This story is set in 1930’s America and reflects cultural norms for that time/place. Some of the characters here act and speak in a manner that is sexist/racist. I promise they’ll learn better by the end of the story. đ Also, a couple of the characters here are based on real people. Please don’t sue me if I turned your great-great-grandma into a sex goddess. đ
Flagstaff, 1929
Clyde sighed deeply as the train finally rolled to a stop at the station in Flagstaff, Arizona.
The three-day journey from Topeka to Flagstaff had been taxing. It wasn’t that the train was uncomfortable; quite the opposite was true. Clyde and his wife had plenty of space amid the berths. The train seemed half abandoned. Most of the other riders seemed to work for the Railway company.
The problem was his wife, Elizabeth. She had flitted between anger and terror for the entire journey. One moment she was furious with him, the next she was pleading. Clyde supposed this was simply because she was a woman, and as such, unable to govern her emotions the way a man does.
Elizabeth winced as the train jerked, coming to rest with finality. This was it, then. The move was really happening. There would be no reversal. Her husband would not come to his senses. He had uprooted them from their home in Kansas, leaving behind family and farm. They were moving into the actual Wild West, a place full of Indians, highwaymen, and God-only-knows what else.
She looked towards her husband with a sigh, and she begrudged him his dream. She knew, from a young age, he had admired the planets and stars. As a teen, he had saved money to purchase a telescope from the Sears catalog. As a man – she had thought him to be a good honest farming man – he had dabbled in astronomy, digging out a long dark trench from which to peer at the heavens. She thought it was nothing more than a hobby, the sort of hobby on which intelligent men like her Clyde wasted a bit of time. She had been wrong.
For his part, Clyde felt a certain sense of exhilaration as he set out to start his true career. He had worked to put himself through the University, but hail had destroyed their crop that year, and he was forced to abandon his education. Determined, he studied on his own. He built his own telescope. He made his own observations and drawings of Mars and the asteroid belt and sent them to the scientists at the Lowell Observatory. He had even discovered a few asteroids, and had one named after his wife.
Then, something unexpected had happened. Guy Lowell, the head of the conservatory that sponsored the observatory, contacted him by telegram, saluting him for his drawings and offering him a job. He would be one of several astronomers operating the world’s largest telescope at the observatory, pending his move to Arizona. Clyde immediately accepted.
It turned out that Flagstaff was situated in the middle of an evergreen forest, at the base of several snow-capped mountain peaks, at a breath-stealing elevation of nearly 7,000 feet. After a thousand miles of unending fields and plains, with nothing to break the terrain but the occasional Model A’s traveling Route 66 beside the tracks, Santa Fe Railway Engine Number 47 abruptly entered a lush green forest and reached the town just a few miles later.
Clyde and Elizabeth made an odd couple as they disembarked the train, him with a shit-eating grin, her with eyes downcast, fixated on the carpet of pine needles that covered every inch of the ground.
“Hello there!” A clean-shaven man with an extremely receded hairline and a white lab coat greeted the couple. He huffed and he puffed as he made his way up the steps to the railway platform, looking entirely out of his element.
A young woman bustled to his side, lending a hand for support. A thick black braid hung nearly to her waist.
“You must be our farmer,” said the black-haired woman.
This comment prompted Elizabeth to make an ugly sound that might have been a snort of laughter, or a stifled sob, but was probably both. Clyde’s smile melted and ran down his face.
“No.” Clyde threw her a look that might have melted steel, before turning to the older man. “I am the astronomer come to work at the observatory.”
The older man chuckled. “Quite right. I think perhaps some introductions are in order. I am Vesto Slipher, the director of Lowell’s Observatory. I present Mr. and Mrs. Clyde Tombaugh. And this is Tal-” He paused, looking to the woman.
“I am Ta’ala Sohu of the Hopituh Shi-Nu-Mu. But you may call me Tala, everyone else does.”
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Ta’ala Sohu,” Clyde said with an air of formality. She had a slight accent that he couldn’t quite identify. He turned back to Mr. Slipher.
“Chinese?”
“No, no…” said the scientist, glancing back at Tala. Her face darkened ominously. “Miss Tala is one of the natives of this area. I brought her to meet you because she is meant to be your computer.”
“An Indian? Is she qualified to make those kinds of mathematical calculations?”
Clyde surveyed the young lady who was to be his assistant. She was several inches shorter than his wife, and her skin was several shades darker. Her eyes were so dark that the pupils could scarcely be discerned from the irises, and right now they flashed with angry fire.
“More qualified than some!” She spat the words at Clyde like venom.
“Miss Tala is on loan to us from the Northern Arizona Teachers College.” Mr. Slipher spoke with the practiced ease of an old professor separating two students. “She holds a degree in mathematics and is furthering her studies in astronomy while she is with us.”
Clyde was suddenly very aware of his own lack of college credentials. He could feel the blood rushing to his face.
“And you are German,” said Tala. It came out as an accusation. The Great War had ended a decade ago, but there was lingering resentment for the Kaiser’s sons. Clyde was put on the defensive.
“I’m from Illinois, by way of Kansas.”
Clyde stared at her, unsure what to make of this woman who challenged him so brazenly. Tala stared defiantly back into his eyes, sizing him up, daring him to say something else stupid.
Whatever he said, she knew he was German. At 6’1″ he was half a head taller than anyone else around, with brown hair that was shaved close on the sides and lightened by sunshine almost to the point of blondness. He had the build of a farmer, thin, with wiry muscles filling out his suit in the right places. The square spectacles that perched on his nose were the only hint of brainy-ness.
Clyde continued to size her up. He decided she was somewhat scandalous. To start with, she was dressed more like a man than a woman, in trousers and a button-down blouse. She evidently wasn’t wearing a brassiere or a corset, either. The fabric of her top was too shear and too white to conceal the brown breasts beneath. Dark nipples were clearly visible.
He thought of the corset that his wife Elizabeth wore, that flattened her hips and slimmed her waist. Such a garment wouldn’t do a thing for this woman. Her hips were too wide; her rump too meaty to accept such a jacket. She was positively inappropriate.
Clyde shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs out.
“I… I apologize if I offended.”
Elizabeth forgot all about her study of pinecones and shoelaces for a moment and looked up for the first time. She could not remember the last time Clyde apologized to anyone, much less a woman, much less a… a savage.
The ride from the train station to the observatory was slow and uneventful. The men sat towards the font of the wagon and discussed a paper one of Slipher’s students had published about the expansion of the universe. At the back of the wagon, Tala surprised Elizabeth by engaging her instead in a different conversation.
Elizabeth found Tala hard to hate. Intellectually she knew Tala was a savage, but in person she made polite conversation as well as any civilized woman Elizabeth knew. Her husband was clearly attracted to the Indian, but she was inclined to blame Clyde on that account. It also turned out that both women had come up farming corn. Both missed the families from which they were separated. By the time they reached the observatory grounds, the two were planning Elizabeth’s new garden together.
The sun had begun its descent across the summer sky by the time the party reached the grounds. The complex of buildings was painted a light blue that stood in contrast to the dark greens and browns of the forest. Everything here seemed darker; even the sky here at altitude was a deeper blue than Clyde could remember, as though hinting that the blackness of space was just within reach.
“I expect you’ll want to get settled and start to unpack first,” Slither said, dismissing them. “I’ll give you a tour of the grounds and show you the instruments tomorrow, Clyde.”
“Follow me,” said Tala. “I’ll show you to your new home.”
Clyde followed Tala, and Elizabeth followed Clyde. The observatory sat at the highest point of the hill, so their trek took them down a hill that was steeper than Clyde would have liked, and then up another slope, such that he was panting by the time they reached the cabin.
The cabin itself had been dropped right on the side of the hill. Apparently, no effort had been made to situate it in a flat place. There was only one room to serve as bedroom and kitchen, with a woodburning stove that would serve both for cooking and heating. By far the best feature was a large porch that extended outwards from the downhill side of the home. Owing to the incline, the porch was suspended 10 feet above the hillside, giving an amazing view of the surrounding area.
“Mr. Tombaugh… may I call you Clyde?” said Tala with a smile.
“I’d like that, Tala.” Clyde marveled at the forwardness of the heathen woman, but he returned the smile, nonetheless.
“I have a housewarming gift for you.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief, and she continued. “From what I’ve heard, you are quite a craftsman. Is it true that you built two telescopes?”
“A seven incher and a nine,” Clyde beamed. “I had to leave them in Kansas, though. They were too bulky for transport.” Real regret was etched on his face.