Close Encounters of the Third Kind (2 page)

“Je ne parle pas espagnol. Français et anglais settlement.”

Mr. Tennessee-Ohio spoke up. “They say this man was here. They say he was here two days. They say he saw it happen.”

This was more than Lacombe or anyone had hoped for. The Frenchman dropped to one knee and with the gentlest touch cupped the humbled chin in his sterile glove. The Mexican raised his head the rest of the way. He was crying but that wasn’t what riveted Lacombe. Half of the man’s face was cherry red and blistering from forehead to collarbone. It was the worst sunburn Laughlin had ever seen on a leathery face so accustomed to Mexico’s furnace summers. The man’s hands were buzzing and a certain stench drifted up that brought Lacombe’s gaze to the Mexican’s starched pants. He had urinated in them some time ago and as he lifted his face to speak, he was involuntarily wetting them again. The sad, desolate man worked his lips together, forcing air through his vocal cords, trying so hard to say it. And when the words broke in Spanish, the man broke down in real tears.

“Qu’est-ce quil dit?
” Lacombe breathed. Laughlin turned to the American who knew the language. But the man shrugged and questioned the humbled wreck at his feet. Again the same words croaked forward and the smell of urine was unbearable. Lacombe was a patient man but the American was keeping the words to himself for too long a time. Laughlin intervened. “What was he saying?” The American raised his eyebrows and let out a sigh along with the translation. “He said the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him.”

2  

F
our-year-old Barry Guiler was having a restless night. A gentle Indiana breeze floating through the half-open bedroom window ruffled his bangs. There was a soft but persistent whirring noise coming from somewhere in Barry’s room, and it troubled his sleep. Suddenly a soft red glow played over his face and Barry’s eyes opened.

On the night stand next to his bed, one of Barry’s battered toys had somehow come on. It was a Frankenstein monster; when it raised its hands, as if to strike out, its pants fell down and it blushed.

Barry sat up in bed, staring at Frankenstein, and then looked around the room. He had a lot of battery-operated toys scattered about—a Sherman tank, a rocket ship, a police car with red dome light and siren, a model 747, a drunk hanging on to a lamppost and chugging from a bottle—and all of them were moving, flashing, whirring. All by themselves.

Barry was delighted. His phonograph came to life all of a sudden, scratching out a tinny version of the
Sesame Street
theme song.

Barry laughed and clapped his hands. Then he jumped out of bed and ran over to the open window. Outside, in the distance, he heard a dog barking, but his back yard was dark and utterly still.

Barry’s bedroom was at the end of a hallway. Very curious now, he trotted down the hall to the living room. The room was dark except for a small blue night light. Barry sensed, though, that something was different, something was out of place. All the living-room windows were wide open and the night air was breathing through the lacy curtains, stirring them in a very odd way. The front door was wide open as well, and the porch light was shining brightly against the black night.

Despite all these strange things, the little boy was not frightened. He was ready for fun. There was a funny smell coming in the open windows and door—a little like the way the air smelled after there had been a lot of thunder and lightning. But Barry didn’t think a summer storm had just come through. He hadn’t heard anything; he didn’t hear any water dripping. Besides, this was different.

He decided to go see what was happening in the kitchen. All the windows in there were wide open, too, and the breeze was really blowing. The back door was ajar and rattling against the safety chain. But that was nothing! Bingo’s dog door had got knocked off its hinges and was lying on the floor, and Bingo wasn’t in his bed next to the refrigerator.

The refrigerator was open, too, and there was a lot of food—a milk carton, some Cokes, butter, a cottage-cheese container, bologna, leftover dinner—in messy piles on the floor in front of the ice box, leaving a sloppy trail all the way to the open dog door. Barry picked up a half-melted Heath Bar. Then something else in the kitchen caught Barry’s attention. Several somethings. Barry spun. The Heath Bar dropped from his open hand, splattering across the linoleum. The little boy backed away so quickly he slammed shut the big Amana with his tiny body. He carefully waited, his soft eyes unmoving. And then Barry Guiler smiled—a shy playful look that seemed to invite . . . a response. Barry looked some more—and giggled and looked away—peek-a-boo—more laughter—peek-a-boo. New game. Barry looked hard; then, rocking back and forth on his heels like a chimpanzee, he spun full around, cocking his head to one side before rotating it slowly—“Like this? Like this?” He was brave. “Boo!” he shouted. And made his scariest face. “Grrrrr-boo!”—his scariest.

Jillian Guiler had been asleep in her bedroom. Jillian had had the flu all week, and her head, her bed, and the room were all in a state of general disarray. The house that Jillian and Barry lived in was small and stood by itself atop a low, rolling hill in this rural area of Indiana. It was really an easy house to take care of, but Jillian had felt pretty rotten all week and had let the housework slide.

In her bedroom, everything was everywhere but where it should have been. The same wind that had been playing through the rest of the house suddenly swept into Jillian’s bedroom, picking up and dropping Kleenexes and a couple of half-finished charcoal sketches of Barry. The bedside table was a clutter of pills, nasal sprays, half a sandwich, and a can of Coke.

Jillian started coming half awake in that peculiar frame of mind that flu produces: tired but not sleepy, thinking but not very clearly, able to do something but not about to. She was under the covers but was still wearing a bathrobe. The TV set was on, and the laughter Jillian at first heard she thought was coming from the stupid sitcom that she saw flickering on the screen. But during a commercial Jillian heard the laughter again and finally recognized its source.

Barry began to imitate the thing outside, mimicking what he saw. First he covered and uncovered his eyes, as if playing peek-a-boo. Then he spun around several times like a top. He cocked his head left and right and left and right again.

He began to laugh out loud with the joy of it, moving into the night as he did so. A pale, burnt-orange light illuminated his face as he walked into the night, laughing.

It was the laughter, growing fainter, that wakened Jillian at last.

Well, that and the parade of toys. The laughter brought her half awake, wondering what had disturbed her slumber. Then, as she sat forward, eyes slowly opening, the police car came through the door of her bedroom, its dome light flashing.

Behind it rumbled the tank, fire flashing in its gun muzzle. Next the giant jumbo jet trundled forward to the accompanying whine of the police siren. And, finally, his pants dropping down, rising and falling again, Frankenstein’s monster lurched in, arms outstretched.

Jillian jumped wide awake, flipped off her covers and got out of bed. The police car narrowly missed her toes as it headed for a wall and shoved its grille into the plaster. Behind it the other toys began piling up in a confused, multivehicle collision.

“Barry?” Jillian called.

Then she remembered his laughter. It had all but faded away, only the memory of it still hanging in the night air.

The bedside clock read 10:40. What in the world was Barry up to now? He’d only been in bed two hours.

Jillian staggered out of bed and went down the hall to her son’s room. Barry’s bed was empty. The windows were open. She ran out of the room, back down the hall to the living room. There she stared about her wildly at the open windows, the open front door, the shining porch light.

Unmistakably now, the sound of Barry’s laughter was outside the house, out in the night somewhere. Jillian gave a little cry and then sneezed.

The laughter again. Fainter this time.

Oh, God! Jillian thought wildly. She rushed out the front door into the yard. Trying unsuccessfully to adjust her eyes to the darkness beyond the porch light, Jillian found herself whimpering. Catching hold of herself as best she could, she cried, “Barry! Barry!” and ran into the darkness in the general direction of her son’s disappearing laughter.

3  

T
he world inside all air traffic control centers is unreal. There are dozens of them scattered across the United States; the one half-buried in the earth near Indianapolis is as typical as any.

The artificial world created within these great concrete bunkers is only dimly perceived. The place is dark. The only light comes from small, shaded bulbs of low wattage that barely show where the doors are.

Most of the light comes from radar screens that sweep the sky over Indiana’s airspace. Here there is no day, no night, only an artificial gloom and the bright radar glowing its electronic picture of what is happening in the real world overhead.

The nation’s air traffic passes in review, noted on radar, interrogated by radio, announcing itself, making proper identification, receiving approval and advice, and either landing in Indiana or, more often, passing above at speeds nearing 600 miles per hour to its destination elsewhere.

False as this dim world is, it presents what every air traffic controller hopes is an accurate picture of real events. He hopes that every jumbo jet, every low-flying Piper Cub, is duly noted and neatly notched into an arrangement that assures everyone safe passage through the state.

That is the controllers hope. That is not what always happens.

Harry Crain was working midwatch that week. On midwatch there were only five or six men at the radar scopes. Harry usually moved behind them, pacing back and forth or resting occasionally on a tall stool, his headset connected by a long coiled wire to the radio bands in use, a small curving plastic tube that picked up his voice and conveyed it by microphone to the real world high above his head.