The Road Not Taken
by August von Orth
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MY FIREBALL XL5 SPACESHIP crashed on Mercury. The ninety-degree heat transformed the curb in front of my house—mostly crumbled to rubble—into a great planet Mercury. A strange man walked up to me as I sat beside the crash site on the curb. I heard him before I saw him. He shambled along the sidewalk with a tap-step gait, a raven-topped cane supporting every other step. He wore church clothes and beads of sweat mottled his face. I didn’t feel so sweaty, but he was old and fat so maybe that made the heat worse. I thought he would pass. But he stopped. He cast a long shadow over the curb where I sat. “Mom’s inside. Dad’s at work.”
“Okay.” He pointed at the XL5 with the cane. “Looks like a pretty bad crash.” He had a nice voice, the kind Nana
