Juniper Flat · Meet the driver

Cosmic Crusher

At the wheel: Ivo Serrano

Ford Galaxie

No chair in the landing zone

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Ivo Serrano wanted a launch pad. The Juniper Flat projectionist had a plank, one good angle, and a folding chair that landed in every story told about his first test.

Exhibit A: the chair

Ivo's friend Marnie sat through his explanation of the launch and started again with the question he'd missed. Whose chair was it? His thing was, he had built a level stand for the plank. Her thing was, she had bought the chair for her dad, so he could keep his seat in the front row of an outdoor film even when his knees hurt. Marnie had moved off it to go get a blanket and came back to find the Galaxie nose out under the seat.

Ivo did ask whether the chair had a mark on it. He should have asked whether her dad had anywhere else to sit. The test plank was out in a separate area behind the cinema, and Ivo had taken the closed space to mean he could trouble the whole lot until the car did what he wanted. Marnie's response to that was only to unfold the chair. She wanted to see how far the Galaxie had got under it.

The projection window

The cinema where Ivo works has a glass booth just wide enough for a stool and a table fan. It plays old things on Wednesday and new things whenever they manage to acquire a print. Ivo likes finding the part of a frame where the audience will look and then noticing what they miss at its edge. He has watched a man hand over a bag of apples in the back of the same scene enough times to be able to count how many are left after the cut.

He expected to bring that sort of attention to the plank. He kept the surface of the landing strip in view, but only the part of the frame where he had aimed the Ford. He couldn't remember how far outside that area it had gone. Marnie pointed to a crumb flattened by a tire. She had walked over carrying a biscuit when he called her the first time.

“How much trouble am I in if the chair folds fine?”

Ivo Serrano · To Marnie after the test.

A vote from the back row

Sonny from Blue Comet asked if the light he had been watching from the freight office was from Ivo's projector. Ivo can sometimes see that office from his booth, and if he leaned far enough he could see a crane where potatoes were coming off a truck. He gave Sonny the direction and then had to accept a gently delivered report: distance makes slow movement look especially smooth. Ivo asked what he had drawn anyway. A few of Sonny's penciled lines made it into Ivo's notebook, under the diagram of the chair.

The next people to borrow the plank were Pippa and her aunt, who wanted to see how far a board in the Hill Shed sagged. When the plank came back there was chalk on the long edge marking three separate places beneath it. Ivo now uses those marks when he checks the camera views he wants for a run.

A picture of the whole lot

Marnie has agreed to film another closed test if he stops telling her where to point the camera. Ivo wants to see the Galaxie clear a longer change of grade with the wheels lined up straight when it touches down. He knows there will be a small run-off area behind the mark, and he knows what needs to be clear beyond that. He has drawn all of it on an old poster.

There is a folding chair in the diagram. Ivo put it outside the test area with a little dot on it for Marnie's father. He still has to show her the sketch. She has asked him to make the dot larger because her dad wants to invite a friend, and two folding chairs, in Ivo's experience, are at least twice as dangerous to a drawing.

“You run the camera. If I tell you where to point it, point it at me.”

Ivo Serrano · Proposing a second attempt to Marnie.

Mic at the pits

The chair that stayed

Mack Why's the chair over there?

Ivo Serrano Last time it was over here. I found the Galaxie underneath. Marnie's dad hadn't even had his tea yet.

Mack So he stood corrected.

Meet the voice behind the microphone