“To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold….”
from Archibald MacLeish, “A Reflection: Riders on Earth Together, Brothers in Eternal Cold,” New York Times, 25 Dec. 1968, p. 1.
I read MacLeish’s reflection shortly after it was published. His writing so impressed me, I remembered it for years. When I began “Brothers,” I took his title phrase, “Brothers in the Eternal Cold” as inspiration for the title of my short story. Then I looked for images of Apollo 8 voyage.
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Excerpt:
“Hi. can I join you?” he asked, standing by my table in the truck stop restaurant, his tray loaded with hamburger, fries and a cup of coffee. He was about thirty–wiry, six feet tall, looked to weigh about 150 pounds. When I had seen him climbing down from his truck five minutes earlier, it was his thin, hard-muscled torso, narrow waist and small round buttocks I had noticed. In the restaurant, I noticed his thick, dark, trimmed mustache, how it worked with his firm chin and thin cheeks to draw my attention to his precisely formed lips and mouth. Looking up into his eyes, I knew.
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