit in protest. The fire hoses. The police dogs. Chattanooga. Greensboro. Saint Louis. That goddamn gun. The heat
makes time go gummy at the edges like the gravitational pull of a black hole.
In 1960 the first particle accelerator is made and scientists start shooting protons at each other, making little replica big bangs. In 1960 Charles Manson violates the Mann Act by pimping out young girls in New Mexico. In seven years he’ll be granted an early release. It’s too bad. In Russia, Lee Harvey Oswald looks up at the sky to see the satellite carrying Belka and Strelka up into the atmosphere. He practices his aim and points a rifle to the stars. Back in the US my great-grandfather is screaming, spittle flying out his mouth. He’s a drunk and always has been. Always will be. Since back in the war days. Since before that even. My grandmother used to be a little girl sitting on her daddy’s lap. She used to tell him her dreams. She would point to the big dipper. Orion’s belt. Whiskey breath. Her daddy loads a round into the chamber. It was always something. Always something. A quarter for the movies. Hitchcock’s Psycho just came out. Janet Leigh dies behind the shower curtain over and over again at every new showing. People in the audience faint when they see it.
My great-grandfather is a man who has been ground down by the boot heel of life, I guess. It is what it is. Back doing them things. You don’t understand shit. No you don’t know nothing. He punctuates each word with the gun. Points it at the carpet, the door. Her head. All you women do is bitch and moan and
open your legs. I mean look at you. You think you know suffering. You think you know pain. Have you worked all day, all day on your knees, all day sweating and for what, just for the foreman to make you clean his shit. His goddamn literal shit in his goddamn toilet. He spits and uses the hand holding the gun to wipe his mouth. Fuck. Fuck you I looked a dead man right in his sunken eyes. I saw flies lay eggs in his sockets. I laid down next to him. I laid down next to him. What did you do huh what do you know.
And he’s panting and he’s sweating. Like a trapped dog. In the lamplight she could be anyone. Daughter. Mother. Corporal. Wife. Janet Leigh dies on screen again, her mouth a black hole. In Dallas, Kennedy shakes hands, he holds babies. For the world is always changing. For the old era is ending. The old ways will not do. In 1960 the Soviets shoot down an American U-2 spy plane. The FDA approves the pill. Polanski goes to film school. Scientists make little replica black holes and scientists detonate atom bombs in New Mexico. It’s just another Tuesday and daddy’s got his gun. It’s just another Tuesday and daddy’s got his gun.
And he’s blocking the only exit. And he’s shot the lock clean off the door. In the box the cat is both alive and dead. You done started back doing the things you used to do. The best fried chicken I know comes from a TV dinner. You, you motherfuckers. In the future Kennedy’s head comes apart in slow motion. Rewind and it comes back together again.
He is blown apart. He is resurrected. Look there you can see it. You can see how the bullet comes in from the front. From the right. Watch how they dance. How they run. The Soviets launch satellites. Children duck and cover. Children eat bullets for breakfast. Men die in Vietnam. They stand up. They fall to their knees. They stand up and they fall. They lie down next to one another. A 6.5 Italian carbine. Late military issue. Only $12.78. Clip fed. Rear sight. Cadillac sittin’ like a ton of lead, a hundred and ten. Janet Leigh opens her mouth and my great-grandfather shoots once, twice. A black hole through my grandmother’s palm. A pulse of blood. A graze on her cheek. History is nothing but a choice made. An action word. A verb. The old era is ending. Time slows to a trickle at the edge of a black hole. No light can escape, no sound can be made. In the end she’ll be okay. In a few weeks’ time she gives birth to my mother under twilight anesthesia and she won’t remember anything but the starry look in her baby’s eyes, bright blue. And when he sees the spray of blood, he thinks he’s killed her. His baby, his grandbaby. The coldwater flat. A decision made. It’s 1960 and he turns the gun on himself. A single shot and it’s over. The wave function collapses. When they die, Belka and Strelka are stuffed and put on display.