Dragons and Stars, Chapter 8: Friday Evening Feast

After Neal laid down for a short nap in his and Uncle John’s own cubicle, he joined the other miners for the Friday Evening Feast.

The miners on Eros had developed the tradition over the years of celebrating the end of the hard work week on Friday evening with a big meal followed by tall tales and card games. They all looked forward to it throughout the week and it was a bright spot in their schedule. Unfortunately, Hanna was rarely able to come to the meal since her grandfather required her for the evening Shabbat service.

Neal had gone a few times with her to her Shabbat ceremony on Friday evenings. In Hanna and her grandfather’s little home in the cylinder, Granddaddy Gazer would be sitting on a padded chair with a shawl pulled over his head, and in front of him their electric candle menora, a candle holder with seven electric candles. He would nod to Hanna, who would reverently move to the menora and slowly turn it up to full brightness. Granddaddy Gazer would bow his wrinkled head and murmur in Yiddish and Hebrew.

Then he would say, “Read from the Tanakh, Hanna,” and Hanna would step forward and read from a scroll in Hebrew, often from Isaiah, she told him later. Neal didn’t understand the soft muttered words, but he had seen the deep reverence in the face of Granddaddy Gazer. He leaned deeply forward as though God himself were speaking words to his most humble servant. And, Neal reflected, he supposed maybe God was.

Tonight, however, while Hanna was in the apartment with her grandfather preparing for the Shabbat, Neal was sitting next to Uncle John. They were eating in the Dining Area, located in the topmost ring of the living cylinder.

Neal took a drink of coke from a cup and tried to decide if his battered stomach was hungry or not. Tonight it was grill cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, with a side of humus for some pita chips. Neal grabbed a grill cheese sandwich off the serving plate and eyed it for a minute. The bread was fluffy from being baked at low gravity, and the cheese was a bacteria yeast-culture brew mixed with artifical ingredients. Only once in his life had Neal had the luxury of tasting real cow-milk cheese, a type called Cheddar. A supply freighter docking at the station had some extra cheese that Granddaddy Gazer had bought Hanna, and she’d given a precious slice to him. It tasted slightly funky to Neal, who was used to his half-artifical cheese. But he was still glad he’d tried it. Neal dropped the grill cheese sandwich on his plate and sighed.

“Not goin’ te eat yer foodstuffs?” MacHardy asked. The great burly man was sitting across from Neal plowing his way through a large pile of sandwiches. His plate and the table around it looked like a battle field. Perhaps Grummel’s clumsiness came from somewhere, Neal reflected, looking at the crumbs sprayed and scattered around MacHardy’s plate.

“My stomach’s not feeling so well,” Neal said, poking his grill cheese sandwich ruefully.

“Ahe! Yeh, I well remembe’ my first fight,” said MacHardy. Neal’s eyes widened, feeling immediate pity for whoever had crossed fists with MacHardy. “He wus my neighbor, a boy named Bren,” said MacHardy, leaning his giant elbows onto the table and speaking between mouthfuls. Neal was a little distracted by a crumb stuck in the long frizzy beard of MacHardy. The crumb bounced up and down as MacHardy talked.

“Thet’ rascal of’a boy had kissed Suzy, the prettiest gir’ in the place,” said MacHardy, furrowing his bushy red eyebrows.

“Vat’s wrong wiss that?” Dirk asked. Dirk and his wife Anna, from Germany, were seated next to MacHardy. They were a lively young couple in their late-twenties. They had landed two years before on the asteroid as a dating couple looking for engineering work. Uncle John had insisted they have separate apartments if they were dating, but Neal knew that generally they lived together. His Uncle John strongly disapproved of that, but had decided not to take further action besides occasionally urging them to marry. “If they were Christians,” he said, “we would certainly have to reprimand them. But God calls us to keep the Church pure, not the world, Neal.” Neal liked Dirk and Anna very much. Sometimes Dirk would have him over to their apartment to play video games on his virtual simulator, and Anna would bake hot cookies.

Dirk was smiling at MacHardy and he turned to wink at Anna. “It’s not too great a sin to kiss a prehtee girl, is it?”

MacHardy slopped his grill cheese sandwich into his soup and chomped another giant bite out of it. “What was wrong wid’ it was thet she was me own girl!” he roared, spraying some additional crumbs in the general area around his plate. “Me own girl, me fair Suzy, only for me own lips to be kissin!” He howled in anguish at the memory and stuffed the rest of his sandwich into his great mouth.

“Wahl, don’t ye know, after I heard all abouts it, I merched straight up over to his house and told him to come out fer a fight. He come straight out his door and we lit into it right ther’ in front of his house. Thet’s how mad I were, I didn’t even keer if his mum saw us or no.”

Several miners at nearby tables were turning their heads to grin and try to catch MacHardy’s tale of woe.
“We traded punches beck and forth for nigh’ unto two hours afore the fight wuz ended,” he said, rubbing his beard daintily with a napkin and missing the crumb on it.

“Two hours?” asked Dirk, amazed. He hadn’t learned much about miners and their tall tales yet. Neal figured if MacHardy told it at two hours it was more like two minutes.

MacHardy turned twinkling eyes to Dirk and nodded solemnly. A miner somewhere guffawed and MacHardy shot a scowl in that direction.

“How did it end?” Neal asked.

“Wahl,” said MacHardy reluctantly, “I cain’t say as thet I won thet particoo’lar fight. I ended et’ like you did, Neal me boy, with two fine shiners and an aching tummy.”

Neal’s eyes widened as he imagined what sort of person it would take to beat MacHardy in a fist fight.

“So did this, this Soozy, leaf you?” asked Dirk, very interested.

“Wahl, thet’s the strange thing about weemun,” said MacHardy, sitting back and stretching. “I lay in me bed thet evening with me eyes and stomach achin’ from Bren, and my backsides achin’ from me mum fer fightin’. But wurst of all was the achin’ in me heart. For I fig’ered Suzy would be out smoochin with that rat named Bren now thet I’d lost. But whut did I hear but a knock at me door, and Suzy coming in with a plate of cookies what she’d made for me her’self! She didn’t say a single word to me, jes’ sat there and fed me cookies one after t’ other. And it weren’t Bren who got a smooch,” he said, picking up another sandwich and winking at Dirk.

“Was that the same Suzy whom you later married?” asked Uncle John.

“It were indeed, Uncle John,” MacHardy said happily. “Grummel’s own mum.” He grew more pensive. “So many years an’ I still miss her at moments.” Uncle John reached over and patted MacHardy’s large arm awkwardly as a tear rolled down MacHardy’s cheek. The other miners all pretended to go back to their own meals and conversations.

MacHardy wiped a large thumb across his eyes and sighed loudly. He took up another sandwich dripping with soup and stuffed it into his mouth as though to stuff away his sorrows. One of the hatches in the ceiling clanged open just then and Neal looked up to see Grummel start descending the ladder, and then behind him Mrs. Silver in her red space suit. Neal was turning back to his drink when he caught a glimpse of MacHardy. His large hand was frozen in mid-air, holding a dripping sandwich. His mouth hung slightly open, showing giant teeth in the middle of chewing. His blue eyes glazed slightly as they slowly followed Mrs. Silver down the ladder.

“Who’s thet?” he choked to Neal. “Is thet the new lady stranger?”

“Yes,” said Neal, laughing until the pain in his stomach made him groan.