The elevator doors opened and General Ramsey led them into a large cafeteria. Rows of long tables and shiny floors gleamed under the endless banks of white, ultra-efficient overhead lights. An entire battalion of super-secret soldiers could be fed here. Parker wasn’t sure how big a battalion was, but it sounded like a lot of people.
“This is the Mess Hall,” said the General. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of providing an entire staff to prepare your meals. I’ll see if I can’t find at least one cook but until then you’ll have to fend for yourselves. The cupboards, pantries and refrigerators have been fully garrisoned, however, so I trust you’ll have no trouble feeding yourselves. You’ve got to keep your blood sugar levels stable and your metabolism maximized if you’re going to survive the rigors of your training.”
He led them to a table closest to the kitchen. “I took the liberty of ordering in supper. A real feast. To commemorate your first night in Candyland and the beginning of your training.” A broad assortment of food spread across the table in front of them. “I didn’t know what you liked so I got a little of everything.”
The General wasn’t kidding. There were two steaming pizzas with lots of gooey cheese. Next to the pizzas sat a platter of small cheeseburgers with yellow cheese melting over the sides of the buns and onto the mound of golden French fries surrounding the burgers. Next was a plate of crispy fried chicken, along with coleslaw and mashed potatoes and gravy, even some biscuits with little packets of butter and honey. Near the chicken were several white cardboard containers of Chinese food with long wooden chopsticks poking out of them. There was also a plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into little triangles and surrounded by yellow potato chips.
“This is nothing formal so everyone help yourselves,” said General Ramsey. “Dig in.”
Bubba stepped up to the table first. He picked up a tray and carefully arranged a plate, bowl, saucer, plastic cup, a napkin, and silverware from their stacks. He handed the tray to Sunny. “Ladies first.”
“Thank you, Bubba.” Sunny accepted the tray. She grabbed a slice of pizza, stretching cheese from the pan all the way to her plate. She attempted to reign-in the cheese with her knife and fork but to little avail.
“Try this,” said Igby. He grabbed an unopened pair of chopsticks and tore off their paper wrapper. He deftly wrangled the excess cheese, pinching it between the chopsticks and wrapping it around them like a snake curling around a branch in an apple tree. He deposited the cheese onto Sunny’s plate.
“Thank you, Igby,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” replied Igby.
Bubba handed a tray to Parker. “Batter up, brother.”
“Thanks.” Wishing he had been the one to help Sunny with her stringy cheese, Parker fell in behind Sunny and helped himself to a slice of pizza and a few potato chips. Sunny moved on to a large bowl of salad topped with little red tomatoes and purple and green olives.
Bubba handed a tray to General Ramsey, then to Igby, and finally to Colby.
“Gee. Thanks,” spouted Colby. “Like I couldn’t have gotten my own tray.”
“The polite thing would be to just say ‘Thank You.’” said Bubba.
“I already said, ‘Thanks.’”
“Then I guess there’s nothing left to say.”
Colby took his tray and walked around to the other side of the table and started loading up his plate without looking back. Bubba prepared his own tray, stuffing a handful of extra napkins into his back pocket.
Igby leaned in close to Bubba and spoke quietly. “What’s with you two?”
“Nothing.” Bubba took the last five pieces of pizza. He alternated their direction side-by-side so they fit on his plate. He took four plastic cups and placed them upside down at the corners of his tray. He stacked a second tray on top of the four inverted cups, creating a pyramid. On the second tray he added four cheeseburgers and a fistful of fries.
“Doesn’t seem like nothing,” said Igby. He used his chopsticks to scoop a nest of egg noodles out of the little white box and onto his plate.
“You ever meet someone who just rubs you the wrong way?” asked Bubba.
“Not really,” said Igby.
“Then you probably wouldn’t understand,” said Bubba.
The kids moved down the table, as did General Ramsey, helping themselves to anything and everything. Near the end of the table Parker found an assortment of beverages in plastic pitchers. He saw chocolate milk, strawberry milk, banana milk and regular milk. He poured himself a cup of water and a cup of orange juice to go with his pizza and potato chips. The school nurse had warned about getting Scurvy from lack of Vitamin C in his diet. Beyond the drinks loomed a veritable bakery of desserts. He took several chocolate chip cookies. He caught a whiff of a cherry pie. The scent reminded him of Sunny’s Cherry Lip Lover. He scooped up three slices of the pie. Then he put them back, along with all but one of the cookies. He didn’t want General Ramsey to think he was a pig.
He sat down next to Sunny at a nearby table. Parker took a big bite of pizza and looked over at Sunny. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, along with her napkin.
“What’re you waiting for?” The hot cheese burned his tongue and the roof of his mouth.
“It’s impolite to start eating before everyone is seated,” she said quietly.
“Oh.” He considered spitting the pizza back onto his plate but decided that would be more impolite than eating it. He quickly chewed and swallowed.
“Don’t wait for us,” called General Ramsey. He poured himself a cup of coffee and piled coconut cream pie on his plate. “Eat before it gets cold.”
Sunny started to eat as Igby, Colby, and General Ramsey sat down. At last Bubba reached their table. His food pyramid boasted an impressive assortment of goodies. He sat down and carefully arranged his plates around him, removing them from the plastic trays. He slowly unfolded his napkin and tucked it into the collar of his shirt. He picked up a cheeseburger and was about to take a hearty bite when he realized everyone sat watching him. “What?”
“Gee, Andrew, when you get done taping Larry Lester’s buns together, would you mind telling me if you always eat that much?” said Colby.
“No, you idiot. I do not always eat this much,” replied Bubba. “But General Ramsey said this is a feast to commemorate our first night in Candyland. I’d be pretty stupid not to accept his hospitality. Not to mention impolite.”
Parker thought of the cherry pie he’d put back, along with the chocolate chip cookies. He wished now he’d been more like Bubba and had taken what he’d wanted. Now that they were all seated, he didn’t want to be the only one to stand up and go get more food. He decided to enjoy the food he had in front of him and took another big bite of pizza, realizing as he quickly chewed and swallowed that he hadn’t eaten anything all day and he was famished. He took a big gulp of orange juice and coughed as he swallowed. He managed not to spit out his food as he tried to regain his composure.
“Everything all right?” asked General Ramsey.
“What is this?” asked Parker. He held up the glass of orange liquid. “It’s not orange juice.”
“No, it’s not orange juice,” replied the General, “it’s Twang.”
“Twang?” asked Parker.
“Sure. Haven’t you guys ever heard of Twang?” General Ramsey looked around the table at each of them. “Judging by the vacuous expressions on your faces—”
“What’s vacuous?” asked Bubba. He took a bite of folded-up pizza from one hand and a bite of cheeseburger from the other.
“It means empty,” said General Ramsey, “like a vacuum.”
“A vacuum cleaner?” asked Bubba.
“More like a vacuum tube,” said Igby.
“Or the vacuum of space,” said Sunny.
“As I was saying,” said General Ramsey, “Twang is one of my favorite drinks.”
“What is it?” asked Sunny.
“It’s a vitamin-fortified drink made from orange po
wder.”
“What’s it taste like?” asked Bubba.
“Ask Parker,” replied General Ramsey.
“What’s it taste like, Park?” asked Bubba.
“See for yourself.” Parker handed his cup to Bubba. Bubba took a sip, then a bigger drink. He smiled.
“It’s good,” said Bubba.
“See?” said General Ramsey.
“What’s so fab about it?” asked Sunny.
“‘This little piece of gum is a three-course dinner.’ ‘Bull.’ ‘No, roast beef. But I haven’t got it quite right, yet.’” Colby shoveled egg noodles into his mouth and sat mumbling with the noodles dangling out of his mouth.
“It was sent into space with the astronauts a long, long time ago,” said General Ramsey, ignoring Colby’s interruption. “They took it to the moon with them during the Gemini program. And they drank it on the Space Shuttle. We have a supply of it here in the base so I thought that since you kids are going to be pilots, it seemed fitting to serve up a pitcher of Twang. Don’t you like it, Parker?”
“It’s okay,” replied Parker, “I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. I was expecting regular old orange juice.”
“Tell us more about becoming pilots, General,” said Sunny. “Are there any other foods or beverages we should know about?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said the General.
“What about Astronaut Ice Cream?” asked Bubba. “My dad brought me home some of that one time from his trip to the Johnson Space Center down in Texas. Remember, Park? They freeze it to minus forty degrees—”
“Fahrenheit or Centrigrade?” asked Igby.
“Centigrade, I think,” said Bubba, “then they dry it with a big vacuum cleaner thing and seal it up in those special stay-fresh foil packs you tear open. The ice cream comes out like a big piece of chalk, because it’s all dehydrimated or something.”
“Dehydrated?” asked Igby.
“Right,” said Bubba, “dehydrated. It’s good stuff. I like the Neapolitan, because I like to take little bites of strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla. Parker likes strawberry the best. He ate three packets. It made his poop turn pink. Remember, Park?”
“That’s funny,” said Sunny.
Parker felt his face flush hot.
Colby rolled his eyes.
“I’m working on a loop-hole in the Federal Aviation Regulations to try and get each of you licensed as a pilot,” said General Ramsey, obviously struggling to change the subject. “Of course, none of you is yet sixteen so you can’t legally get a student pilot certificate. And the Go-Boy Battle-Suit is a one-of-a-kind aircraft and defies current aircraft type classifications, but I think there may be a way, once you each pass your check-ride with Igby, of course.”
Parker found his attention wavering as General Ramsey spoke further about the legal requirements of thirteen-year-old kids becoming licensed pilots in state-of-the-art Top Secret aircraft. His imagination wandered out to the blackness of space and the freezing vacuum and low gravity of the Moon. He tried to imagine standing on the Moon drinking Twang from a foil pouch with a straw, kind of like the packets of Astronaut Ice Cream Bubba had mentioned. He imagined himself all alone on the Moon, surrounded by a vast sea of gray lunar horizon, with nothing to eat but Bubba’s fried Frinkies and pouches of Twang that had been brought to the moon back in 1965. He found the prospect terrifying: alone on the Moon with no way to get home. He wondered if a Go-Boy Battle-Suit could fly in space, if it could get you from the Earth to the Moon or from the Moon back home to Earth. He tried to imagine the fiery, terrifying re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, the searing heat and endless buffeting by the super-heated air, the immense friction and flames as he fell out of orbit at almost eighteen thousand miles per hour, plunging toward Earth. He remembered an ad he and Bubba had seen one night featuring one of the old Space Shuttles General Ramsey had mentioned, Columbia. It lost one of the protective ceramic tiles on its belly and the heat of re-entry caused the shuttle to overheat and break up. Thousands of pieces rained down on farmland all over the Midwest. Parker remembered how quiet he and Bubba had gotten when they saw the photographs of the astronauts who died that day. The ad explained that during more than forty years and nearly five hundred missions, only two shuttles were lost, Columbia and Challenger. Although each loss was catastrophic, only two accidents out of more than five hundred launches meant the shuttle program held an impressive operational service record. Parker had to admit, however, the closer he got to being a real pilot, the more apprehensive and nervous he felt.
He watched Bubba enjoying the Twang and thought maybe he didn’t want to be a Go-Boy pilot after all, even if General Ramsey could help them get their licenses through a government loop-hole. He definitely didn’t want more to eat. He knew he’d probably be so hungry he couldn’t sleep later that night, but right now his pizza and chips and cookie looked about as appealing as the chocolate-covered tomato worms Sunny had been admiring back in Sky City Hobbies and Toys. Even the slice of cherry pie made his stomach clench up. He set his pizza back on his plate and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He noticed Sunny looking at the wedge of pizza with only two bites out of it. She looked at him and smiled in a funny way, then looked back at General Ramsey.
“What happens if we don’t pass our test? Our check-ride with Igby?” she asked.
“Nothing,” replied General Ramsey. “Don’t worry, you’ll still go on the mission. Dr. Red doesn’t care whether you’re all legally licensed pilots and frankly neither do I. Sometimes you have to bend the rules in order to do what’s right. The trick is to know how far the rules will bend before they break. How’s the food?” General Ramsey surveyed their trays. “Bubba, you ready for round two?”
“Yes, sir, General, sir,” replied Bubba.
“Great,” said the General, “me too.” He and Bubba stood and went back to the buffet. General Ramsey brought back another fat wedge of coconut cream pie and more coffee. Bubba returned with the last of the cheeseburgers, several pieces of chicken and three slices of cherry pie.
Parker felt simultaneously jealous and revolted as he watched his friend enjoy the dessert. It occurred to him that the ad featuring the space shuttle had been selling life insurance. Using death to sell life.
Chapter 7
Against the Fall of Night