A Voyager 1 story set in Barstow, California, told as a short story. Pickle, Mr. Gil, Ivy and everyone in town are made up. However, the night is real. On Wednesday, November 18, NASA's Voyager 1 will be one full light-day from Earth, and NASA has asked people everywhere to flash V-G-R in Morse code at the sky after sunset on Tuesday, November 17. This story imagines that night in one small desert town.
The Wrong Way
At 4:51 p.m. on Tuesday, the whole town of Barstow pointed its lights at the southwest.
Kids stood on the bleachers at the high school, while truckers stood on the steps of the diner by the freeway. Even the lady from the bank stood on the hood of her car in a long skirt. Everyone held up a phone or a flashlight, and everyone blinked the same three letters at the same patch of pink sky.
Dot, dot, dot, dash. Dash, dash, dot. Dot, dash, dot.
V. G. R. Voyager.
Meanwhile, on the flat roof next door to mine, old Mr. Gil held up his big red railroad lantern and pointed it the other way.
East. Straight at the dark bluff across the dry wash, where there was nothing but rocks, a water tank and the long, low lights of Sunset Ridge.
"Mr. Gil," I called up the ladder. "Voyager is that way."
Even so, he did not turn around. "I know where Voyager is, Pickle," he said. "I talked to it for thirty-one years."
Then he lowered the lantern, swung it around, and flashed V-G-R at the southwest like everyone else. Of course, he did it perfectly. Still, I noticed he did the east first.
I am telling you this because of what happened at nine o'clock that night. However, you need the rest of it first, or it won't make sense.
Why I Tell This Voyager 1 Story
My real name is Lucy, but nobody uses it. When I was four, I ate a whole jar of pickles at a church picnic and then threw up on the pastor's shoes. So I am Pickle, and it stuck.
I am twelve, and I live with my mom on a short street at the east edge of town, where the houses run out and the desert starts. Past our back fence there is a dry wash full of tumbleweeds, and past that is the bluff.
Sunset Ridge sits on top of the bluff. It is a care home, long and low, with a hundred little windows. My mom works nights there as an aide. She leaves at a quarter to seven, and she comes home when the sky turns gray.
Because Mom works nights, Mr. Gil next door "keeps an eye on me." In practice, that means I do my homework at his kitchen table until eight. After that I go home and lock the door, and he watches our porch light from his window.
We can't pay for a sitter. Mom says so with a smile, but it is not a real smile.
There is one more thing about my mom. She buys AAA batteries in the giant box from the warehouse store, forty at a time. "For my work light," she says. I never thought about it. Why would I?
Blinky
Every kid on our street calls Mr. Gil "Blinky." He is seventy-nine, with big ears, a white mustache and hands like old baseball gloves.
At nine o'clock every night, Blinky climbs the ladder to his flat roof with that red railroad lantern. Then he points it east at the bluff and blinks it. A few short flashes, a few long ones. After that, he waits a minute. Finally, he climbs down and goes to bed.
The kids think he is losing it. Some grown-ups think so too. Last month somebody called the city, and a lady from code enforcement left a letter in his screen door. It said his "repeated light signals" were "a nuisance to neighbors" and must stop, or he would be fined.
He read it at the kitchen table while I did fractions, because that is what we do after school. Then he folded it into a tiny square and used it to fix the wobbly leg of the table.
"Is that allowed?" I asked.
"It's a good letter," he said. "Nice and thick."
On his mantel there is a photo of a woman with curly gray hair and a big laugh. She is holding up a fish that is way too small to be proud of. That was Ivy, his wife.
I asked about her only once. Mr. Gil looked out the window at the bluff for a long time.
"Ivy went up the hill two years ago," he said quietly.
There is a cemetery on a hill on the other side of town. So I said I was sorry, and I never asked again.
One Light-Day
Two weeks before that Tuesday, our science teacher, Mr. Diaz, told us about Voyager 1.
It launched in 1977, before my mom was even born. It flew past Jupiter and Saturn, and then it simply kept going, out past the planets and into the dark between the stars. By now it was so far away that light itself needed a whole day to get there.
"One light-day," Mr. Diaz said. "More than sixteen billion miles. On November 18 it crosses that line, and NASA wants everybody to shine a light on the 17th. So your project is to do it, then write me a Voyager 1 story about what it meant."
The Big Dish
That afternoon I asked Mr. Gil if he knew anything about Voyager. He put his coffee down so hard it splashed.
"Pickle, I kept the big dish turning for thirty-one years," he said. "Out at Goldstone. You know it?"
I knew it, sort of, because Mr. Diaz had shown us pictures. Goldstone is about forty miles north of town, out on the Army's land in the desert. Giant white dishes sit out there and talk to spacecraft. The biggest one is two hundred thirty feet across, which is wider than the wings of a jumbo jet.
"I wasn't a scientist, though," he said. "Back then I was a grease monkey. My job was keeping the gears clean so the dish could point. When Voyager whispered, our dish listened."
He told me that back in his day a message to Voyager took hours. Now, after Tuesday, it would take a full day to go and a full day to come back.
"So you say hello on Monday," he said, "and you hear hello back on Wednesday. That's the whole job, Pickle. Patience."
He also said Voyager's power shrinks a little every year, like a flashlight going dim. As a result, the team keeps switching things off to save what is left. The cameras went first, long ago. Then heaters, and then one instrument after another.
"They never stop talking to it, though," he said. "Not as long as it can hear. That's the rule."
The Tie
That Thursday I heard something I wasn't supposed to hear.
Mom was in our car in the driveway with her phone on speaker, because the car is old and the phone holder is broken. Since her window was down an inch, I could hear everything. I was on the porch steps with a juice box, so I stayed very still.
The voice on the phone belonged to Mr. Pratt, her boss at Sunset Ridge. Mom calls him "the Tie," since he wears one even on Saturdays.
"Two aides for thirty-two beds after ten, Gina," he said. "That's the budget. I don't like it either."
"Two of us can't turn everybody every two hours," Mom said. "You know that."
"Then work faster." Papers rustled. "And one more thing. A family complained about lights in the windows at night. Flashing. It upsets people. No personal stuff at the windows anymore. Not one more time, or we're done. Understand?"
For a long moment, Mom did not answer. "I understand," she said at last.
When she hung up, she put her forehead on the steering wheel and stayed like that until the alarm on her phone went off. Then she wiped her face, fixed her purple hair clip, and drove to work.
I didn't know what "lights in the windows" meant. I figured it was something somebody else did. Besides, I had a project to finish.
Dots and Dashes
All that week, Mr. Gil taught me Morse code at his kitchen table, tapping a pencil on the wood.
"A dot is quick," he said. Tap. "A dash is long, like you mean it." Taaap. "Then leave a little gap between letters, so they can breathe."
V is dot, dot, dot, dash, just like the start of that famous symphony, da da da DUM. G is dash, dash, dot. Meanwhile, R is dot, dash, dot, like a little hiccup in the middle.
After that, I practiced on his lantern until my thumb hurt. By Saturday, I could do V-G-R without looking.
On Sunday, I finally asked about the east.
"What do you flash every night at nine?"
At first he was quiet. Then he tapped it on the table. Dash, dash, dash, dot, dot. Dash, dash, dash, dot, dot.
"Eight, eight," he said. "The old telegraph men used it. It means love and kisses."
"Who are you sending love and kisses to?"
"Somebody who answers," he said. "It just takes a minute."
That night at nine, I stood in my own backyard and watched. He flashed his 88 at the bluff, and I stared at Sunset Ridge until my eyes watered.
Nothing. There were only the hundred little windows, all the same soft yellow.
I went to bed feeling sad for him, the way you feel sad for a dog that waits at the door for someone who moved away.
The Son on the Phone
On Monday I heard the second thing I wasn't supposed to hear.
Mr. Gil's son lives in Phoenix, where he sells boats, even though there is hardly any water there. He called while I was coloring my project poster, and Mr. Gil put him on speaker because his ears aren't great.
"Dad, the house goes on the market December first," the son said. "We talked about this. The money has to come from somewhere, and the bills up there aren't getting any smaller."
"I know."
"You'll love Phoenix. There's a pool."
"I don't swim."
"Dad. And please stop with the lantern. Now the city is calling me too."
Mr. Gil looked out the window at the bluff. "After Tuesday," he said. "Let me have Tuesday."
After he hung up, he sat for a long time without moving. Meanwhile, I went back to my poster and colored Saturn way too hard.
"The bills up there," the son had said. I thought he meant the cemetery. Some people pay for those for years, I guess.
Shine Bright
Tuesday came windy and gold.
That day Mom took an extra early shift because somebody called in sick, so she left at three and missed the big moment. She kissed the top of my head and said, "Flash one for me, bug." She had her purple clip in, and her little work light hung on its cord around her neck.
At 4:51, the sun slid behind the hills, and the whole town did its thing. Phones blinked on the bleachers. Truckers flashed their headlights by the diner. Somebody on Main Street even had a spotlight from a car lot.
Mr. Gil and I stood on his roof. First he pointed the lantern east, just for a second. Then he turned it southwest, toward the spot where my app said Voyager was hiding, low over the hills in a star pattern called Ophiuchus. Nobody can actually see Voyager, because it is far too small and far too far. Still, we knew where it was.
We flashed V-G-R together, him on the lantern and me on my phone, while my tablet filmed it for Mr. Diaz.
"It won't see this, you know," I said. "It's a light-day away."
"Doesn't matter," he said. "The light goes that way regardless. In a day, our little hello passes it by. Like waving at a train."
I liked that, so I wrote it down for my project.
Nine O'Clock
That night I didn't go home at eight, and Mr. Gil didn't make me.
At five to nine, he climbed the ladder again, slower this time. I followed with the binoculars from his hall closet, big heavy ones with a cracked strap.
"Here," he said, and he hung them around my neck. "Your eyes are better than mine. Mine used to see it plain."
He faced the bluff and flashed. Dash, dash, dash, dot, dot. Dash, dash, dash, dot, dot.
Then he waited, and I waited, while the wind pushed the tumbleweeds around in the wash.
"Now," he said softly. "Look now."
I lifted the binoculars and found Sunset Ridge. At first all its little yellow windows bounced around. Then I held my breath, and I held still.
That was when I saw it.
Near the north end, in one window on the second floor, a tiny white light was blinking. It was so small and so weak it was almost nothing. But it was there.
Dash, dash, dash, dot, dot. Dash, dash, dash, dot, dot.
Eight, eight.
The Window
Slowly, I turned the little wheel on the binoculars until the window got sharp.
Inside, an old woman with curly gray hair sat in a big chair with a blanket over her knees. Her eyes were closed, so she was asleep, or nearly.
Ivy.
It was Ivy, from the photo with the too-small fish. Ivy, who went up the hill. Not the cemetery hill, though. This one, right across the wash, the whole time.
And standing beside her chair, holding a tiny penlight against the glass, was a woman in purple scrubs with a purple clip in her hair.
My mom.
It was my mom, who had been told "not one more time." My mom, who buys AAA batteries forty at a time for her work light.
She finished the second 8. Then she switched off the light, tucked the blanket up to Ivy's chin, and was gone from the window.
When I lowered the binoculars, my hands were shaking. "That's my mom," I whispered.
"I know," said Mr. Gil.
Since April
He sat down on the roof slowly, with his back against the swamp cooler.
"Ivy and I did this for fifty years," he said. "Whenever I worked nights at the dish, she flashed 88 from our porch, and I saw it from the road coming home. Then, when she moved up to Sunset Ridge, we just kept it going. Her window, my roof."
"Then what?"
"Then last spring she forgot how." He said it plainly, the way you say the weather. "Most days she forgets my face now. In March she forgot the code too, so for two weeks I flashed and nothing came back."
Then he looked over at the bluff. "And then one night in April, it did. It was faster than Ivy, though. Ivy always did her dots slow, as if she was thinking about each one. These dots were in a hurry, like somebody with thirty-two beds and not much time."
"You knew it was my mom?"
"Not at first. Later I saw her car pull in every morning with a box of batteries on the seat." He smiled under the mustache. "Your mother is good dish crew, Pickle. You don't stop talking just because the other end can't answer anymore. Not as long as it can hear."
I thought about the Tie. "She could get fired."
"I know," he said again. "That's why tonight was the last night. I told my son I'll go to Phoenix, so your mom can stop."
Somebody Ought to Answer
For a while I looked at the lantern on the roof between us. It was red and heavy and dented. I thought about Voyager, sixteen billion miles out, a little dimmer every year, and a room full of people who keep saying hello anyway.
Then I thought about my mom, standing at that window every night for seven months, so a stranger's wife could still say love and kisses.
Somebody ought to answer her, I decided. After all, that's the rule.
So I picked up the lantern. I pointed it east, at the second floor, north end. Then I put my thumb on the switch, the way he taught me.
Dash, dash, dash, dot, dot.
Dash, dash, dash, dot, dot.
At first, nothing happened. I counted my heartbeats. Ten. Twenty.
Then, across the dark wash, very small, a light blinked back. It wasn't 88 this time. Instead, it was three quick dots and a long one. Next came two long and a short. Last came a little hiccup.
V. G. R.
My mom never could resist showing off.
At 2:16 the next morning, while I slept with that lantern next to my bed, Voyager 1 crossed one light-day from home. Nobody out there saw our little lights, of course. They were still on their way.
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